AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“But what a nice surprise,” Emma says.
“Yes, it is.” Justine shoots a glance at the bags in Emma’s hands. “It looks like you two are going to be eating very well this week.”
“I hope so. If it doesn’t work out, I can hardly blame the ingredients. What about you? What are you picking up?”
Justine’s cloth bag appears to be empty. By this point she’s moved a little closer to Emma, who can’t help but notice the fatigue in her eyes. She wonders if Tom’s number two is still scrambling to fix the problem that emerged last weekend.
“Not sure yet. Is Tom with you?”
“No, he’s playing golf this morning.”
“Glad to hear it. He... he’s had so much on his plate lately.”
Justine fastens her olive-green eyes on Emma’s, her expression slightly inquisitive. Surely Tom hasn’t told herabout what’s going on with the reopening of the case. No, he wouldn’t have. She must be referring to the items Tom mentioned last night—putting out fires, trying to resolve the numbers with Dan, and so on.
“Well, you know Tom, he’ll figure it all out,” Emma says.
“Oh, I’m sure, but evenhemust need a break at times. I hate to see him pushing himself so hard.”
This conversation is starting to feel weird. Justine’s never been this forthcoming with her, and beyond that, Emma feels uncomfortable discussing Tom behind his back.
She shrugs. “He’s had crazy periods before. I don’t think we need to worry about him.”
She hopes that’s enough to move them off the topic, but Justine purses her lightly freckled lips, obviously eager to continue.
“I just want him to be aware that he can dump as much as he wants in my lap.”
“I’m sure he knows that.” But even as Emma says it, she recalls Tom’s point about Justine not being on top of her game lately, which could be the reason he isn’t delegating much.
“Sometimes I worry he’s afraid he’s imposing. Like the other night after the client dinner, I hated that as we were piling into our cars to go home, Tom had to head back to the office. Whatever the issue was, it would have been fine if he’d asked me to handle it.”
This is the first Emma’s hearing about him returning to Halliday. It seems odd he didn’t mention it, but they didn’t speak for very long that night before he popped into his home office.
“Justine, I think it would be best for you talk to Tom directly and tell him your concerns.”
She nods. “You’re right, and I will. But... did he seem okay when he got home? There’s not some issue at the agency, is there?”
“Not that I’m privy to, and as you know, even if I was aware of anything, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to mention it.”
“Of course. Like you said, it’s best for me to speak to Tom directly.”
Emma extricates herself, wishing Justine a good day. After retrieving her car, she makes a quick run to the dry cleaner and then stops at Winfield Street Coffee, where she orders a cup of herbal tea and sits at one of the slatted wooden tables on the sunny patio out front. She’s briefly tempted to pull out her phone but instead leans back and lets her gaze go to a soft focus. This is the first time in ages that she’s given herself permission to do absolutely nothing for a few minutes, and it isn’t long before she feels some of the tension in her shoulders begin to melt a little.
She knows it would be smart to allow herself regular downtime, to be more of a laid-back kind of girl, but she’s come to accept that she’s an anxious person, partly by nature, and partly, she guesses, from having grown up with hard-to-please parents. She also knows that in her case, things like deep cleansing breaths and showers with myrrh-scented body wash don’t help very much. Even if there’s not an immediate issue on her radar, she seems to have an internal tracking system that searches until it findssomethingto latch on to, like a phone call she’s made that hasn’t been returned yet.
And this anxious tendency has probably been compounded, she knows, by her professional training. As a trend forecaster, she’s always looking for signs and patterns, trying to guess their meaning and what impact they’ll have on the future.
And that’s exactly what she’s been doing lately:projecting, convincing herself that the detective’s visits mean that Derrick’s death is somehow going to come back to haunt her. To steal a phrase from Tom, she’s been borrowing trouble.
She has to stop, she realizes. Stop brooding and stewing and expecting the worst. Though it’s disruptive to have Webster snooping around, she and Tom are innocent and there’s no reason to think that the other shoe is about to drop.
After slowly finishing her tea, Emma pays her bill and returns to the parking lot. She’s halfway to the car when she halts in surprise to spot another a slip of white paper pinned beneath her windshield wiper.
She looks around and sees that the only other adult in the parking lot is a thirtysomething woman holding the hand of a young girl and walking toward a nearby SUV.
Emma leans across the hood and snatches the paper from where it’s fluttering. The note is written in the same block letters as the last one, and the message is just as cryptic.
You’re not as smart as you think you are.
