The Nest(72)

“The effort showed,” Leo said. He held her gaze. This was exactly what he needed today. “We talked afterward, right? At that French place?”

“Yeah,” she said, amused. “We talked.”

And then he remembered. He’d cornered her in a small hallway leading to a bathroom. Nothing had really happened, a little body contact, she was there with someone, too.

“So …” She trailed off, laughed a little, and looked down at the dog then back at Leo smiling.

“So,” Leo said.

“I’m not friends with Victoria or anything.”

“Me neither. We’re divorced.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, not sounding the tiniest bit sorry.

“Don’t be.”

She looked back out at the water and he waited. “Are you off to work right now?” she asked.

“Nope,” Leo said. “There’s nothing going on at work today that needs my attention.”

“Want to get some coffee? Breakfast? There’s a good place nearby. I just have to drop the dog off at home.”

“I could do that,” Leo said.

“Excellent.” She smiled at him and then looked down at the dog. “C’mon, Rupert,” she said. “Let’s show our friend where you live.” As they turned to leave, she stopped and pointed to Bea’s leather satchel sitting on the bench. “Is that yours?” she asked.

Leo looked at the brown leather case. He remembered buying it, how proud he’d been when he bargained the seller in London down to less than half the listed price. When he got the thing home, he decided it was a little on the twee side, a little too uptown, so he’d given it to Bea. “That is definitely not mine,” he said, relieved to note his ebbing anxiety, his elevated mood. He probably shouldn’t leave the case sitting there. But then he saw Paul Underwood approaching from less than a block away, right on schedule, set to arrive at the bench precisely at 8:55 A.M., as he did every weekday. Leo dropped his cigarette and ground it beneath his heel. He was doing everyone a favor by getting out of town, he thought. People abandoned one another constantly without performing the courtesy of actually disappearing. They left but they didn’t, lurking about, a constant reminder of what could or should or might have been. Not him.

“You think it’s okay to just leave it there?” she asked.

Leo looked at the satchel again and then back at Paul, who’d seen him and raised a hand in recognition. “Sure,” Leo said. “If it’s important, whoever left it will come back. Okay, Rupert,” he said to the dog, clapping his hands. “Lead the way.”





CHAPTER THIRTY


Let me do the talking,” Vinnie said, sitting at Matilda’s kitchen table and paging through her contacts, looking for Leo’s name.

“It’ll go straight to voice mail,” she said. “I’m telling you.”

If it was possible, Vinnie was even more pissed to learn that Matilda had called Leo Plumb after the night he’d brought over the mirror, after they’d argued. “I thought about what you said,” she told him. “I decided maybe you were right.” She had dialed Leo’s number a few times, she finally confessed to Vinnie, but it always went straight to voice mail and she didn’t want to leave a message.

“We’ll dial all night if we have to.” He touched the screen and put the phone on speaker and, as Matilda predicted, the computer-generated voice mail came on. Vinnie disconnected and hit redial. This time, after only two rings, someone answered. A woman. Vinnie and Matilda were momentarily stunned.

“Hello,” they both said at once.

“Hello?” the woman said.

Vinnie held a hand up, signaling for Matilda to be quiet. She shook her head and pointed to herself. She could do this. Vinnie nodded at her. Go, he mouthed.

“My name is Matilda Rodriguez.” Silence. She cleared her throat and leaned closer to the phone sitting on the table to make sure her voice could be heard. “And I would like to speak to Leo Plumb.”

“That makes two of us,” Stephanie said.





CHAPTER THIRTY–ONE


Melody’s birthday was usually a grim-weather affair occurring when it did, in the waning days of February. New York in February was still weeks away from any sustained sun or morning birdsong or tender plant shoots breaking through the mottled dirt. The holidays and New Year celebrations were already a distant memory, as diminished as the lingering, soot-covered curbside snowpack that would finally melt under a gloomy March rain only to expose neat little piles of desiccated dog shit.

But every so often, like the day of her fortieth birthday, the weather gods would smile upon Melody and lift the hem of the jet stream just far enough north to create a brilliant preview of spring, embryonically warm and inviting. It was the kind of day that can fool the crocuses into blooming too soon and the twentysomething denizens of New York into baring their winter-white legs and walking down the recently salted pavement in arch-destroying flip-flops, dirtying the bottoms of their feet still tender and pink from months of being coddled by socks and boots and sheepskin slippers.

Heading south on the Taconic, a furious Walt was driving exactly four miles above the speed limit; the mood in the car was tense. After Melody’s absurd counteroffer and her subsequent refusal to budge, the two potential buyers for their house became impatient and moved on. When Walter discovered her deception, he was more dumbfounded than enraged. He was about to call Vivienne Rubin to reopen negotiations when the promising e-mail from Leo had arrived. Melody managed to convince him to wait until after her birthday dinner.