An Anonymous Girl(77)

“I get it,” he said. But he still stood up and retrieved his second drink.

“I didn’t tell her we slept together,” I said when he returned to the table. “I’m not planning to ever tell her about that.”

He closed his eyes and sighed.

“I don’t get it. You say she’s crazy and you want to leave her,” I said, “but when you’re around her, you act like you’re in love with her. It’s like she’s got this weird hold on you.”

His eyes snapped open.

“I can’t explain it,” he finally said. “But you’re right about one thing: It is an act when I’m with her.”

“You’ve been unfaithful before.” I already knew the answer, but I had to smoke him out.

He frowned. “Why is that any of your business?”

‘It’s my business because I’ve gotten sucked into the middle of your twisted relationship!”

He glanced behind him, then leaned closer to me and lowered his voice. “Look, it’s complicated, okay? I had a little fling.”

One fling? He was only being partly honest.

“Does your wife know who she was?” I asked.

“What? Yeah, but she was a nobody,” he said.

I felt myself bristle. I wanted to throw the Scotch in Thomas’s face.

A nobody who was a subject in Dr. Shields’s study, just like me. A nobody who was now dead.

He saw the expression on my face and backtracked: “I didn’t mean—It was just some woman who owns a clothing boutique a block over from my office. A one-night thing.”

I looked down at my bottle of Sam Adams. By then I’d almost peeled off the entire label.

So he wasn’t referring to April. At least his story aligned with Dr. Shields’s about this affair.

“How did she find out about it?” I asked. “Did you confess?”

He shook his head. “I sent Lydia a text that was meant for the other woman. Their names started with the same letter; it was just a dumb mistake.”

This was interesting, but it wasn’t the affair I wanted to know about. What about Subject 5?

So I asked him, straight out. “What about your relationship with April Voss?”

He gasped, which was an answer in itself.

When he spoke again, his face was pale. “How do you know about her?”

“You’re the one who first told me about April,” I said. “Only that night in the Conservatory Gardens, you referred to her as Subject 5.”

His eyes widened. “Lydia doesn’t know, does she?”

I shook my head and checked the time on my phone. We still had several hours before Dr. Shields believed we were meeting.

He took another healthy swig of his drink. Then he looked me directly in the eyes. I could read genuine fear in his. “She can never, ever find out about April.”

That was almost exactly what he’d said about us a few seconds ago, too.

The door to the pub swung open so hard it banged against the wall.

I flinched as Thomas whipped around.

“Sorry!” A portly guy with a red beard stood in the doorway.

Thomas mumbled something and shook his head, then turned back to me. His expression was grim.

“So you’re not going to tell Lydia about April?” he asked. You have no idea what you would destroy if you did.”

I finally had something on Thomas. It was the opportunity I needed.

“I won’t tell her,” I said.

He started to thank me, but I cut him off. “As long as you tell me everything you know.”

“About what?” Thomas asked.

“About April,” I said.


He didn’t give me much. I thought about what Thomas had revealed while I walked to meet Noah for a late dinner at Peachtree Grill following my second drink of the day with Dr. Shields’s husband, the one in which we’d read our lines like actors onstage.

Thomas had said he’d been with April only once, last spring. He’d gone to meet a friend at a hotel bar. After the friend left and Thomas lingered to pay the bill, April slid into the seat across from him and introduced herself.

It’s the scene Dr. Shields had me re-create at the bar at the Sussex Hotel with Scott, I think, and suppress a shudder. But I don’t reveal that to Thomas; I might need to hold information over him again.

Did Dr. Shields set up April to test Thomas, and did April lie about it—just like I did?

Or is the truth even more depraved than that?

According to Thomas, he went to April’s apartment later that same night and left a little after midnight. Aside from the way they met, it sounds eerily like our date.

Thomas insisted he had no idea until after April died that she was connected to his wife. But given that April was a subject in Dr. Shields’s study, too, there was no way it was a random encounter.

The cover story Thomas and I created for Dr. Shields tonight might buy us a little time, I think as I approach Peachtree Grill. I heard relief in her voice when she thanked me after I told her Thomas was devoted to her.

But something tells me it won’t last.

Dr. Shields has a way of pulling the truth out of people, especially when it comes to things they want to bury. I’ve learned that firsthand.

Tell me.

It’s like I can hear her voice in my head again. I spin around and search the sidewalk. But I don’t see her anywhere.