himself to her, and the darkness moving through him lightened. She seemed distracted, stiff, so he ran his hand over her silk blouse until he felt her nipple harden and then moved his tongue the way she liked, lightly across her lip first and then harder, more probing, until he felt her relax against him.
“No fair,” she said, softly, pulling away. “I have to go to work.” Stephanie knew she had to stop procrastinating and tell Leo what was going on. Tonight, she figured, was as good as any night. “Maybe I’ll leave early today.”
“Sounds good,” he said.
She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Bea,” she said, grabbing her bag. “Don’t forget.”
AFTER STEPHANIE LEFT, he made another pot of coffee. For the first time in weeks, he didn’t have any desire to open his computer. Go to his “office.” Do work. The thought of sitting and looking out the small back window to the dreary quilt of adjacent brown yards was depressing. His phone vibrated on the counter. He picked it up to see the incoming call. There it was, again. Matilda Rodriguez. He dimly remembered insisting on getting her number the night of the accident and texting her repeatedly when she was still back in the kitchen getting her things before they headed for the car. She wasn’t supposed to call. He was going to have to talk to George. It wasn’t only Matilda he was avoiding; Jack was sending daily e-mails about a dinner party for Melody’s birthday, and Melody had left a handful of messages asking to have lunch. “Just the two of us. It’s urgent.”
Something here is not right.
He went upstairs and found Bea’s leather bag on the bookshelf where he’d left it, back when he believed he had more important things in play. Maybe the story would be good. Maybe he’d have something useful to say about it. He tried to settle his troubled brain and concentrate on the first few paragraphs. It was about some guy named Marcus. (Leo was surprised to feel a flicker of disappointment that it wasn’t an Archie story.) Some guy named Marcus. A wedding. A caterer. A car. Leo’s pulse started to race. He flipped through more quickly as words floated off the pages, headlights, severed limb, emergency room, suture. “Tomelo, Mami,” he read. “Take it.” Christ. He turned back to the first page again. The story was about his accident. The story was about him.
CHAPTER TWENTY–EIGHT
The night Stephanie was planning to tell Leo she was pregnant—but didn’t—she came home to find him wearing the same clothes as when she’d left that morning, including the T-shirt he’d slept in. He was apoplectic about Bea’s story. He must have started reading right after she left and then spent the rest of the day working himself into his Leo lather. It took her a good five minutes to calm him down enough to understand what was happening, that the story was about his accident and about someone who had been hurt during the accident in ways that Leo was not calm enough—or willing—to explain.
“Did you kill someone?” she finally asked. In the seconds before he answered she was sure that he had, sure that the wild terror she saw in his eyes was because he had to tell her that he’d gotten behind the wheel, inebriated and high, and committed involuntary manslaughter but had somehow gotten off the hook. But he hadn’t. A severe injury was all he would say, something that was bad but had also been taken care of and if Bea published this story, he insisted, the truth would be out and everyone who had it in for him would not hold back—all this came out in one invective, evasive stream; it was a lot for Stephanie to take in.
Leo stood in front of her, shaking the pages. “This is bullshit!” he said. “It’s an Archie story!”
“It is?” Stephanie was surprised. An Archie story. Interesting. “Is it any good?”
“Are you kidding me? That’s not the point!” He threw the pages on the table and a couple of the sheets slowly drifted to the floor. He stepped on one, tearing the paper under his heel. “She’s pretending it’s not an Archie story—she gave the character a different name—but it is. It’s about last summer and there is no way on earth she is going to fucking publish that story.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“No, not yet. I’m not sure I ever want to talk to Bea again.”