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“Then we ate. I took my daughter to swim therapy. Afterward, I watched her in the bath and put her to bed.”
“After that?”
“After that, I went to work in my office.”
“Was it normal for you to work at night?”
“It wasn’t abnormal. I had some charting I needed to finish up.”
“And did you do the charting?”
“Yes,” I tell her, which is the truth. “But it was about that time that I felt a sense of sheer panic. Not unease, like what had happened after the incident at the diner. This was worse. It was gut-wrenching sorrow. I broke out in a cold sweat until I was forced to get up from my desk and crack a window. When I went back to my charts, my hands shook. I felt dizzy.”
“A premonition?” she questioned.
“I don’t know.”
“Sounds to me like a panic attack.”
“Maybe.”
“That had never happened to you prior?”
“Not in a long time.”
“Is that why you told your wife you had to see about a patient?”
“Partly.”
“And then you drove by the Dunaway place?”
“Yes.”
“Did anything seem suspicious? Out of the ordinary?”
“I didn’t know what to expect. So, no.”
“You’d never driven by before?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did you have the feeling that after the encounter at the diner that you’d lost her?”
“Who? Laurel?” I asked, confused. I hadn’t thought of it that way.
“You’d been involved for months in a heady affair.”
This is not how I would describe Laurel and I at all. The term ‘heady affair’ reduced what happened between us as something illicit, no more than a passing fancy. By the time I drove by her house, I’d suspected it was more than that. I was pretty sure for the both of us.
Chapter Thirty
Laurel Dunaway
Journal Entry
It was after two in the morning when I woke James to tell him I’d gotten the call. Dad was not well. His breathing was labored. He was asking for me. I had to go.
Most of this, of course, was a lie.
