The Golden Couple(61)
She snips the end of the thread and ties a knot, then stands up and walks to the staircase, folding the shirt as she climbs it. She enters Bennett’s bedroom and hovers on the threshold for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the dim glow of his night-light. His giant FAO Schwarz dog is in one corner, leaning against a bookshelf that’s filled with the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson series.
Marissa places the shirt on top of his dresser so he can see it first thing when he wakes up. Then, even though she is tempting fate, she walks over to her son and presses her lips to his forehead. She closes her eyes and inhales deeply. Even if she were blindfolded and a hundred little boys were lined up, she could recognize Bennett simply by his smell.
“Mama,” Bennett murmurs as he rolls onto his side and instantly falls back asleep.
Long ago, Marissa had read a newspaper article about a teenaged girl who was flying a small airplane. The instructor was seated next to the girl, and her father was in the back. The plane crashed, and all three died. One detail of this tragedy stood out to Marissa: the father was found with his arms wrapped around his daughter. Even at the terrifying moment of his death, his fear was dwarfed by his need to protect and comfort his child.
Marissa looks down at Bennett, thinking that she understands the ferocity of that kind of parental love.
He is wearing his favorite Spider-Man pajamas, which he won’t give up even though the cuffs extend only to his forearms and the bottoms barely reach his shins. Marissa pulls the covers up more securely around him, then eases away and heads back downstairs.
In the distance, she hears the wailing of a car alarm that must have been triggered by the storm. She wraps her arms around herself, wondering if she should turn on the gas fireplace and curl up with a book or maybe take a hot bath. She can’t seem to get warm.
She puts on a soft fleece that she keeps in the hall closet and picks up an Anita Shreve novel she’s forever been meaning to read, but her mind is too jittery to process the story.
Every minute that passes brings her closer to the Monday meeting in the coffee shop. Avery seems so confident that she knows what to do, but what if she’s wrong?
Marissa’s eyes flit to the sofa again, seeing herself as she was that night: her back arched, her lips parted, her body set aflame by the slow touch of strong hands.
Enough, she orders herself, reaching for the remote and selecting a mindless comedy.
She watches two episodes while simultaneously scanning Instagram and replying to a few work emails, then turns off the downstairs lights and rechecks the house alarm, as she does every evening. Crime rates are surprisingly high in their neighborhood, and although most are simple car breakins late at night, there is an occasional home invasion, and last year two armed men held up the neighborhood pharmacy where Marissa buys vitamins and gets prescriptions filled.
Marissa has just finished smoothing on her favorite night serum and climbed into bed when the home phone shrills. She’s tempted to let it ring. Only two categories of people call the house phone: telemarketers, and her parents, who prefer landlines to cells.
But telemarketers are prohibited from calling after 9:00 P.M., she remembers.
Her parents, who open the store at 7:00 A.M., go to bed early. If they’re calling now, something must be wrong. She throws off the covers and hurries to the side table where the phone rests in its charger.
It isn’t her parents: caller ID shows a 202 area code, which is for D.C.
“Marissa?”
The female voice is familiar, but Marissa can’t immediately place it.
“This is Renee Hammerman.” Matthew’s new secretary, the woman Marissa met just today.
“Hi, Renee. Is everything okay?”
“I’m sorry to call you so late at home, but I’m still in the office and need to speak to Matthew briefly. I wouldn’t bother him unless it was urgent.”
“Wait, isn’t he there with you?”
In the pause that follows, Marissa feels her skin prickle.
“No, he left about forty-five minutes ago.… I keep trying his cell, but he isn’t answering.”
There’s no traffic at this time of night, so the ride home should be twenty minutes, tops. Even if he’d stopped for gas, Matthew should be here.
Unless—Marissa clutches at the thought—he was hungry and picked up something on the way. Typically when he works late, Matthew gets takeout from Giovanni’s, the restaurant across from his office, and eats at his desk. But maybe his routine changed.
She shares this thought with Renee, but Renee immediately replies, “I actually picked up his dinner because he had to jump on a call.”
Marissa grabs her cell phone off her nightstand and hits the button to dial Matthew. “Renee? Hold on a second.… I’m trying him now.”
When it goes to voice mail, she taps out a text: Where are you? Please call me.
Maybe Matthew had gone to meet a client unexpectedly, though it would be highly unusual for him to not let her know.
“I can’t reach him,” she tells Renee. “Can you explain exactly what happened when he was leaving?”
“He told me he was heading home and emailed me a final electronic document to format and send. He said to make sure to get one of the security guards to walk me to my car, and that I should come in late tomorrow. When I was reading through it, I realized he hadn’t signed one of the pages. I’ve been trying to reach him, but like I said, he’s not answering his calls or texts.” Renee hesitates. “Which we both know isn’t like him,” she concludes with a nervous laugh.