The Widower's Wife: A Thriller (23 page)

“Daddy will be here soon,” I said.

Sophia licked her ice cream. The day had been better without him and she must have sensed it. If he’d come, she would have spent the whole time trying to show off for him while he half-ignored her, and I would have become frustrated by his lack of responsiveness, leading to an argument.

I knelt beside my daughter. Pink ice cream smeared across the tip of her nose and her top lip. I swiped it with my thumb. “You know how much I love you?”

Sophia giggled. “You would become the wind?”

“What?”

She swallowed the last of her ice cream as though she hadn’t heard the question. I knew her mind was working. Three-year-olds took time to translate their thoughts. “Like the mommy rabbit,” she said finally. “If I became a sailboat, you would become the wind and blow me home.”

The Runaway Bunny
. I must have read that story to Sophia a hundred times. “You’re my home.”

She laughed. “Momma, I’m not a house.”

“Home is wherever you are, for me.”

She didn’t understand, but she hugged me anyway. “I so love you, Momma.”

We passed a trash bin. She dropped the cone inside, as she’d never liked the cracker texture. I tossed my shake, freeing my hands to pick her up beneath her armpits and swing her around. Her hair flew out behind her. She laughed. I wrapped her in a big bear hug as she came down from her flight. “I will love you forever. No matter what. I love you forever.”

Sophia’s legs enveloped my torso. “Me too, Momma. Like the wind.”

*

Sophia and I waited in the food court. Our chicken nuggets sat on the plastic table, soggy from abandonment in ketchup. The air was irritating my nose. It smelled like a fair on a sweltering day: body odor and boiled hotdogs. In fact, everything was annoying me: the large screen behind Sophia’s head, blasting a music video
for some teen pop star whose voice mimicked someone midcoitus. The crowds. The fact that my husband hadn’t accounted for traffic when telling me to meet him upstairs by the teriyaki chicken stand.

My daughter fidgeted in her chair. Napkin drawings and memorized bedtime stories could only amuse for so long. “I want to go,” she said for the zillionth time.

“If Daddy doesn’t come in the next five minutes, we’ll leave, okay?”

“He never comes.”

Though he’d only missed one pickup, the memory of waiting while all the other daycare kids had disappeared into the arms of their caregivers had stuck with Sophia. One mistake erased months of showing up.

“He just hit traffic, honey.”

“I want to go.” She kicked the table leg, sending the leftover lunch bouncing across the table.

“I know, but we have to wait for Daddy. Please don’t kick the table.”

Again, she slammed the toe of her foot into the plastic leg. “I want to go.”

Normally, I would have corrected the tantrum, but I didn’t want to be at war with my daughter right before she met her babysitter. I needed her to be happy, to remember the experience with Tom’s cousin as something wonderful so she wouldn’t be frightened to spend three full days with the woman.

Sophia drummed her feet into the table leg. Sugar highs always resulted in an angry crash.

“Sophia.” My voice contained a warning. “Please don’t.”

“I want to go now,” she whined.

“What else can we do while we wait for Daddy?”

She pouted as I recounted previously played games: find the letters on signs, again, count the straws, again, make funny faces, again. Nothing appealed. I considered taking her for another walk around the cafeteria in search of something that she
shouldn’t have on top of ice cream. Bribes were bad but sometimes necessary.

Tom saved me from hating myself later. He exited the elevator and stood off to the side, searching for us. A very young blonde followed behind him. Her tousled California-girl locks swayed as she scanned the room. She was only about five foot three or so, tiny compared to Tom’s six foot two. She had a dainty, girlish face. Fine bones. The only feature she shared with my husband was eye color.

“There’s Daddy now.”

I waved to them as Sophia bolted from her chair in his direction. He stretched out his arms, catching her shoulders before she could take him out at the knees. She gripped his hand and swung it, not noticing the woman beside her father. Tom touched his cousin’s arm and pointed to our table. They walked toward us, Sophia pulling her father forward.

I stood for the introductions, hand extended, a large smile on my face. I had to show Sophia that I liked this “Auntie” whom her father hadn’t bothered to mention in four years of marriage. As we shook, I pulled her in for a one-armed hug. “So nice to meet a member of Tom’s family,” I said.

Her eyelashes fluttered. Her smile appeared strained as she examined my face. She wasn’t practiced in handling awkward moments. “Yes.” She smiled at Tom. “He’s kept us away from each other.”

My husband looked down his nose at her, an older brother admonishing a fresh kid sister. “Well, you know, you were always so busy with school and we had the baby. And it wasn’t like we had a big wedding.”

“Justice of the peace and a couple coworkers,” I explained.

She giggled, a tinny sound. “No hard feelings at all. I totally get it. Shotgun weddings don’t leave much time to plan.”

How did she know I’d been pregnant before walking down the aisle? I shot Tom a hard look while maintaining my smile. He should know that I didn’t appreciate his sharing our business with near-strangers.

I walked around the table and touched my daughter’s shoulder. “Hey, honey, this is Auntie Eve, Daddy’s cousin.”

She cracked a shy smile. Sophia was not a timid kid, but all preschoolers treat new adults with an extra measure of caution. Eve responded with a cool “Hello.”

“Maybe we could all go to the carousel. What do you two think? Sophia loves it, and I’m sure she’d like to ride with Auntie Eve.”

Eve looked at Tom for approval. “Is that what you—”

“Sounds great,” he said. “Why don’t you two lead the way?”

I fished a couple carousel tokens from the change section of my purse and pressed them into Eve’s hand. Her fingers wrapped around them. Sophia grasped her fist. She walked forward, taking seriously the command to lead the way.

The merry-go-round beckoned at the end of the food court. The placement was ingenious, providing an obvious reward for parents to dangle so that their children ate something, thereby enabling the mommies and daddies to shop longer. As the menagerie rotated, it played “Pop Goes the Weasel” and other nursery songs. The music blasted through the cafeteria in two-minute spurts, shutting off for sixty seconds in between songs to allow kids to disembark.

Sophia skipped to the beat, jerking Eve’s stiff arm. Tom had hinted that Eve might not be good with children. She seemed particularly bad with our daughter. I took a deep breath and tried to convince myself that I was reading too much into her body language. She was just unsure, and young.

Tom hung behind with me. I reached for his hand, but he was too distracted watching our daughter. He looked straight ahead as he spoke. “I booked the trip.”

“When?”

“At Eve’s. I bought the tickets on her computer.”

“Just the flights?”

“The whole shebang.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Wasn’t cheap. It’s a good thing that you got all that unused leave. They don’t always do that.”

“Yeah,” I said, reaffirming my earlier lie that I’d received eight thousand from Derivative Capital for two weeks of work and three more weeks of unused sick and vacation pay. “How much is the trip?”

“The airline tickets were two hundred dollars each round trip—I couldn’t make any of the ninety-nine-dollar flights work with the ship schedules. The cruise is two hundred thirty dollars per person for two nights. All in, we’re at roughly a thousand dollars after taxes and fees.”

We still had about eight thousand left, given the seven left over from Michael and the grand in the savings in account. We could live on that for six months, as long as we didn’t need to pay rent anywhere. Fortunately, foreclosures took a long time.

Sophia and Eve reached the carousel. Tom’s cousin looked back at us, apparently for visual permission to enter the line with Sophia. My husband waved her forward. Sophia saw the signal and tugged her first-cousin-once-removed behind a mom with a young boy.

“Her favorite is the panda,” I called out.

Eve looked back at me puzzled. I pointed to a panda as it went around. There were only two of them on the carousel. Sophia preferred the one with the pink saddle, but either would do. To get one, they’d have to make a beeline for it. Lots of kids liked pandas. In my mind, whether Eve managed to get one was a test. Could she cater to our daughter for a few days?

Tom and I watched it play out. Eve and Sophia were four groups back from the front of the line. The first group went to the rocking chair. The second group took the unicorn right in front. A bunch of boys scattered. A younger boy took the panda with the purple saddle. Sophia pulled Eve around the carousel, hunting for the remaining panda. A minute later, the rest of the groups had boarded and they still wandered around.

“All aboard,” the conductor shouted. “Everyone choose your seat.”

“It’s there,” I heard Sophia shout from somewhere behind the carousel’s massive center column.

The merry-go-round began to turn. I waited for Sophia. When she came round, she was smiling atop the pink-saddled panda. Eve had passed my mental test. She’d try to make Sophia happy. What else could I really want from a last-minute babysitter?

Tom continued to watch our daughter and evaluate Eve. Was he as worried as I was?

“So we’re headed back home for dinner.”

“I need to bring her back.”

“I haven’t even gotten to talk to her,” I said.

Tom continued to watch the carousel go round. “Sophia will be fine.”

“But—”

“She has to get back. Roommate’s birthday. It was nice of her to agree to come out at all.”

“Sophia has barely got to spend any time with her.”

“They’ll be fine. Look, Sophia likes her.” He waved at our daughter, hugging the painted panda, Eve standing by her side. “I’ll bring Eve before our flight, so you can show her the lay of the land.”

“When are we leaving?”

“Friday.”

My vision swam. My gaze retreated from the carousel, unable to watch something spin as the ground shifted beneath my feet. Friday was just three days away.

29

November 30

R
yan sat in his car, two doors down from the Bacon house, waiting for the BMW parked in the driveway to leave. Three hours of breathing the stale air inside the vehicle had coated the car windows with condensation. For the fourth time, he cleared a visibility circle with his wool coat sleeve. He couldn’t miss the bimmer backing out of the driveway.

If, of course, Eve ever left. He was beginning to wonder whether Tom’s “friend” planned on sleeping over and at what point he’d have to call off his stakeout. He wanted to catch Eve alone. The girl would never confess any affair while Tom stood over her shoulder.

Ryan bounced his good leg to generate warmth, and for something to do. There was no one left to call—not tonight. He’d left the maid a message, and he’d done all he could with the cruise line contacts: setting up an interview with the Bacons’ mystery stateroom neighbor for tomorrow at a place called Fun by Design. The still nameless source had suggested the location, and Ryan had little choice but to agree to it, even though it sounded like a nudie bar. Whoever this guy was, he really didn’t want anyone seeing him.

Ryan had also tracked down the folks who had told the Bahamian authorities they’d seen Tom at the pool and left them voicemails. Three people had witnessed Tom on the sun deck. The redhead and two guys who remembered an attractive ginger
chatting up “the guy on the news.” Ryan didn’t really want to hear them repeat their alibis for Mr. Bacon, but he had to check off the boxes, particularly with the financial crimes crew working Ana’s death as a homicide.

It might not be a complete waste of time. Anyone hired to kill Ana would have been monitoring Mr. and Mrs. Bacon’s movements on the ship. It was possible that the murderer had seen Tom on the pool deck and realized that Ana was alone in the room. And if that was the case, it was also conceivable that one of the people who’d noticed Tom would remember seeing someone else checking him out.

The exterior lights of the home flipped on. Ryan clasped the gearshift. The tiny blonde he’d glimpsed before exited a side door. He watched through his peephole as her headlights illuminated the space in front of where he’d parked, behind an overgrown hedge. He waited for Eve to get a hundred feet past the corner stop sign before peeling out behind her.

She made a right onto the main road through town. Ryan guessed she headed toward the highway. As predicted, the BMW led him to the Interstate. He tailed it over the George Washington Bridge and onto I-87 South, toward Queens, maintaining a one to two car-length distance, depending on the traffic.

After forty minutes of driving, the white car exited into Long Island City. Ryan followed, widening the gap between the Dodge and BMW to compensate for the relative lack of street traffic in the outer boroughs. Eve’s car passed a glass skyscraper before turning onto a block of two- and three-story brownstones. It slowed down the street, pausing beside a fire hydrant. She was looking for parking.

The car pulled close to the side of an unevenly spaced row of parked cars and angled into a space. Ryan passed Eve and then stopped his car half a block up in front of a townhouse driveway. A sign on a gate threatened to tow anyone who blocked the “egress.” The car was visible beyond the gate. It was already ten. Chances were the homeowner wouldn’t head out for the night. And if he had to grab his car out of the impound lot, so be it.

He watched Eve in his rearview. She crossed the street and then ascended the steps of a seven-story building. It looked new. Fancy. The kind of place with a doorman. Good. A concierge could call up to “Eve” with a description.