The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(86)

“Nothing, just . . . nothing.” He pushes his reading glasses up onto his forehead and rubs his eyes.

“Did you sleep at all?” she asks him, and he shakes his head. “I didn’t either. I was going to make some coffee.”

He makes a face. “I drank enough coffee yesterday to kill someone.”

The words hang uncomfortably in the air for a moment.

“So did I,” Beck says, “but I need more anyway, if I’m going to make it through this day.”

“I’d better have some, too. Be there in a few minutes. I just want to finish something.”

He’s back to typing on the keyboard as she leaves the den.

In the kitchen, she starts the coffee, then busies herself reorganizing the kitchen cabinets, moving around all the serving bowls and platters well-meaning neighbors and friends insisted on washing last night before they left. At that point she was so tired of people she’d have been more appreciative if everyone had just cleared out of here and left the mess to her.

Now, as she puts things back where they belong, she finds that every piece invokes a memory. Mom always served Christmas cookies and Valentine’s Day brownies on the red oval platter. The big cut-glass bowl had held fruit salad at every Easter brunch. And she’d just seen the white ceramic pedestal plate a few weeks ago, holding the cheesecake she’d picked up at a bakery on her way into town. She’d been planning on baking one from scratch, using Mom’s own recipe, but she and Keith had gotten into a monster argument the night before and she didn’t have the time—or the heart—to putter in the kitchen.

She remembers wistfully watching her parents that day, thinking their marriage seemed idyllic compared to her own.

Well, whose wouldn’t?

Is it possible her perspective was skewed because of her own miserable life with Keith? Was she just imagining that her parents were happily married? Was there something brewing beneath the surface, something she should have noticed; something she could have stopped in time, had she only known?

No. Dad had nothing to do with what happened to her. He loved her. That was that.

And yet, another memory nibbles away at the edge of Beck’s consciousness; one she’s been trying to keep at bay.

Too worn-out to fight it this time, she lets it in.

About a month ago she’d called in sick to work and driven into town on a weekday to have lunch with an old high school friend, now a lawyer, about the possibility of a separation agreement. She wasn’t going to tell her parents she was coming; the last thing she wanted was for them to worry about her—and her marriage—on top of their financial mess, now that Dad had lost his job.

Miranda, Beck’s lawyer friend, said she had to stay fairly local because she had a meeting right before lunch and another right after. Beck chose a chain restaurant she knew her mother hated, figuring there was no way in hell she’d run into her parents there. She didn’t.

She ran into her father.

He was walking out just as Beck was hurrying in—late—to meet Miranda.

She was so flustered seeing him that she started stammering—but so, she remembers now, did he.

“What are you doing here?” they asked each other.

Beck told a semi truth—that she’d taken the day off to have lunch with an old friend—and was planning to pop into the house afterward to surprise him and Mom if she had time.

“But I was afraid I wouldn’t,” she said, “so I didn’t want to disappoint anyone.”

“I won’t tell Mom. If you have time, stop over. If you don’t, your secret is safe with me.”

That was when the woman came out of the ladies’ room and walked right up to her father—almost as if he’d been waiting for her.

Maybe he had, Beck realized, when the woman said to him, “All set?”

“Louise,” he said, “this is my daughter, Rebecca. Beck, this is Louise Falk. She’s been helping me with . . . some financial paperwork.”

Beck and Louise shook hands, and then Dad said, right in front of Louise, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to Mom. I don’t want her to worry. You know how she is.”

Beck knew.

At the time, she was so thrown off by having run into her father that she didn’t think to question whether he’d been telling the truth about Louise.

No, it hadn’t occurred to her to question it until her mother lay dead and the police were asking her whether her father might be capable of terrible things.

She’s sworn to them—and herself—that he wasn’t.

Because he isn’t.

He—

“Is the coffee ready?”

She jumps, almost dropping the big white platter, as her father comes up behind her.

“Oh—it’s ready,” she realizes. “Sit down, Dad. I’ll pour you a cup.”

“Thanks.”

Watching him go over to the table and pull out a chair—his chair, the one he’s been sitting in at family dinners for as long as she can remember—she wonders what he’d say if she asked him, now, about Louise.

About whether she really was a . . . financial consultant, or whatever he’d implied.

But if she asks, then he’ll think she has doubts . . .

Do you have doubts? she asked herself.