Chapter 19
PAIGE
Finn’s laptop proves very useful. There are emails going back a year that Paige screenshots, emails to herself, and prints.
She drops them into her box labeled Finn inside the bedroom wardrobe.
She doesn’t want to keep the laptop, she just wants to get what she needs off it.
So she will drop it off at his front door.
If he were to start pointing fingers at her, the last thing she needs is to be in possession of stolen property.
She doesn’t think he really could without exposing himself, but maybe the secrets on his computer are worth the risk, she’s not sure, so she cleans it with a disinfectant wipe.
Both his and Cora’s cars are gone, so on her way out to go and visit Charlotte, she leaves it on their doorstep.
It wasn’t hard to find pathetic, sickly sweet emails and Facebook messages between Finn and Charlotte.
It’s like he wants to get caught. She doesn’t know why Cora finds it so hard to gather what she herself did, easily, in just days.
Finn makes Cora feel like she’s the paranoid one and leads her down dead ends, that’s probably why.
It’s a Friday afternoon, and Charlotte is out of the office all day, according to their exchanges.
Paige has emailed Charlotte from Finn’s account asking her to meet him at Milio’s for lunch and adding that it’s urgent.
Charlotte agrees, asking if everything is okay.
Paige assures her that it is but to please just be there at twelve thirty.
Paige has taken a lot of steps to get what she wants, but this will set in motion something nobody is expecting.
She doesn’t bother changing out of leggings and a sweater.
She wraps an infinity scarf around her neck, pushes her feet into knee-high flat boots, and rehearses one more time what she’ll say before she leaves the house to meet Charlotte.
Before she goes, she applies some ChapStick. It’s gotten so cold and dry outside. She feeds Christopher a pocket biscuit and tells him he’s a good boy, pulls on a coat, and looks herself in the hall mirror before she walks out and says, “This is it. Don’t fuck it up.”
When she pulls into Milio’s, she looks around the front window and tries to spot Charlotte, and there she sits, nervous as anything, waiting for her lover to find out what his cryptic message was.
She holds a cup of coffee and taps her fingers on the table.
Paige would almost feel sorry for her, but she doesn’t.
The tramp knows Finn is married, so she deserves no sympathy.
Of course, the woman has no idea who she is when Paige enters the restaurant, so she’s jarred when Paige sits right down across from her in a two-top table and stares her down, saying nothing.
“Uh, hello. I think you might have the wrong table?”
“Don’t remember me, Char?” Paige asks, pronouncing it again as in charbroil.
“I’m sorry, who are you?” she asks, leaning back and twisting her pretty hair with the fingers of both hands. On guard, but not full-on defensive yet.
“Oh, right. You were pretty drunk. We met at the trashy charity ball. You remember. A couple weeks ago,” she says, and she can see the woman put together the mispronunciation of her name with this rude stranger at her table.
“Oh, yeah, I do remember you. But, uh, I’m meeting someone, so it was nice to see you, but...”
“You’re meeting me,” Paige says. Char laughs a humorless laugh and reasserts herself.
“I can assure you I’m not, so if you’ll excuse me.”
“Finn’s not coming,” she says.
“Uh, I’m sorry, wh...”
“You should be sorry,” Paige says, “but that’s not why I’m here. Your affair with Finn...” she starts, but Charlotte begins her protest earlier than Paige anticipated.
“My what?” You’re...” She starts to fuss with her things like she’s getting up to leave.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. I do not have time for the theatrics,” Paige says, pulling printed-out transcripts of their texts and emails and a photo of them embracing at the ball, and places them on the table in front of her.
“I...” is all that comes out of Charlotte’s mouth.
“Please. Go on. You what?” she asks.
“What is this? What do you want?”
“You know he’s married, right?” Paige says, and Charlotte doesn’t answer but looks away and gives an exaggerated sigh.
“Right. Of course you do, because I was there when you were introduced to his wife,” Paige says.
“I think you should leave,” Char says.
“So all I want from you is to know how long it’s been going on.”
“Why would I tell you that? I’m leaving. I’m calling Finn, and you can deal with him,” she says, pulling on her coat and scooting out of the booth.
“No, I don’t think that’s how this is gonna go. Your husband is Anthony Cohen,” Paige says, and the woman sits back down, and her eyes gloss over like she’s about to cry, but she doesn’t say anything.
“When I say I’ve seen all your messages and emails with him, I mean all. So if you don’t want me to talk, you’ll tell me. How. Long?” Paige says, and waits for a response, unsure if the woman will burst into tears and storm out to call Finn or what, exactly. Her pulse races. She needs to know.
“Almost two years,” Charlotte finally says with a defeated look. She takes a tissue from her purse and dots her eyes. “Why are you doing this? Why do you care?”
“Were you with him January 17 last year?” Paige asks.
“How would I remember that? Why?”
“Because I think he killed my son. In fact, I’m pretty sure of it.
The only reason I’d go near the son of a bitch with a ten-foot pole is to get the information I need.
And I need this. I think he was in a car, pulling onto our street at ten thirty on the night of January 17, and his calendar says he was meeting with C.
Was that you? Or was that my son, Caleb?
Because I have other reasons to believe it might have been my son.
You have to know something,” she says, her voice breaking.
“You think he’s gay,” Charlotte says. Paige responds by slamming her hand down on the table, folks around them turning to look.
“Do you have any way to remember if you were with him?” Paige hisses, and Charlotte fumbles with her phone and opens her calendar. She scrolls months of pages to find last January.
“I was in Denver for a work thing that weekend,” she says.
Paige grabs her hand and closes her eyes.
She doesn’t thank her or explain further, she just quickly lets go and says, “When you see Finn, I highly recommend you leave him. You owe his wife an apology, but since she’ll never get that, you should know that he’s probably dangerous.
I don’t need to hurt you or ruin your marriage.
I don’t care enough because I don’t even know you, so I have no plans to tell anyone about this, but you’ll do a few things for me in return. ” Paige stops and waits for a response.
Charlotte nods. “Of course,” she says, but her words barely come out as her voice cracks. She clears her throat. “Of course, anything.”
“First, do not tell him you saw me. Do not mention my son. If I find out that you did, I’ll go to your husband with these photos.
So deal with your own shit, and keep my name out of it.
Yeah?” Paige says. “Also, cut it off with him. Now. He’s not yours.
He has a family, and he’s a fuckface. If you’re gonna cheat, trade up. ”
Charlotte nods vigorously and gathers her things. She stands up and leaves as quickly as she can without causing a scene.
Paige is surprised at how long it’s been going on.
Certainly the other women Cora was worried about were valid concerns.
It’s impressive how he’s done this for so long without Cora actually getting proof.
She decides to follow Charlotte. If it’s been a two-year relationship, if she thinks he’s possibly a killer and she has just been threatened—warned to cut things off with him—she’d have questions.
Where else would she go but straight to him for answers?
As she drives she thinks about how she assumed it would be easier to get close to Finn the way Charlotte has—easier to get information out of him without breaking windows and stealing laptops—but she couldn’t get close.
It’s only because she was too much of a risk for Finn, being so close to Cora.
That, she’s sure of. She thought about using Charlotte to somehow get him talking about that night or why he has Caleb’s number in his phone and a history of text exchanges with him.
Then, she’d threaten to reveal the affair if she didn’t get the information Paige needed.
But there are a few things wrong with that.
It would take too long, and she doesn’t know if she can trust Charlotte, despite what the woman has to lose.
Plus, Finn might get suspicious, and she needs to build her body of evidence before that could happen.
Anyway, she really has everything she needs at this point. She’s almost ready to make her move.
Before she does, though, it would tickle her to see him get a small taste of his own medicine on Cora’s behalf.
She signals right and pulls into the parking lot of Finn’s office building.
She parks close to where she did last time she was here and watches the door.
After five minutes she sees Char pull in.
Of course she does. A few minutes after that, Finn comes out the front doors with a scrunched-up forehead, looking around until he spots Char’s car.
She gets out, and they are talking. There are no dramatic hand gestures or yelling.
She has kept her side of deal, it looks like, and has not confronted him about Paige or her threats or accusations he’s dangerous.
She might have, but Paige had to take that chance.
She had to know who C was. Those texts tell her he knew Caleb more than a grown-ass man should know the teenage kid next door.
Yes, he was twenty-two when he died, but those texts show that they had communicated for a few years.
Cryptic texts. She can’t figure that part of this puzzle out yet, but she needed to eliminate a part of the equation, and she has.
Finn reaches his arm out to touch Char’s shoulder, and she pulls away.
It’s the body language that tells Paige what she needs to know.
She’s ending it, and he’s not letting that happen.
She’s calm and sad-looking. He’s desperate but trying to stay subtle about it in the middle of his work parking lot.
She can’t hear the words, but he’s practically begging.
That’s clear. Charlotte’s hands go up in front of her, an I’m-done-with-this gesture.
She backs away; he moves to her. She gets in her car and shuts the door.
He calls after her, tries to block her driving away for a minute and even knocks on her window.
She looks away. He gives up. She drives off.
He punches a brick column in front of the building and walks inside with bloody knuckles.
“Well, then,” Paige says out loud and then drives away herself.
That was slightly satisfying, but now she’s ready to nail him to the wall.
Before she goes to the cops, she needs to show Cora all the evidence.
She needs to tell her everything. She’s so sorry to betray her dear friend, but it was the only way.