The Night Before(50)

“What are you saying?”

“That sometimes they stay up talking. Alone. I have no idea what it’s about. But maybe Laura confided in him about something. Maybe about the notes or something else. Maybe Joe’s afraid to expose her to the police.”

His name was Joe.

First Kathleen, and now Gabe, telling her things about her husband and sister. This could not be happening. Not to her own family. Was there no end to the trouble? Would it follow them forever?

“He went to see her, Gabe,” Rosie blurted out then. She couldn’t be alone in this.

“What do you mean?” Gabe looked surprised. Shocked, even. And something else—territorial, protective. His alliance had always been with Laura, and Rosie was now putting the pieces together. That story about his brother. That had to have stayed with him. Made him feel responsible for her and whatever damage Rick Wallace had caused.

“Laura’s roommate heard them on the phone, and saw Joe with her at the apartment in New York. Before she moved. Before the breakup with the shrink—if there even was a boyfriend. Maybe that was all a ruse. A distraction.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Gabe said, thinking. “You don’t believe…”

“I don’t know, Gabe.” Rosie let the tears come now. It was too much. Too fucking much.

“No way!” Gabe shook his head as though he could erase the thought from both of their minds. “Not Joe. He loves you. He always has. Always. And Laura—she would never do that to you, even if she did have feelings for him after all these years.”

Rosie wiped her eyes and gathered herself. She was in an alternate world now, where nothing was known or unknown except the facts. Joe had been seeing Laura behind her back. Joe had been having secret conversations with her at the house. Joe had found the notes, conveniently, after the police left.

And Joe had found the car.

This last fact suddenly jumped out above the rest.

“He found the car,” Rosie said. “Joe—and in less than an hour.”

Gabe was silent, his eyes fixed on Rosie. He took her hand again and pressed his lips against her palm. Then he squeezed it hard between his own, and she imagined that he didn’t believe it. But then he also did, and now he was going to be her protector, even from his best friend. The man he’d known since childhood.

His phone buzzed on the table right beside their hands. Gabe broke away from the embrace and picked it up.

“It’s a message,” he said, pulling it up to the screen. “Shit! From findlove.com. From secondchance.”

Rosie gasped. The woman from the website who’d gone quiet. The woman who’d told them to RUN.

“What did she say?”

“She gave us a phone number. She said she’ll talk to us.”

Rosie stared at him, eyes stinging now, from the exhaustion and the tears. She’d already heard one story about this man, this Jonathan Fields, from Sylvia Emmett, a woman he’d picked up at a bar and then lied to and mistreated. Now they had the woman from findlove.com. What story was she about to tell? Rosie was afraid to find out.

“Are you ready?” he asked her, looking at her with steadfast resolve.

It didn’t matter if she was ready or not ready. They had to find Laura. Everything else would fall into place.

She opened her mouth, but it was bone-dry. So she didn’t speak. She met Gabe’s eyes and nodded. Yes.





TWENTY-EIGHT


Laura. Session Number Three. Four Months Ago. New York City.

Dr. Brody: Do you worry when you’re here? When you’re with me?

Laura: No.

Dr. Brody: You don’t wonder if maybe you’re doing it again? With the wrong man—a man who will never love you.

Laura: Well, now I am. Thanks …

Dr. Brody: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put thoughts in your head.

Laura: Isn’t that your job, Kevin?

Dr. Brody: I suppose it is. Hopefully good thoughts. Or correct thoughts, I should say.

Laura: I would only be worried if I thought you were going to break my heart.

Laura: You’re not going to do that, are you?





TWENTY-NINE


Laura. The Night Before. Friday, 12 a.m. Branston, CT.

It’s over in minutes.

Mere minutes.

I’ve thought about this before. How it can take hours, days, weeks to arrive at this place. Clothes littered on the floor. Arms, legs now limp and twisted together like a pile of dead trees in a ravaged forest. I feel his heart, wild against my chest. Breath coming and going in quick bursts. Panting. Our naked skin sticks together from the drying sweat. The residue of the heat that is cooling fast.

Mere minutes. A tornado. A tsunami. So much drama before its arrival. Then it comes with a force that was fully anticipated, yet we are still unprepared. Taken by surprise. Swept away. It leaves us forever altered. The shape of our bodies, the way they respond, the way they move—these intimate details cannot be unrevealed.

Mere minutes and everything is over. I am stunned.

I press my closed eyes into the nape of his neck. I don’t want to see his face.

“That was incredible,” he says. And he follows it with a dramatic moan.

I think now that it was no more or less incredible than every other time. It’s so predictable, and yet I never seem to learn.