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23
THERE’S A SPLIT SECOND IN THE MORNING WHEN EMMAsurfaces from a dream and the only thought in her head is how cool the sheets feel against her skin.
And then, a moment later, images from the night before explode in her mind like a firecracker. Her furtive walk down the hall in the dark. The folder full of clippings about her. And worst of all, the program. If that’s really Tom’s handwriting in the margins, it means he was at the event that night, that hedidcome to hear her speak in New York, that he’s been completely dishonest about not being more than vaguely aware of her before she arrived at Halliday.
It’s early and barely light out, but Tom is up. She hears him padding around the room, dressing in preparation of his trip, though he’s obviously doing his best to be quiet. She breathes deeply and rhythmically with eyes closed, praying he’ll think she’s still sound asleep.
His getting-ready process seems to go on forever, but finally she hears him take a few steps across the room, probablytoward the door. He stops abruptly, however, mere inches away, and she practically feels the heat coming off his body. Is he hoping that her eyes will flutter open and she’ll wish him a sleepy goodbye?
Or is he simply studying her? Did he awaken last night to find her side of the bed empty and wonder where she disappeared to?
But she doesn’t open her eyes. She doesn’t move a muscle.
It isn’t until Emma hears the purr of the car backing out of the driveway that she throws the sheet off and slips out of bed. The clock on the bedside table says 6:02, which means she has roughly two hours before Brittany emerges from her bedroom.
Downstairs in the kitchen, she reads a note from Tom saying goodbye and that he’ll see her Tuesday night, then brews coffee on automatic pilot and takes it to the table. A loud sigh escapes her lips. She’s done what she set out to, gathered even more information than she had initially, but rather than helping her, it’s chilled her to the bone. Tom clearly developed some kind of fascination with her after Miami, an obsession even. He kept a file of her media clippings, went into Manhattan to see her speak, and then subtly manipulated an employee into bringing her on board at Halliday: a “long game” that came to a head when he finally asked for a meeting with her in his office. He orchestrated their love affair, and ultimately, their marriage.
And how convenient for Tom, she thinks, that she was newly widowed by the time she arrived at Halliday. What would have come of his little infatuation if she’d still been with Derrick? Would he have made a play for her regardless,turning on his charm at full wattage to seduce her into stepping out on her husband?
So what does she do now that she knows all this? She feels like the dog that caught the car.
Listlessly, Emma brings the mug to her mouth but then sets it back down, her stomach too queasy to face the caffeine. She needs to take some kind of action, but right now she can’t imagine what that could be. Things might actually be worse than she can see at the moment; there might be more Tom has misled her about.Isthere? Is there even more?
A thought breaks through her mind, like an axe hacking through a door, and her lips part in shock. What if her first husband’s death hadn’t been simplyconvenientfor Tom? What if he’d become so obsessed with her that he’d actually killed Derrick so he could have her all to himself? He wouldn’t have turned up on the police radar then because, like in the classic Hitchcock movieStrangers on a Train, he’d never met Derrick, never had contact with him, not even exchanged a single phone call.
Stop, Emma tells herself. She’s started down another crazy rabbit hole, and she can’t let herself go there. Maybe there’s some other explanation for the Harvard program and the handwriting isn’t Tom’s. And even if hewaskeeping tabs on her, he’s not a murderer. Despite her failures at judging people, she knows that. Plus, he has an ironclad alibi, one that he’s shared with Detective Webster.
Just for her own satisfaction, though, she picks up the phone from its spot on the table and googles “How long does it take to drive from Stowe Vermont to New York City?”
The answer: “5 hr 24 min.” Which means if Tom hadsnuck away from the client weekend to kill Derrick, he would have been missing in action for well over a dozen hours, which though possible seems highly improbable. Of course, he could have paid someone to do the killing for him.
No, the whole idea is absurd, outrageous. But then so is the idea of Tom tracking her over months and manipulating her recruitment to his agency, and yet she now has proof that he did those things.
Emma holds out her hands and lets her head sink into them. She’s loved Tom fiercely, finally been so happy in her life, and it’s shattering to think he’s not who she believed he was, that he might be responsible for something truly horrible.
But she can’t let her distress either undo her or immobilize her, the way it did for far too long during her first marriage. Instead, she needs to keep digging, to find out the key pieces of information that will put her mind at ease once and for all.
The first step that occurs to her off the top of her head is a LinkedIn search for Stacey Manning, the former number two at Halliday, who left shortly before Emma started there. If she can connect with Stacey, she might be able to tease out whether, as Scott suggested, the woman attended the panel discussion with Tom.
Emma finds her on LinkedIn and discovers to her dismay that she’s a Harvard grad, which suggests things are exactly as she thought. But—longshot idea—maybe Stacey went to the panel discussion on her own and later passed on the program to Tom. She’s going to have to talk to her.
Seeing that there’s no current job listed in the bio jogs Emma’s memory—she’d heard that Stacey had decided tostep off the treadmill for a while. She drags the cursor to the message icon on LinkedIn and writes her a quick note saying that she’s Tom’s wife, has heard a lot about her, and wonders if she’s open to being interviewed about switching gears for some research she’s doing.
Unfortunately, if Stacey has stepped off the treadmill, she’s hardly going to be checking her LinkedIn messages every day, and it might be a while before she hears back.
Emma’s running late by this point and after a shower, she slips into a simple summer dress and sandals and grabs a container of yogurt from the fridge. She’s preparing to leave when Brittany comes down the back stairs. She offers Emma a pleasant smile.
“Morning,” Emma says, happy that overall things still seem to be in tune with the two of them. “Would you like me to order an Uber for you before I go?”
Brittany had mentioned at dinner that she’d be using Uber for work the next two days since she wouldn’t be able to hitch a ride with Tom.
“No thanks, I already scheduled one, and Tom was nice enough to say he’d reimburse me. I’m just going to have a little breakfast first.”
“Have a good day then.”
“You, too, Emma.”
When she arrives at the studio, Emma discovers her two coworkers are already at their desks. As she reviews the day ahead with Dario, she senses him on alert, probably noticing how tense she is, and she takes a few deep breaths, tryingto force herself to stay present. For the next couple of hours she manages to draft some questions for the next influencer survey with Eric and tackle a mass of emails. She’s halfway through them when she finds a message from Lilly Shelbourne responding to her condolences.
