Chương 1
"“Grandpa, don’t marry her,” Toby whispered, digging his small fingers into my hand hard enough to hurt, “she hit my mommy when you weren’t there.”
Ten minutes before I was supposed to walk into a ballroom and marry Evelyn Kensington, I stood in a hotel hallway with my three-year-old grandson pressed against my leg and felt the life I had arranged for myself tilt sideways.
His gray suit was too big in the shoulders, his left shoelace had come undone, and somebody had clipped his bow tie crooked beneath his chin.
None of that bothered him.
He was staring past me toward the bridal suite.
I followed his eyes.
Evelyn stood twenty yards away in ivory lace while two bridesmaids fussed with her veil and the photographer joked about getting mascara on his shirt.
She laughed, touched his arm, and looked exactly like the woman I had spent two years trusting.
Then Toby flinched when her head turned slightly in our direction.
I crouched until my knees protested against the hotel carpet.
“Who hit Mommy, buddy?”
Toby pointed at Evelyn.
For a moment, all I heard was the muffled string quartet rehearsing inside the ballroom and an ice machine grinding somewhere around the corner.
“Evelyn?”
He nodded.
I nearly corrected him.
That was my first instinct, and I am still ashamed of it.
Children mixed things up.
Three-year-olds misunderstood arguments.
Genevieve had disliked my engagement from the beginning, and I had spent months telling myself that her objections were grief, protectiveness, maybe even jealousy over the fact that I had found someone after her mother died.
I had explanations ready before I had facts.
“Where is Mommy now?”
“With Aunt Sarah.”
That made me straighten.
Genevieve was supposed to be at her apartment with a migraine.
At 8:14 that morning, she had texted me that she might miss the ceremony but would try to come to the reception if the medication worked.
Evelyn had read the message over my shoulder while I was shaving.
“Don’t let her punish you today,” she had said.
She had kissed the back of my neck afterward.
At the time, I had mistaken the sentence for kindness.
“Why is Mommy with Aunt Sarah?”
Toby looked down at his shoes.
“Mommy was sleepy.”
“What do you mean, sleepy?”
He shrugged because he was three and I was asking him to explain an adult emergency with a vocabulary that still called helicopters “sky fans.”
Then he reached inside his jacket pocket.
“She said give you this if she sleeps a long time.”
He opened his fist.
A black USB drive lay across his palm.
It was scratched along one corner and had a strip of faded blue tape wrapped around the metal end.
I knew it.
Genevieve used drives like that at Vance Development because she distrusted cloud storage for sensitive project documents.
I took it.
“What did Mommy say was on this?”
“Bad stuff.”
My mouth went dry.
“Did she say anything else?”
Toby considered this with grave concentration.
“She said don’t let Evie see.”
Evie.
That was what he called Evelyn.
I closed my fist around the drive.
Across the hall, Evelyn laughed again.
One of her bridesmaids noticed me and waved.
I raised my hand automatically.
The absurdity of waving back nearly made me laugh.
Instead, I picked Toby up.
He immediately locked both arms around my neck.
“Thomas?”
Evelyn’s voice reached me before I made it to the corner.
I turned.
Her smile remained in place, but her eyes had settled on Toby.
“What is our runaway ring bearer doing out here?”
“He needed me.”
“I can see that.”
She gathered her skirt and came toward us.
Toby’s face disappeared against my shoulder.
Evelyn slowed.
“Is he all right?”
“I don’t know.”
Her expression changed by almost nothing.
That was one of the things I had admired about her when we met.
At thirty-eight, she had a composure I had never possessed even at sixty-eight.
She could hear bad news without broadcasting panic.
She could enter a room full of hostile investors and make them feel embarrassed for being hostile.
Now that same composure frightened me.
“Where’s Genevieve?” I asked.
“At home, presumably.”
“You haven’t spoken to her?”
“Not since yesterday.”
The answer came easily.
Too easily, perhaps, though I no longer trusted my ability to distinguish suspicion from hindsight.
Toby tightened his arms.
Evelyn noticed.
“What happened?”
“Nothing I can deal with standing in a hallway.”
Her gaze dropped toward my closed hand.
I slipped the USB into my trouser pocket.
The movement was small.
Her eyes followed it anyway.
“Thomas?”
“My laptop is in the suite.”
“We’re supposed to start in eight minutes.”
“I know.”
She smiled, but it had become the smile she used when a waiter brought the wrong bottle of wine.
“Then whatever this is can wait eight minutes.”
I looked at Toby.
“No.”
The word landed between us.
Behind Evelyn, one of the bridesmaids pretended to check her phone.
The photographer stopped adjusting his lens.
Evelyn lowered her voice.
“People are waiting.”
“So am I.”
“For what?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
She stared at me for two seconds, then reached for Toby’s back.
He recoiled so violently that his shoe struck my hip.
Evelyn froze with her hand in the air.
Nobody said anything.
She lowered it.
“All right,” she said.
There was no anger in her voice.
That scared me more than anger would have.
I carried Toby toward my suite.
My best man, Daniel Mercer, emerged from the elevator carrying two miniature bottles of bourbon and wearing the expression of a man pleased with his own preparedness.
Daniel had been my attorney for twenty-six years and my friend for slightly longer, although he enjoyed pointing out that friendship had never stopped him from billing me.
“There you are,” he said.
Then he saw my face.
“What happened?”
“Come with me.”
He looked toward Evelyn.
“Do I want to know?”
May you like
“I don’t.”
That shut him up.
