Then a man’s voice, muffled through the steel-and-walnut door.
“Maintenance.Evening, ma’am — sorry to disturb you.We’ve identified an issue with the communal air ducts on this floor.Need to check each unit.”
Her head turned.
Relief flickered.Routine, she could handle.People with a job to do.Easy.Predictable.
“Just a second,” she called.
She crossed the room, barefoot, heart steady.She didn’t think twice — why would she?This was the safest building in the safest district in Boston.Everyone who crossed this threshold carried a badge, a barcode, or both.
She undid the latch.
Turned the deadbolt.
Pulled the door open.
She smiled politely, ready to step aside without needing to look too closely.
He smiled deferentially as he crossed the threshold; older than his voice, a thick-built man with scruffy brown hair, in the yellow and red overalls of the maintenance company.
As he turned to her with something in his hand, she did not, could not know that this would be her final moment alive.And that she would, at last, be filled with regret.
CHAPTER THREE
The smell of garlic and roasted carrots filled Catherine Valentine’s kitchen — a comforting, old-bookish scent that always made Kate think of childhood winters, of returning from school to see her mother leaning over a saucepan, glasses fogged, hair tied up with one of those scarves Kate had once sworn she’d never wear.
Now she owned three.
“Sit,” Catherine said, gesturing toward the small wooden table by the window.“You chop like you’re interrogating the vegetables.”
“I chop fine.”
“You chop like an FBI agent.”
“Thatisfine.”
Catherine gave her a look — the one that meantdon’t be clever, darling, I invented that trick.
Kate sat.
She was still unsettled, restless from the day; restless from the encounter with Cox, from the looming sense of something coming round the bend in the road.
But tonight was theirs.Monday dinners.Their new ritual.The weeknight version of their sacred Sundays.Which were still a thing, but a little less frequent of late.
Her mother plated the roasted vegetables, then the grilled chicken.“Your face looks tight,” she observed, setting everything down.“Not telling me something?”
“It’s work.”
Catherine slid into the seat opposite hers, eyes warm, searching.“Work that follows you into my kitchen doesn’t count as work.It counts as worry.”
Kate stabbed a carrot.“I’m fine.”
“Lying to your mother is a waste of breath.”
Kate sighed.“It’s just… Cox.”
“Ah.”Catherine leaned back, folding her arms.“That explains the tight face.”
