Wish You Were Gone(41)
“Yes! I can’t believe I’m finally doing this,” Emma said now, and looked around. “What did I do with my purse?”
“Check the kitchen,” Gray suggested. “And do you have an umbrella I can borrow? It’s getting overcast and I didn’t bring one.”
“Gray Garrison, unprepared? Will wonders never cease?” Emma smiled. “In the mudroom.”
Emma ran back into the kitchen and Gray walked into the spacious mudroom. There were sneakers and shoes on the floor, and she lined them up by pair, then tucked them under the bench, where they belonged. On the wall hung a few jackets and an old dog leash, still there even though Emma’s golden retriever had died three years ago. Gray clucked her tongue. Sometimes she worried about Emma’s inability to move on—to get over things.
Gray found what she was looking for and shoved it in her bag just as Emma came around the corner.
“Found it!” Emma announced. “Oh, I wanted to tell you, I’m meeting up with James before the big party tonight, so I won’t be riding in with you. I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course. Don’t worry about it,” Gray said. “I’ll survive.”
She always did.
EMMA
A pot of stew bubbled on the stovetop while Emma sat at the kitchen island surrounded by cell phone bills, her laptop open to Google number search. Emma couldn’t believe she’d considered the possibility of hiring a private investigator, even for a second—although she had sort of enjoyed the image of knocking on the door of some square-jawed, hard-nosed, stubble-covered rogue who would give it to her straight. How hard could it be to uncover the truth about her own husband? It wasn’t as if they’d kept separate finances or she didn’t know where he went every day. After leaving a message for their estate lawyer, Evan Cantor, Emma had dug into their accounts. It had taken her half an hour to pull up and print out the last two years’ worth of phone bills, and now she had a record in black and white of every single person James had called. If there were any mysterious strangers on this list, she would find them.
She had started with the day he died and worked backward from there. So far all she’d found were calls to agents and sports venues, media outlets and reporters. A handful of numbers were registered private, which meant they were probably direct lines to the famous athletes James dealt with on a daily basis. She supposed James could have been having an affair with a world-class tennis player or an Olympic soccer star, but she put the chances at low that a woman that successful would go for a guy like him—which she supposed didn’t say much for her own self-esteem. But she could cross the pro-athlete bridge if she came up with nothing elsewhere.
She’d called a few of the numbers, then hung up if she got a man on the other end. She’d stricken a line through those, then highlighted all the women. She hadn’t spoken to any of them. There were far more strike-throughs than highlights, sports and sports journalism apparently not having made the same strides as other industries in the whole equal-workforce movement. She was just hanging up with some guy at Nike when her kids walked in.
Kelsey tossed her bag on the floor and slumped into the nearest chair. Hunter went right for the stew.
“Hi, guys.” Emma closed her laptop and tugged the papers into a pile. “How was your day?”
“Annoying. People suck,” Kelsey said, not lifting her head. “I can’t wait to get out of that place.” She lifted her phone and opened her email, then sighed and closed it.
“Honey, you sent the Daltry application last night. They probably haven’t even opened it yet.”
“I know,” Kelsey said.
Hunter filled a bowl with stew and opened a drawer in search of a spoon. “What’re you doing?” he asked.
He shoveled some food into his face—it had to burn, but he didn’t react—then used his free hand to paw through the pile of bills.
“What’s all this?”
“Nothing,” Emma said, then decided she didn’t feel like lying to her kids. “I was just trying to figure out who some of the people were that your dad was calling and texting.”
Kelsey sat up straight. “Why?”
“Yeah. Why?” Hunter asked around a mouthful of potatoes and meat.
A hot flush crept up Emma’s neck and into her face. She lifted her shoulders, then got up and retrieved a bowl for herself and another for Kelsey, giving herself half a second to figure out how to answer that question.
“Do you think he was having an affair?” Kelsey asked, sounding intrigued—almost excited.
Hunter froze, then put his spoon back into his bowl. “Dad wasn’t having an affair.”
“Why not? Why else would Mom be stalking his phone records?”
“Mom?” Hunter said.
Emma put the empty bowls down on the counter. She turned to face them, clutching the edge of the countertop behind her on either side. Their whole lives, Emma had tried to be truthful with her kids, as much as she could without hurting them. This didn’t seem like the time to give that up, however humiliating the truth was. But when she looked into Hunter’s eyes, so vulnerable and defiant all at once, she lost her nerve.
“I don’t know, you guys,” she said. “It’s just something I’m looking into.”