Page 121 of Start With A Slap

—I’m in love with you for god bloody’s sake haven’t you figured that out by now

Sick of his voice haunting her head, she took a big gulp of wine and kicked the offending folders onto the living room floor with a grunt, the papers inside flying every which way. She wished she could just light them on fire or feed them to the shredder, or...

Huey got up to sniff a news clipping.

“The dog ate your casework,” Ivy tried on for size. “What are the chances, right? Guess we’ll have to start all over again...”

Typically uncooperative, Huey turned around and walked away.

While she moved to her knees to rebuild the folders — and contemplated slathering them with dog food — she came across that old photo of Melody.

Maybe this was less a quest for justice than a thirst for revenge.

Jason clearly blamed Sever for what Melody did to him. God knows he didn’t blame his ‘dead’ mother; despite her obviousfailings as a parent he chose to remember her as a child would, at her very best. But he wasn’t a child anymore, he wasn’t made of glass, he could handle a partial truth. And maybe if he started to see Roxie as less than a saint and Sever as less than a sinner, he could find peace.

Jason arrived home while she was still rebuilding the folders, and two and a half glasses in.

“Must’ve been a big sneeze,” he said, referring to the documents scattered around her.

“It was a sigh. A sigh of paralegal pain—oop, you almost stepped on her.”

“On who?”

She turned the rescued photo of Melody his way.

He glanced at it. “Good.”

“She has a cartoon face,” Ivy said, and realized she’d drank too much. “A pretty cartoon, but...”Shut up.

“I guess,” he said.

“Jessica Rabbit! That’s who she looks like!” she said. “Sorry. I’m two glasses in.”

“Jessica Rabbit was smarter.” He stepped out of his shoes. “Talking to Mel was like talking to a stuffed animal.”

She snorted. “Or maybe she was just playing dumb.”

“If she was, she should get an Oscar.” He walked to the bedroom.

Ivy said, “No one’s innocent.”

“What?” He hadn’t heard her.

She picked up her wine glass and padded to the bedroom. “I said no one’s innocent.”

Stripping off his work shirt, he said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She put her glass on the bedside table and sat against the headboard and thought,Did I just confess?

“You still think she’s guilty?” He unzipped and stepped out of his slacks, then carefully hung them up before saying, “Believe me, she has a solid alibi.” He turned away to unclasp his watch and drop it in the clay bowl he’d bought her in Mexico. “Just... trust me on this. She has one.”

Oh… so he and Melody weretogetherthat night. Softly, she said, “You can trust me, too, you know.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he said, seemingly annoyed. “I’m tired, I’ve had a long week; I was kinda hoping it would just be you and me in here tonight.”

Here. In the bedroom. It dawned on her then that she hadn’t made love to her husband since he’d told her about the murder. Not since she rode him on the couch after her nightclub encounter with Sever.

Severwas the last person she’d had sex with.

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