Page 117 of Start With A Slap

“She didn’t mean to,” he reasoned. “She was blasted, didn’t know what was real — I tried to stop her, but by the time I...” He held a hand out in front of him. “It was too late.”

“That’s manslaughter, Sever. You could have called the police — a good lawyer could’ve gotten her a reduced sentence, some drug-induced insanity plea... You didn’t have to stage this elaborate hoax!”

“You think I didn’t try? She threatened to pin it onme, Ivy. My DNA was all over that girl, and there were two other people in that house who would have gladly testified against me.”

Ivy was quieted with a vision of the two people he was referring to.

“It wasn’t some grand scheme, all right? It’s three in the morning, the mother of my child is frantic, tweaking out of her bloody mind and there’s a dead woman on my floor. All I know is I’ve got to get this body out of my house!”

She believed him, mostly because his voice, his cold veneer, was cracking under the emotional pressure.

“I carried her body to the car, lay her down in the back seat, thinking she could just look passed out, yeah? Got no idea what I’m gonna do with it. I’m not even fully dressed yet. But then,” he tutted a mirthless, helpless laugh, “Roxie bolts out of the blue and drives off with her.”

Ivy shook her head. She’d asked, felt entitled to the truth, but now she didn’t want to know, didn’t want to feel more pity for the deceased than she already felt, didn’t want to watch another second of the Mark family freakshow in which she’d become an unwitting co-star — or in legal terms, an accessory. “You don’t have t... I don’t need to know any more.”

“Yeah. You do.” Rubbing his knee, he sucked on and stubbed out his cigarette. “I followed her, tore down the streets after her. Got to the top of Mulholland in time to see her pushing the car over the edge.Mycar. With a body in it.” He looked at his hand, the one rubbing his knee, and balled it into a fist. “She’d started a fire in it somehow. It goes over, and...sheloses her balance. I catch her just asshe’sabout to tumble down the fucking cliff.”

“I’m supposed to applaud you for being a hero now?”

“No, Ivy, god! Iwantyou to know why I did this.”

“I get it. You did it for her.”

“I did it for Jason!”

Whoa. What?

“Shebegsme to let go, just let her fall, end her miserable life, she hates me and herself and her bloody fucking addiction and the fact that she had my kid...” He ran out of breath and continued in a shaky voice, “Says if I don’t do it, if I don’t man up and drop her, she’ll kill Jasonandherself. Rid the world of her legacy.”

“Would... would she really do that?”

“After the night we had? I believed it. She told me about him and Mel then, I thought she must be lying, anything to make me drop her...” He got wistful then. “And I looked down at that burning car... and that’s when it hit me: That could be her.”

Moved by his fragility, she had to remind herself that his choice was made at the expense of another human being. “What about the body? Didn’t anyone look for her?”

He sighed. “She didn’t have family. Read tarot cards on the boardwalk, talked to inanimate objects... Could have easily wandered off in the night.”

“How convenient for you both.”

“I’m not saying it was the right thing to do. I just...”

“Did it,” she said, folding her hands in her lap. “She might have had family. The coroner’s report said she’d given birth at some point.”

“Dez?” He knit his brow. “That’s news to me.”

“So, you didn’t even bother to read it?”

“No! I didn’treadit. They were the same age, the same height, it was close enough. God, I just wanted to move on and be done with it.”

“How can you move on if you keep Roxie twenty minutes away from you?”

“She won’t goaway. I bought her a new life in another country, at a sodding retreat she claimed would cure her. A year later, I find out she never even boarded the plane—she’s smoked every last cent and she’s whoring her wares in MacArthur bloody Park. What would you have me do?”

“Buy her another ticket? Watch her get on the plane? Force her into detox, I don’t know!”

“I can’t control what she does, and I don’t want to! She made her choices, incrediblystupidchoices, and I can’t keep trying to fix her for the rest of my bloody life when no matter what I do she self-destructs. I keep her off the street and relatively safe, and that’s where it ends.”

So, were his call girlsliteralstand-ins for Roxie? Or did they have nothing to do with her at all? Was he pining over his still-living ex, or was he completely over her? Which prospect bothered Ivy more? She felt dizzy. Maybe it was his stupid cologne. Was it terrible that part of her just wanted to grab himand feel his warm skin and pull him into her, just to make all of this go away?

---