Chapter 32
The heat spreading through my body is dangerous and deadly, dual revelations fighting for my attention. Marlowe’s letter is clenched in my fist, my fingers too stiff to let go.
Constance and Preston are having an affair.
It’s absurd. Preston with his preppy, pro-athlete swagger and Constance, the aura-obsessed hippie. During group gatherings, the two of them barely interact, have almost nothing in common. A romance budding between the two of them doesn’t make any sense.
My heart sinks when I think of Ava. Nothing she’s done could warrant this.
A betrayal from her husband and one of her oldest friends.
Even when she’s vying for the limelight, Ava gives all of herself to everyone around her, Constance and Preston being two of the biggest recipients of her generosity.
She’s supported Preston as he navigates his retirement. She’s planning Constance’s baby shower—
The baby. Horror tremors through me, burrows into a sickening pit at the base of my stomach.
Is it possible Preston could be the father of Constance’s child?
At her first fertility appointment, she’d informed her doctor that she was celibate, but was she only saying that to hide her affair?
If she’d admitted to being sexually active, I would have had questions, and it could have impacted her ability to get pregnant via intrauterine insemination.
Constance wouldn’t risk it. That appointment was over a year ago.
Marlowe’s letter doesn’t indicate when the affair started, but it can’t have been going on for over a year. Could it?
I crush the letter with my fist and stuff it into my pocket, the material cushioning around Oliver’s phone. Discovering Damien is the person blackmailing me isn’t shocking. I was expecting it. He’s the only outsider here.
But this? Never in a million years would I have thought Constance could betray Ava. The thought of it makes me sick to my stomach. I can only imagine how Ava feels, uncovering something so upsetting in such proximity to everyone involved.
I rush out of the Teal Room in search of Ava.
Marmee gifted her with her favorite room in the house—the Fairy Room, the only one on the first floor, tucked into a narrow hallway between the parlor and the formal dining room.
I rush down the staircase, ignoring the curious stares from everyone inside the parlor.
It’s a relief to see Ava isn’t in there.
After reading Marlowe’s letter, I was afraid she would be out for blood.
“What’s going on?” Preston says, following me down the hallway in the direction of their shared bedroom. “Is Ava crying?”
“Not now,” I spit, shooting daggers at him with my eyes.
I’ll deal with Preston and Constance, and even Damien, later. Right now, Ava needs me. I find her inside the Fairy Room, stuffing her belongings into a suitcase.
“Ava, I’m sorry…” Words fail me. Anything I say is a useless balm for her suffering.
“Did you read what Marlowe wrote?” She stops abruptly, her posture stiffening. There’s a fury in her eyes I’ve never seen before. “About Preston. And Constance.”
“Yes,” I admit, overwhelmed with shame. “I had no idea.”
“Neither did I. Marlowe found out weeks ago!”
I’m shocked Marlowe didn’t say something sooner.
I’m surprised she didn’t recruit me to assist in breaking the news to Ava, help soften the blow, as if there’s ever a right time or place to reveal such soul-crushing information.
When I imagine Preston and Constance together romantically, I feel like I’m about to retch.
“Marlowe wanted you to know,” I say, compelled to defend our dead friend. “That’s why she wrote you the letter.”
This explains Marlowe’s apathetic demeanor tonight. She regretted having to engage with Constance and Preston. I’d misinterpreted her frustration, believed it was targeted at Ava stemming from the dress fitting.
Another mystery clarified. Marlowe wasn’t distraught over her divorce that day, an accusation levied against her; she was upset about the affair.
Ava misread the situation and attacked. Constance allowed it to happen.
Marlowe, not wanting to ruin the day or inflict further pain on Ava, remained silent, waiting for the right moment to release the truth.
Between the wedding planning and the breakup and this party, it never came.
Ava continues stuffing clothes into her suitcase, her careful demeanor abandoned, her once-styled hair a sweaty, mangled mess.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving.”
The police ordered everyone to stay. The last thing Ava needs to do is storm off in the middle of the night, especially now that she knows what I did to Oliver.
Her reaction to the affair is visceral and raw and warranted, but I must keep her here, reclaim control before untamed emotions expose my darkest secret.
“You can’t leave.”
“I’m not staying here!” she says but stops packing, stares at something unseen in the distance, and begins to laugh, possessed by some cruel joke. “In one night, I’ve learned one friend died, one is a murderer, and the other one is fucking my husband.”
Her words pierce me, filling me with hurt and regret. It’s all I can do to keep myself standing upright. Before tonight, my biggest concern was getting away with Oliver’s murder. I thought that was the worst thing in the world.
“Look,” I say to Ava, “I need you. Together we can prove Damien pushed Marlowe. She deserves justice.”
“This lovely revelation changes that, too,” she says, zipping her suitcase shut.
“What do you mean?”
“Think about it, Tippi. We assumed Damien was the only person who’d want to hurt Marlowe.” She fixes me with a strange stare. “That’s not really the case anymore, is it?”
All night, I’ve been accumulating reasons Damien might have murdered Marlowe and sought to blackmail me.
Oliver’s cell phone hidden in his guest room confirms he’s the blackmailer, but I’ve had tunnel vision, assuming if Damien was the person scattering messages around the house, he must also be responsible for Marlowe’s death.
But now? Ava is right. It pains me to consider it, but Constance and Preston have obvious reasons to want Marlowe dead.
“Do you really think Preston or Constance could do something to Marlowe?”
“I didn’t think they were capable of fucking each other behind my back,” she says. “And I was wrong about that.”
“Ava? Tippi?” Constance’s voice carries from the hallway. Like Preston, she must wonder why Ava is so upset. “Are either of you in there?”
Ava starts for the door, but I jump in front of her, shouting over my shoulder, “Go back to the parlor, Constance!”
“What’s going on?” she whisper-shouts. “Did you find something in Damien’s things?”
The door creeps open.
I dart past Ava, slamming the door behind me as I enter the hallway.
“What is taking you two so long?” Constance asks, leaning against the wall to keep pressure off her injured foot. “I thought I was supposed to be distracting Damien. Ava came running down the stairs crying. What’s going on?”
Protectively, I step to the left, blocking the closed bedroom door.
It’s a bizarre situation to be in, staring at Constance, the person who used to comfort me after breakups, nurse me to health after particularly bad hangovers.
When she was nervous and afraid about IUI, I accompanied her, served reassurance.
I don’t want to believe this same person could betray Ava.
“Before she died, Marlowe wrote a letter,” I begin.
Her face turns pale. “What do you mean, a letter? Like, a suicide note—”
“No.” I clench my eyes shut, trying to forget the horrible revelations that have surfaced tonight. Marlowe’s death. The affair. “She wrote a letter to Ava.”
Constance’s eyes dart in the direction of the bedroom, waiting. “Okay.”
“In the letter,” I say, summoning the courage to continue, “she accused you and Preston of having an affair.”
I’ve said it. Those ugly words that have already provoked so much sorrow tonight, and all I can hope, with every fiber of my being, is that Constance will say it’s not true.
There’s been a misunderstanding. Marlowe was confused, wrong.
Hell, maybe Marlowe didn’t even write the letter, and this is only another twisted layer to Damien’s manipulative game.
Constance’s voice trembles when she speaks. “Did Ava read it?”
“Yes.” The waiting in between questions is unbearable. “Constance, is it true?”
She lowers her head. “I can explain.”
My outrage is ferocious, instincts compelling me to be on the offensive. Constance is one of my closest friends, but my loyalty to Ava in this moment is potent.
“How could you? With Preston!”
Having an affair with a random man would be immoral enough, but he and Constance are the opposite of each other. She’s all woo-woo and air and mutable. He’s muscle and earth and fixed. The two of them never made sense as friends, let alone as lovers, Ava being the only binding force between them.
“I didn’t plan for this,” she says. “He didn’t either. It just happened.”
“You don’t just happen to sleep with your best friend’s husband.”
“Don’t say it like that.” She looks down, rubbing two fingers along her brow. “It sounds dirty, wrong.”
“That’s exactly what it is!”
I realize I’m yelling. I wanted to keep my voice down, try to de-escalate this situation, but I lack self-control. A protective, violent energy surges through me, similar to what I felt on the night I confronted Oliver in Marmee’s closet.
“Preston signed up for some spirituality sessions after his contract ended. He’s been struggling.”
I know he has. Like so many athletes after retirement, he’s floundered, unable to find his purpose, a series of new industry failures only compounding his sense of inadequacy. I’ve heard all this before from Ava. His wife.
“We became closer. He showed me a side to him I’ve never seen before,” she says. “One thing led to another.”
I clench my fists. “How could you do this to Ava?”
“You have to believe me, both of us feel awful about what we’ve done.”
“Then why keep doing it?” I ask.
“We tried calling things off,” she says, looking down at her growing stomach, “then this happened.”
The thought already existed in my brain, but I didn’t want it to be true. It feels like a bullet has ripped through me, tearing at my flesh and insides one layer at a time.
“Is Preston the father?”
Tears glimmer in her eyes. She nods.
Disgust, sour and bitter, lodges in my throat, burning. This revelation will destroy Ava.
“You said you wanted to tackle motherhood on your own. That you weren’t going to wait around for a man.”
“I meant everything I said. I did. I’d started looking into IUI long before things got serious with Preston. I’d already committed to my decision, scheduled the insemination,” she says, looking at her stomach. “This happened on its own.”
As if pregnancy is some magic trick, a rabbit being pulled out of a black hat.
She made deliberate decisions leading up to conception.
Getting involved with Preston. Sleeping with him, over and over again.
The decision to betray Ava and risk her friendship with Marlowe once the affair was found out.
Choosing to go through a pregnancy knowing how many lives could be ruined as a result.
Ava has tried to become pregnant and failed. To know that Preston and Constance were able to conceive this easily—
Ava exits the bedroom. When she sees Constance standing in the hallway, in the flesh, she inhales deeply, as though she’s about to faint.
Constance mirrors her reaction, her body falling forward, collapsing into itself as she cries, “Ava, please let me explain.”
“Is it true?”
Ava’s composure surprises me. Gone is the broken woman from minutes ago, her emotions replaced with seething disdain.
Constance can’t bring herself to answer. Her mouth opens and closes, searching. “We never meant to hurt you.”
It’s such a clichéd response, and the use of the word we makes me cringe. A maniacal grimace stretches across Ava’s face. She lowers her gaze to Constance’s midsection, a perceptible evil in her stare. “Is the baby his?”
Constance continues to look at Ava, refusing to move her face in either direction. Finally, she says, “I’m so sorry.”
The change of tone in her voice, shifting from regret to pity, is what does it. Ava extends her arms toward Constance. Rage overrides her sensibilities.
Constance recedes, narrowly avoiding another tumble. I reach for her, pulling her arm forward, just as she’s about to collide with the wall. The sudden movement puts too much pressure on her injured foot, and she whimpers in pain.
“I will never forgive you for this,” Ava spits at Constance. There’s venom in her stare, murderous intent writhing and winding between us, unraveling nearly two decades of friendship. She turns to me. “Keep them away from me. If I see either one of them, I can’t say what I might do.”
My intuition tells me that Ava may not say, but she knows.