The Golden Couple(79)

“Skip’s house is fantastic,” Matthew adds helpfully. “He just finished renovating it.” Matthew seems oblivious of the prickly undercurrent linking Skip and me.

So far Skip’s biographical data aligns. Yet I feel as if the more time I spend in Skip’s presence, the less I know about him.

He is the missing link in a chain I never knew existed, an invisible stitch affixing me to the Bishops.

I swiftly review the timeline in my mind as Matthew tops off Skip’s drink, then his own.

I called in my supposedly anonymous tip to the FDA, then I met Skip. Several weeks later, Marissa reached out to me. In between my encounters with Skip and the Bishops, Acelia began unleashing their intimidation tactics. All of these events seemed independent at first. Now I wonder if hidden connections exist, like the sticky threads of a nearly invisible spiderweb.

“Do you live nearby?” Skip turns my question around on me.

“Cleveland Park,” I tell him, as if he weren’t eating Thai food at my kitchen table just last week. I look back and forth between him and Matthew. “So, how do you guys know each other?”

As Matthew opens his mouth to answer, Marissa enters the room. The smudge of mascara is gone from beneath her eye, and she has smoothed her hair. But one pant leg is still tucked inside her boot, and she looks wrung out, even worse than when she exited her car a few minutes ago.

“How was your massage?” Matthew leans over to give her another quick kiss.

“Amazing.” But Marissa doesn’t seem like a woman who has just spent a blissful hour getting her body kneaded with lavender oil.

“A massage?” I wonder if this is why I couldn’t reach her.

“Marissa’s been under so much stress lately, I thought she deserved a break.” Matthew lifts up the bottle of wine. “Pour you a glass, babe?”

Marissa stares at the bottle for a beat, then shakes her head. “I’m going to stick with water and rehydrate.”

“That makes sense,” Matthew says as Marissa takes a glass out of the cabinet and fills it with water.

It’s only because I’m watching Skip so intently that I realize he is staring at Marissa with an equal intensity.

She tilts back her head, exposing her long, graceful neck, as she takes a long sip of water. She must feel Skip’s eyes on her because she turns to him.

“How are the new town houses coming along?” She glances at me. “Skip is a real estate developer.”

I nod, pretending it’s new information. This, too, fits with what Skip has told me.

“Really well,” Skip says.

“You still thinking about letting Natalie handle some of the sales?” Matthew asks.

Natalie again? I think.

Skip nods—a little curtly. I can’t read Marissa’s face because at the mention of Natalie’s name, she turns around again and opens the refrigerator door. Then she closes it without removing any items.

“Shall we move this party to the living room?” Matthew says easily.

Matthew lifts up the wine bottle and his glass in one hand and the bowl of mixed nuts in the other. We all trail Matthew into the room where I held my second session with the Bishops. Something is different about this space. At first I’m not sure what it is, then I realize the sectional couch is darker and smaller than the one that used to be here. As before, Matthew claims a chair facing the couch, and since I’m right behind him, I get to pick next. I choose the only other chair in the room, the same place I sat last time.

That leaves the gray sectional for Marissa and Skip. They sit a few feet apart, like strangers who enter the same elevator together and immediately put a healthy distance between them.

I make sure I’m the first one to speak. I need this question answered: “So, you were about to tell me how you guys all know each other.”

“Marissa and Skip were friends first.” Matthew leans back and perches his right ankle and foot atop his left thigh. “They actually grew up in the same town.” He names an area on the Eastern Shore.

“I’ve heard it’s lovely.” I’ve never been, but Paul had friends who owned a vacation home there and often traveled from D.C. for the weekend.

“My parents bought a summer place there when I was fifteen,” Matthew continues. “Skip was quite the entrepreneur even then. He had a little fishing boat and ran a charter business. My dad still talks about the snapper he caught with Skip before dawn on Saturday mornings while the rest of us were sleeping.”

“Hey, some of us had to work during the summers,” Skip chimes in. “Right, Marissa?”

She nods and smiles weakly.

“But we all had fun together at night,” Matthew says.

“That’s true. Those beach bonfires … man, I miss them.” Skip looks only at Marissa when he replies.

It sounds idyllic. I wonder, though, if like everything else in the Bishops’ life, the pretty memories are layered over something murky.

Skip’s dynamic with Matthew seems to hold hints of one-upmanship. Maybe that began when they were young.

“So when did you two become close friends?” I ask.

Something passes between Skip and Matthew—their eyes briefly meet, then flicker apart. Marissa’s empty glass of water clinks loudly against the stone coaster as she sets it down.