Chương 3
It was the first ordinary thing either of them had said since the salon.
Eleanor lived on the second floor of a brick building in Brookline, above a dentist who played jazz through the ceiling after six. The elevator had been out of service for nine days. A handwritten sign claimed that a replacement part was arriving soon. Someone had crossed out soon and written before the sun dies.
Daniel read it.
“That seems optimistic,” Eleanor said.
He carried her handbag and walked one step below her as she climbed, near enough to catch her without making a performance of it. The stairs took longer than they should have. At the landing, she paused beside a dusty artificial fern.
“I hate that plant,” she said.
Daniel glanced at it. “It has survived on spite.”
That time she did laugh, once, and regretted it when her hip tightened.
Inside her apartment, Daniel set the handbag on the kitchen table. He looked too formal among the mismatched chairs and the jar where Eleanor kept rubber bands. His gray suit had acquired a faint crease at one knee from kneeling beside her.
Eleanor put ice into a dish towel.
“You don’t need to stay.”
“The doctor said someone should.”
“The doctor also asked if you were family, and we established that you are not.”
He took the ice pack from her and wrapped it more securely.
“My mother worked in hotels for twenty-six years,” he said. “She was accused of taking a guest’s bracelet once.”
Eleanor stopped.
Daniel kept his eyes on the towel. “The bracelet was in the guest’s makeup case.”
“What happened to your mother?”
“She was suspended for four days while they investigated. The guest never apologized.”
“Did the hotel?”
“They paid her for three of the four days.”
Eleanor leaned against the counter.
“And she stayed?”
“She had two children and rent due.”
He handed her the ice pack.
Eleanor pressed it to her wrist. “So you know what this is.”
“I know part of it.”
The answer made her trust him slightly more than if he had claimed to understand everything.
His phone vibrated on the table. Claire’s name appeared on the screen. He turned it facedown.
“You should answer her,” Eleanor said.
“No.”
“She’s supposed to become your wife on Saturday.”
His jaw moved.
“That is no longer happening on Saturday.”
Eleanor studied him. “Because of me?”
“Because of what she did.”
“That isn’t the same answer.”
Daniel looked toward the small window over the sink. A delivery cyclist coasted through the intersection below, one hand lifted against a turning car.
“I don’t know what happens next,” he said. “But I know I’m not standing in front of two hundred people in three days pretending I didn’t see what I saw.”
“Four hundred,” Eleanor said.
“What?”
“The guest count. Four hundred and twelve, unless her aunt in Florida changed her mind again.”
Daniel stared at her.
“I altered the gown,” she said. “People talk while you pin them.”
His phone vibrated again.
This time he silenced it.
Mara arrived carrying two grocery bags, a laptop, and enough anger to power the dead elevator. She was forty-three, narrow-shouldered, sharp-eyed, and still wore her middle school identification badge clipped to her cardigan because she had come directly from work.
She hugged Eleanor carefully, then inspected her wrist, hip, pupils, and speech as if the urgent care doctor had been a child with a plastic stethoscope.
“Where is she?”
“Who?”
“The bride.”
“Probably discovering that a canceled wedding has vendors.”
Mara looked at Daniel.
He stood from the kitchen chair. “Daniel Mercer.”
“The fiancé?”
“For the moment.”
Mara’s eyebrows rose.
Eleanor closed her eyes briefly.
Daniel handed Mara the discharge papers and described the doctor’s instructions without embellishment. Mara listened, asked two practical questions, and then said, “Thank you for bringing her home.”
“You’re welcome.”
Her tone made clear that gratitude was not absolution for belonging to Claire’s world.
At the door, Daniel turned to Eleanor.
“The salon owner has my number. I told her to preserve whatever records she has.”
“Records?”
“Incident reports. Camera footage from public areas. Staff statements.”
Mara looked interested.
Eleanor did not. “There are no cameras in the fitting rooms.”
“There’s one over the front desk and one near the main floor. It may show who entered and left, and when.”
“It won’t show the fall.”
“No. But records disappear when people decide they are inconvenient.”
Eleanor thought of Celeste’s face when the medical transport entered the salon.
“Daniel,” she said.
He waited.
“Don’t turn me into the reason you leave her.”
His expression changed with a weariness that seemed older than the afternoon.
“You’re not.”
He left.
Mara locked the door behind him and stood with her hand on the deadbolt.
“He seems decent.”
“He found a brooch.”
“He also called medical transport, drove you home, and told someone to preserve evidence.”
“He is a lawyer.”
“He’s an architect.”
Eleanor looked at her.
“I searched him in the car,” Mara said.
“Of course you did.”
Mara unpacked the grocery bags. She had bought soup, crackers, ginger ale, frozen peas, three kinds of pain reliever, and a bunch of bananas so green they looked resentful.
Eleanor sat at the kitchen table with the ice pack on her wrist.
“You need to report this,” Mara said.
“To whom?”
“The police.”
“No.”
“Mom.”
“No.”
“She grabbed you and knocked you down.”
“She grabbed me. I lost my balance.”
Mara stopped arranging soup cans. “Do you hear yourself?”
“I hear every word.”
“You’re protecting her.”
“I’m protecting myself from being interviewed by someone young enough to call me ma’am six times while asking whether I’m sure I didn’t just fall.”
“That might not happen.”
“It might.”
“And if you do nothing?”
May you like
“I didn’t say I would do nothing.”
Mara sat opposite her. She had inherited Eleanor’s habit of pressing her thumbnail against the side of her index finger when angry. As a child, she had done it during piano recitals. Now she did it in faculty meetings and doctor’s offices.
