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  The ride into Manhattan, to Dr. Dan’s that first time, was long and confrontational. Ara remembered screaming at her father that she didn’t need a shrink, she needed a normal life. But he insisted she would come to love the sessions.

  “It’s an hour a week you get to talk about just you, sweetheart, who wouldn’t enjoy that?”

  Didn’t he understand she never wanted to talk about herself?

  Maybe he did, but knowing didn’t stop her father. He marched her right into the building and up to the doctor’s floor. After a heated argument in the hallway, a young Bradley Cooper lookalike came out from the office and introduced himself to her as Dr. Dan.

  Ashamed of acting out in such a way in front of a near stranger, Ara regained her composure and walked into his office.

  “Ara?” Dr. Dan’s serene voice was calm and measured. Like he knew better than to place too much emotion behind his words, yet placed enough importance on them for her to trust him. She had just met him, but she already welcomed his soothing tone.

  Realizing she was out of breath and sweating, Ara took a few deep draws of oxygen before answering, “I’m so sorry about that.”

  “For what?” said Dr. Dan. “I call that a Monday.” Ara mustered out a quiet laugh through her labored breaths before retreating to the couch.

  “You watch The O.C.? I hear Marissa and Ryan are on the outs again, huh?” Dr. Dan said.

  Ara couldn’t help laughing at his reference to The O.C. It was what she would later love about Dr. Dan, he always had a casual way about him that helped her realize things were not so bad. He managed to undermine demons with friendliness and indifference. Like nothing was new to him. Nothing was out of the norm.

  “It’s Trey’s fault, Ryan’s brother. He’s a dick,” Ara replied. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dr. Dan hushing her father from commenting on her inappropriate language.

  “Every primetime show has one. Conflict keeps it interesting, don’t you think?” said Dr. Dan before asking, “Wanna stay and chat for a little?”

  “Sure, not my dad, though,” she said. I can’t talk with him here.

  “But Ara—” said her father, who clearly was not understanding her need for personal space. Both her parents had a habit of twisting her issues into a personal attack on their parenting.

  It wasn’t too far after that when her father died. Dramatic or not, it was an event neither she nor her stepmother were prepared for and there wasn’t a single moment where they pretended they would continue on without him. Her stepmom moved back with family in Iowa, and Arabelle returned to New York with her husband and Raina so Ara could finish out high school on the East Coast. There was some conversation about Ara moving out to California instead, mostly because, like Ara, Raina wanted to graduate with friends. For once, Arabelle put her daughter first, something Ara knew Raina always resented.

  She could only imagine what her mother would have to say to her now, alone and widowed at such young age.

  “I begged her to leave New York. What are people going to think about this,” Ara could imagine her horrified mother saying as she hyped herself up over multiple glasses of wine club zinfandel.

  Ara let her hand drop from the security of the blanket and searched for her cell phone on the floor, shifting the phone with her pointer finger until it was in reach. Typing in her pass code—her wedding anniversary—Ara prepared herself for what she was sure was going to be a flood of messages from over the past twenty-four hours. But there was nothing. Not one text or call. Not a single person had reached out to her. Not to console her, question her, or even just to confirm that she was alive herself. Not one.

  Knowing that couldn’t be, Ara threw off the blanket and stormed Raina’s kitchen. She could see the horror on Raina’s face as she nervously said she had to get off the telephone. Their mother still speaking as Raina hung up the call.

  “What did you do!” Ara’s face burned with anger. She could feel sweat gathering by the roots of her hair. “You deleted all of my messages and missed calls, I know you did! You have no right to go into my phone!”

  Ara didn’t wait for an explanation. She grabbed Raina’s wrists and pulled her close but Raina lunged away and retreated to the caddy corner of the makeshift kitchen.

  “You need to calm down, Ara, you’re dealing with a lot right now. Please calm down!” Ara knew she should probably consider Raina’s desperate plea but anger fueled her forward.

  “That is my phone. MINE. It was not yours to poke your nose through and delete things as you wish. You have no right!” Ara screamed at Raina as she jumped from the counter top and tried her best to force Ara to retreat to the chair.

  “You need to sit down, Ara. You have been through so many unimaginable things since last night. I’m only trying to help you, plus Mom thought it would be best for you not to read all that shit. I’m sorry, people just have so many opinions, you know that. People make things up,” she said.

  “Sure, and people also like to reach out and pay their respects and now I have no way of knowing who did that,” Ara said through clenched teeth.

  “We thought we were doing the right thing.” Ara despised when Raina referred to her and Arabelle as we. It wasn’t Ara’s fault Raina never met her mother, and she could never understand why Raina wanted to latch herself onto hers.

  “Do people really think I could do this?” Ara asked through her tears. “I loved him. He was everything to me. What messed up shit could people be saying that you felt you had to delete it all?”

  “Of course not, Ara, I know you couldn’t do it but think about how this looks to his family. They were never that fond of you in the first place, and they know the cops are going to start looking at you first. We know that they have to check you off before they can find the real douchebag who did this. But Brad’s family is reading more into that than they should. Maybe it’s easier than admitting it was random or a robbery or something.”

  “So you think you’re saving me from Brad’s family,” Ara said, her retreating anger bubbling back to the surface. “I could handle the congressman, you had no right to make that decision for me.”

  “If we thought you should feed into it I wouldn’t have deleted it. Please understand, it’s easier not to react if you don’t know at all, it was the right thing.”

  Again, with the WE.

  “That’s my decision, Raina! Get Mom back on the phone. I’m sure this was her idea,” Ara yelled only to be cut off by Raina’s shriek.

  “Ara, oh my God. You’re bleeding!”

  Looking down, Ara saw the blood pooling at her center and in her pajama pants.

  Stunned, she looked up at Raina, who had both hands cupped over her mouth in visible shock.

  “Oh my God, Ara, you were pregnant.”

  Ara didn’t even have to respond. It seemed Raina already knew the answer.

  CHAPTER 6

  When Lane first called her with news of the shooting, Raina was sure she would find Brad at the station, never thinking that he was the victim. Raina didn’t think it was possible that Ara could be responsible, but what did she know? People snap, things go wrong. Sometimes people are simply not who you think they are. That’s just human nature, right? Not every convicted murderer is a stone-cold serial killer. Hell hath no fury like a scorned lover, she remembered reading somewhere.

  She knew Ara and what she could be capable of. She also knew Ara did not know Brad’s secrets. Was there ever a way to truly know everything about a person’s life? The Brad Bugia Raina knew was not a one-woman kind of man, let alone the marrying type. How manipulative he could be. He was from a family of politicians. Ara had to know at least portions of the truth about her husband.

  Raina herself was no different, and she didn’t even pretend to know anything about marriage. She was a withering addict to the attention and the challenge of luring someone in, controlling their every move, then discarding them like a used hand towel. People like her and Brad thrived on the attention. Sure,
he loved Ara. But Brad couldn’t deprive his nature of who he was. Maybe that was what he saw in Ara. A person he was never going to be, a truly good person. A person who knew how to give everything to someone and to sacrifice. The Ying to his Yang. The calm to his storm.

  But Raina saw who he really was and understood him perfectly. Two dark, self-centered souls feeding off the attention of others. Ara could never compete with that.

  Maybe she did kill him, Raina thought. Nobody’s perfect. Not even Ara, no matter how hard she tried. Wouldn’t that be the kicker? A dark, deep-seeded fairytale of betrayal. The virtuous princess pushed to the edge of all edges. Pushed to murder.

  She knew Ara would be furious that she deleted her messages, but Arabelle encouraged it, and that was good enough for her. Through the mix of somber texts, messages from friends, and forceful ones from Brad’s family, one message stood out to her. Five simple words. I’ve been trying to reach you. It was all the text said, yet somehow it didn’t seem to fit. The number was saved under a common name, Danielle, however Raina never heard Ara mention a friend or colleague with that name. Not once to her directly, but the texts had been coming since college—at least that’s when Raina started noticing them. Wouldn’t a best friend come to visit or make the pin board of pre-college photographs found in every freshman dorm room? Never wanting to directly ask Ara who Danielle was, she was left to wonder. If she asked about it, Ara would know that she was snooping, and that would take the fun out of it. She loved to virtually eavesdrop on Ara and report back to their mother. Phones do keep quite a bit of secrets.

  While the other messages offered condolences or the typical ill-fated attempt at justifying the tragedy, the he’s in a better place type, all Danielle’s message said was I’ve been trying to reach you. No I’m so sorry. No how are you. But an urgent, I’ve been trying to reach you. The odder thing was, when Raina scrolled through the recent calls and text messages, Danielle had not been trying to reach Ara. Quite the opposite, Ara had called her, just once, the night Brad was killed. Hitting delete, Raina decided whatever Ara’s secret was, she was going to cover it up for now.

  CHAPTER 7

  She lost their baby. Ara’s final connection to Brad. A few weeks ago, she was elated with the news. They were finally going to have the family they always talked about.

  “You are going to be an amazing mother one day when we’re ready,” Brad had said with a smile that always brought her to her knees. Compliments were particularly sweet coming from his lips, especially toward the end where they were few and far between.

  Ara was cursed with a mother who resented that she managed to escape the womb unscathed from the lack of prenatal care. A daily scotch was hardly what the doctor recommended. That was exactly why Ara always wanted to be a loving maternal influence to a child. It would be the final proof that she was OK, that she had made it into adulthood despite her mother, who even in naming her, left the reminder that Ara would always be half as good in her eyes.

  “But I’m going to get so fat,” she had whined. “Burrito belly on steroids; who wants that?”

  They’d both laughed at the thought. “When it happens, you’ll be beautiful.” Brad knelt on the kitchen floor and kissed her above her navel where a bump would have been. “Who doesn’t love burritos?”

  It was just weeks after confirming with her doctor that she was pregnant that the evil fist of the truth punched her in the gut. She could have lived forever not knowing what she knew now, that her husband was seeing someone else. The truth may set you free, but it was a hell of a lot easier to be kept in the dark. Maybe it was for the best not knowing. Being replaced is a hard pill to swallow.

  The media chomped on the story like a piece of red meat at a July 4th barbecue, chewing and chewing until the flavor was sucked out, leaving nothing but tasteless commentary and overreaching opinions. If he were a different man, from a different family, the media may have passed on the story, but Brad being the only son of a New York congressman, especially during an election cycle, presented an opportunity for irresistible click bait. Theories flooded the news channels, each station offering up its own breaking details and exclusives. The viewer’s tweets flashed across the bottom of the screen while the hard-nosed news anchors shredded Ara and Brad’s relationship into slivers of falsities and pointed fingers in every direction.

  The frenzy was expected of course, given the details. Young, successful couple in the prime of life, struck down by a horrific tragedy. America couldn’t help but love a good mystery, especially when the horror fell upon those otherwise living charmed lives. It was as if watching the one percent suffer justified some personal disservice by God and balanced the scale.

  At first Ara watched intently, starved like any other viewer for updates from the police. But as the coverage continued and the producers ran out of content to deliver, the stories pulled in character witnesses out of any rabbit hole from the couple’s life. One by one, Ara watched as Brad’s coworkers dished details of his office manner.

  “Brad was the type that always said good morning,” bragged one secretary. “Always complimenting something, your earrings, haircut, that sort of thing. A true gentleman.”

  Who the hell are you, and how do you know he was a gentleman? Ara would think as she obsessively Facebooked the Brittany’s and Jessica’s that claimed to be close friends and colleagues of her husbands, wondering who, if not all of them, were sleeping with him. Friends, of course, that he never mentioned over the typical how was your day dinner conversations they had. One bitch went as far to say that although she assumed he had a happy marriage, she never heard him mention his wife nor did she ever see her in the office. Clearly alluding to trouble in paradise, just as the producers wanted. Obviously desperate to be asked back, or better, become a tabloid mistress and claim her five seconds of fame.

  Ara noticed that, more and more, the special guests seemed heavily weighted in Brad’s favor. As if the news outlets forgot that she was a core player in this sick and twisted storyline. While she denied the requests for comments originally, she never expected for the media to give up on her altogether. Was it easier to call in the acquaintances than his widowed wife?

  It was only after his parent’s televised press conference that the rumors started of shady deals he arranged for clients, or missing fundraising dollars collected as a political bundler. Finally, there was a new angle, whether true or not. If he didn’t kill himself, and Ara was innocent, there had to be someone else, lying in wait for Brad Bugia to key into his apartment, only to be destroyed by his own weapon. Someone who knew where to find the gun.

  She was overjoyed when Raina said she had been contacted to be interviewed—at least it was someone for her corner. A public chameleon, Raina adapted to any role she was challenged with and had mastered the art of manipulation years ago. Confident Raina wouldn’t betray her, Ara knew that if there was one thing Raina was good at, it was being the center of attention.

  “I promise, Ar, I will show everyone how incredibly wonderful you are,” she had said before going on air. “Everyone will love you and feel for you when I’m done.”

  Ara could not help thinking that it was an odd thing to say given the circumstances, but she chose not to overanalyze it. Did Raina think she needed people to feel for her? Did she know something Ara didn’t?

  Victimized by many the past few days, she wrote it off as being overly anxious, something she was prescribed Xanax for in her early twenties. But when the interview began to unfold on national television and she saw next to Raina in huge block lettering, Mutual Friend of Victim and Wife, she no longer could talk herself out of the betrayal she felt.

  Mutual friend? Raina and Brad saw a lot of each other and they were as close as any stepsister and husband, but Ara did not agree that mutual friend accurately reflected the threesome’s relationship. She and Raina were stepsisters. Family. The girls’ relationship was firmly cemented years before hosting any New Year’s soirees. How could she! There was a n
ever-ending line of special guests that were publically declaring their allegiance to Brad, his reputation did not need Raina. Ara needed Raina. The sting of her betrayal was sadly something Ara was accustomed to by now, but on national television?

  Her ears hissed with anger as she listened to Raina’s detailed version of her and Brad’s love life. Flirtatiously skipping over detrimental questions that could have helped Ara.

  “There had to be other women,” the anchor questioned as Raina’s glance shifted into a head tilting, corner glanced smirk.

  “Brad was a very charming man, but he loved Ara. She was perfect for him,” Raina responded.

  “So there was cheating going on in the marriage? As a coworker, did you see anything you were uncomfortable with in the office? Anything you wanted to run home and tell your stepsister?” The network was going to run with this one, and Ara knew it. Raina, however, either lacked two brain cells to rub together or the attention was blinding her of any loyalty she had previously expressed.

  “No, ma’am, if I did see anything, I knew it was harmless. Ara wouldn’t have cared to know. She loves Brad and always trusted him.”

  Ma’am! And, of course, I would have cared to know. She was fuming.

  She slammed the remote against the wall and pounded clenched fists against the couch. An uncomfortable gaze looked back at her from a canvas portrait of Raina she had displayed in her living room. A selfie of her on a beach that Ara always hated. There was something just plain gaudy about having your own face hanging on your walls. If anyone would do it, though, it would be Raina. She probably gets off to herself, Ara thought as the weathered couch suddenly seemed less inviting underneath her.

  Picking up a lighter from the coffee table, she closed in on the image, disgusted by it more than usual. Slowly she held the lighter to Raina’s face and watched as the pieces of fabric melted away, revealing a dark black hole. Ara sat back on the couch satisfied and lit the lavender candle on the coffee table. She’d have to throw that out before Raina got home.