The pharmacy section. Ivy is standing in front of the painkillers, looking at the ibuprofen, aspirin, and Tylenol. All that pressure must be giving her one hell of a headache.
“Ivy?”
She turns. The more Karen sees her, the more she realizes Ivy is such a lovely young woman. Delicate features, flawless skin, and the most open, engaging smile. Although right now, she looks a little scared.
“I thought that was you,” Karen says.
Ivy takes a step back. “Oh. Hi.”
“Hello. I guess it was inevitable we’d run into each other out here.” Karen gestures to the aisle. “In the real world.”
“I guess.”
“How are you doing?”
“Fine, thanks.” She grabs a bottle off one of the shelves. “I’ve got to get going. Have a good night.”
“Wait.”
Ivy turns back, the smile on her face now gone. No light in her eyes. Wes has really done a number on this woman.
“I was sorry to hear you turned down my request for an interview,” Karen says.
Ivy taps the bottle with her thumb, over and over. Like she’s clicking a pen. “I can’t talk to you without my lawyer.”
Karen steps forward, closing the gap between them. “Of course. I just wanted to say that the interview would’ve been a chance for you to discover things you might not realize. Not consciously. But they could be important.”
“Seriously, I can’t talk to you without my lawyer.”
Karen holds up her hand, backing off. “Understood.”
“Good night.” Ivy nods and starts to walk away. Karen lets her take one step.
“How’s Abigail doing?” Karen says. She changes her voice, using the one she usually saves for abusers. Offer a suggestion, but make it sound like a threat. “Have you talked to her yet?”
“Abigail?”
“The admin at Siphon,” Karen says. “She took Bianca’s place?”
Now Ivy is the one who steps forward. Karen thought that would get her attention, given that Abigail is so firmly on #TeamWes.
“What about her?” Ivy says.
“Oh,” Karen says, looking surprised. “I just thought you would’ve spoken to her, given the whole thing with Wes.” She waves her hand, like it means nothing. “Anyway, I don’t mean to hold you up. Have a good night.”
Karen walks away, pausing outside the store to collect herself. What she did to Ivy, mentioning Abigail in that way, was so manipulative. Planting a seed of doubt and hoping it will grow.
Just like her husband used to.
Of course that’s where she learned it. Who else would it have come from? Except he made Karen doubt herself, not him. She is trying to make Ivy doubt Wes.
It still makes her feel horrible. But when someone needs help, it has to be done.
54
Ivy sits in her car, replaying the conversation with Karen in her head, but remembering what her lawyer said.
The police lie.
Stan said they do it all the time. They do it to mess with people’s heads, to confuse them, to get them to admit to something. That must be what Karen is doing.
Still, Ivy can’t help but think about how beautiful Abigail is. She also thinks about the voice that answered Wes’s phone, but she can’t remember what Abigail sounds like. Ivy searches for her on social media, hoping she has posted a video of herself talking.
A knock on the window interrupts her scrolling.
Ivy is still sitting in the parking lot of the drugstore, so she expects to see Karen. But it’s a man.
She doesn’t recognize him at first. It’s nighttime, she is alone in her car, and now there’s a man just outside. This scenario has played out a dozen times in true-crime documentaries, and it never ends well for the woman.
But then she knows. It’s the beard.
“Milo?” she says.
He can’t hear her because her window is still up. He motions for her to lower it. She does, only a few inches.
“Ivy,” he says. “I thought that was you.”
“Yes, hi. It’s me.”
“How are you?” he says.
Everything comes back to her now, the whole story about the picture she posted online, and this starts to feel weird.
“I’m fine,” she says. “And you? How’s your fiancée?” Snarky, yes. Deserved, definitely yes.
“Not too well, actually,” he says.
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Clarissa thinks you and me are having a ‘thing.’？” Air quotes around thing.
“She messaged me. I told her we just had a drink together,” Ivy says.
“I know. She didn’t believe you.”
Ivy restrains herself from rolling her eyes. “Well, maybe you shouldn’t have drinks with women in bars and ask for their numbers.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t tag pictures of guys you aren’t going out with.”
This is so not her problem.
“Goodbye, Milo.” Ivy rolls up her window and backs her car up.
Milo watches her leave, illuminated by her headlights. He looks a lot creepier than she remembers from Liver.
She forgets about Milo as soon as she drives away and heads home. Her mind is back on Abigail.
Ivy has met her a few times. Abigail had been the admin in Wes’s office for years. Ivy saw her once when she stopped by to have lunch with Wes, and again at a Siphon holiday party.
Abigail had also been there the day Ivy had been in a rage, tearing apart Wes’s office.
He deserved it. His coworkers may not have understood that, but Wes did. Abigail was the one who had walked in first, raising her voice above Ivy’s. She grabbed Ivy’s arm and told her security was on its way. Tanner rushed in behind her, yelling for her to get out. Ivy did, before the guards arrived.
She has a clear memory of the look on Abigail’s face. Disgust. Even though Ivy kept her head high, as always, she felt that look.
But it’s hard to believe Wes would hook up with her. Work is too important to him, and the majority of his career has been at Siphon. Messing around with the admin in his department would be idiotic. Granted, he has done stupid things in the past—a lot of them—but something like this could be career suicide.
Still, that woman on the phone.
Ivy shakes her head, trying to erase the voice. Her mind is playing tricks on her, making connections where there may not be any. No, she is not going to ask him about it. Not going to call Heath, either. She already knows what he would say. Heath claims to be on #TeamIvy, but when she really thinks about it, he is #TeamAnyoneButWes. This would just add to Heath’s pile of evidence, the one he throws at her whenever things aren’t going right.
As Ivy enters her apartment, she gets a text from Wes.
I’ll be done in about half an hour. Your place or mine?
She looks around at her disaster of a bedroom. Clothes are spread out everywhere, hanging on the door of the closet, stacked in a pile on the chair. Right next to the open suitcase.
I’ll come to your place, she says. Text me when you’re home.
She tosses her phone on the bed and looks around her room. So much to do. And now she is pissed off, and it’s all Karen’s fault.
But in a few days, none of that will matter.
* * *
—
After Wes suggested marriage in the middle of the night, the subject was dropped. They went back to bed. In the morning, they were both groggy, sleepwalking through the coffee and bagels, and neither one brought it up. Ivy went to work thinking the whole conversation had been a fever dream.