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2022-08-04 21:00:00As I examine an obscenely expensive handbag at Gucci, I hear a shotgun blast ringing in my ears. I smell smoke. I see Frank Geary’s chest exploding and watch as he falls backward down a flight of stairs. I hear my mother screaming. I don’t know where these bloody images have come from, if they are memory or dream.
“You seem distracted,” Ella says as we sit down to drink espresso in the food court. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I say lightly.
I keep seeing Simon Briggs in my mind’s eye. He’s the headache I can’t shake. His face, so rough and ugly, is familiar without being recognizable. There are so many things like this that I can’t quite remember - people, events slipping through my fingers like sand. “I’m just…not sleeping much.”
“Well,” she says knowingly, “you’re probably still freaked out by that incident on the beach. That would keep
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THE VENGEFUL LUNA THE REBIRTH
“I mean, I spend my whole life working hard, providing for my family, paying taxes, saving for retirement. Every vacation, every new appliance we need, every repair on the house - we budget and save, you know? And then I walk into some perp’s garage and I’m looking at a Hummer. Or I go into his crib and there’s a flat-screen and audio system that could pay for a year of private school for my kid. I think, here’s a person with no respect for the law, for human life, and he’s living large. I tell you, it eats at me sometimes. It really does.”There’s something whiny about his righteous indignation. I get where he’s coming from, but it doesn’t seem quite sincere.“What do you want?” I repeat.“Let me tell you a little bit about Annie Fowler. She was born in a small town in Kentucky, where she lived her entire life until she and her infant son were killed by a drunk driver just a few years
Last Updated : 2022-08-04THE VENGEFUL LUNA POWERLESS
The only thing I like about Gray’s office is that it’s filled with books. Big, thick books bound in leather, with gilt-edged pages, texts on war and military theory, encyclopedic tomes on world history, classic literature, poetry. But it’s not a library collected after a lifetime of reading. It is a library that has been purchased for show - Drew’s idea of which books should line the shelves of a military man’s office. He has a similar collection in his own office. Most of the books have never even been opened, eyes have never rested on their words, fingers have never caressed their pages. They are as untouched and virginal as nuns.I scan the covers: Sun-tzu, Machiavelli, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley. Anyone sitting in my husband’s office would think him a great reader. He’s not. My husband opens a book, he falls asleep.Curled on the leather couch, I recount my meeting with Detective Harrison for Gray. His face
Last Updated : 2022-08-04THE VENGEFUL LUNA WHAT DID YOU?
“Lolita,” she said, covering her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that.”I left her without another word. She called after me, but then I heard Frank’s truck pulling up the drive. A moment later the water was running in the bathroom, and I knew she was brushing her teeth so he wouldn’t smell the booze on her. She’d probably taken the whiskey from Frank’s secret stash I saw in the barn. There were always two or three bottles of Jack in a crate near the back under a pile of flannel blankets. Twice I’d found Frank passed out in the barn, a bottle nearly drained, cigarette butts in an ashtray beside him. Dangerous behavior in a barn filled with hay.Later that night I found Marlowe sitting on the floor of the stable smoking a cigarette. We hadn’t spoken since that night in my room when he’d suggested unthinkable things to me. Instead we’d been circling each other ever since. I was simultaneously draw
Last Updated : 2022-08-05THE VENGEFUL LUNA IT'S LOLITA
He lifts his chin up, puts his hand to his face, and starts rubbing at his jaw. The stubble there and the dry, hard skin on his hands makes an irritating scratching sound. He regards me carefully, seems to think twice before deciding to say, “You’re not being honest with me, Annie.”“I don’t remember,” I say quickly. “You know that.”“I’m starting to get the feeling that there’s a great deal you’re not sharing with me. I’m afraid it’s affecting how much good I can do.”I give a slow shake of my head and purse my lips. There’s a moment - no, a millisecond - when I think maybe, just maybe, I’ll come clean, tell him everything. But the moment passes in silence.He looks at his watch and stands up. This means our session is over. “I can’t help you if you won’t face the truth. Okay?”“Okay,” I say, getting up and walk
Last Updated : 2022-08-05THE VENGEFUL LUNA EVIDENCE
It’s nearly dark when I wake up in my car in the parking lot of my doctor’s office. The sun has disappeared below the horizon line, and the sky is glowing a deep blue-black. My peripheral vision is almost gone from the migraine I have coming on. I am struggling to orient myself, to separate reality from fantasy.I see her face again, her blood-drenched clothes. I see my doctor slumped over his desk, blood draining from him onto the floor.I don’t feel the appropriate level of terror, I’m just stunned, numb. I look at my watch; it has been only forty minutes since my session with the doctor ended, which seems impossible given what’s happened. There’s a large bloodstain, still wet but drying quickly, on my jacket. I shrug out of it, crumble it into a ball. I don’t want to look at the blood. Then my cell phone, balancing on the dash, starts ringing.I answer.“Hi, Annie.”I already recognize the vo
Last Updated : 2022-08-05THE VENGEFUL LUNA GONE
I got back into my bed quickly, wrapped myself up in the covers, and closed my eyes. I measured my breathing, made it deep and steady. After a minute I heard Marlowe creaking on the stairs. The floorboards outside my door groaned beneath his weight, and I heard the knob on my door start to turn. I tried to control the quaking of my body, to fight the urge to scream as I heard the door open just a little. The seconds dragged on as I waited to hear him come in or to speak my name. But he didn’t. After a moment I heard him walk away and go back down the stairs.When I thought it was safe, I raced to my mother’s room. I was sure I’d see an empty bed. But when I burst through her door, she was sleeping soundly, undisturbed by the events that had just transpired. I thought of waking her, telling her what I’d seen, but I didn’t. I just went back to my bed, lay there wide-eyed and listening to the night. Frank didn’t return until just before d awn.
Last Updated : 2022-08-05THE VENGEFUL LUNA THE GROUP
He keeps his distance as we walk down the hallway and get into the elevator. My mind is racing through options: wrong floor, wrong office, wrong building. The doctor’s dead; someone hid his body and cleaned out his office. Or someone, as Drew so eloquently put it, is fucking with me. I can see from the look on Gray’s face that he’s running the same catalog of possibilities in his mind. He’s holding my hand tightly, as if he thinks I’m going to make a run for it.At the desk the guard gives Gray the building directory. I notice that the pages on the clipboard are crisp and new. On the list, Dr. Paul Brown, Ph.D., is nowhere to be found.“This looks like a brand-new directory. When was it printed?” asks Gray.The guard shrugs. “Does look new,” he admits, peering over Gray’s shoulder. “Maybe he moved his office. I don’t know.”“Do you know him?” I ask. “Dr. Brown?
Last Updated : 2022-08-06THE VENGEFUL LUNA A LIFELINE
“These people need to move on,” my mother said that morning, annoyed by their grief and suffering. She was driving me to school, and Marlowe was along for the ride. “Frank’s not even in the car. Why would he be throwing rocks at us?”“He wants revenge,” said Marlowe from the backseat. We locked eyes in the rearview mirror.“He wants it from the wrong man,” said my mother. If she remembered her confession to me about Frank, about his strangeness, she showed no sign. I hadn’t even bothered to tell her what I saw the night before; she wouldn’t have believed me, and I didn’t want her to tell Frank. Fear was a stone I carried in my chest, so heavy I could barely stand upright. I thought of her in her used wedding dress, how she’d pranced about like Cinderella at the ball, thinking no one could see the frayed edges or the cigarette burn in the lace. The story of her life.At school that day,
Last Updated : 2022-08-06
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THE VENGEFUL LUNA PEACE
I suppose it’s possible that, like Ray Harrison, she was a person I met, someone I knew in passing, and that the fuller relationship we shared was something created in my mind, a fantasy established to fulfill some deep need in my psyche.It’s equally possible that she was someone who worked for Drew, someone hired to keep tabs on me; this is what Gray believes, though he has no evidence or knowledge to support his theory. Sometimes I search my memory for clues that might have indicated that my friendship was a fantasy - like the white shock of hair my imaginary Ray Harrison had, or the searing headaches that were the inevitable backdrop to my encounters with him. But there’s nothing like that. Whatever the case, Ella Singer was friend enough that I feel her loss deeply. And that means something in this world. It means a lot.I am less hard on myself these days. I try to treat myself the way I treat my daughter - with patience and understanding. I str
THE VENGEFUL LUNA A NEW BEGINNING
I walk over to the back of the house, look at the ocean and the white sand. The ground beneath me seems soft, unstable.“Annie, what’s this about?”“The night...” I begin, then stop. I was going to say the night you killed Briggs but I don’t want to say those words out loud. “When you said all threats had been neutralized, you meant Briggs.”Gray is behind me, his hands on my shoulders now. “Why are we talking about this?”“Just answer me,” I say quickly.I hear him release a breath. “Yes, that’s what I meant.”I lean against him, my back to his front. “What’s happened?” he whispers.But I can’t bring myself to say the words. I can’t bring myself to tell him about the Ray Harrison I knew. Not now, not when my husband has started to believe in my sanity for maybe the first time.“Annie,” Gray says,
THE VENGEFUL LUNA KARMA
They are grim, intent, uncomfortable. My father is a boy with the stubble of a beard, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He is lithe, muscular, with dark eyes and square jaw. Drew looks like a heavier, less appealing version of my husband - like a young bulldog with a stern brow and mean eyes.“These men, these fathers, all searching for their kids,” says Harrison, drifting over toward the glass doors leading to the deck. “Alan Parker’s daughter murdered by Frank Geary, Teddy March’s daughter held in the thrall of Marlowe Geary, Drew Powers’s son far from the fold, estranged for years. They all had a common purpose, to do right by their kids in the ways that they could.”I think about this, the deviousness and planning, the deception that it took to make all this happen.“And how was it that both you and Melissa fell prey to the Gearys? Coincidence, maybe. Or maybe it was their karma, their bond? I don’t kno
THE VENGEFUL LUNA THE SEAL TEAM
After I’ve been all through the house, I come to stand at the glass doors downstairs and stare at the Gulf until I sense someone behind me. I spin around to see Detective Harrison standing in my living room.“The door was open,” he says apologetically.He looks thin and pale but oddly solid - at peace in a way. I find myself grateful for him and for his wife, and I’m glad to see him now. I want to embrace him, but I don’t. I smile at him instead and hope I don’t seem cool, distant.“Coffee?” I ask.“Please,” he says.I pour him a cup but abstain myself. I’m jittery already from too much caffeine this morning, and I feel a headache coming on. I sit on the couch, but he prefers to stand.“How’s your family?” I ask.“We’re okay, you know?” he says with a nod. “I think we’re going to be okay. I’ve hung out my own shingle
THE VENGEFUL LUNA OUR LIVES
I feel a shutting down of anger, of fear, and I am mercifully blank. But I find I can’t bear the sight of Drew and Vivian anymore. I stand up with Victory in my arms and move away from the table, heading for the door. There are a lot of questions, but I don’t want the answers. Not from Drew and Vivian.“Annie, please try to understand,” says Vivian. I can see that fear again on her face, but I am already gone.“I need to understand what you did, Dad,” I hear Gray say behind me. I can tell he’s trying to keep his tone level. “I need you to tell me the truth.”“Leave it be, son,” answers Drew, his tone as unyielding as a brick wall. I wait in the foyer, listening, rocking back and forth with Victory, who is quiet now.“I can’t do that.”“Yes,” says Drew. “If you know what’s good for your family, you can. Your wife is unwell. In my opinion not w
THE VENGEFUL LUNA FIRED
Now that the engine is off, the ship has started to pitch in the high seas, and my stomach churns. I pause at the bottom of the staircase that leads up to the deck. I can hear the wind and the waves slapping the side of the ship. I strain to hear the sound of voices, but there’s nothing, just my own breathing, ragged and too fast in my ears.I make my way up the stairs, my back pressed against the wall. My palm is so sweaty that I’m afraid I’ll drop my gun. I grab on to it tightly as I step onto the deck. I am struck by the cold and the smell of salt. The sea is a black roil. The deck is empty to the bow and to the stern; the light on the bridge has gone dark, like all the other lights.Suddenly I am paralyzed. I can’t go back to the cabin, but I don’t want to move outside. I don’t know what to do. I close my eyes for a second and will myself to calm, to steady my breath. The water calls to me; I feel its terrible pull.While
THE VENGEFUL LUNA POWERS AND POWERS II
She is on me then, clinging and sobbing into my chest in a way she hasn’t since she was a toddler. I hold on to her tightly, bury my face in her hair.“No one’s going to hurt me, Victory,” I whisper into her ear.Gray is looking at his father, his face a mask of confused disappointment. “Dad?” he says. “What have you done?”Drew takes a few deep breaths, seems to steel himself. “I did what I had to do for our family, so that we could all be together like this.”Gray gets to his feet so fast that everything shakes. A piece of stemware falls to the floor and shatters, spraying wine and shards of glass at our ankles. No one moves to pick it up; everyone stays fixed, frozen. Gray’s face is red, a vein throbbing on his throat. I’ve never seen him so angry.“What are you talking about, Dad?” Gray roars.Drew is turning a shade of red to match, but he doesn’t
THE VENGEFUL LUNA TONIGHT
I reach my cabin and fumble with the lock for a second, then push into my room. A small berth nestles in the far corner. Beneath it is a drawer where I have stowed my things. I kneel and pull out my bag, unzip it, and fish inside until I find what I’m looking for-my gun. A sleek Glock nine-millimeter, flat black and cold. I check the magazine and take another from the bag, slip it into the pocket of my coat. The Glock goes into the waist of my jeans. I’ve drilled the reach-and-draw from that place about a million times; my arm will know what to do even if my brain freezes. Muscle memory.I consider my options. Once again suicide tops the list for its ease and finality. Aggression comes a close second, which would just be a roundabout way toward the first option. Hide and wait comes in third. Make him work for it. Make him fight his way through the people charged with protecting me and then find me on this ship. Then be waiting for him with my gun when he does.
THE VENGEFUL LUNA POWERS AND POWERS
The farce of it all sickens me. Sarah Harrison might as well be seated across from me at the long glass table where we have gathered for dinner. A wide orange sun is dropping toward the blue-pink horizon line over the Gulf. We feast on filet mignon and twice-baked potatoes, fat ears of corn. Drew and Gray knock back Coronas while Vivian and I drink chardonnay. Victory sips her milk from a plastic cup adorned with images of Hello Kitty. Anyone looking at us might feel a twinge of envy, the rich and happy family sharing a meal at their luxury home with a view of the ocean.“Annie,” says Drew, breaking an awkward silence that has settled over the table once vague pleasantries and chatty questions for Victory have been exhausted. “You seem well.”He is smiling at me in a way he never has before. There’s a satisfied benevolence to him, the king surveying his subjects. I thank him because it seems like the right thing to do in this context
