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“He saidItold him to call you?” he says finally.
“Not that you told him, but that you sent him a link to an article about me, the implicit message being that heshouldcall.”
“If that’s his memory of how things went, I’m not going to question it.”
“But if you sent the link about me, why didn’t you mention it after we started dating? Or now, especially with this weird Miami coincidence.”
He shrugs. “I must have skimmed the article, not realized you were the same person on the program at that dinner, and forgot sending him the link when you came to work with us. Which is a shame because I could have given myself a pat on the back for shaping my own destiny so successfully.”
Instinctively, she steeples her hands and presses them against her lips.
“What?” he asks, studying her.
“So you didn’t actually hear my speech and decide you wanted to have me consult for you?”
“Sweetheart, we’ve been over this ground before. I staggered out of that dinner before you even opened your mouth, in desperate search of painkillers.”
He steps closer and envelops her in his arms, and her body softens against the counter.This has got to be the end of all the crazy worrying and projecting, she tells herself.
Maybe some of her anxiety relates back to her first marriage, the experience of seeing the darker side of someone emerge without any real warning, like a person stepping out of the shadows in a slasher flick. That’s not going to happen with Tom, though. There have never been any red flags, no hints of anything other than his boundless kindness and trustworthiness.
“Iknow what’s going on,” Tom says, his lips against her hair. “This investigation is still getting to you. But you can’t let it, okay? As I’ve said before, we don’t have a thing in the world to worry about.”
“You’re right,” she says.And thankfully, Emma tells herself,the NYPD is unlikely to talk to Scott.
From there, the weekend manages to feel normal, even easy at moments, with their picnic at the beach, an impromptu dinner with friends of Tom’s on Saturday night, and a movie the next day.
On Sunday night, while Tom’s packing for Chicago, Emma makes a chicken dish and a salad with lettuce from the farmers’ market, and they eat with Brittany, who seemscheery enough. If she was annoyed with Tom from the day before, she’s let it go.
Later, despite how tired Emma is, she finds herself lying wide-eyed in the dark in bed again, unable to let herself drift off and replaying Tom’s assurances. As genuine and logical as they sounded, something continues to gnaw at her. She turns his words over and over in her mind, then reminds herself that there’s nothing to see.
But then shedoessee something. A hairline crack. Yesterday he told her that he never heard a word of her speech in Miami, but a week ago he’d said he’d managed to catch the first few minutes.
Has she been stupid to believe him? Has she ignored the rule of three—and four, and five? There’s no way she’s getting back to sleep now.
Patting her bedside table, she locates her phone and then slips nearly silently from bed. After easing the door open, she tiptoes down the long hall and finds herself outside Tom’s office once again.
After a furtive glance back toward their bedroom, she eases the handle downward, pushes the door open, and quickly steps inside. Her nerves are on fire, like she’s just drilled her way into a bank vault in the middle of the night, and yet she can’t bring herself to turn back.
Emma decides to leave the door open so she can hear if Tom steps into the hall, but it means she’ll have to rely on the flashlight in her phone. She activates the beam and trains it ahead of her. They worked on the room together, and it’s nicely furnished, with a wall of bookcases on one side, a comfortable armchair and ottoman at the opposite end, and,directly in front of her, a sleek and elegant wood desk set between two windows. At the same time there’s a slightly unfinished feeling to the space because Tom uses it so rarely.
Inching forward, Emma reaches the desk. There’s nothing on top of it other than the printout of a creative concept for an ad campaign, and when she tugs open the solitary drawer, she sees only a few stray pens and paper clips, a pad of blank Post-it notes, and a roll of stamps.
From there she turns right to the bookcase. It’s barely a quarter full, with a small selection of business books, as well several framed photos and a few knickknacks from the several trips they’ve done as a couple. They tell her nothing about Tom that she doesn’t already know.
This is ridiculous, Emma thinks.What could I possibly hope to find?
As she turns back around, her eyes fall on the filing cabinets in the built-in credenza to the left of the door. She’d forgotten about those. She’ll take a quick look and leave, she tells herself, before she feels any worse about sneaking in here.
One of the drawers is entirely empty except for a dozen hanging folders waiting to be assigned their jobs, and another is filled with hard copies of financial records, but the bottom one seems to contain personal files. Her breath quickens as she flicks quickly through the tabs, spotting titles like “Medical records,” “Travel ideas,” and “Condolence cards, Diana.”
And then her fingers freeze. Because one tab has just two letters: E. H.For Emma Hawke?she asks herself.
After a glance back at the door, she slides the file from the drawer and opens it on the top of the credenza.
There are a dozen clippings related to her—a short profilein a business trade magazine as well as printouts of online magazine articles she's been quoted in. The one on top is from about a year ago—no surprise there, she keeps track of Tom’s press, too—but as she sorts through the pile, she sees others from farther back. Her stomach knots at the sight. It’s like he’s prepared a dossier on her.
There’s something at the bottom of the file that’s not a clipping, but a program. Within a couple of seconds she recognizes the crimson crest of the Harvard Club. The date on the front is February 24, just over two years ago.
Her eyes skim the page and she quickly processes what she’s holding—the program for an event she participated in. Not a speech, but a panel discussion on emerging trends that calendar year, and her name’s right there along with the other panelists. She’d been recruited by a professional contact who’d gone to Harvard.
It was one month after the Miami dinner and one month before Derrick died.
With her heart racing, she peers more closely. In the margins are notes in pencil, and as she reads each one, there’s a prick of recognition. She’s almost positive they’re snippets of remarks she made that night. And the handwriting looks just like Tom’s.
