Open House(57)
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My house? Noah will be out tonight. Can you come?
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Yes but are you sure this is a good idea?
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To [email protected]
Maybe I’m being reckless, but please come. 8 pm. xx J
There seemed to be no more emails between them, but maybe they’d switched over to text after this. Rappaport had said they’d found correspondence on Dean’s phone, which could mean anything.
Haley spun the ergonomic chair around and stared out onto the lawn. A streetlamp glistened over the snow like a beacon.
Could this really be? Could Dean and Josie have been romantically involved? She didn’t want to jump to conclusions from the emails, but the whole thing was so off. Dean meeting with Josie at her home and not telling Haley about it? What else could have been happening there besides an affair? And if that was it—if they’d cheated—what if Noah had found out? Haley’s heart pounded. What if today’s attack had nothing to do with her sister’s disappearance? What if it was a jealous husband trying to kill his wife because of an affair?
Her stomach felt like a rock, and something dawned on her that scared her more than almost anything, which was that, in this possible scenario, she felt more disappointed by the possibility of losing the answers to her sister’s disappearance than the prospect of her fiancé straying.
Haley put her hands over her eyes—she could worry about her cold feet later. She still felt sure she was missing something, and for the thousandth time she wished her sister were here to help her. Tears came, wetting her hands. “Can you hear me, Emma?” she asked, and the sound of her own voice in the empty room made her cry harder.
The doorbell rang.
Haley glanced up at the clock to see it was almost midnight. Dean wouldn’t normally ring the bell, but he probably hadn’t taken his keys when Rappaport took him to the station. She went to the front door and peered through the peephole. Priya. Haley’s heart pounded, and she knew she probably shouldn’t talk to Brad’s wife, but curiosity propelled her. She yanked open the door. “Hi,” she said, a blast of cold air hitting her face. And then, before she could think better of it, she said, “Come in,” and Priya did.
Haley didn’t look at her. She shut the door and moved into the living room, her bare feet hot and itchy on the carpet. “Do you want to sit?” Haley asked, gesturing to an uncomfortable-looking midcentury chair Dean had brought home from a tag sale.
Priya wasn’t wearing a coat, only a knit sweater that she held together over her chest with skinny fingers. She had that same crazed, scared look in her eyes that she’d had at the open house. But she nodded, and after a beat or two she sat in the chair.
Haley sat on the sofa across from her. “There’s a blanket behind you,” she offered, and she watched as Priya unfolded the blanket and set it across her lap. It made her look older than she probably was, and so did the worry lines creased around her eyes.
“What do you know about my husband?” Priya asked.
Haley tightened. “Did you come here to interrogate me?”
“No, not at all,” Priya said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I’ll tell you everything you want to know about us. I was just wondering how much you already knew.”
“I know you taught Emma,” Haley said. “I know Brad was sleeping with her, and may have gotten her pregnant, though I’m not sure on that part. I know the cops are holding him now, and I know there’s a pregnancy test with his DNA all over it. That’s pretty much all I know.”
Priya nodded. “Haley, first,” she started, the worry lines growing deeper. “I’m so sorry about your sister. She was my student—like you said, you already knew that—and she was extremely talented, but I’m sure you knew that, too. She was also kind, and we were friendly, actually. I’m completely sure that she didn’t know Brad was my fiancé, not only because I don’t think she would have slept with him if she knew, but also because Brad and I kept our relationship private, mostly because we both taught classes, and we didn’t want to ruffle anyone’s feathers. Yarrow can be conservative in that way. We liked it there, actually, at Yarrow. We had good times together, particularly when I first got the job and traveled back and forth between Yarrow and New York to exhibit. Things went wrong, of course. Brad met your sister—I still don’t know where, because we barely ever talked about it. I learned of their affair the night she disappeared. She came to our town house, and I could see it all over her face—the surprise at seeing me there, everything. It was awful.”
Haley didn’t want to interrupt—but the words came out anyway. “But why didn’t you go to the police?”
“Because I honestly didn’t think my husband did it. It was so wrong of me not to go to the cops, and I won’t make excuses, but if I were trying to make you see it from my perspective, I would tell you that I delivered my son a day and a half later, and I was out of my mind with stress about the affair and what would happen to my newborn son and me if I told the police that Brad had been sleeping with not only a student, but one who had disappeared. Emma had her sad side, too, we all do, and I believed the rumors that she had hurt herself. I don’t believe them now, not after what happened to Josie this morning, but I also don’t believe my husband hurt her.”