Twisted Love

Thanksgiving is awkward between Alex, Ava, and Michael. Though Ava and Alex wish to keep their relationship a secret from Michael until they can break the news to Josh, Ava is convinced that her father knows. That night, Ava has a dream of being strangled, but she is convinced that it is actually another memory. She yearns to sleep with Alex, who is down the hall in the guest room, but she doesn’t want to risk waking him if he has managed to fall asleep despite his insomnia. In the morning, Ava visits the lake behind the house and recalls another memory of her past. The memory focuses on a gold signet ring that Ava saw when she was pushed into the lake as a child: Michael’s ring. In the present moment, Ava screams at the revelation that her father was the one who pushed her into the water when she was five.

Ava has been distant since the morning after Thanksgiving, and Alex worries about her as his “heart rage[s] in [his] chest, a snarling beast furious at the sight of her distress and the thought that there was something in the world that would dare hurt her” (192).