Welcome to my foray into the world of Ringer. Because I couldn't just leave the finale as it was presented without further discussion, right?
Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize. I do, however, claim any mistakes as my own, as this is un-beta'd.
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the story!
The car rolled into the Hamptons at midnight but neither of its occupants was in any mood for sleep.
With their suitcases left to be unpacked in the coming hours, Juliet settled down on the couch under a blanket to temporarily distract herself with old movies from their vacation DVD stash. Andrew alternated between sitting next to her, staring numbly at the smiling, laughing faces that danced across the screen, a cruel caricature of what life ought to be, and pacing mindlessly through the empty rooms, assaulted by memories at every turn.
He was completing what seemed like his hundredth turn around the house when his cell phone rang. He glanced at the clock on the wall: 2 a.m. Who was calling at this hour? Pulling his phone out of his pocket, he saw that the caller ID read "Agent Machado". He sighed, steeling himself for yet another confrontation. Pressing the call button, he said, "Hello?"
"Hello, Mr. Martin?" Victor Machado's voice sounded slightly staticky coming over the cell line—or was that just background noise? Where the hell was he that was so noisy at this hour of the night, anyway?
"Mr. Martin, this is Agent Machado. I'm sorry to call you at this hour, but I wanted to inform you that there was a break-in at your apartment tonight."
Out of the many questions that raced through his mind in the millisecond before he spoke, Andrew asked the last one he thought of: "Why is the FBI calling me about this and not the police?"
Agent Machado laughed gruffly on the other end of the line. "Ah, and there's the rub, Mr. Martin. You see, it wasn't just any break-in, and the intruder wasn't after your goods—none of which have been stolen, by the way, although some of them have been harmed. The intruder was Bodaway Macawi—name ring a bell?"
"Yes," Andrew answered slowly. "Siobhan told me he was the man who was after Bridget." The words tasted acrid on his tongue as he spoke what he now knew to be a lie.
"That's right, Mr. Martin," Agent Machado replied. "And tonight, he came after your wife." He laughed again, a thin, humorless sound. "Guess he thought your wife was Bridget."
Andrew's gut twisted and he leaned against a doorframe for support, running a hand through his hair and taking a deep breath before he replied. So Machado didn't know. Didn't know that it was Bridget who had been living as his wife for the past seven months, didn't know that his real wife was dead, didn't know how difficult it was for him to be having this conversation when he was still trying to sort out his feelings for the woman he'd married and had just discovered was dead and her twin, the woman he loved but couldn't allow in his life, not after the deception she'd revealed tonight. And yet, aren't you just as much of a liar? a voice inside him asked. Weren't you willing to defraud your clients and leave chaos in your wake when you fled?
"What happened?" he asked shakily, returning his attention to Machado.
"Your wife is fine, don't worry, Mr. Martin," Agent Machado hastened to assure him, "But she's been through an ordeal. Macawi broke into your apartment and tried to kill her with a knife. My team and I walked in just as she shot him dead."
Andrew wasn't sure whether he was more shocked by Bridget—his kind, loving…no, not his wife—having a gun at the ready or by the allegresse with which Agent Machado reported the act. Remembering at the last minute that he was supposed to be in charge of caring for the woman Machado thought was his wife, he asked, "Will there be any charges?"
"No, of course not," Agent Machado answered dismissively. "Siobhan Martin killed a criminal wanted on murder charges who was obviously trying to kill her. No one's going to press charges against your wife, Mr. Martin. In fact, I think we all agree that the sooner this case is closed, the better. It's been dragging on for far too long."
On the receiving end of the call, Andrew drew in a shaky breath of relief. No charges were being pressed. He wouldn't have to continue the charade of being Bridget's husband while legal action took place. He could wash his hands of this matter forever.
So why did he feel this sudden urge to go find Bridget, to make sure she was all right, to protect her and make sure nothing like this ever happened to her again? She had chosen her path in life, chosen to take the drugs and become a prostitute and get mixed up with the wrong crowd. The natural consequences shouldn't bother him.
Yet he couldn't shake the fact that they did. Despite the fact that this woman had lived a lie with him for seven months, let him think she was his wife, made an overt effort to restore a severed relationship and welcomed his ensuing advances with soft sighs, limpid eyes, and more desire and acceptance than he'd felt from his wife in years—he still wanted to cocoon her away from the harshness of the world.
He'd so wanted to believe that Siobhan had changed, that somehow she had woken up one day while he was gone to London and realized that things could be better, that it truly had been his wife he'd struck a bargain of openness and honesty with and was in the process of wooing again. Yes, it was true what he'd told Bridget—we believe what we want to believe.
"Your wife was still at the apartment when we left, Mr. Martin," Agent Machado continued. "We may need to bring her in for some questioning and we'll need to gather some more evidence from your apartment tomorrow, but there's no problem with you returning home at any time."
"Thank you, Agent Machado," Andrew replied.
After the final courtesies were exchanged and the phone call was finished, Andrew returned to the room where Juliet had started her second movie of the night. It Happened One Night. What hadn't happened tonight? He'd found out that his wife, the one he'd cheated with, had been cheating on him with her best friend's husband, only to then find out that she was now dead and he'd been sleeping next to her twin sister for the past seven months. Her drug-addicted prostitute of a twin sister who had won his trust only to betray him.
Andrew shook his head, feeling the sting of her betrayal wash over his heart anew as he took further inventory of the evening. He'd finally thrown that punch at Henry Butler he'd longed to throw for so long. And apparently someone—a murderer himself—had been murdered in his apartment. God, what he wouldn't give for some of Clark Gable's debonair charm and a willing Claudette Colbert and, more importantly, scriptwriters to make all of their problems resolve in a two-hour give-or-take time slot.
Juliet looked up from the screen as he walked in. "Who was that on the phone, Daddy?"
"That was Agent Machado," Andrew said, sitting down next to her on the couch.
"What did he want?" Juliet asked, shifting so that she could see him better.
Andrew sighed, putting his hands on his knees and leaning on them slightly awkwardly, not quite ready to relax but not sure he had the strength to hold himself up for much longer. "Bodaway Macawi, the man who was after Bridget, broke into our apartment tonight while Bridget was there and tried to kill her. Instead, she killed him."
"Oh, my God." Juliet suddenly sat up straighter and leaned toward her father. "Daddy, you have to go to her! You have to make sure she's all right."
In the brief pause that followed, Andrew leveled his daughter with a skeptical gaze. Finally he said, "Juliet, where is this coming from? I spent most of the drive here listening to you berate that 'twisted bitch'—not that I condone your use of that language, by the way—and go on about how she's just as bad as your mother. Now you're telling me I should go investigate her wellbeing?"
Juliet fidgeted slightly on the couch and started to twist an edge of the blanket between her hands. Catherine had bought that blanket years ago, Andrew remembered suddenly, when Juliet was still a little girl. He vaguely remembered a much younger Juliet curled up under the same blanket, listening to bedtime stories on vacation.
"Well…" Juliet began hesitantly, and her eyes flicked to the television screen before she continued. "Daddy, Mom's an alcoholic who tried to kill us. Siobhan was an uptight bi—"
"Juliet…" Andrew broke in warningly.
"Right, whatever," Juliet nodded and then continued. "Like I was saying, Siobhan was an uptight…unpleasant person. And Bridget…well, Bridget's a former drug-addicted prostitute. And she lied to us, which I'm still really mad at her for. But, Daddy…"
Juliet paused for a moment as if searching for the right words, then blurted out, "Daddy, we were better with her! We were like a real family for the first time I can remember. She took care of me when I was hung over, she made me tell you about the trust fund money Mom and I stole, she went with you to all those business things Siobhan never cared about, she cooked dinner for us…"
Her eyes flicked briefly to the television screen again, and suddenly Andrew thought he understood what was going on. He sighed and moved to put his arm around his daughter.
"Juliet, sweetheart," he began in a soft tone, "I know our family life hasn't been easy. I know your mother and I fought all the time and you didn't get along with Siobhan…"
Juliet snorted. "That's an understatement."
Andrew gave her another warning look and said, "But, sweetheart, life doesn't always turn out like the movies. We can't always get our happily ever after. But we'll make it through. Me and you against the world. We'll always have each other."
Juliet wiggled out of his half-embrace, looking back and forth between him and the television a few times before fixing him with an incredulous stare. "You think that's what this is about? You think I'm saying these things because I've been watching movies? God, Daddy, how easily do you think I'm influenced?"
She continued, and Andrew noticed she was blinking back tears. "I know we can't ever have a perfect happily ever after. You've already got two ex-wives and a fake one to prove that."
Andrew winced at that. How much of this, truly, was his fault?
Juliet didn't seem to notice her father's reaction and went on, "I know we can't erase the bad things that happened. I did drugs and stole from you. Mom tried to kill us. Siobhan never changed and she killed herself. Bridget isn't going to have your baby. But don't you think we could finally have some peace?"
"And you think that having Bridget in our lives would bring us that peace?" Andrew looked at his daughter searchingly.
"I don't know." Juliet bit her lip. "But maybe? Daddy, I know you love her. You've been happier in the seven months after she became Siobhan than you have been for a long time. You've been all mushy and googly-eyed and I've walked in on you two kissing more times than I care to remember." Juliet wrinkled her nose and Andrew had to smile at that. "Frankly, Daddy, it's been disgusting."
In the silence that followed that pronouncement, the smile slowly faded from Andrew's face as he hesitated before speaking. "You're right, Juliet," he said finally.
She looked up from the impromptu study of the floor she'd undertaken while waiting for his reply. "I am?" she asked, surprised.
Andrew laughed at her expression, then more somberly said, "Yes, you are. I do love Bridget. And, excepting untoward external circumstances, I've been happy—we've been happy—since she came into our lives."
His expression hardened as he continued, "But, Juliet, she lied to us. We don't know Bridget. We only know Bridget pretending to be Siobhan." He gestured with his hand, exasperated.
"So you're not going back to New York to check on her," Juliet surmised, quirking her lips into a thin expression of distaste.
"No, darling." Andrew shook his head. "At least, not tonight."
The decision hit him with a sense of finality that drained him of any vestigial reserves of strength. He slumped against the back of the couch, Juliet curled up next to him and maneuvered the blanket so that it covered both of their laps, and he stared unseeingly at the black-and-white images flickering before them.
The past few weeks had been…insane. His entire world of carefully constructed veneers had come crashing down.
Regarding his business, he no longer owned it and he wasn't entirely sure Tim Abrogast wouldn't use his knowledge of the Ponzi scheme against him should the opportunity arise.
And then there was Olivia, his former business partner, who had fled to save her own skin only to become involved with Catherine at the worst possible time.
Oh, Catherine, his first wife, his first love, his first great mistake in the world of conniving women. She was an alcoholic (he'd known that), a suicidal, murderous psychopath (he'd recently learned), and, apparently, bisexual (he hadn't seen that one coming). But she had given him Juliet, so could he really regret their involvement?
And after Catherine had come Siobhan. With Siobhan, Andrew didn't know where to begin. He had loved her deeply. When she had come into his life, she had offered him everything his wife hadn't—affection, adoration, adulation. He regretted the affair, yes. He wished they'd waited until he was divorced from Catherine before becoming involved, but that was because, in retrospect, he wished he'd done right by Siobhan. Making her the other woman certainly wasn't treating her well.
And maybe she hadn't been completely stable, maybe he'd known all along there were secrets she kept hidden, but he couldn't resist the opportunity to rescue her, to take her from her lower-middle-class world in Lake Tahoe and make her a belle of the Upper East Side. Maybe he'd used her just as much as she'd used him and maybe they'd just called it love for lack of a more socially acceptable term, but he couldn't deny that the ache in his chest—at each new distance she established between them, at each new wary look of mistrust she gave him—felt incredibly similar to a broken heart.
Now she was dead. Dead, Bridget had told him. As tense as things had been between Andrew and his wife in the past few years, he couldn't quite bring himself to believe she had committed suicide. It didn't seem in her character. Siobhan would have wanted to go out with more panache; suicide was for the weak, like Catherine.
But, lacking accounts to the contrary, he had no choice but to believe Bridget. It was a struggle to mourn his wife; his emotions felt too raw, too exposed to focus on something so concentrated as mourning. While a deep, denied part of him was slightly relieved to have their marital strife terminated so instantaneously, the rest of him was awash in inquietude at the lack of resolution. Suicide—especially a suicide revealed months later after living with an impostor for the interim—was a messy solution that gave his soul no peace. It was something that had been thrust upon him, a happening outside of his control, outside of his consent and volition.
It disconcerted him more than he cared to admit.
The sisters were alike in that way, he reflected bitterly—they knew how to shake his world and beliefs to the core. Before Siobhan, he would never have imagined he was the sort of man who could even think of threatening someone with death, yet his fear of exposure in the Ponzi scheme had caused him to do just that to his wife. Before Bridget, he would never have thought he could be so taken in as to allow himself to believe another woman was his wife, but Bridget had so blinded him to the truth that he'd fallen for her ruse completely.
Bridget.
Bridget, who kissed him when he came home from work. Bridget, who humbled herself to apologize for her sister's transgressions. Bridget, who helped Juliet get sober because she knew just how difficult it was. Bridget, who attended business functions and made him proud to have her on his arm. Bridget, who appreciated the gifts and the sentiments to which Siobhan had become indifferent, even scornful. Bridget, who was all soft smiles and inviting eyes and a willing bed partner. Bridget, who loved him.
Bridget, who lied.
"Daddy. Daddy!"
Juliet's voice broke into the increasingly depressive bent of Andrew's thoughts and he realized that he had a corner of their shared blanket fisted tightly in one hand and was staring dazedly at the now-dark television screen.
"The movie's over and I'm tired. I'm going to bed," Juliet announced, pushing the blanket aside and starting to head toward her bedroom. She gave Andrew a critical once-over and added over her shoulder, "You should probably go to bed, too."
Andrew didn't bother to respond and simply began the process of rising from the couch, going to his bedroom, and readying himself for bed. It was surprising how much energy those simple tasks could consume, he mused.
Only after he had settled into bed did he allow a wave of unabashed self-pity to wash over him. He was alone in the bed of his vacation home when he should have been with his wife, about to head to the tropics to renew their wedding vows. Vows the woman he'd been with had never taken the first time around.
He had been deceived. Cuckolded. Abandoned. Publicly humiliated.
As he finally drifted off to restless slumber in the early hours of the morning, Andrew wondered, and not for the first time, how he had come to so drastically misjudge the true character of the women he allowed in his life. He wouldn't be taken in again, he vowed sleepily. He would not allow Bridget to take another piece of his already fractured soul.