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“Okay, but have her come to my apartment. Not the studio.”
The thought of all the wounded collages inside my home, piled against the wall, fills me with fresh despair, but I’m not planning to go to the studio anytime soon, not after what happened last night.
As promised, Mikoto arrives at noon, dressed in black jeans and a maroon crewneck sweater and lugging a plastic bag from a nearby Chinese restaurant.
“Sesame noodles, chicken and broccoli, spring rolls,” she says with a smile.
“Perfect,” I say, then gesture to the coffee table. “I’ve got work on the dining table, so we’ll have to eat here if that’s okay.”
“No problem.”
As she goes about arranging the food, I grab plates, glasses, a couple of serving spoons, and a liter bottle of fizzy water from the kitchen and return with it all to the living room. I plop down on the couch next to her, and we take turns loading up our plates as the smell of soy sauce and ginger fills the room.
“I feel so terrible about what happened last night,” Mikoto says, tearing the wrapper from her chopsticks. “You must be devastated.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s the right word for it.”
“Can your collages be fixed?”
“Maybe, but it’s going to take a lot of time and effort, and there’s no way to be sure the same thing won’t happen again.”
“Wait, what do you mean?”
Famished, I take a bite of a spring roll and then describe the stamp mark on each of the collages and how I’m sure it has to do with the trust. I also catch her up on the other events of the past few days: the note stuffed inside my tote bag, the surprise visit from C.J.’s son, the proposal from Jane Whaley that I turned down flat, and the man behind me last night.
Mikoto’s eyes widen in astonishment. “This is getting really scary. Have you called the police?”
“The gallery owner did, but they told him there’s not much they can do.”
“Skyler, you have to watch your back. This woman is escalating the situation every day.”
I nod. “It is scary, but I’m not so sure anymore that she’s behind it.”
“Don’t tell me you’re suddenly giving her the benefit of the doubt?”
“Sort of. I’m actually starting to wonder if someone else is responsible, and I wanted to get your input.” I pause. “What would happen if a practicing lawyer was found to have arranged for someone else to take the LSATs for him?”
Mikoto cocks her head and finishes chewing a mouthful of food. “Well, for starters, there’d be sheer amazement that the person pulled it off. I mean, security is incredibly tight with these kinds of tests.”
“This would have been around twenty-five years ago.”
“Okay, things probably weren’t nearly as stringent back then, so somebody might have managed it. As for the repercussions, as far as I know there’s no statute of limitations on cheating, which means his law school would strip him of his law degree. You said he’s a practicing attorney? Then his firm would give him the boot, and he’d be disbarred.”
“Wow. So, there’s a whole lot at stake.” But that’s not all I want to know. “What about the guy who took the test for him? Would he be in trouble, too?”
“Oh, for sure. But where are you going with this?”
I fill her in on what C.J. said during a round of Two Truths and a Lie and take her through my idea that the trust might be an act of gratitude for me keeping his secret all this time. Mikoto listens intently as I speak, her expression pensive, and I have an even stronger feeling that I might be onto something.
“So?” I ask when I’m done.
Mikoto shakes her head in a slow, measured way, then looks at me. “I think it’s way too much of a stretch,” she says at last.
“Really?”
“Yes. Even if he did take the test for someone else and confessed it to you as a quote-unquote lie, it’s hard to imagine him worrying that you’d guessed the truth, let alone that you’d try to use it to your advantage. That just seems far-fetched.”
“Yeah, I agree, it is far-fetched. But so is everything else about the situation.”
