CHAPTER
FORTY-SEVEN
Wednesday, December 19
“Your wife really is crazy!” I hiss into the phone.
I’m four blocks away from Dr. Shields’s town house, but this time I’ve made sure she isn’t following me. I’m huddled in the shelter of the entryway to a clothing store that has a going out of business sign plastered across the window. By now the clouds have cleared, but the winter sky is a shade between purple and black. The few people who hurry past are huddled in their coats, heads down and chins tucked into their collars.
“I know.” Thomas sighs. “What happened?”
I’m trembling, but not from the cold. Dr. Shields is tangling me up; it’s like a Chinese finger trap—the harder I struggle to escape, the more tightly I’m imprisoned.
“I just need to get away from her. You said you’d help me figure out a way. We need to meet again.”
He hesitates. “I can’t get away tonight.”
“I’ll come to you,” I say. “Where are you?”
“I’m— Actually, I’m on my way to meet her.”
My eyes widen. I feel my back stiffen.
“What? You were just at her place two nights ago. How am I supposed to believe you’re separated when you’re together all the time?”
“It’s not like that. We have an appointment with our divorce lawyer,” Thomas says. His voice is soothing now. “How about we talk tomorrow?”
I’m coiled so tight I can’t even continue the conversation. “Fine!” I say before I hang up.
I stand there for a moment.
Then I do the only thing I can think of to regain a bit of control over my splintered life.
I walk out of the store’s entryway and retrace my steps. When I am thirty yards away from Dr. Shields’s town house, I cross the street and conceal myself in the shadows.
She steps outside fifteen minutes later, just when I’d begun to worry I’d missed her.
I trail her, making sure I stay as far back as possible, as she strides down two blocks, turns a corner, and continues on for another three.
I never worry I’ll lose her, even as we approach a commercial area and the crowds grow thick. She wears a long, winter-white coat and her red-gold hair hangs loose around her shoulders.
She looks like the porcelain angel atop a Christmas tree.
In the distance, I can see Thomas waiting under an awning.
I’m confident he doesn’t spot me; my hood is up and I duck behind an MTA bus stop.
But he catches sight of Dr. Shields.
A wide smile breaks across his face. His expression is a mix of anticipation and delight.
He doesn’t look like a man who wants to divorce the woman approaching him; on the contrary, he is eager to see her.
The two of them don’t realize I’m watching. I’m not sure how long I’ll have before they disappear into the building for their meeting with their lawyer. But maybe I can learn something.
He steps toward her, stretching out his hand.
She takes it.
And in that instant, with him in his black tailored jacket and her in white, it is as though I am spying on them in a different moment, one I’ve only seen in a photograph: their wedding.
Thomas bends his head, cups the back of her neck, and kisses her.
It isn’t the kind of kiss a man gives a woman he wants to be rid of.
I know this, because Thomas kissed me the same way only five days ago, when we met at the bar.
As I walk home now, I think about all the lies that link the three of us together.
Because I know now that Thomas is trying to deceive me, too.
After I watched him and Dr. Shields end their lingering kiss under the red awning, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close again. Then he opened the tall wooden door—not to an attorney’s office, but to a romantic-looking Italian restaurant—and stepped aside so that she could enter first.
At least I’ve finally learned something concrete: Neither of them can be trusted.
I have no idea why. But I can’t worry about that now.
The only question I need answered is which one of them is more dangerous.