He studied her face, though she couldn’t tell what he was looking for. A sign that she’d just fibbed? She wished he’d just leave already.
“Okay, then,” he said coolly after a moment. He reached for the door handle—and then hesitated. “Are you coming?”
“What do you mean?” she asked. It was as if his whole visit was some mind game meant to drive her nuts.
“You said you had to go back to your clients’.”
She remembered her earlier lie. “I do. But I have a call to return first.”
After he’d left, she leaned for a moment in relief against the foyer wall. Then she hurried down to her bedroom and swung open the closet door. His old black suitcase was exactly where it had been, though slightly askew from having been put back haphazardly. She surveyed the room. She’d totally changed the bedroom a month ago, making it all white and spare, far different from what it had been when Jack had shared the space with her. But it was less than tidy today, with a few items scattered on the low dresser—a Starbucks receipt, a clipping she’d torn from the Wall Street Journal. She walked over and glanced at them. She was pretty sure they had been moved. Jack had snooped around.
Kicking off her shoes, she fell back onto the bed. Everything right now seemed Kafkaesque to her—Jack’s behavior, Keaton’s death. She thought of her lie about using the house in the Catskills. The kids’ camp was only twenty-five minutes from the house, but her plan had been to drive all the way to the camp from Manhattan and return to the city later that day. She had avoided going to the house all summer, mainly because of what was happening with Jack—she was afraid of memories. But maybe it would do her good to be there. The house had always been a refuge for her, and it might be exactly what she needed right now. Nothing there could conjure up Keaton and the horrible mess she was in. It would be great for Smokey to poke around outdoors. And there was no reason she couldn’t leave right now.
It took her only a half hour to pull everything together for the trip. She gathered her folders and her laptop, with the hope of working on her presentation at some point during the weekend. She packed the cooler with a small steak from her freezer and a fresh head of lettuce. As usual, Smokey resisted the carrying case, so she spent a few minutes gently easing him inside.
“You’re gonna get to be outside tonight, Smokey boy,” she told him. “Won’t that be nice?”
Ten minutes later, as she waited for the garage attendant to bring her car around, she considered how escaping the city would put her out of the loop with people at the clinic, who’d be among the first to hear news about the murder investigation. Cell service was spotty where she was headed, so if someone decided to call her, it might be impossible to get through. After pondering this for a few minutes, she called the clinic and asked for Maggie.
“I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be at my house in the Catskills this weekend,” Lake told her. “The cell service around Roxbury is bad so I thought I’d give you my number up there—in case you want to reach me.”
“Is one of the doctors supposed to call you?” Maggie asked.
“Um, no—I just thought it would be good for you to have it. You know, in case someone needed me.”
“Okay,” she said obligingly. “But I’m sure it won’t be necessary. Since we have no transfers today, Dr. Levin is sending everyone home at lunchtime. He thought we all needed the break.”
Lake also left a message on Molly’s voice mail, telling her about her plans and that she would catch up with her later.
The traffic north was heavy and aggravating, though Lake managed to make the first part of the trip in just over two hours. When she finally pulled off the highway for the last leg—along several rural highways up through the Catskill Mountains—she felt a rush of pleasure override her anxiety. In her mind there had never been a better word to describe the landscape up there than piney—endless fir trees hugging the mountains that rose steeply from the road. The temperature was seven or eight degrees cooler here than in the city, and she rolled down the window to breathe in the