“I loved you the best way I could and respected you, and now, even after your death, I wouldn’t want to do anything deliberately to hurt you. But he’s sick and he needs to be stopped.”

Sebastian paused, expecting to feel her spirit or presence or essence move through him and protest, maybe give him some sort of sign. What he felt was nothing. No stirring, no thoughts. Actually, that wasn’t true. He did feel something: he felt silly. Ridiculous. Reduced to a childlike state where he had once believed an angry, invisible man who lived in the sky would protect him from the monsters that lived in his closet and under his bed. Still, the woman who had shared his bed for nearly two decades was now lying six feet below him, sealed in a coffin packed in dirt. He felt that.

“It will be quick and painless. That’s the best I can do. The best I can promise.”

There. It was done. He had said everything he had come here to say. He had told the truth. Unburdened himself. It was time to go.

Sebastian walked away, expecting to feel at least a bit lighter, like he had on that hot August afternoon when he’d stood at his mother’s grave site, making amends for his drinking and alcoholic behavior, what he had put her through. Right now, though? Right now he felt troubled. He felt some new burden weighing him down. And why did he feel that familiar itch along the back of his tongue and throat—the one that could be scratched only by a good bottle of Scotch or, back in the day, by using his fists?

By the time he reached the highway, he’d had an epiphany.

Sebastian didn’t drive home. Instead, he took a detour to the Hollywood Hills.

To Ava’s house.

Sebastian killed the lights and parked across the street. Her sprawling home looked like some sort of dark, futuristic monolith under the blanket of stars. He stared at the dark windows, listening to the ticking of his cooling engine, thinking about Ava sleeping in there, along with eight words he had said to Trixie back at the Park:

I loved you the best way I could.

It was true. He had loved her and respected her to the best of his ability. But if he was being honest, Trixie had been his consolation prize. Trixie, with her blond hair and blue eyes and Barbie doll physique shaped by Pilates and eating low- or no-carb meals, was the anti-Ava—and hadn’t that been her appeal? Hadn’t he allowed Trixie and her kid into his life so he could forget about Ava? To keep his mind occupied with the reality of his life rather than constantly wishing for the one stolen from him? Trixie was a stand-in for the real thing, a placeholder. He supposed he’d realized that on some level, for all these years, but it had slept quietly, this truth, on the deep seafloor of his mind, and it had taken his getting shot—by her son—for him to get to this place to confront it. And if at any point during his time with Trixie Ava had knocked on the door or picked up the phone and said, “I want you back,” he would have said yes. Wouldn’t have hesitated.