But what has me so convinced? A writerly intuition? Or something more?
I don’t believe in ghosts, but it’s not hard to feel Mari’s presence in this house, and there are times when I wonder if it’s her nudging me on.
There’s more. Find it.
Or maybe I’ve just spent too long going down all these rabbit holes, reading and rereading the same book, filling my head with murder and secrets, and now I’ve completely lost the plot.
Sighing, I drop my head into my hands.
I haven’t had another bout of sickness in a few days, and my brain has felt very clear as I’ve worked. But it’s always there, this threat that my body might betray me, attacking me like some kind of boogeyman, rendering me helpless.
That fear is what makes me think I should just go ahead and finish the manuscript while I can, get it done and off to Rose before I somehow lose myself again.
Speaking of Rose, I remember that I’ve been meaning to email her to ask about Matt and his lawyers. I’ve been putting it off, first because I didn’t feel well, and then because it had seemed silly. What was I supposed to say, “Hey, did you tell my soon-to-be-ex’s lawyers I was working on a new book?”
And I know I’m also putting it off because if I email Rose, it’ll mean there’s this part of me—albeit a little one—that didn’t really believe Chess when she said she hadn’t told Matt.
That she hadn’t talked to him at all.
But I know it’s going to bother me until I get it over with, so I quickly pull up my email and shoot a missive off to Rose. I keep it brief, breezy even, just checking in, legal stuff with the divorce, she understands, just checking what she told Matt’s lawyers about the new book.
I hit Send before I let myself overthink it, and then close my laptop harder than I need to.
On my desk, my phone beeps, and I glance down to see a text from Chess.
It’s a picture of a massive fish on ice, its glassy eyes staring out at the camera.
What if I brought this home for dinner?
Guilt sneaks into my chest, an ugly, oily feeling.
I don’t trust my best friend. That’s the truth of it, and I don’t know if it’s the house getting to me, if it’s Mari, if it’s just me, but there it is.
I type back, I’m actually on this very strict no sea monster diet, so pass.
Then the search continues.
Chess is determined to cook a big fancy dinner for some reason, wanting to buy all the ingredients herself rather than depending on Giulia. Personally, I think she’s using it as a way to avoid working. She hasn’t said anything, but I haven’t really seen her at her laptop all that often. Luckily, she seems to have believed my lie about working on the next Petal Bloom mystery, and the questions about Mari and the book have trickled off.
But that’s actually another reason to get this done quickly. Once it’s in Rose’s hands, I’ll feel better—safer.
I know it sounds paranoid, I know Chess is not actually out to steal this book from me, but I can’t shake the memory of her eyes glinting in the candlelight.
This really seems like one we should work on together.
Like she doesn’t already have enough. Like the book she’s currently not writing won’t sell tons of copies, even if it sucks.
She can’t have this, I think, surprised at how ferocious the thought is.
I’ve probably been spending too much time in Mari’s head, reading about how fiercely competitive she and Lara were, constantly locked in a struggle for the same man, for the same artistic recognition, for the same life in a lot of ways.
It’s true that I haven’t thought nearly as much about Lara as I have about Mari—choosing, I suppose, to be loyal to the woman I feel the most kinship with.
But now, as I sit here wondering where Mari’s last pages might be hidden, it occurs to me that perhaps I haven’t looked at Lara closely enough.
And with Chess out of the house for another hour at least, I could use this time to do a more thorough search of the place.
I start with the little bedroom Mari described as belonging to Lara. Chess has taken the bigger room, the one I think was probably Noel’s, so this bedroom is empty and neat, though faintly musty since it’s been closed up for our entire stay.
I search for loose floorboards, feel under the desk, under the mattress, but there’s nothing. I make my way downstairs, back to the sitting room at the front of the house.
Chess was right about there being several copies of Aestas around, and I check each one, feeling in the sleeves even though I know that’s stupid. All five of these albums have probably been taken in and out of their cases a hundred times over the years.
Mari would never have risked that. She hid that last section well on purpose.
I move into the main hallway, passing the dining room, and notice that Chess’s laptop is sitting on the dining-room table.
Open.
I stand there in the doorway, and for a second, I really do think about just walking away from it.
But there’s a darker voice inside. She read your shit without asking, why shouldn’t you read hers?
She probably has the screen locked. And even if she doesn’t, I’m not going to go searching through her stuff. At least when she’d read mine, I’d just foolishly left it up.
I stop.
Had I? She said that I had, and I’d been too freaked out and pissed off to really think carefully about it, because I did sometimes walk away from my computer without closing the document.
But then I think about that little icon on my desktop with “THEVILLABOOK.doc.” and how that might have acted like a siren song.
Chess’s computer isn’t locked, but she has her own icon calling to me. Not “SWIPERIGHT.doc” or anything that obvious, just “NewBookDraft2-July.”
I sit down.
I click.
Have you ever asked yourself, “Am I grabbing all there is in life?”
I let out a slow breath.
It’s her self-help book, no mention of Mari, the house, any of it.
God, I’m a psycho, creeping around on her laptop, thinking she was … well, I don’t even know what I’d thought. But this is clearly a Chess Book.
I scroll past her usual stuff—How often do you ask yourself if you’re reaching your highest potential?—and feel my shoulders unclench a little.
She hasn’t stolen my book. She isn’t telling my story.
I scroll further down. More New Age word salad.
Enlightened.
Powered Path.
Soul Cleanse.
I’m just about to scroll back up to the top when another word catches my eye.
Emma.
Not my name, obviously, but close enough that I pause.
And then I read.
It’s not much, just a couple of paragraphs, but as my eyes move over them, nausea and rage surge up from the pit of my stomach.
Of course, there are times in life when we step off the Powered Path, and find we can’t get ourselves back on. Settle in while I tell you a little story about a friend of mine. We’ll call her Emma. Emma was always the Smart One at school. Perfect family—you all know what a mess mine was!—and she had gone on to an adult life that we’d say had allllllll the markers of success: A good career, a nice house, a loving husband. But what happened when Emma, who was so used to things going her way, lost two of those three things? She couldn’t handle it. Complete life meltdown.