Chương 3
Half-empty glasses. Candle wax. Cooling coffee. A silk napkin on the floor beside a chair.
Mara looked at her belongings spread across the marble.
“I’d like to go home.”
Adrian took a step toward her.
“Of course.”
She began putting things back in the bag.
The lipstick.
Wallet.
Keys.
Charger.
Receipt.
Her apron remained on the table beside the necklace.
She did not want to touch either of them.
Adrian noticed.
“I’ll have someone bring your things.”
“No.”
“Mara.”
“I can pick up my own things.”
His mouth closed.
Evelyn came around the table.
“Leave the apron.”
Mara stared at her.
“For now,” Evelyn said. “It may matter.”
Mara almost laughed.
Of course it mattered.
Everything she had worn to work that morning suddenly mattered.
The pocket she had never checked.
The moment she had folded the apron.
The bag she had set by the staff-room door.
The five minutes she had spent helping a caterer find serving trays.
Her entire day had become evidence while she was busy living it.
She put the last pen into her handbag.
Adrian said, “I’ll have a car take you.”
“I came by bus.”
“I know.”
The sentence bothered her more than it should have.
She looked at him.
He looked tired now. Older than thirty-eight. There was a faint grayness around his eyes she had noticed often in the months after Eleanor’s death.
“You don’t know much about me,” Mara said. “Don’t pretend this is the night to start.”
His face tightened.
Evelyn looked down.
Mara hated herself for the cruelty of it almost immediately.
She also meant it.
“I need to leave.”
Adrian nodded.
“One of the drivers will take you. No argument. It’s after eleven.”
Mara nearly refused just because he had said no argument.
Then she remembered the bus schedule and how long she would be standing alone at the transfer station with her face still burning from humiliation.
“All right.”
She walked toward the hallway.
At the doorway, Adrian said her name again.
She stopped.
He did not say he believed her.
That would have sounded insulting now.
He said, “Tomorrow, I want to hear everything you remember. Not tonight. Not while you’re like this. Tomorrow, if you’re willing.”
Mara looked back at him.
“I’m not coming to work tomorrow.”
“No.”
“Am I fired?”
His expression changed.
“No.”
“Suspended?”
“No.”
“Then what am I?”
He had no answer.
Mara nodded once.
“That’s what I thought.”
She left him standing beside his mother’s necklace.
The driver took the highway instead of the surface streets. Mara sat in the back of a black sedan she had cleaned twice during the spring and watched unfamiliar versions of familiar places pass through the window.
A twenty-four-hour pharmacy.
A gas station.
Two teenagers sharing fries outside a burger place.
A woman walking a dog in pajama pants.
Normal life seemed almost offensive.
Her roommate, Tessa, was awake when Mara got home, sitting cross-legged on the couch with a bowl of cereal balanced against her stomach and a cooking show playing silently on television.
She looked at the clock.
“You’re home early.”
Mara put her handbag on the kitchen counter.
Tessa looked at her face.
“What happened?”
Mara opened the refrigerator.
She did not want food.
She stood there anyway.
“Someone put a diamond necklace in my apron.”
Tessa blinked.
“Okay.”
“Then put my apron in my bag.”
“Okay.”
“Then dumped my bag in front of my boss and accused me of stealing it.”
Tessa set the cereal bowl down.
“Okay is no longer the word.”
Mara closed the refrigerator.
Tessa worked early shifts at a bakery and rarely looked elegant after nine at night. Her hair was gathered on top of her head with a pencil. Flour still clung to the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
“Did they call the police?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“That seems like a thing rich people call lawyers about before they call police.”
Mara leaned against the counter.
“They have footage.”
“Of you?”
“Of Celeste planting it.”
Tessa stared at her.
“Well.”
“Yeah.”
“That feels important.”
“It did at the time.”
Tessa studied her for another second.
“You’re shaking.”
Mara looked at her hands.
She was.
“I’m cold.”
“You’re lying.”
“I know.”
Tessa went to the cabinet and took out a mug.
She did not ask whether Mara wanted tea because she had known Mara long enough to know that questions sometimes made bad nights worse.
Mara sat at the small kitchen table.
One of the chairs wobbled. It had wobbled for six months. Tessa had once shoved a folded takeout menu under one leg, and neither of them had bothered finding a better solution.
Mara pressed her palm against the tabletop until the shaking eased.
“She knew where I kept my bag.”
Tessa filled the kettle.
Mara looked up.
“That’s the part I keep thinking about.”
Tessa stopped.
“She knew I fold my apron and put it inside when there are guests because I don’t want to wear it on the bus. She knew the side pocket was deep enough. She knew I wouldn’t check it.”
The kettle clicked on.
“She watched you.”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
Mara did not answer.
The question followed her into bed.
She slept for an hour, woke with her heart racing, then spent most of the night staring at the digital clock on her dresser.
At 6:12 she made coffee.
At 6:35 she poured it down the sink untouched.
At 7:08 her phone began ringing.
Adrian.
She let it ring out.
At 7:16 Evelyn called.
Mara answered.
Evelyn did not say good morning.
“I think you should file a police report.”
Mara sat on the edge of her bed.
“You didn’t last night.”
“No.”
“Why?”
A pause.
“Because Adrian called his attorney.”
There it was.
Mara closed her eyes.
“And the attorney said?”
“That we should preserve evidence, review what happened, and avoid making statements until we understood whether other property was missing.”
“Other property.”
May you like
“Yes.”
“You mean before anyone has to say publicly that his fiancée framed the maid.”
