“I’d wanted Isabel to stop the treatments,” he added a heartbeat later. “She obviously didn’t. But she was keeping all of that secret from me.”
Livvy wanted to assure him there was nothing he could have done to stop Isabel. She had been driven to have a child. But there wasn’t anything Livvy could say that would help with the guilt he was feeling.
It was the same for her.
Isabel had been her friend, and Livvy hadn’t been able to get the woman to see the damage that some of the experimental treatments were doing to her health. And Livvy totally understood that obsession.
“When I turned eighteen, I submitted myself to some questionable practices to try to regain my memory,” she admitted. “Three sessions with drugs used in hypnosis. Countless hours of therapy, including some that were considered promising and cutting edge. I soon learned that was code forthis might work and you’re a test case.”
“I remember,” he said, and there was something in his tone that had her glancing at him. “When you were twenty or so, I drove you back from one of those sessions. I was worried about you,” he added a moment later.
Yes. She’d been worried about herself. About the thoughts that had come with the attempts to dredge all of that up. And here they were again. The dredging was happening, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Her phone rang, the sound thankfully yanking her out of all of those bad memories, and when Livvy saw Eden’s name on the screen, she took the call right away on speaker.
“How are you two holding up?” Eden asked.
No small talk. Eden was their friend and had been a cop as long as Ethan and her, and she knew the sickening tangle of emotions that came with having to kill someone in the line of duty.
“We’re managing,” Livvy said, and Ethan echoed something similar.
“Good. I almost believe that,” she remarked. “I might have found something,” she added after a quick breath. “And FYI, I’m not sure if it’ll help or hurt.”
Livvy felt the dread wash over her. Still, she insisted, “Tell us what you found.”
Eden dragged in another breath. “I’ve been going through Ivy’s diary. Since this spans over several entries, I’ll try to summarize, and then I’ll send you copies of the pages so you can read them for yourselves.”
Good. Livvy wanted to read every word of it. Especially since Ivy had died around the exact time that she had been found in Renegade Canyon. They could be connected, especially considering that Ivy had had stab wounds.
“Let me start with the page that Anthony showed you,” Eden went on, “and I quote—‘Chloe’s jealous of her lying, cheating husband, and she accused me of sleeping with him. As if. The man is slime. But I don’t think Chloe believed me, and when she’s like this, she’s dangerous as hell. I think I should go to thecops.’ That all sounds as if Ivy wanted no part of Paul, right?” she asked.
“Yes,” Livvy verified, wondering where this was going.
“Well, apparently Ivy didn’t always feel that way about Paul,” Eden explained. “In the entries from the year before, Ivy admitted to having an affair with him.”
“Wow,” Ethan grumbled. “That was in the diary?”
“It was. So, I don’t know if the part Anthony showed you is fake or if he simply refused to believe it. It’s also possible he hadn’t read the entire diary before today, though that doesn’t feel right.”
Livvy agreed. The man was on a mission to find who was responsible for his mother’s death, and since Ivy had died when he was ten, the diary was his insight into what might have happened.
“He maybe didn’t want to paint his mother in a bad light,” Ethan suggested. “Heck, Anthony might not have even considered that we’d take the diary and examine it.”
“True,” Eden admitted. “But we do have it…and there’s something else. Again, I’m going with a summary here because the info spans over about a dozen entries. About three weeks before Ivy was killed, Paul ended their affair. She was clearly hurt and really angry. Lots of profanity and venom aimed at Paul. And also aimed at the woman he dumped her for.”
Ethan and Livvy exchanged another glance. “I’m guessing Paul didn’t quit seeing Ivy for his wife?”
“No. Ivy called the woman Anna. No surname given,” Eden tacked on. “But Ivy said in a couple of the entries that she intended to get back at Anna and Paul. Remember, all of this would have been days before Ivy was murdered.”
Livvy was having no trouble seeing the timeline. And that feeling of dread was growing by leaps and bounds.
“There’s more,” Eden said. “This one entry where Ivy talks about Anna. I’ll read this one to you verbatim.” She cleared her throat. “‘I talked to Anna’s kid, and she said Paul had been coming around to see her mom. Out of the mouths of babes. I guess when you’re six years old, you don’t think to lie about something like that. Or wonder why someone is asking.’”
“Oh, God,” Livvy blurted. She hit the brakes and pulled to the side of the road. “Six. I was six.”
“Yeah,” Eden verified. “And here’s the rest of what Ivy had to say—‘That bitch, Anna, and Paul are going to pay, and I’m going to use the kid to help me.’”
Chapter Eight
