I throw a glance toward my kitchen. “Of course. The water is a bit brown though, I have to warn you. I’ve gotten used to the metallic taste, but it bothers some people.”
Her nose crinkles again. She has the faintest hint of freckles on the bridge, no doubt covered by several layers of makeup. “Brown water? Adrienne, you should have somebody take a look at that.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. It tastes fine. Let me grab that water for you.”
“Actually, that’s okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, it’s fine.” She looks a tad green at the idea of choking down a glass of my fictional brown water. She wants to be my friend, but not that badly. “I should be heading out now. It’s a long drive back to the city.”
I nod. “Drive safely.”
She takes one last long look around my house. She’s probably wondering how much it cost me. In another life, Paige could have been a real estate agent. She has the right personality for it. Pushy as hell.
“Honestly,” she says, “you should think about getting some sort of security system for this place. I don’t want to come here one day and find you murdered in the living room.”
Statistically, the risk of such a thing is low. Less than a quarter of all homicide victims are female. Most of those women are young and low-income.
“Or get a boyfriend,” Paige adds with a laugh. “Like I said, happy to help on that front.”
Up to seventy percent of females who have been murdered are killed by an intimate partner. So in actuality, her suggestion to “get a boyfriend” is not only highly judgmental and insulting but would only increase my risk of meeting with a violent end. But I will not debate this woman.
“I’m really fine,” I say again. “I don’t need a security system.”
She considers this for a moment then snorts. “Yeah, that’s right. You invite the crazies right in, don’t you?”
It hits me now. I don’t know how I never saw it. Paige doesn’t respect what I do. She has been my advocate through two publications, and in her defense, she’s damn good at it. But she doesn’t believe in any of it. To her, the people I help are a bunch of “crazies.”
During the five years I have known Paige, she has insulted my home and my lifestyle choices, and she’s been the harshest critic of my manuscripts. I have taken every bit of her abuse because she’s good at what she does. But today, she has crossed a line.
Nobody talks about my patients that way.
“Paige.” I tap the corner of my right eye. “You’ve got a bit of mascara caked right here.”
“Oh!” Her black eyelashes flutter as her hand flies self-consciously to her eyes. She automatically reaches into her purse to search for a compact, but in the process, her phone slips from her left hand and clatters loudly to the wood floor. “Shit…”
She scoops up her phone—there’s a spiderweb of cracks imprinted on the screen. She looks like she’s going to burst into tears.
“Oh, dear,” I say. “It looks like your phone got cracked.”
“Shit.” She runs her index finger over the screen as if she might magically fix it with her touch. She swears again and yanks her finger away. The glass has sliced right through the pad of her finger. “Just my luck, right?”
“Maybe it’s a sign,” I say. “Perhaps you should spend less time on your phone.”
Paige laughs like I made a joke. She doesn’t know me well enough to know that I don’t make jokes.
Her smile is strained as I lead her to the door, and once she gets outside, the smile drops off her face altogether. I watch from the window as she makes her way back to her car, this time avoiding the treacherous loose brick. As soon as she slides into the driver’s seat, she twists her body to look at her reflection in the rearview mirror. She touches the corner of her eye, frowning as she searches for the mascara I had assured her was caked in there.
She’s having a bad day. But it’s going to get much worse when she gets the email from me terminating her as my agent.
I turn away from the window and look down at the manila envelope that Paige left me. My book. Two years of blood, sweat, and tears.
I carefully lift the clasp and open the envelope. I pull the proof copy of my book from within. The corners of my lips twitch. The book is exactly the way I envisioned it. My name is in bold block letters: Adrienne Hale, MD, PhD. The publisher balked when I suggested the knife dripping with blood on the book cover, but after the success of my last book, I got to call the shots. They must realize now what a brilliant decision it was—how striking the image is. I trace the letters of the title as I read the words out loud: