Sins of the Mother (9 page)

The detective hooked his phone back into its holster and nodded. “Yup, that was one of the FBI agents assigned to the case. We’ve made contact with Doctor Brian Lewis.”

“Brian!” Jasmine exclaimed. “Brian has Jacqueline!”

Her head was spinning with questions. But even though she had no answers, she was drenched with relief. If Brian had Jacqueline, then her daughter was safe. He would never harm her.

“Thank God you’ve found her,” she cried. “When can I see my daughter!”

L
OS
A
NGELES
, C
ALIFORNIA

A
FEW WEEKS EARLIER
, N
OVEMBER
2009

B
RIAN STARED AT HIS
A
MERICAN
Express bill. Eight hundred dollars—not bad compared to what he usually spent in a month’s time on food, clothes, and entertainment.

Except on this bill, six hundred of those dollars had been spent in one place—Flowers For You. He took another sip of his wine and, in his mind, added up how much he’d given this flower shop since June 2008, the month his divorce had become final.

This is getting ridiculous.

Especially since it didn’t seem like he was making any progress.

Yes, Alexis always called him. Yes, she always thanked him. But that’s where her gratitude ended, with just a simple: “Hello . . . thank you, Brian, but you’ve really got to stop doing this . . . take care.”

It seemed that, unlike him, his wife had moved on.

But how was he supposed to accept that? Just let her go? Giving up just wasn’t in his DNA.

This drive for his ex-wife had his sex therapist more than a bit concerned.

“You’ve made Alexis your new obsession, and it’s going on too long. Any reconciliation would never work if she’s your new addiction.”

But that was as ridiculous as the amount of money he’d been spending on flowers. How could Alexis ever be an addiction when she was the love of his life?

“Alexis.” Just saying her name made him take another sip of wine. “Alexis.” And then, after a moment, he put the glass down. Maybe it was time—it had been three years since they’d first separated. She’d moved on; he had to do the same.

The ringing doorbell stopped those thoughts. And Brian sighed. Since any guest had to be announced by the concierge, he knew who was standing on the other side of the door.

Misty.

His new neighbor had been living in the building for only thirty days, but from the moment they’d met in the elevator on her move-in day, Misty had found one reason to keep stopping by.

“Do you have any sugar?” she would ask him with a faint southern drawl.

What Misty lacked in creativity, she made up for in persistence. Though he’d never given her any grounds to believe he was interested, Misty needed sugar at least three times a week.

But even if he could find a way to give up on Alexis, he wouldn’t be heading toward the blond ponytail-bopping twentysomething. That was not how he rolled.

The bell chimed once more, and he brought his wineglass
again to his lips. When the bell chimed a third time, Brian pushed himself from the sofa. If he was going to move on, maybe Misty could help him get back into the game.

Taking quick steps, he thought about what he would say. No doubt, Misty would be wearing her signature Daisy Duke shorts and some sort of cutoff shirt—even in the dead of Los Angeles’s sixty-degree winter. Maybe he would tell her that he wanted to borrow some of
her
sugar.

That thought made him crack up with laughter, but then it all stopped when he swung open the door.

A couple of seconds passed before Alexis said, “Are you going to invite me in?” She didn’t wait for his response, just stepped past him as he stood with his mouth wide open.

It was the whiff of the flowers she held that brought him out of his stupor.

“I just stopped by to see if you still had any furniture,” she said, peering around the apartment that the two of them had shared for more than five years of marriage.

Brian frowned as he finally closed the door. “Any furniture?” he echoed like a parrot. That was all he could say as he stared at his ex-wife. She sure looked good, still wearing the short, curly haircut she’d gotten when they’d first divorced.

“Yeah.” She unbuttoned the cashmere swing jacket that she wore. “’Cause you’ve been spending all of your money on these.” Holding up the bouquet, she grinned, though it looked more like she felt sorry for him than anything else. “By now,” she kept on, “I thought for sure you’d be broke and that you would’ve started selling your furniture.”

He chuckled, getting his bearings, ready for their banter. “As you can see,” he said, opening his arms wide, “I haven’t changed a thing.” Then, with a more somber look and tone, “I’m keeping everything the same so that when you come home . . .”

It was a slow fade—the way the edges of her lips eased
down and her smile went away. She shook her head. “Start selling the furniture.”

So cold, yet so cute.
But he wasn’t fooled. She’d come straight to his apartment, straight to him. “If you’re not coming home”—his steps closed the gap between them—“then what’re you doing here?”

“I just came by to tell you to stop.” She held up the flowers. “Save your money.”

He shrugged. “It’s my money.”

“And you’re wasting it.”

Shaking his head, he said, “You’re wrong. My plan’s already working. You’re here, aren’t you?”

Her expression showed that she was more amused than stumped. “I told you why I’m here.” She shrugged her coat from her shoulders and strutted by him. Pulling kitchen cabinets open as if she still lived there, she searched until she found the glass vase that had been one of their wedding gifts.

As she filled the vase with water, Brian leaned against the wall, folded his arms, and watched the scene that he’d dreamed of unfold. This was just how he imagined her—coming home from work, still wearing her burgundy tailored suit that showed just how much time she spent at the gym, and doing something totally mundane, like setting flowers in a vase.

He held back a sigh as she stuffed the elegant red, pink, and white design of roses, daisies, and lilies inside. Once done, she swept past him again and centered the floral arrangement on the living room table. He was still standing in the same place when she picked up her coat.

“Anyway, thanks again for the flowers. But I think I’ll leave these with you. My apartment is filled with the ones you sent me three days ago.” She tilted her head when she added, “You
really
need to stop.” She frowned a little, waiting for him to speak. He didn’t, and she just shrugged.

But when she made her move toward the door, he jumped in her path. “Have dinner with me.”

“What?”

“Since you’re here, have dinner with me. I’ll cook. Or we can order in—whatever you want.”

“I don’t want anything.” She frowned. “No!”

“What are you afraid of ?”

“I’m not afraid, Brian.” She wrapped her coat’s belt around her waist. “I’m just smart enough not to go backward.” She paused, then added, “I never put a comma where God’s put a period.”

He laughed. “You can come up with all the clichés you want, but I have one, too.”

He could tell that she didn’t want to ask, but it was her natural curiosity that made her say, “And your cliché is . . .”

“I always win.”

She bowed her head just a bit as she stepped around him, but even though she tried to hide it, he didn’t miss her smile.

The way she didn’t say good-bye, the way she didn’t even close the door behind her, made Brian laugh out loud. Oh, yeah—he was getting to her. Finally!

Back in the living room, he reached for his glass and turned it upside down, swallowing the little bit of wine that was left. Then he raised the empty wineglass into the air—a salute to himself.

“Yup,” he said, “I always win.”

A
LEXIS SLAPPED HER HAND AGAINST
the steering wheel.

Why did I do that?

Going to Brian’s apartment had never been part of her plan. After a day filled with client presentations at the advertising agency she owned, her desire was to get to her town house before the evening news ended, strip down to the suit she’d been born with, and then soak away her pressures in her Jacuzzi tub.

But just as visions of her stress-free evening danced in her head, her assistant had popped into her office with the bouquet.

“You got some more!” Kennedy had exclaimed with a giggle.

Alexis hadn’t even looked up; she knew what her assistant was talking about. Grudgingly, she had taken the flowers and wondered what to do with this bunch. Already there was a bouquet from Brian sitting on her credenza. And her home was also filled with the fragrance of her ex-husband’s gifts.

Still, as she carried the bouquet to her car, her plan was . . . to stay with the plan. But then she got behind the
steering wheel, and her BMW headed west instead of east; before she could figure it out, she was in front of the condominium where she’d spent four years of immense ecstasy and one year of total agony.

Now she was so mad at herself.

So why am I grinning?

She shook her head, but that didn’t stop her mind from pressing Play again. And hearing Brian’s last words:
I always win.

Glancing at her image in the rearview mirror, she used her hand to wipe her smile away. “What am I doing?” She tried to talk herself down as she squeezed her car out of the circular driveway.

It was almost eight o’clock, and the traffic moved easily down Wilshire. She turned the radio’s volume up, blasting Mary J through the car. But not even her girl singing about her life helped.

She needed to talk.

Turning down the radio, she pressed the Call button on her dashboard.

“What’s up?” Kyla, her best friend, answered on the second ring.

“I just left Brian’s,” Alexis blurted out.

“Brian? As in your
husband,
Brian?”

Kyla was at least eight miles away, hanging out in her Ladera Heights home, but Alexis could see her friend now—suddenly sitting straight up and on the edge of her couch.

“My
ex
-husband Brian,” she reminded her.

Kyla’s screech reverberated through the car.

“Would you stop it?” Alexis said.

“I’m sorry; it’s just that I’m happy.” She could hear Kyla clapping. “My two best friends are getting back together.”

“I didn’t say anything like that. We’re already divorced.”

“So what? Simon and Sylvia Webb were divorced for a
year before they got back together. And do you know the Alstons at church? He sings in the choir. They’ve gotten remarried . . . twice! And then there’s—”

“Dang!” Alexis said, stopping her friend. “Did you keep a list?”

“No, it’s just that when people get back together, everyone talks about it. ’Cause it’s just so exciting to do it the right way . . .”

Alexis rolled her eyes, knowing exactly what Kyla was going to say next.

Kyla finished, “Since God hates divorce.”

Alexis sighed, almost sorry now that she had called Kyla. Not that her friend wasn’t always there—Kyla was her two a.m. friend, the one you called at any time. The one who would come running anywhere. But Kyla was also her Christian friend, the one who would quote God’s word to you right when you didn’t want to hear it.

Not that she could hate on Kyla for that; back in the day, she’d given Kyla a million scriptures when she and her husband, Jefferson, had been going through their own marital challenges after he’d slept with Kyla’s other best friend, Jasmine Larson.

“God hates divorce,” Kyla repeated, as if Alexis needed to hear those words again.

“Would you stop saying that!”

“Why? Just because you don’t want to hear it doesn’t make it any less true. You know I never agreed with your leaving Brian. I supported you because I knew what happened was hard for you . . .”

Hard? Was Kyla kidding? Hard didn’t even begin to describe what she’d been through. And she knew that Kyla, her mild-mannered Christian friend, would have never been able to handle the news of her husband being a sex addict, either.

“Plus,” Kyla said, breaking through Alexis’s thoughts, “Lord knows Brian still loves you or else he wouldn’t have worked so hard to get that little sex-addiction thing under control.”

“Little sex-addiction thing?”

“You know what I mean. But my real point is,
you
still love him.”

Her back stiffened, her grip tightened. “I don’t love him,” she said, with indignation all through her tone.

“Ah.” Kyla giggled. “I think you protest too much and—”

“You know what? I don’t want to talk to you anymore.” She pressed the Disconnect button without saying good-bye, but in the more than twenty years that the two had been friends, they’d done that to each other hundreds of times. So she knew Kyla wouldn’t be mad. In fact, Kyla was probably thrilled to get off the telephone. That way, she could run to Jefferson and tell him that ridiculous happily-ever-after story that was in her head. Alexis could imagine it—Kyla clapping, jumping up and down, singing as if she were in elementary school, “Alexis and Brian sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”

Alexis glanced into the rearview mirror again, and her forehead was bunched together in a deep scowl, her smile long gone.

Why did Kyla have to take the conversation there? All she’d wanted was for her friend to listen, then tell her that going to Brian’s condo wasn’t the craziest thing she’d ever done. But no, Kyla had to turn her little fifteen-minute visit into some kind of grand reconciliation.

Well, Kyla . . . and Brian needed to get over it because that reunion was never going to happen. No matter how often she remembered their good times—the way Brian had proposed to her, coming to her apartment at midnight, dressed in a tuxedo with flowers and a ring. No matter how often she recalled every late-night stroll they’d taken on the beach, or the days when they’d snuck away from work for a picnic in the park.

No matter how often those images seeped past the little part of her heart that still hurt, those memories could never obliterate the fact that Brian had blown her world apart when he’d confessed that he was a sex addict and had bedded hundreds of women. Still, that wasn’t what had killed their marriage. It was that in the middle of his addiction, he’d fathered a child with her archenemy, Jasmine Cox Larson Bush.
That
was the unforgivable sin!