you can touch it.”
You hesitate. A frown creases your brow.
“It’s not as fragile as it looks,” you are assured.
You run your fingertips over the glass. The falcon appears poised to take flight with a beat of its wings; the piece embodies coiled, dynamic tension.
“It’s his favorite bird. Their exceptional visual acuity enables them to identify the presence of prey through the slightest ripple of grass in a verdant landscape.”
“I’m sure he’ll love it,” you say.
You hesitate. Then: “I didn’t know you were married.”
When a response is not immediately offered, your cheeks redden.
“I always watch you take notes with your left hand and I’ve never seen you wear a wedding ring before,” you say.
“Ah. You’re very observant. A stone was loose, so it needed to be fixed.”
This is not the truth, but while you have vowed to be scrupulously honest, no similar promise has been made to you.
The ring was removed after Thomas confessed to his affair. For a variety of reasons it is back on.
The falcon is returned to the bag, the tissue paper nestled around it once again. It will be personally delivered to Thomas’s new rental apartment, the one he moved into a few months ago, tonight.
It isn’t a special occasion. At least not one that he knows about. He will experience surprise.
Sometimes an exquisite gift is actually a vessel utilized to issue a warning shot.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
Thursday, December 6
I freeze up when Dr. Shields tucks the sculpture back into the bag and says that is all she needs from me today.
I’m so thrown I can’t remember the exact wording of my question, but I plunge ahead anyway.
“Oh, I was just wondering . . .” I begin. My voice comes out a little higher than normal. “All the stuff I’ve been telling you, is that going to be used in one of your papers? Or—”
Before I can continue she interrupts, something she has never done before.
“Everything you’ve shared with me will remain confidential, Jessica,” she says. “I never release the files of my clients under any circumstances.”
Then she tells me not to worry, that I’ll still be paid the usual amount.
She bows her head to look at the package again and I feel dismissed.
I simply say, “Okay . . . thank you.”
I walk across the carpet, my footsteps swallowed by the delicately patterned carpet, and take a last glance back at her before I close the door behind me.
She is backlit by the window, and the low sunlight turns her hair the color of fire. Her periwinkle turtleneck sweater and silk skirt skim her long, lithe body. She is completely motionless.
The vision almost makes my breath catch in my throat.
I exit the building and walk down the sidewalk toward the subway, thinking about how I put together a few clues—Dr. Shields’s missing wedding band, the empty chair across from her in the French restaurant, and the possibility of her wiping away a tear—and formed an assumption. I thought that her husband might be dead, similarly to how I misread signals and inferred Mrs. Graham’s husband was alive.
As I descend the subway steps and wait on the platform, I glance at the guys around me, trying to imagine the kind of man Dr. Shields would marry. I wonder if he is tall and fit, like her. Just a few years older, probably, with thick blondish hair and the kind of eyes that crinkle in the corners when he smiles. He’s still boyishly handsome, but he doesn’t inspire double takes the way she does.
I can see him having grown up on the East Coast, then attending an elite boarding school. Exeter, maybe, followed by Yale. That could be where they met. He’s the type to know his way around a sailboat and a golf course, but he isn’t a snob.
She would choose someone more gregarious than she is. He’d offset her reserved, quiet nature, and she’d rein him in if he had a few too many beers and got rowdy during a poker game with the guys.
I wonder if it’s his birthday, or if they’re just one of those romantic couples who like to surprise each other with thoughtful presents.
Of course, I could have gotten it all wrong again.
That thought grips my mind as the subway car screeches to a stop.
What if I got something much more important wrong than the details about Dr. Shields’s husband?
In no universe does it make sense that Dr. Shields just paid me three hundred dollars to run a quick errand. Maybe it wasn’t a simple errand