Praise for The Vixen Amber Halloway

LaHines’s fascinating narrator, Ophelia, is decidedly pathological. And here’s the surprise—she’s also sympathetic, humorous, intelligent—a deeply damaged woman telling her tale to a prison psychiatrist in preparation for a hearing before a parole board, but it’s not a confession.... The novel raises questions about diagnoses of mental disorders, possible treatment, and the appropriateness of incarceration.

—NPR Podcast, Baum on Books

A heart-wrenching account of one soon-to-be-ex-wife’s psychological breakdown...a compulsive read.

—Katrīna Biele, Long. Sweet. Valuable, Medium.com

"The Vixen Amber Halloway is dark and compulsive reading. Following a woman’s descent into madness after her husband leaves her for another woman, this compact and complex novel pulls you into the mind and delusions of a woman as she slowly devolves while you watch, helpless to stop it."

—Mary Webber O’Malley, bookseller at Skylark Bookshop

"Carol LaHines has invented here a compulsively readable and craftily constructed tale of murder and mayhem. Her wonderfully original unreliable narrator tells a story that will make you laugh and cry and perhaps remember Humbert Humbert in Lolita."

—Sheila Kohler, author of award-winning novels including Cracks and Open Secret

Carol LaHines excels in a wry blend of humor and darkness...breathtaking in its descriptive psychological draw and surprising in some of its twists and turns of plot. LaHines creates a vivid story of a woman who embarks on a campaign that leads her further into darkness, taking readers by the hand in a dangerous invitation to join in the journey.

—D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

With pinpoint accuracy, LaHines nabs the inner life of a raging, jerky-eating narrator traumatized by family history who recounts her Lolita-like obsession with allegro turns of brilliance. Ophelia’s selective memory, steady wit, and allusions to Dante slip off her tongue with delicious, underhanded humor. Ophelia will make you feel the chill of vengeance, because her fury—delivered in a voice perfectly crafted by LaHines—makes perfect sense.

—Maureen Pilkington, author of This Side of Water: Stories

The Vixen Amber Halloway

Carol LaHines

Regal House Publishing

Copyright © 2024 Carol LaHines. All rights reserved.

Published by

Regal House Publishing, LLC

Raleigh, NC 27605

All rights reserved

ISBN -13 (paperback): 9781646034666

ISBN -13 (epub): 9781646034673

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023942953

All efforts were made to determine the copyright holders and obtain their permissions in any circumstance where copyrighted material was used. The publisher apologizes if any errors were made during this process, or if any omissions occurred. If noted, please contact the publisher and all efforts will be made to incorporate permissions in future editions.

Cover images and design by © C. B. Royal

Regal House Publishing, LLC

https://regalhousepublishing.com

The following is a work of fiction created by the author. All names, individuals, characters, places, items, brands, events, etc. were either the product of the author or were used fictitiously. Any name, place, event, person, brand, or item, current or past, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Regal House Publishing.

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

For Lizz and Shannon

1

Some have questioned my sanity. Only a mentally imbalanced woman, they say, would spy on her estranged husband and his lover from a tree. Only a delusional woman would believe that the husband would one day return, when the evidence—viz., engagement to his lover, before the ink on the divorce papers was even dry—was demonstrably to the contrary. Only a woman unconcerned with how she is perceived by the outside world, by former spouses and law enforcement circles alike, would commit her observations of the husband and his lover to eight consecutively numbered spiral-bound notebooks, producing, in three months’ time, a comprehensive, incriminating document that would serve to confirm the prosecution’s theory that she was a spurned wife with rancor in her heart.

Leona Valentine, of the Saratoga County Gazette (investigative reporter of the year, five years running), called the notebooks the work of a fragile yet malevolent mind. Ms. Valentine cited instances of electronic interference and surveillance of the subjects to show alleged mens rea; she retraced the accused’s path, admittedly circuitous, to the Home Depot in Schenectady, where the accused purchased certain household items (zip ties, duct tape) she would later use in furtherance of her deranged aims. Jean-Claude, whom the reporter tracked down to a truck stop just north of the US-Canada border, informed Ms. Valentine that I appeared off when he encountered me on the night of August 5, 2011, that I was behaving in a furtive manner suggestive of criminal enterprise.

Our actions may all be explained by reference to certain formative experiences: whether we are loved; whether we are well-cared for; whether our parents wish we’d never been born.

There are coruscating wounds, wounds that do not heal. They fester and suppurate.

And so, I remember the last time I saw my mother. The peanut butter and jelly sandwich she made me, sliced on the diagonal, the crusts removed (I could never abide them). It sat on my plate with a note, Remember I love you, Ophelia. There was still a moment in time when she was combing my hair, smoothing the cowlicks, Remember I love you, Ophelia, that she might have reconsidered, removed the valise from the trunk, forsaken Bob, none of us the wiser. There was still a moment before the screen door clacked against the doorjamb, before she stepped out into the autumnal Saturday, the leaves fluttering to the ground, there to rot and turn to mulch, that she might have thought the better of her plan to escape to Florida with the used car salesman.

But she stepped over the threshold, clack, never looking back.

The prison psychiatrist counsels me to reimagine the past. To return to the pivotal moment, to imagine the dialogue as it should have taken place. I’m so sorry but I have to leave, I am in love with another man, your father just wouldn’t understand. She has me play the part of my mother, to enable me to see events through her eyes. She has me switch, play the part of my eight-year-old abandoned self, to impress upon me the fact that it wasn’t my fault. She gives me a supportive foam pillow and encourages me to take out my aggression against the mother who left, the mother frozen in time. She tells my adult self, the supposedly rational and reasonable self, to embrace the eight-year-old girl, to protect her, to scold the adults who were supposed to protect her but instead failed miserably.

Say what you want to say to her, she prods me. She never gave you the opportunity. She left you alone. To fend for yourself. Say what you want to say to her now.

What is there to say? I can pummel the therapeutic pillow, I can rip out its stuffing, but to what end? Nothing can alter the past. No amount of therapeutic role-playing or imaginative gestalt can change the script. The groove in my psyche is too deep.

Why did you leave me? Say it.

I cross my arms, stop role-playing.

Why did you leave me? Say the words.

I examine the diplomas on the wall. I play with the desk toy. One ball knocks into the next, initiates a chain reaction. Tick-tock. Set a ball in motion and certain immutable laws come into play, laws of gravity and momentum, laws of fate and inevitable consequence.

2

I rehearse my speech for the parole board. I review my life as dispassionately as possible under the circumstances. I try to understand, but not to excuse. My attorney advises me to accept blame for my actions and to express remorse, and if possible, to apologize directly to Amber’s surviving kin. Only by acknowledging and accepting full responsibility for my actions will I achieve absolution. If I fail to accept responsibility, if I maintain my innocence or otherwise protest, I will be sent back to the cell from whence I came.

I will do my best to appear contrite. I will hang my head. I will allude to the crime only in the most general terms so as not to inflame the passions of the spectators. I hope they will be moved to pity by my woeful appearance. I have not spent the last ten years pumping iron or working on my core. I do not spend time in the gym, furiously skipping rope, but have let myself go. I wear dated aviator spectacles—the State of New York, alas, does not carry the same stylish frames as Lens Crafters.

I must sit quietly, listening respectfully, as Amber’s friends and relatives line up to read their victim impact statements. How Amber loved to skip rope as a child, how very much she enjoyed Bavarian cream pie. I imagine what they might say:

You took her from me! I will never see my daughter again. I can only visit her grave, and send a prayer heavenward, hoping it will reach her.

My sister is gone. She was more than a sister. She was my best friend, my confidante. And now she can’t come to my wedding. She’ll never see her nieces and nephews. She’s just a name chiseled on a headstone.

My daughter was the light of my life. Why did you have to take her from me?

I will hang my head and listen. I will be wearing prison-issue garb, a heavily laundered jumpsuit that does not flatter.

I will resist making excuses. I will not refer to my wastrel childhood, to the adults who failed to shelter and to care for me. I will not seize upon clear evidence of dysfunction, a family history of mood regulation disorders. Exhibit A, the abandonment by Mother. I will stress my commitment toward rehabilitation, my eagerness to serve the community, citing my work with prison illiterates and others less fortunate than I.

3

Spring 2005

I was a college professor, a scholar of Dante and the harrowing oeuvre. Other than the occasional faculty soirée, I did not socialize much. I preferred to sit at home in my moldering Victorian with my books and research materials on the Hellmouth, a contraption popular in medieval morality plays.

An acquaintance proposed to fix me up. I was in my thirties and not getting any younger, etc. Larissa’s husband had a colleague at Halford Medical Supply who was to die for. Andy Fairweather, director of sales, northeast region. You sold laparoscopes, guidewires, surgical robots, devices that allowed surgeons to visualize the innards with little-to-no-trauma, a veritable medical miracle.

I hesitated. I’d had but one prior relationship of note, and that had ended badly when he accused me of being cold, detached. Emotional expression is, for the heavily traumatized, a dangerous proposition.

Larissa prevailed upon me to give it a try. What did I have to lose? How many nights could I spend alone watching Hoarders and writing papers for obscure academic journals like The Psychopomp?

I made a reservation at Milford’s on the Lake. I arrived first and was seated at a table by the window. The lake was stocked with pairs of mating swans, gliding by as their feet paddled furiously below the water line. I gnawed on items in the breadbasket, an anxious habit of mine.

Would the mademoiselle like another roll? asked the waiter.

No, thank you. I blushed. He used a file to brush away the crumbs.

You arrived late, apologizing profusely. Third-quarter sales push! you lamented. Never mind. I don’t want to bore you.

It’s all right. I listened as you explained the benefits of the Penetrate-R, a breakthrough in noninvasive surgical technique. You were, as advertised, handsome. Your eyes an impossible-to-define shade of blue or green, their color depending on the light.

Larissa says you’re a professor.

Yes. Medieval literature was filled with harrowers and heretics and Florentine politicos consigned, unfairly or not, to eternal damnation.

You know, you’re very attractive, you said.

I blushed. I’d never been the object of much male attention. I was too cerebral; I didn’t make an effort; I was content to hide in formless clothing, etc.

You stared at me. A gaze so penetrating I could not look away. There was a spot of blood on your cheek where you had nicked yourself with the razor.

I invited you in. Soon, we were throwing off our clothes, searching for illumination, tripping over the steps in our haste to make it to the bedroom. You are so beautiful, you murmured, fumbling with my buttons and fasteners. I don’t think I can hold back. You lifted me off the floor and carried me up the stairs.

I want to please you, you said, caressing my breasts, kissing me, a breadcrumb trail to the throbbing source of my every aching desire. When I could bear it no longer, when I was babbling sacrilege, my legs trembling uncontrollably, pleading, Right there, don’t stop, don’t stop, please don’t stop, you entered me and brought us to an ecstatic communion.

It all seems improbable now, with the missives going back and forth between our respective lawyers, your star-turn testifying for the prosecution, the damnable he-said, she-said of our inevitably disparate accounts. I tell you, she burned with hate for Amber. She blamed her for everything. No way was this an accident.

Perhaps one day you will be able to put aside the rancor in your heart and at last see things from my perspective.

4

Summer 2005

We made love for hours, long, drawn-out decrescendos of pleasure. You liked to run your fingers over the surgical site, watching, over time, as even the shallow depressions filled in, turned shimmery white, and disappeared.

I’d never had a lover who was so attentive. Who knew, intimately, the ridge of my ear, the incurve of my belly, the slight dent I have in my skull (the result, apparently, of vigorous use of forceps during delivery). Who knew I favored right side over left, as evident from uneven development of the quadriceps and gluteals; who knew I ground my teeth at night, accounting for jaw fatigue and ice-pick headaches. Who knew from the outline of a scar, only barely perceptible, that I’d once undergone emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix, an undiagnosed condition my father, drunk on Jack Daniels, had failed to appreciate, even after I’d fallen over, clutching my side, complaining of tell-tale pain in the lower right quadrant. Stop being dramatic, he’d said.

You had an interruption in your clavicle where once you had fallen from a jungle gym. A slight deviation in your septum. A keloid scar on your shin, the result of a fall off a bicycle. You’d broken your nose, and suffered a collapsed lung, but prompt medical attention, together with your parents’ insistence that a plastic surgeon close the wound, had minimized the damage, speeded up the healing process, made you almost good as new. Almost good as new, you liked to say. You’d escaped, virtually unscathed, from life.

We slept tangled in one another, bodily rhythms synchronized. The ba-BUMP of our hearts, the gurglings of our inter nal organs. We search for the one who completes us, the one who will make us whole. That person was you.

5

We married in the fall season. You, me, the justice of the peace of Saratoga County. I had no father to walk me down the aisle; my mother, the one who abandoned me at the tender age of eight, leaving me effectively on my own, was living in Pensacola, miles away, persona non grata.

Your parents worried whether we were perhaps rushing into things, committing too hastily to lifelong union. They prevailed upon us to give it some time. They gave us a leaded crystal punch bowl.

We had a hastily organized reception at Milford’s on the Lake. Two tables, pushed together to accommodate our guests. We waltzed to You Light Up My Life and fed each other angel food cake with buttercream icing.

You said you were so very lucky to have met me. Our love was an impossible-to-explain gift. You serenaded me. You sang about lighting up my life and filling my nights with song. The words