THE MURDER TRIAL
Pretrial forensic evaluation session.
The shrink asked me if Martin was like my father. I hate that he’s right about this—I am attracted to men like my dad. Big and powerful and commanding, and I want them to love and treasure me and make me feel safe and special. Like a princess. Like some vestigial childhood fairy-tale thing I can’t shake, someplace in my kid psyche where I got stuck. The place that wants storybook happy endings.
“So if you wished ill on Martin, do you also wish ill upon your father?”
A discordant jangle begins in my head—two parts of me being forced together in the mirror.
“My father is not violent toward me.”
He assesses me. I haven’t answered his question. I’m getting panicky again. He’s closing in on the hidden and secret places in the basement of my soul again. I feel the rustling of discontent, the discordant alarm bells going off in my body. Agitation.
“I can see this question makes you uncomfortable, Ellie. We can move on if you like. You called your mother weak.”
“She was. I despised her for that. For leaving me.”
He watches me for a few moments. “If you despise those parts of your mother, and you believe on some level you are like your mother, does this mean you despise those traits in yourself?”
“So is this where I’m supposed to say yeah, but by taking drugs, self-medicating, I numb myself to this truth?”
“What about Doug? Did he give you the attention you needed?”
“What are you saying?”
Silence.
Panic flicks longer tongues through my belly. “Doug and I loved each other. But it fell apart after we lost Chloe. The grief was too big. Everything we had was built around being Chloe’s parents.”
“So he wasn’t there for you when you needed him most?”
Anger surges—basal, rudimentary anger. Incompletely articulated. Dark. “He’s a jerk, okay. He started having affairs.”
He glances up sharply from his notes. “More than one?”
“I . . . Right after Chloe was born—he lost . . . interest in me.”
“Sexually?”
I fiddled with my hands. My face started going hot. “I was carrying a lot of baby fat. I wasn’t sleeping, not looking good. Breastfeeding was rough. Stressful. I was worried I wasn’t doing it all right.” Emotion coalesces in my eyes. “I wished my mother had been there to guide me. I had all the money in the world, but it couldn’t buy the things I needed. I . . . I was lost. Scared.”
He consults his notes again. “I see you were diagnosed with postpartum depression. You were clinically depressed well before Chloe drowned.”
“Where did you get that from?”
“Transcript of the police interview in Hawaii,” he says.
“You have no right.”
“The opposing legal team will have the same access to these transcripts, Ellie.”
THEN
LOZZA
Over one year ago, November 16. Jarrawarra Bay, New South Wales.
Lozza caught a last wave and rode it all the way into the shallows, where Maya, her eight-year-old daughter, was already waiting with her board. The sun was sinking toward the horizon, and the low-angled rays cast a beaten-copper glow over the sea. The early-summer breeze, warm and rounded against her skin, sent a fine spindrift off the backs of the waves. It was her first surf of the season without a wet suit, and it felt like heaven.
She slid off her board and allowed it to float for a moment, catching her breath as Maya came paddling over. Lozza’s muscles ached, and her eyes burned from salt and wind and sun. But this was exactly the kind of mental scrub she’d needed after a long week working on a strike force that had resulted in a biker gang drug bust up the coast. Since moving to Jarrawarra, Lozza had discovered that surfing with her girl was a far better tonic than the booze she’d once habitually sunk into after a tough shift on the homicide squad back in Sydney. Her life there had spiraled into a self-destructive cycle after she’d lost her husband. It had ultimately cost Lozza her coveted position as a detective on an elite investigative squad with State Crime Command. But her boss, her team of brothers in blue, had protected her from losing her badge entirely. They’d kept “the incident” out of the press. And the quiet demotion to the policing backwaters of the South Coast had pretty much saved Lozza. It had allowed her to clean up and adopt Maya. It had brought Lozza closer to her own mother, who’d moved into the beach house Lozza rented to help out with Maya when Lozza worked long hours or was called out at weird times.
Jarrawarra had been the best decision in the entire world. She was finding her essence in this place with its wild ocean and empty beaches in the off-season, and the great fishing. She was sending down firm roots and discovering a way of life she hadn’t even known she’d been looking for.
“Did you see my last ride, Mom? Did you see I got barreled?” Maya beamed. Her eyes glittered with fierce excitement.
“I sure did, kiddo.” Lozza grinned at her daughter as she reached into the water to undo the Velcro strap that secured her board leash to her ankle. Looping the leash over her thruster, she tucked it under her arm, and she and Maya waded through the shallows and onto the hard-packed sand. Small birds scattered as they made their way up the beach toward the dunes where they’d left their gear.
“Are we gonna have that leftover pizza?” Maya asked, breathing hard at her side as she scrambled to keep up on her skinny brown legs.
Lozza smiled. Her kid’s thoughts were never far from food. Something they had in common.
“Yep. But I get the anchovies.”
“Blech!”
Lozza laughed. That was the moment she saw the woman sitting up in the dunes. Her waist-length hair—ebony brown—fluttered like a pennant in the wind. She hugged her arms tightly around her knees. Pale skin. A beach towel draped
