someone got married in here today and the happy couple left all the floral arrangements behind.
“Wow,” Paisley says.
“These are beautiful, Emilia. Are you hosting another event?”
“Actually, Anna,” she replies, voice tight, “these are for you.”
Emilia sends Paisley upstairs to get ready for bed, to a chorus of protests. I promise to run up to say good night once I’m done talking to Emilia, a rarity since it’s far past the regular Clovelly Cottage dinnertime—and Paisley’s bedtime. She vanishes up the stairs.
“A young man named Max Adler stopped by while you were out today,” Emilia says. “You know you’re perfectly welcome to go out or have guests over outside work hours, but he arrived with two other friends, who he seemed to have recruited to carry floral arrangements, right in the middle of a client call. It was disruptive.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, heat flooding my cheeks. “I had no idea he was coming over. I barely know the guy, and I haven’t heard from him in weeks. I don’t know how he even found me here.”
Emilia’s face softens. “Men will go to great lengths in their pursuit of a beautiful woman.” She gives me a small smile.
“I’m really sorry,” I repeat. “Honestly, after the way we left things, I never thought I’d hear from him again. I’ll let him know he can’t show up here unannounced like that.”
“I overreacted,” Emilia says, eyes drifting up the stairs after Paisley. She lowers her voice. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. Things have been … difficult … with Tom this summer. The flowers touched a nerve.”
I swallow, mind retracing Tom’s sometimes furtive behavior over the past few weeks. I’ve been so focused on other things, I haven’t given Tom a lot of thought, but looking at Emilia’s pained face, it hits me that maybe something is going on between him and Joan Spanos. Emilia has acted a little strange every time the topic of Zoe’s mom has come up. Maybe I should have told her about seeing Tom’s car when he said he was at the office late that first week, and about the person who called looking for him the other night.
“Is something going on with Mrs. Spanos?” I ask, heat crawling up my neck.
“With Tom and Joan?” Emilia bursts out laughing. I slip my foot out of my sandal and scratch my big toe against my ankle. I’m not sure what’s so funny. “No, honey,” Emilia says, recovering herself. “When I was just a couple years older than you—this was years before I met Tom—I had my first graphic design internship at Joan’s magazine. She and I were involved for a bit. I guess you could say Joan was my first love. She was separated from her husband at the time, but they got back together, and Joan and I fell out of touch.”
“Oh!” My mind flashes to the photo I found in the back of Emilia’s desk when I was rooting around for flash drives. Emilia was young; she had her arm wrapped around an older woman with dark, waist-length hair. Joan Spanos—that’s why she looked so familiar the other night.
“Anyway, that’s ancient history,” Emilia says after a minute. “Tom’s not … it’s not an affair. At first, I thought he was seeing someone else. We fought about it over the Fourth. But it’s not that. Work has been hard; the company’s struggling. The partners reduced his client load by half at the start of the summer. He was too embarrassed to tell me.” She sighs and runs a hand along the marble tabletop.
“I didn’t realize,” I say after a minute. So that’s why Tom’s been avoiding the office. “You thought the flowers were from him?”
She straightens back up. “It was silly of me to get upset. As I’m sure you’re already figuring out, relationships are rarely easy.”
“Can I ask you something?” I say after a minute. “Did you recognize that guy Max today?”
Emilia frowns. “I don’t think so. Not that I can recall, anyway. Why?”
“We met him at the aquarium; he works there. Paisley seemed to know him from somewhere, so I was just curious.”
Emilia shakes her head back and forth, brown bob swishing. “He didn’t seem familiar, but Paisley has sharp eyes.” She smiles. “Now, do you want help carrying these to the pool house?”
I stare at the lavish bouquets, but all I can see is Max’s face twisted into an ugly scowl when I shoved him off me on Montauk. “They look so beautiful in the