Chapter 21 Maggie #2
They had just finished dinner, but Lloyd had hardly touched his meal.
In their circle of friends, Lloyd had always been the one with the heartiest appetite, a fact made obvious by his waistline, but tonight he’d only picked at his pork chop and hadn’t even looked at the dessert menu.
This was not the Lloyd she knew, the man who was a lifelong member of the clean-plate club.
While Maggie had managed to catch a few hours of sleep, Lloyd looked like he had not rested at all.
Nor had he shaved, and his chin was rough with gray stubble.
“That was my fault,” said Lloyd. “I know, I know. I should have let you handle it. I just needed to find out.”
“There were other ways to go about it, ways that didn’t call attention to us, but it may not matter, anyway. Ben and Declan haven’t been able to find any information about Willem Dekker, so we don’t know if he’s significant. This could be a dead end.”
“It’s the timing,” he said. “That means something. Ingrid receives the man’s photo, deletes it, and empties the trash folder. Then she packs up and poof, disappears. You have to admit that’s significant.”
“Yes.” Maggie sighed. “I suppose it is.”
“You suppose it is? What happened to assembling the data, interpreting its significance, making predictions? It’s what we do. It’s what I did.”
“But you weren’t out in the field, Lloyd. You didn’t have to deal with the consequences when your predictions turned out wrong.”
“I’m already dealing with the consequences. My wife is missing.”
“She chose to go missing. That’s a completely different set of circumstances.”
“All right, she chose to vanish. But she’s still gone, and I want to know why.”
“I want to know as well. I’m just worried that . . .”
“What?”
“Maybe we won’t like the answer.”
“The answer being what? That she can’t tell us the truth because it’s not pretty? That she’s done something wrong, and can’t bring herself to tell us?”
“I’m not going to speculate on her reasons for vanishing.”
“Or maybe you think she found someone else. Is that what you’re getting at?”
Maggie looked down at her dinner plate and said nothing.
“Because I’m sure that’s what you’re all thinking.
Even I can’t avoid considering the possibility.
And it is a possibility. I’m not stupid.
I acknowledge she may have met someone else, or maybe it’s someone from her past. I know there were other men.
Of course there were—just look at the woman.
Always one to catch a fellow’s eye. Had a bombshell figure when she was younger. And by God, she still hasn’t lost it.”
Maggie couldn’t help smiling at that remark. Ingrid had been an eye-catching woman. She was still handsome, but she was hardly the goddess Lloyd was describing now. They’d been married nearly three decades, but he was clearly still besotted with his wife.
“The truth is,” he said, “I never really understood how I landed her.”
“Maybe it was your irresistible sex appeal.”
He winced. “Now you’re just being cruel.”
“Seriously, Lloyd. After all these years together, you still wonder why she married you?”
“Twenty-eight years isn’t all that long. It goes by in a flash. You start off with all your hair and a size thirty-five waistband. Then one day you wake up and look in the mirror and wonder who that old man is. You wonder what she ever saw in you. What she still sees in you.”
“I see a man who loves his wife.”
He shrugged. “Is that enough?”
“I see a man who knows his way around a stove.”
“Okay,” he conceded. “That’s something, at least.”
“A man who just crammed himself into a middle coach seat and flew through the night to rescue his wife.”
“Oh, I doubt she needs rescuing. Not my Ingrid.”
“Then why are we here, Lloyd?”
He looked across the table at Maggie. “Because I need to hear the truth. I need to know why she doesn’t trust me. I need to know what secret she’s keeping from me, because clearly there are secrets. I accept that. I understand it, because it’s the nature of her work. Your work too.”
Maggie nodded. “There were things I could never tell my husband.”
“And he suffered because of it.”
Yes, he did. She looked away, across the restaurant. She pictured Danny as she’d last seen him, the man she would never stop loving. The man she had, in so many ways, betrayed.
“So I do understand, Maggie, why she might have kept me in the dark about things. She had no choice. But I assumed she’d left that all behind when she retired.
I thought we’d putter off together into the sunset.
Now it’s clear that she hasn’t left it all behind.
Something’s pulled her back into the field.
Or someone has.” He sighed. “That’s what I worry about. That it’s a particular someone.”
She was reluctant to tell him what she was thinking, but he’d said he wanted to hear the truth. “Last week, at the reception,” she finally said, “we met that man who used to work with Ingrid. His name was Rodrigo. Did she ever mention him to you?”
He looked up at her, his expression pained. “You noticed it too.”
“Noticed what?”
“The—the tension between them.”
Maggie didn’t say it, but yes, she had noticed that spark of electricity, generated between two people who clearly had a history together.
Was he an old lover, suddenly back in Ingrid’s life, tempting her to take one last bite of the apple?
Promising her another chance to feel young and alive and ready to risk everything?
“That’s why we’re here,” he said. “Why I’m here. ‘The truth shall set you free.’ I’m here for the truth.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Now it’s time for me to face it.”