Great Big Beautiful Life(104)

It had felt good to him to believe that they loved him, and it tore him up to feel now that they hated him. You couldn’t buy into one side without making room for the other.

“Just focus on us,” Margaret said. “The people who know you. Who love you. Who see your heart.”

He promised to try his best.

Laura’s new doctor came every few weeks, usually on a Tuesday, to check in on how she’d been sleeping and eating, whether her anxiety had improved at all. But on one of these Tuesdays, after a week of exhaustion and nausea, Margaret asked him to examine her as well.

As she described her symptoms, he looked on, (badly) fighting a smile. When she’d finished, he asked a question that would change her life forever: “Any chance you’re pregnant?”

This time—with Laura in her bedroom down the hall and Cosmo down on the patio sipping iced tea with his manager—Margaret felt only joy at the possibility.

So much joy.

A bright flame that burned so hot it chased away the blue that had coated her world all those years ago, as if all along it had been nothing but a flimsy shadow.

There was so much to be afraid of, so much to make a person hurt, but right then, with the people she loved most in the world safe and close, all she could see was the brilliant light.

She hoped.

For the first time in a long time, she hoped. And that was everything.





30




On Tuesday night, I fill in my notes from my session in the garden with Margaret, adding details from my outside research as I go.

Back in the sixties, when all of this happened, no one knew for sure what Laura had given the authorities to earn her own legal protections. Most people took it for granted that, after the group’s arrest, she’d flipped and agreed to be a witness for the prosecution, a deal offered to her only because of her family’s wealth and power.

I’d never read anywhere about the extortion, or the tense diner meeting. I wonder now why the lid had been kept so tightly shut on that. If it was the preference of the government or if the Iveses themselves had pushed to keep Laura’s role in the raid a secret.

Based on everything Margaret’s told me, the trial was hard on Laura. Even in the quick and loose courtroom sketches, she looks terrified. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was too afraid of retribution to allow David Atwood to find out she’d done more than turn on him. She’d set him up.

I flip between web browsers until I get back to an old article from the New York Times. Front page. In the grainy photograph to the right of the article, Laura walks with her head down out of the courtroom, surrounded by lawyers and bodyguards. Several paces behind her, I spot half of a face I didn’t notice before. A man in a three-piece suit, with oversized glasses, turning to speak with someone else in the crowd. He’s only partially visible, but it’s enough to send a zing down my backbone.

I recognize him.

From more than one place. I click back to the browser where I was analyzing courtroom sketches. I scroll down, checking my hunch.

There, just like I thought.

A loosely scrawled cartoon version of the man in the suit. Round face, a gap between his teeth. The associated documents describe him as Dr. Cecil Willoughby, testifying on the medical state of Laura Ives during her involvement in the People’s Moment Plot.

I’m shaking with adrenaline as I pull out my phone from my sleep-shorts pocket and flip to the picture Cecil Wainwright texted me.

I zoom in, close enough to get his long hair out of the frame.

Round face. A gap-toothed smile. The same man.

I feel almost dizzy as another wave of déjà vu hits me. Because I’m fairly certain this isn’t the only time I’ve seen Dr. Willoughby in the news.

In a new window, I pull up the infamous press conference video, the one filmed outside the hospital, announcing the death of Cosmo Sinclair.

There he is again, clad in a white coat, his hair short and slicked neatly down.

Dr. Cecil Willoughby.

Captain Cecil Wainwright.

The guy who owns Fish Bowl. The one who throws himself yearly not-birthday parties and never leaves home without a bucket hat. The one who’s been incredibly interested in the presence of not one but two writers on Little Crescent Island.

With shaking hands, I text Hayden: Holy shit.

I know, he says. I’m coming over.



* * *



? ? ?

I scoop coffee into a fresh filter. “What does this mean?”

“I still don’t know,” Hayden replies, leaning against the counter. He braces his hands on it, on either side of his hips, and a tiny sliver of his stomach shows when his shirt rides up.

I pull myself back to the task at hand. “I mean, it’s too big of a coincidence, right?” I fill the pot at the sink. “There’s no way this doctor and Margaret end up in the same place, both using different names, and don’t know about each other.” He opens his mouth to respond, but I get there first: “If you don’t want to talk about this—”

“I do,” he says. “Anything I say, you’d get to anyway. It’s faster if we just do this together.”

I nod, chest warming at the thought, and pour the water into the coffee maker’s tank, then drop the pot on the warmer and hit brew. “I mean, theoretically, is it possible she doesn’t know he’s here? Or vice versa?”