Chapter 67
“Are you in the bathroom?” Henry’s voice and face came from Tessa’s cell phone, now propped on top of a tissue box in the cramped and frustratingly dim bathroom of her room at the Midlands Hotel.
“I have to put on makeup. Get ready for tonight,” Tessa said, dragging down one eyelid to swipe her charcoal eyeliner.
She wished she could blame the lighting, but she knew it was guilt, and fear, and the specter of her life irretrievably crashing that made her look so haggard.
Being accused of participating in the cover-up of a hit-and-run murder could do that to you.
And even if she knew it wasn’t true—and it wasn’t true, could it be?
—even the hint of such a catastrophe could ruin them all.
The truth might even send her to prison.
But she could not tell Henry. The fear battered at her, a trapped creature demanding to escape.
“When last we spoke,” Henry began. “If I remember correctly, and I do. You hung up on me. And did not say always always.”
“If I remember correctly, and I do, you were out , and had left the children home. Alone. You know how much I hate—”
“If I remember correctly, and I do”—Henry’s face was so small she could barely read his expression—“you have no idea where I was. Or why.”
“On that point, at least, we agree.”
“I was not ‘out.’ I was outside.”
Tessa unscrewed her black mascara and leaned forward, talking into the mirror instead of the phone. “With your phone off. Did you figure you would simply hear the children screaming?”
“Tessa, I was outside the front door. I had turned my phone off because I kept getting spam messages.”
“Oh yes,” Tessa said. “So annoying. And when all hell was breaking loose in the kitchen, what were you doing, ‘outside’? Were you ‘outside’ by yourself, pray tell?”
“ Pray tell? Tessa, what’s going on with you?
I was out front, talking to the neighbors, like people do.
Would you rather everyone ignored us? And the dishwasher broke, what can I tell you.
I don’t control the universe. I know you hate the dishwasher, you haven’t even seen the dishwasher, but you hated it from moment one.
I refused to argue with you over a broken dishwasher, that’s insane. What is wrong with you?”
“What neighbors?” Tessa had applied makeup thousands of times with Henry watching.
Now, inured to the road, Henry on the phone seemed almost as real as if he were physically standing beside her.
She smoothed her eye shadow into submission, pulled out a lip pencil.
Fifteen minutes before she had to leave for the bookstore.
Would Harper be there, mocking her, watching her?
And tomorrow she’d have to get back into the car with that woman. So ironic—her own success was her best protection. Talk about a Faustian bargain.
“Let me ask you, Tessa.” Henry’s voice sounded brittle, not like Henry. “Are you imagining some mad affair, some neighborhood fling while my successful wife is gallivanting around the country? In front of our children, perhaps, wild and bacchanalian?”
“Who told you ‘yellow is the new taupe’? Let me ask you that.” She’d smudged her lip liner, trying to talk and apply it at the same time.
She heard the edge in her own voice, shrewish and badgering, the worst kind of stereotypical wifey character, and she didn’t need Annabelle to tell her to chill.
But in real life, it was hard to do. She was trying to act normal when she didn’t even know what normal meant.
“Before you were a big-time writer, you weren’t such a pessimist,” Henry said. “Now everything is a sinister plot, and my life is a sordid backstreet affair. Nellie is a decorator, kind of, so she must have said that. We picked the color just for you. She said all writers love the sunshine.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Do you want to talk later? This is no fun.”
“And on that we agree as well,” Tessa said. “Was it Nellie the kind-of decorator who was in the background of your phone call the other night? I saw her shadow. Or was that Barbara?”
“Mom! Mom! Is that Mom on the phone?”
Zack’s voice.
“Hey, darling one.” Tessa flipped the switch to Happy Mom. The kids, what would she ever tell them? “How are you, sweetheart?”
“Did you see the thing on Facebook?” Zack’s face, his glasses askew, replaced Henry’s on the phone screen. “About that picture you posted?”
Tessa paused, lipstick brush in midair. “No. I haven’t been on Facebook all day.”
“Hang on, I’ll get my laptop and pull it up,” Zack said. “Dad, you talk.”
“What did Zack find on Facebook?” Tessa asked, filling in her lips with Ruby Slippers.
“Not a clue.”
Which gave Tessa an idea. Something she should have done days ago. She could look up Nellie on social media. Barbara, too.
“While I have you,” Tessa said. She checked her makeup handiwork, which was as good as it was going to get. “Did you ever get a dog?”
“We decided—”
“Who decided? When?”
Hush, Annabelle said. Let him talk.
“Whenever. I told Zack to keep it a secret, but the kids and I, and Barbara, decided to wait until you got home. So you can choose, too. Okay? If you ever do come home. Which sometimes it feels like you aren’t.”
“You wish.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Tessa picked up the phone, walked toward the bedroom.
So that was Zackie’s secret, the dog delay.
Not some earth-shattering, marriage-ruining disaster.
Now, her event clothes lay like black stripes on the beige bedspread; black dress, black jacket.
Blue earrings. Not the ones from the airplane.
She was pretending those didn’t exist. “So, this Barbara, I keep forgetting to ask you her last name.”
“Willoughby,” Henry said. “Why? Are you going to call and yell at her about the dog?”
Now she had two profiles to look up.
Her phone pinged with an incoming call. Unknown caller. Tessa’s stomach hit the floor. “We’ll find you ,” Harper had threatened.
Tessa had to answer. But she needed to know what Zack found on Facebook. She could look herself, though.
“I’m getting a call, and it’s probably about tonight’s event. I have to go. I’ll call you back. Or something. Later.” She paused. “Henry?”
The phone pinged again.
“I heard you,” Henry said. “You’ll ‘call me back or something.’ Very gratifying. I’ll tell Zack you’re too busy to hear his discovery. He seemed pretty excited to share it with you. But he’s just a kid.”
“No, no, please, don’t do that.” Her heart was shattering, smithereens. “I’m getting a business call. I have to answer.” No. She couldn’t leave it this way. “But Henry, quickly, do you know anyone named Emily?”
“Emily who?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” She hadn’t planned to ask him, but how could she not? “Just Emily. Emily Owen.”
“Why? Who’s that supposed to be?”
“Just do you? Oh, Henry, I have to go. I’ll call you later.”
“What’s wrong with you, Tessa?”
“Mom!” Zack’s voice, off camera, came back on the line.
“Mom says she doesn’t have any more time for you now, Zachary. She says she loves you and she’ll talk to you later.”
And Henry hung up.
Tessa’s heart wrenched in her chest, heavy with sorrow and fear and decisions and with impossible distance. She touched the green Answer Call button and prayed.