The Fidelity Files (Jennifer Hunter #1)(147)
I scratched my head and looked again at the back of the card.
That was weird. Jamie and I had the exact same car appointment time. At the exact same location. But I guess I already knew that because that's when and where I bumped into him. My surrender to the universe.
Well, the universe certainly had had its fun with me, hadn't it?
I shrugged and turned back toward the trash compactor, ready to flick the now slightly grimy card right back where it belonged. But then I caught sight of the oven in front of me. And my mind flashed back – just for a moment – to the day I was told about the recall appointment.
Marta had been cleaning the oven when she informed me that the Range Rover dealership had called to schedule an appointment. And oddly enough, I wasn't even in the appointment book. And come to think of it – even more oddly enough – my car model wasn't even marked for a recall.
I suddenly froze: the card in one hand, my phone in the other, as everything slowly started to make sense.
That business card had made its way from the back pocket of my jeans where I had placed it the minute Jamie had handed it to me to the top of my kitchen counter, where Zo? later picked it up and interrogated me on it. And there was only one person who'd had access to it in the meantime.
Marta.
She had found the card in my jeans pocket, noticed the handwriting, told me about a bogus recall appointment, all so I could bump into Jamie again?
It was almost too orchestrated to fathom.
I sounded like I was reading what I hoped to be the winning combination during a game of Clue. Marta Hernandez, in the kitchen, with the business card.
And I didn't even know she knew the word recall.
And what interest did she have in whether or not I bumped into Jamie again?
Then suddenly another idea hit me. I sprinted into the laundry room and started searching frantically through the cupboards and cabinets. I felt like I was on a wild-goose chase, hunting for clues to lead me to my next destination. And God knows what I would find there.
But what I found in here was exactly what I thought I might.
In the cabinet under the sink, carefully hidden behind the Drano, the Windex, and the roll of spare paper towels, was the laundry detergent I thought I had never bought. The laundry detergent that Marta interrupted me for while I was in the middle of trying to place a very important phone call, one that would have put an end to my third date with Jamie before it even began.
The laundry detergent she convinced me I didn't have.
There it was. Way, way in the back. And I certainly hadn't put it there.
Marta Hernandez, in the laundry room, with the detergent!
This whole thing was mind-boggling. How did she even know who Jamie was? Had she tapped my phones? Bugged my house? Implanted some type of mind-reading device in my brain while I was asleep?
Here I was tiptoeing around big words and complex English phrases so I could be sure that she would understand me when I spoke to her about how to wash my favorite pair of jeans. But all along she'd been devising complicated masterminded plots to intervene in my love life.
And all I could think was, What else?
What else had she been intervening in all this time?
I stood in the middle of the living room and walked slowly in a complete circle, surveying every inch of my immaculately clean house. And just when I'd almost made a full rotation, my eyes stopped at the TV.
The TiVo!
Desperate Housewives in Spanish?
Or more important, the one Desperate Housewives episode that happened to feature a plot to expose and incriminate one very dishonest husband?
Oh, this was just too much!
And I couldn't decide if it was comforting or just plain creepy, but Marta had single-handedly been responsible for not only initiating and later preserving my relationship with Jamie, but also for leading me to my victory against Raymond Jacobs.
"She saved me," I said aloud.
This whole time, she knew everything. And she saved me from it.
She was like my guardian angel. Watching over me. Protecting me from afar. Not just from the city's dirt and grime that I dragged in on my heels every day, but from the city itself.
Batman may have had Alfred.
But I had Marta.
I sunk into the couch in a stunned silence, Jamie's business card still clenched between my fingers. I felt like a hurricane had just swept through my life and all I had been left with was this little white card.
And I wondered if she had been right all along.
If she could save me from someone like Raymond Jacobs, maybe she had her reasons for making sure Jamie stayed in my life. And maybe the reasons were good ones.
A knock came at the door and I turned my head slowly toward it.
I didn't really have to open it to know who would be standing on the other side. Sometimes, in life, you just know.
"Hi," I said softly as I opened the door. "Do you want to come in?"
The visitor didn't respond. The visitor didn't have to. I knew that he would have plenty to say when the door closed behind him. And I knew that I had a few things to confess, myself. So I held the door open wide and watched as Jamie slowly made his way back into my house.
35
Gray Skies Ahead
THERE ARE some things in this world you can't read about in books. They won't teach you about them in school. Your parents won't even include them in one of their many speeches that are supposedly meant to prepare you for the real world.