“It’s time to face reality,” Aubrey thought after she freshened up in the police station bathroom.
Jake, Hollis, the detective, and Max were waiting for her at the detective’s desk.
“We wanted to speak to you before we left,” Jake said. “We’re pressing charges, but we wanted you to know we don’t blame you.”
Aubrey reached into her purse and fished out a business card.
She handed it to Hollis.
“This is the name of a good attorney if you need one. He’s an associate of mine, and he’s well-connected. I’ll call him tomorrow and pay for any legal services you need. He can advise you on your next step. I’m on your side, Hollis,” Aubrey said, pressing her hand for emphasis.
“Thanks for your help, Dr. Prentice.”
Hollis hugged Aubrey.
“No hard feelings,” Jake said.
Hollis and Jake left the police station.
“Now what am I going to do?” thought Aubrey.
Maxwell spoke up. “I got Foster released on his own recognizance. He’s been processed and is waiting to see you back in a holding cell.
Foster looked terrible.
“I am so sorry,” he said to Aubrey, not looking at her directly.
Aubrey stared at him, not sure what to say.
“Did you bring the town car?” she asked Maxwell.
Maxwell had a town car he used for these occasions. It had tinted windows and a commanding appearance.
“I did,” said Maxwell, “but there are reporters out there.”
By reporters, Maxwell meant the local reporter from the Orchard Park Ledger and his photographer. These two ‘newsmen’ were fixtures at the courthouse and the jail, always hanging around to get a story where there usually wasn’t one.
This meant that Foster and Aubrey’s picture would be in the paper along with a story, and that they would also be on the local news. Aubrey could only wonder what Jake and Hollis had already told them.
Maxwell escorted Foster and Aubrey out the back entrance and into the waiting town car. The news guys hounded them with questions, the worst one being if Aubrey knew that she was married to a sex offender.
Aubrey had a sinking feeling that once the gossips in Orchard Park had gotten hold of the story, she could kiss her local psychiatry practice goodbye. Ian Henshaw Senior would pull the plug on her operation: one that was supposed to heal sexual deviants, not harbor them.
She doubted that Foster would still be allowed to work for the city, or anywhere else in Westchester County, for that matter.
Then, in the town car on the way home, Dr. Aubrey Prentice got a brilliant idea.
It all made sense now.
She would use this field experience for her book.
She had planned to write a book anyway, but it was going to be a dry, academic book that would collect dust on some college library shelves. She figured it would be called something like “The American Working Male and the Cost of Deviant Sexual Behavior in the U.S. Workplace.”
Now that her husband was one of these men, these men who had strange, perverted, and abnormal sexual desires, her work was no longer just a clinical study. She had experienced the behavior firsthand!
She was married to a man who liked to digitally manipulate women and watch as they enjoyed themselves, with no desire for sexual gratification for himself.
So Dr. Aubrey Prentice was no longer just a psychiatrist. She was now part of the study.
This new book would be magnificent. Not the clinical manual for her colleagues, nor a white paper that no one would bother to read, but a bestseller that gathered all the sexually deviant stories in one place: a book of women’s fantasies as imagined by men. It would be a work of transgressive fiction—
“centered on characters who feel restricted by societal norms and expectations and who break free from those constraints in unusual or illicit ways…”
It was Jennifer who had originally told Aubrey about the book genre. Transgressive fiction was mentioned in one of Jennifer’s textbooks. She suggested it to Aubrey during one of their brainstorming sessions, but Aubrey dismissed it at the time.
But screw being intellectual! Aubrey had done that her entire life, and it had gotten her nowhere.
This idea gave new life to the piles of records, Post-it notes, and outlines sitting on her dining room table. Those files in her office were the key to her financial independence and worldwide recognition.
This was no longer just a book. This was going to be a best seller!
She could see it now: with millions of copies sold, she would tell her story on the talk show circuit and then lavish in the fame and fortune that Dr. Aubrey Prentice knew she always deserved.
Aubrey glanced over at Foster. He was so disheveled-looking. He would be ruined by this, especially when his family found out. Aubrey would be pitied, of course, but more importantly, she would be free to live her life as she wanted.
She knew Foster was the kind of guy who would want to talk it out and beg for her forgiveness. So Aubrey would have to get in touch with a publicist first thing next week to figure out if she should have an ugly public divorce or some quiet and tender forgiveness for Foster.
The publicist would tell her which scenario would sell more books.
Aubrey was excited now; she couldn’t wait to get home and start working on an outline for her new, tell-all manuscript.
The limousine pulled up to the Prentices’ home and stopped. Foster looked at Aubrey and then at Maxwell.
Maxwell spoke for Foster.
“Foster wanted to know if it would be okay if he came in and got some things before he went to a hotel,” said Maxwell.
“Of course, of course,” Aubrey said sympathetically. She was relieved that he wouldn’t be staying with her in the house. It would be much easier to make calls and start writing without him there.
She looked into Foster’s eyes, which were dull and lifeless.
“Foster, you take all of the time you need. Maxwell and I will wait for you in the study.”
A few moments later in the study, Maxwell started a lawyer/client conversation with Aubrey.
“How would you like to proceed, Aubrey?”
“To be honest, Max, I don’t know. This has been a terrible shock. Although I will tell you that the psychiatrist in me won’t let me do anything rash, if that’s what you mean.”
“Yes, and no,” said Maxwell. “It’s good that you aren’t going to drive yourself crazy about this, but I was talking more in terms of staying married or filing for divorce.”
“I think Foster and I will both need some professional counseling first, and then I am going to hire my own divorce attorney, no offense. Until then, I think we both need some time to think and calm down. Max, I knew what was going on, and I didn’t say anything. I feel so guilty.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, Aubrey. You couldn’t have known it would go this far. I’ve known Foster and his family longer than you have. I could never have seen this coming, and neither could you.”
“I guess you’re right, but I still feel guilty,” Aubrey said.
“Of course you do. It’s to be expected.”
Maxwell and Aubrey exchanged pleasantries and a few shots of bourbon to calm their nerves until Foster came down with his suitcase.
“I’m so sorry, Aubrey.”
“We’ll work through this, Foster.”
That being said, Maxwell and Foster left the house where Foster believed Aubery and he would be together for the rest of their lives.
When they were gone, Aubrey had one more shot of bourbon to make a toast to her new life and to say goodbye to everything else that had held her back for so long.
Aubrey spent the rest of the night tossing and turning. Partly from the ordeal with Foster, but mostly from the excitement of starting her new book.
What would she call it, and how would she use her failed marriage to promote it?
Aubrey lay awake in the dark. Her thoughts were racing; she couldn’t write them down fast enough, and the strain of the day had been too much, so she decided not to go manic over it.
Titles floated through her mind, provocative, daring, just academic enough to silence critics while inviting people to read it despite the stigma attached to it.
Something that sounded important, while at the same time sounded dangerous.
She reached for her phone on the nightstand and opened the notes app.
Working title ideas, she typed:
Men Who Watch.
Private Desires. Public Masks.
The Deviant Next Door.
None of them felt quite right.
But they got Aubrey’s creative juices flowing.
This was bigger than her and her patients. Bigger than her and Foster.
They were merely the starting point. This was a cautionary tale. One that explored the respectable man in your life who was hiding behind the mask he was wearing. It would be a warning, sure, but also a confession. Readers loved confessions, especially when they came from women who were supposed to know better.
She rolled onto her side, energized now.
She would be both the expert and the victim. The psychiatrist who missed the signs. The wife who lived with deviance and survived it. The woman was brave enough to share her sordid story of regret and triumph.
To add some spice, she would fictionalize it. Based on a true story. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.
By morning, Aubrey had sketched out three chapters in her head.
The first would begin with the arrest. The shock. The humiliation. The betrayal.
The second would return to her marriage, where it all began.
She’d talk about the clues she’d ignored, the behaviors she’d explained away because her husband didn’t fit the profile of the sexual deviants in her patient files.
And the third would create the big picture by utilizing her research, experience, and her curriculum vitae. She was a bona fide doctor. Not a woman writing a mea culpa who’d seen the light and was ready to talk about it.
This was an exploration of how many men walked freely among us, respected and invisible, carrying desires that society wasn’t aware of.
She smiled to herself. All the grief she had suffered her entire life had been leading up to this.
Vindication.
Global respect and admiration.
Maybe her own talk show.
By the time she was drinking her coffee, Aubrey knew one thing with absolute certainty:
Last night had destroyed Foster.
But it was just the beginning for her.
She closed her eyes at last, already imagining the book jacket, the interviews, the careful way she would tell the story—her story—in a way that ensured she emerged not as a footnote in someone else’s scandal, but as the author of it.
And this time, Aubrey Prentice would be the one controlling the narrative.
But there was one more piece of the puzzle. What about Ian?
Aubrey was falling in love with Ian, but now that she was thinking clearly, things would have to be different.
She had fallen in love with the side of Ian who talked to her in her office.
The shy Ian.
The vulnerable Ian.
The Ian who was excited to change.
The one who wanted to cherish the woman in his life.
This new Ian—Ian 2.0, who was fresh out of therapy, mistook his material triumphs as healing. He was not the Ian whom Aubrey wanted.
But now there was hope for the two of them. If Aubrey were independently wealthy, she could meet Ian on his own terms. Be his equal. She could define their relationship as she chose.
They would have a fiery, passionate love affair based on give-and-take.
The kind of relationship Aubrey dreamed of. The relationship she was determined to have.
Watch out, Ian.