grudge are you holding against me?”
“Nice to hear from you, too. What the hell’s your problem now?”
“I want to know just how bad you’re feeling against me. Because I didn’t give you that letter. You didn’t get the job.”
“Damn, you think well of yourself. I got a raft of letters, from scholars who…how shall I put this? Have a lot more pull in the field than you do. I decided not to take the job because it wasn’t a good fit.”
That was a lie, I was sure of it. “Still. You don’t like it when things don’t go your way.”
“Can you name one person who does like it when things don’t go their way?”
“So what’s the deal with you and Noreen McAllister? Why is she lurking around Caldwell College?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Ask Noreen. If you haven’t got anything important to discuss—”
“Oh, trust me when I say this is important. You’re not having an affair with her?”
“That is none of your damned business.”
“Sounds like a ‘yes’ to me.”
“As a matter of fact, it wasn’t. I’m not, not that it’s any of your business, either. What’s this all about?”
“And where have you been all summer? Any little trips to Maine or Massachusetts I should know about?”
“I’m going to hang up now. You take care, Emma. And you can look under ‘Psychotherapists’ or ‘Psychologists’ in the yellow pages, okay?”
I hung up before he could. Well, that didn’t go nearly as well as I’d hoped. Duncan sounded confused, surprised, a lot of things, but not like he’d been expecting my call. Not like he had something to hide.
He was good at concealment, though, there was no one who knew it better than I. I made a few calls to his department and found out he’d been away for days at a time. Couldn’t rule him off the list, but I had nothing else to pin on him either. I clenched my hands, wishing there was something more I could do, anything, to stop feeling so powerless. So off balance. Crazed.
Downstairs, the kitchen screen door slammed; I couldn’t hear it, but I recognized the vibration. After a couple of years, I’d learned all the creaks, noises, and shudders of the old house and where they were. My computer beeped, and small screen popped up.
“I’m home,” Brian IM’d.
“K, brd,” I responded. Okay, I’ll be right down.
“CCOS,” he typed. “Caution, Cats on Stairs” was a joke with us, after having discovered the hard way that both cats played on the stairs. “What dinner?”
“Don’t care,” I typed back. “Not hungry.”
Chapter 12
THE DAY OF MEG’S WEDDING THE SATURDAY BEFORE Labor Day was gorgeous, sunny, and warm. We were lucky to be down on the lawn overlooking the harbor at the Chandler site. We got there early, about 9:30, ostensibly to help Meg, who’d been on ‘red alert’ for the past week; I wanted to keep an eye on things.
Brian and I had already argued about clothes once that morning, when he’d announced that if he was going to suffer in the heat with a noose and shoes, then I wasn’t allowed to go with dress pants and flats. Now I was wearing a floral print silk dress, vaguely 1930s in appearance with its short sleeves and narrow silhouette. My shoes, strappy sandals, seemed to be made for sitting. I’d thought a pair of flat shoes and trousers would be more serviceable if someone tried something at the wedding, but Brian refused to go if I didn’t wear the dress I’d bought for the occasion.
“So why is it that you’re not more worried about the wedding?” I asked, finally. “Why are you taking it so lightly, when you seem to be so anxious about everything else?”
“Because I’ll be there,” Brian said, as if that made all the sense in the world.
Maybe it did, for him, but it didn’t reassure me all that much. I bit back a hundred logical retorts, and found my purse.
We got there to find Meg had beaten us, and she was in a tizzy. Her dress was exquisite, even more lovely than it had seemed in my office—now that she had the appropriate foundation garments, and stockings now covered the legs that had been unshaved and scratched from fieldwork. Her hair was its usual platinum, but the spikes had been tamed beneath a small headdress, a golden crown of laurel leaves with a short veil. Two stray locks found their way up through the leaves, and the effect was altogether charming.