Chapter Thirty-One
Diana parks her car in front of a dented “Reserved for Fiona’s Customers Only” sign.
With a faded sticker warning against drunk driving affixed across its bottom third, the sign cantilevers over a modest patch of grass filled with trash: empty Dunkin’ Donuts cups, crushed beer cans, and torn plastic bags, the forgotten fragments of urban life.
Remembering her promise to Lakshmi, Diana takes her phone from its dashboard perch—she needed the GPS app to get here, the narrow and circuitous streets in this part of Boston unfamiliar to her—and makes sure someone knows where she is.
Hey Lax, she texts. Meeting Jessica at a bar in South Boston called Fiona’s.
Fill you in after xo. She doesn’t wait for a response, dropping the phone in her purse and listening to it bang against Grace’s rock.
Diana steps out of her minivan into a perfect spring day masquerading as summer.
The sky overhead is a sunny, cloudless blue, and the air is brand new, even in the middle of the city.
The forecast calls for a high of eighty-five, a wave of heat that regularly comes this time of year, making late May feel more like August.
Figuring out what to wear to meet Jessica was a challenge.
Nothing too obvious or desperate, nothing that indicates how nervous she is either.
Diana settled on a blue cotton dress with a braided rattan belt, bare legs with brown leather boots, and gold hoop earrings.
She centers her belt on her waist and prays she comes across as presentable and, hopefully, sympathetic.
Pushing her sunglasses down from the top of her head, Diana takes in her surroundings.
Fiona’s is housed in a squat, windowless brick bunker.
In front, traffic backs up for more than a block, cars honking at the intersection, drivers anxious to make it through before the light turns from amber to red.
The weekend is underway, and everyone wants to be somewhere else.
Getting here called for subterfuge, an approach Diana found all too easy.
She concocted a story about needing to catch up at work, and as predicted, before she even asked, her father offered to take the kids for the day.
“We’ll go fishing,” he said. “Your mother will pack a picnic. We’ll make it an adventure. ”
Diana didn’t need to lie to her parents. She can’t let Duncan get too caught up in her search for Jessica, but her parents would have helped had they known where she was headed. Deceit—or, at least, hiding the truth—is second nature to her now.
She stumbles at this realization, righting herself before she falls. How much she’s changed since she found Tom’s letter.
Or perhaps she’s finally seeing herself clearly.
A metal plate reading Fiona’s is bolted in place at eye level on the bar’s front door, and the outline of what appears to be a fist is smashed in above the doorknob. Diana slings her purse onto her shoulder and opens the door.
Fiona’s is exactly what she thought a South Boston bar on a Saturday morning would be like: dimly lit, the air thick with the yeasty smell of beer, the walls covered in Boston sports team posters.
A large pool table takes up the far left corner, with round tables scattered around the scuffed linoleum floor.
Hugging the right side of the space is a wraparound bar, where a man slumps on a stool, gawking at the wall-mounted television turned to a twenty-four-hour news channel.
He turns away from the screen to squint at Diana, blinded by the sunlight accompanying her inside.
She steps forward and lets the door swing shut.
The man returns to his half-full—or is it half-empty?
—beer. Diana doesn’t know whether she should look for an optimistic slant on what has clearly begun as morning drinking.
In truth, she has no idea what’s brought this stranger to Fiona’s.
Maybe it’s the end of his day, a backbreaking night shift behind him.
Maybe it’s nonalcoholic beer. Or maybe it’s one of a dozen other possibilities.
Diana’s nervousness is causing her to make assumptions, which she can’t do if she’s going to connect with Jessica.
She offers a silent apology to Fiona’s only other customer and takes a seat at a table next to a shrine to the 2004 Boston Red Sox.
As she drops her sunglasses into her dress pocket, a woman enters through a set of swinging doors. Diana twists her neck to peer at her. Is this Jessica? She asked to meet here; she didn’t say whether she would be a customer or an employee.
When the woman turns, Diana is presented with a clear view of her face.
Not Jessica, she thinks, recalling the photo Grace sent her, which she carries in the zipped pocket of her purse.
The woman puts a plate of food in front of the beer drinker, and they speak briefly, their voices low.
She glances at Diana, wipes her hands on a towel hanging from the waistband of her jeans, and comes out from behind the bar.
“You order at the bar at this time of day. No waitstaff for the tables,” the woman says, stopping a few feet from Diana. Her dull blond hair is cut into a chin-length bob, and her voice is rough, the Boston accent swallowing up the r in each word.
Yah ordah at the bah, Diana hears. She’s never, despite growing up outside the city, been able to mimic the accent.
“You want a drink?” The woman—Diana decides she must be Fiona—cocks her hip and pushes up her shirtsleeves, gestures that indicate she isn’t up for arguments or complaints.
“A seltzer, please.” Diana follows Fiona across the room, eyeing the door as a glass of carbonated water shifts across the bar, bubbly drops falling on the polished wood.
“Waiting for someone?” Fiona asks. Diana nods and opens up her purse to pay, but the bartender waves her away. “Get me on your way out.”
As she returns to her table, Diana’s phone buzzes. She opens her purse to see who texted. It’s Lakshmi: Be safe.
A new list starts—What Will I Do If Jessica Stands Me Up?—but Diana is stopped by the loud screech of the front door’s rusty hinges. Sunlight pours in, and it’s her turn to blink against the glare.
A slight shape pauses in the threshold.
“Here she is,” Diana murmurs, her heart racing.
Jessica scans the bar and acknowledges Fiona with a swing of her head so quick as to be missed in the reflex of blinking. She skips over the man at the bar and lands, at last, on Diana.
Diana holds up her hand. “Jessica?”
Jessica nods but walks over to Fiona. The two women chat, and Fiona hands Jessica a drink in a tall glass. Diana can’t tell whether they’re friends or meeting for the first time. She doesn’t know whether Jessica is a frequent visitor to Fiona’s. Or how she gets by. Or really anything about her.
Jessica is not what Diana expected. After hearing about Jessica from Grace and meeting Nikki, Diana anticipated Tom’s ex would present with obvious signs of addiction, someone clearly struggling to function in the world.
This Jessica is the opposite.
Pretty, with a generous mouth and wide-set eyes, Jessica looks like one of the moms who meet for coffee at Sully’s, straight from school drop-off.
She’s petite, barely five feet. Her hair runs to the middle of her back, and her corkscrew curls gently bounce as she moves.
She wears a denim jacket, skinny black jeans, and ankle boots.
Under her jacket is a green, striped blouse Diana immediately recognizes; she bought the same shirt last week.
Jessica looks a lot like the girl from the photo: radiant and healthy.
Diana has been more judgmental than she realized; she expected someone entirely different.
Jessica joins Diana at the table and, in a sustained chug, gulps down a third of her glass. Diana suspects Jessica’s drink of choice is soda, though she wouldn’t blame her if it included a shot of something strong and alcoholic. Stress practically radiates off her.
An ornate tattoo of the name Ava peeks out from the edge of Jessica’s sleeve, its chunky lines twisting around her forearm. Her eyes, a rich brown, close briefly and then flutter open. “So you’re Tom’s wife.”
Jessica’s voice is low-pitched and raspy, as if she’s been standing at the edge of a stage, screaming at her favorite band to play one more song. She locks her eyes with Diana, but Diana doesn’t look away.
With each passing second, a realization comes to her, a connection she should have made sooner, perhaps when she saw the photo with Grace’s letter or when she looked again at Tom’s drawings. She’s been a beat behind this entire time, so it’s not a surprise she missed this.
“We’ve met before,” Diana says.
Jessica blinks rapidly.
“Yes,” Diana says slowly, heat rising in her body, turning her cheeks red. “We’ve met. At Sully’s. The missing cat. That was you. That wasn’t the only time, was it? I’ve seen you before.”
Jessica drinks instead of responding.
“How often? How often have you been there and I didn’t see you?” Lakshmi was correct about Diana’s safety being a concern. Diana pushes her chair away from the table. “Have you been following me?”
Jessica slides her hand into her pocket, and when her fist exits her jacket, her fingers are curved, hiding something. Diana is unable to make out what it is, and she stiffens, fearing the worst. “I’m sorry,” Jessica says.
Diana glances down and gasps. Her house key and the missing photo of Tom and their kids lie in front of her.
Her heart hammers in her chest, and she snaps her gaze to Jessica. This other woman—the intruder—stares back at her, regret in her eyes.
Diana has been looking for Jessica in the hope that Tom’s ex can explain his past; perhaps she shouldn’t be shocked about Jessica’s involvement in her own present.