Chapter Twenty-Seven. Riley, Present Day
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
RILEY, PRESENT DAY
After Alex leaves, I stand on the sidewalk in front of her professor’s house for a moment, unsure of what to do next. I’m about to walk to my Toyota when the door to the townhouse opens again.
A thirtyish, petite woman steps out, the sun picking up the red and blond glints in her wavy brown hair. It must be the professor’s wife.
Our eyes meet and she gives me a small wave. “Can I help you?” she calls, walking toward me. “You look a little lost.”
“Just getting my bearings,” I say. “Marquis is that way, right?” I point in the direction I came from.
“Sure is.” She’s just a couple of feet away from me now, close enough that I can see the small birthmark on her right cheekbone. She’s staring intently at me, perhaps wondering what I’m doing lurking on her street. “Have a good day.”
She turns back toward her car and I hear the chirp of the fob unlocking the door as I walk away.
She seemed a touch too interested in a stranger on her street. But maybe she’s one of those people who is friendly to everyone.
Does she know what her husband is accused of doing? I wonder. Perhaps he is concealing everything. Maybe he’s being extra sweet and solicitous, telling her to put her feet up while he cooks dinner, and holding her close at night while she marvels at her luck in marrying such a good man.
Or perhaps there’s something nagging at her.
Maybe she buries the unsettled feeling under the busyness of her days and spends her evenings scrolling through images of other people’s lives rather than examining her own.
She could be choosing a common form of myopia by avoiding seeing what’s right in front of her.
Like I did.
My throat thickens as I finally acknowledge the signs were there all along: the way Danny always rushed to get the mail first. The time I asked him to get cash from an ATM and he claimed it was broken and not dispensing money.
The phone calls at strange hours that he told me were business-related, which I reasoned was plausible since, as a real estate agent, he didn’t have off hours.
I sensed very early on something was amiss in my marriage. But I quashed that fear, never wanting to disrupt the heady, romantic illusion of our lives.
No wonder I don’t feel like I can trust anyone. Yes, Danny betrayed me. But even worse, I betrayed myself. And that’s what really shattered my sense of safety.
To my right is the Marquis University library, where there must be plenty of information about Professor Joshua Woods. If Alex is telling the truth and he stole her student ID, he was likely the one who stole the Trimble Institute files. But why?
I turn to my right and begin walking quickly.