on his face. It took me a moment to register that Brad, from Maine, was on my doorstep in Boston. It felt incongruous, like seeing a man in a tuxedo at a country fair.
“Ted,” he said, and he sounded a little breathless, “I’m glad you’re here. Can we talk?”
“Of course,” I said, undoing the chain and opening the door. “Come on in.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. There was no good reason for Brad to come all the way from Maine to see me. He was halfway into the house and I pushed slightly against the door, stopping his progress. “Brad, what are you doing here?”
“Just let me in, Ted. I’ll explain.” His voice quivered, and I could smell the booze on his breath. Our eyes met, and I was suddenly scared. I pushed a little harder against the door, but Brad wasn’t moving. He fumbled in his jacket pocket and I looked down at the gun he had removed. “Let me in, Ted,” he repeated, and I stepped back as Brad entered my house.
CHAPTER 14
LILY
“Addison, what’s the matter?” I asked.
“Fucking Nolan,” she said, and came through the door, following me down the stairs. She was brushing rain from her coat, spatters of it striking the back of my head.
“You two have a fight?” I asked as we entered our flat.
She looked at me, wiping tears off her cheeks with the palms of her hand. “He has a girlfriend back at TCU. A serious girlfriend.”
“Shit,” I said. “How’d you find out?”
Addison told me how she’d gone onto his computer and read his e-mails, and how he confessed to everything, telling her that he’d been meaning to tell her about Linda, but at first he thought that they—Addison and him—were just having a fling, and now he didn’t know. I half-listened, opening a bottle of wine and pouring Addison a glass, but my mind was frantically trying to figure out what to do when Eric returned. Should I abandon the whole plan, telling Eric that I was pretty sure the chicken korma had cashews in it, or should I allow it to play out, with Addison as a witness? In some ways, having Addison here might be better. She would back up my story—that a drunk Eric mistakenly ate Indian food that had cashews in it, and that we couldn’t immediately find his EpiPen. But there were also so many ways that it could go wrong with Addison here. She could call for an ambulance that might get here in time. She could notice that Eric’s EpiPen was not where he thought it was. And if Eric asked about the chicken korma—whether or not it had nuts in it, then I couldn’t lie in front of her. And, most important, it wasn’t fair to Addison to let her watch Eric die from anaphylactic shock. I decided it was off.
“Wait. Where’s Eric? Didn’t his plane make it here?” Addison asked, her head swiveling around our small flat as though he were here and she had somehow missed him.
“You know that pub challenge at the Bottle and Glass?”
“The ten-pint thing?”
I told her about Eric insisting he could do it, and I told her how I got hungry and sick of waiting for him, and just took off.
“I guess neither of us is having a good night with our men.”
“Well, I’ll live,” I said. “You’re the one who got screwed over. What are you going to do about it?”
Before Addison could answer, the door buzzed again. “That’s Eric,” I said. “Prepare yourself. He’s going to be smashed.”
“Lily, I’ll just leave. I totally forgot he was coming in tonight.” Addison stood, snatching her purse from the kitchen table.
“Not a chance. You stay here.”
I climbed the stairs again, bracing myself for a drunk Eric, but when I opened the door it wasn’t Eric standing there, but Nolan, his eyes red-rimmed from crying. “Ah, the bigamist,” I said, and he gave me a confused look.
“Is she here?” Nolan was tall and skinny with bright red ears. His close-cropped hair was an almost-white blond and he wore a puka necklace tight around his neck.
“She’s here,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean she wants to see you. You wait here and I’ll go check.”
I left Nolan on the stoop and went back downstairs. Addison was refilling her wineglass. “Guess who’s here?”
“Who?” She looked genuinely puzzled.
“Nolan. I left him upstairs. You want me to send him away?”