13. Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Thirteen
I did hear about my appearance on “ Morning Harbor: After Hours” the next morning. And for several days after that.
After our eventful appearance on the real Morning Harbor, it made for a nice change of pace.
Things settled down around the Avery residence over the next few days: Daniel hadn’t left the intensive care wing of the hospital yet, but he was a hell of a lot more stable than before.
Jessamyn Fawkes made her official retraction in writing, for all that the entertainment news took notice of it, but the viral clips of Kiki and I on that talk show did more than Jessamyn’s about-face could have done under the best circumstances, anyway.
That clip—that simple “I’ve got you” delivered to a woman who was practically in my arms—hit in a way the Lauren answer never could.
The Lauren thing ended up on Substacks and thinkpieces—the I’ve got you wound up on TikTok.
Everything’s a Cult surprise-dropped its second episode of its ‘expose’ on the Avery family, but their metrics were way down.
But podcasts reacting to the Morning Harbor footage were booming.
Meanwhile, the household had found a new rhythm faster than I’d expected.
It took no time at all for Yukiko and Mona to get even closer than before.
They’d always worked well together, but at the news that she’d made out with her husband, Yukiko reached a level of camaraderie where “thick as thieves” wouldn’t have been a bad descriptor.
Funny how she was one of the only people I’d ever met to like a woman even more when she did that.
The two of them sat at the kitchen island most mornings, my strategist princess and the shovel-wielding shark who’d once buried bodies for my mentor.
They drafted press releases, they maneuvered Jessamyn Fawkes, they bonded in a way that told me any wariness between them had been quietly cremated and scattered to the four winds.
Part of the reason they could do all that was because of what an enormous help Yui was around the house.
I’d expected Yukiko’s mother to be a source of moral support (and to probably jump feet first back into our therapy sessions) and while I was right about that, I’d underestimated just how eager she was to get domestic again after her divorce.
She handled the myriad little tasks around the house that needed doing—especially with Marcie still with her mother and Daniel—and every day since Morning Harbor, we’d spend some time on the back porch we’d quietly converted to a space for her therapy sessions.
Those went… about as well as could be expected.
I’d sit in one of the wicker chairs Yukiko bought from World Market while Yui rocked quietly on the back porch swing, talking to her about Daniel, about Victoria, about the way I’d nearly lost control during the Morning Harbor crisis and needed an entire car ride to calm myself down.
And about Lauren.
Somehow, Yui managed to do it all while sounding more like a mother-in-law than a therapist. Somehow that made it even easier.
I wasn’t fully healed from any of my traumas and wouldn’t be for a while, but by the third “back porch” session I was sleeping through the night again without any 3AM panic attacks.
I hoped to string together many, many more of those in the future.
And if Yui occasionally remarked with a smirk around the dinner table about how ‘reliable’ her earbuds were, we all had the decency to pretend not to be scandalized by it.
At some point during the ramp-up to Samantha’s podcast appearance, a new group chat appeared on my phone called PROJECT FIONA, with the emojis of a microphone, an eggplant and a kiss next to it.
Of course Heather and Eva were behind it—following the After Dark performance they were so proud of, they’d unilaterally declared themselves Samantha’s ‘honorary podcast producers’ and had been helping her brainstorm salacious things to say during the Call Your Daddy interview.
Some of them were so filthy I was pretty sure even Fiona Hall wouldn’t let them get to air.
But that wouldn’t stop the cheerleaders from trying.
I spoke with Marcie every single day—sometimes two or three times a day.
She gave me regular reports about Daniel’s condition, along with notes about everything from the terrible hospital food (we set her up with a DoorDash account) to how Vanessa was holding up.
Daniel wasn’t out of the woods yet, but the doctors were cautiously optimistic.
I wasn’t shocked by how badly I missed Marcie. Her absence was felt daily, if not hourly. What surprised me was how badly the rest of the harem missed her, too. We were all looking forward to having her back.
Four days after Morning Harbor, with Samantha’s podcast appearance on the horizon and Mona making our final travel preparations, things were as steady as they’d been at any point since the wedding.
Which was how I should’ve known life was about to drop another bomb on me.
The Call Your Daddy studio was absolutely nothing like Morning Harbor.
Morning Harbor had been all daytime-TV polish: soft lighting, shades of beige and gray that showed up well under studio lighting, smiling hosts and sponsors and commercial breaks.
Old people television, is probably what the people running this place would have called it.
Call Your Daddy’s studio looked like a cross between a dorm room and a tech startup, with ultra-modern furniture and a lobby done up in shades of pink so blatant it would’ve made Georgia O’Keefe weep.
Two neon signs over the front desk read THOTS AND PRAYERS and THE FATHER, THE SON, AND THE HOLY GHOSTED, this latter above a poster of Fiona Hall herself carrying a rosary and a copy of Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation like a Bible, her hands clasped in mock-prayer.
I wondered what Kate McCleary would have made of that.
The receptionist’s getup looked like something the cheerleaders would have worn to a sorority meeting: a midriff-bearing crop top and a leather pencil skirt that showed far more thigh than anyone at Morning Harbor would have tolerated.
When she saw us, she actually came around the desk and threw her arms around Samantha, like we were all surprise guests at her birthday party.
“Samantha Avery!” she giggled, her voice an octave higher than I’d expected. “Oh my gosh, I am such a fan! You look amazing!”
“Thank you,” Samantha said. “I have a hell of a stylist.”
She glanced over her shoulder when she said. Caroline—the same Caroline who’d accompanied Kiki off the Morning Harbor stage and pressed a frozen bottle of water to the back of my neck in the middle of a panic attack—stood with me, Mona and Samantha, an official part of the ‘entourage’.
From the expression on her face, she was enjoying the Call Your Daddy offices. And me.
“Honestly, I hardly have to do anything at all,” she murmured with a smile. “You’re a queen, babygirl.”
Caroline was the only person I’d met bold enough to call Samantha my pet name for her to her face. I’d expected her to slap the girl the first time she heard it, but the two of them were getting along like… well, like a house on fire, as Yukiko so elegantly expressed during her interview.
Samantha did a little twirl, her black blazer and black bodysuit mostly hiding the gentle swell of her belly underneath of her clothes. Mona insisted we didn’t want to hit the pregnancy angle too hard—it made Yukiko sympathetic, but we weren’t going for sympathetic with Samantha. Just raunchy.
I hope that group text helped, I thought. If nothing else, it gave the girls plenty of new dirty talk ideas…
We followed the producer down a hallway lined with framed posters of previous guests—some of them so famous I even recognized them.
“Is that August Aguilar?” Samantha asked, craning her neck as we passed one. “I haven’t stopped bumping her new album since it came out…”
The green room was easily four times the size of the one on Morning Harbor, with a velvet sofa, a stocked bar that none of us planned to touch, and a station already laid out with enough hair and makeup gear that Caroline didn’t need to bring her own—but of course she had anyway.
“Help yourself to whatever,” the receptionist said. “The producer will be in soon to greet you all. We cannot wait for this interview.” She beamed. “It’s gonna be so great!”
“I know it is,” Samantha said. “I’m such a fan of this podcast. This thing was my bible back in Delta Rho.”
She left us alone in the green room. Mona was already pacing, tapping away at her phone, pointedly not thinking about the fact that the two of us had a date coming up that Yukiko had penciled into both our calendars.
Caroline grabbed a bottle of water and handed one to Samantha, then moved over to the nearby fruit plate and started picking out morsels. “You should eat something,” she told my babygirl. “Not too much, but you definitely don’t want to go out there on an empty stomach.”
“Sure,” Samantha said, plopping down on the couch. “Lay it on me, Caroline.”
The makeup artist turned, putting a hand on my shoulder.
It felt so natural it took me a second to realize it shouldn’t have been there.
“How about you, Jack?” Caroline hadn’t called me Mr. Avery once since joining my payroll, which should’ve told me plenty. “Anything I can get you?”
I swore her eyebrows wiggled just a bit more than they ought to when she said that.
“I’m… I’m okay,” I told her. “For now.”
Again with that willowy, knowing smile. “Just let me know,” she whispered, turning back to the plate.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out.
“It’s Marcie,” I told the room. “Hang on, I’ve got to take this.”
I hoped she was just calling to wish Samantha good luck. If things with Daniel had taken a turn…
I stepped away from the group, out into a side hallway. The wall I leaned against was the same garish pink as the lobby. “Hi, babygirl, I’m here. Everything okay?”