Overseas (35 page)

“Love sucks, huh?” Charlie said.

“No, it doesn’t.” I slipped the phone into my bag. “It’s wonderful. You should try it sometime.”

A grin flashed across his mouth. “I’ve got to admit, it’s working for you. Look at you, dude. All glowy and shit. Like, you are getting some sweet-ass lovin’ up there.”

“Okay,
thanks,
Charlie. That’ll do.”

He snorted. “You are, right? Man oh man. Dude’s a fucking stud.”

F
RANK WAS ON THE HOUSE PHONE
when I waltzed through the lobby of my apartment building, and he just about dropped the receiver. “Hold on a moment, please,” he said to the person on the other end. “Kate! Long time no see!”

“Hi, Frank. Just came by to pick up a few things. Is Brooke around?”

“Haven’t seen her leave. You still got your key?”

“Oh, yeah. Of course. See you later.”

He looked as if he wanted to say something more, but then gave a little shrug. “Let me know if you need something,” he said, and put the phone back to his ear.

No sign of Brooke in the living room, though her bedroom door was tightly closed. Sleeping it off, probably. I looked around, thinking about the last time I’d stood here, and everything that had happened since. “Wow,” I mumbled to myself, tossing the keys in the basket.

“Do you mind if I turn on your TV?” Charlie asked.

“Suit yourself. I’ll just go get my things,” I said, and went into my bedroom.

I’d left in a hurry. A few drawers were still askew, as though someone had slammed them shut in haste. The file boxes with my papers inside were still on top of the bed; how had I been so careless?

I frowned and went over. Strange. They looked as though they’d been rifled through.

I tried to remember exactly what I’d done that afternoon. It had passed in such a blur of activity and emotion, and everything overshadowed by what had come after, but still. I knew I hadn’t gone through my student
loan records, or my college transcripts, or my few old handwritten letters.

But clearly
someone
had.

Swiftly I stuffed the papers back in the file boxes and went to straighten the drawers of my bureau. I paused. A note had been taped to the mirror above, the scrawled handwriting barely legible.
Doctor called re missed
appt
.

Doctor’s appointment? How had I missed a doctor’s appointment?

Oh yeah. Because my calendar was in my old BlackBerry. Oh well. Reschedule that. It would be just about time to renew my Pill prescription…

Oh. Holy.
Crap
.

My fingers went cold. I sat down, trying to stop my brain from spinning. How long had it been? How the
freaking hell
long?

I’d left my overnight bag in the hall, with my travel kit inside. I walked back out in a daze to the living room, where Charlie was standing in front of the TV, watching CNBC. “Dude,” he said, not looking up, “the cameras are already camped outside. They had a shot of your guy a second ago, walking in.”

“Oh, really?” I picked up my bag and took it back into the bedroom and unzipped it. My travel kit sat at the bottom, under the bit of lacy underwear I’d packed, just in case.

I opened it up and began sifting, thorough and methodical. Yes, there it was. My round pink pill case. I always got the twenty-one-day pack, because I found it annoying to take the blank pills the other seven days, knowing they were just placeholders.

Except it was so easy to forget about starting the next pack that way. You just kind of… forgot. Got out of the habit. Especially when you were so dizzy in love, your brain wasn’t always functioning properly, anyway.

Okay, stay calm. When was my last period? Not that long ago, right?

The second week of August. I knew exactly, because it had ended with such perfect timing, the day before we sailed to Newport for the long-promised weekend away. I’d been free to indulge a sense of delicious naughtiness as Julian had slipped the key into the hotel room door, even
though I bore his ring on my finger, even though by August we were so wholly knit with one another that a marriage ceremony seemed a superfluous formality. Julian had booked us the most luxurious suite in the building, with champagne and chocolate truffles and ripe red strawberries cooling on the nightstand; he’d swung me into his arms and begun kissing me almost before the door had closed.

Yet my clearest memory of those few days came not from any particular encounter—the intensity of emotion blurred the details for me, in recollection—but during a tranquil hour late Saturday afternoon, as the honeyed sunlight slanted through the window onto Julian’s sleeping face.

I’d hardly ever seen him sleep. We drifted off together every night, and he always woke before I did, stealing away at dawn with one of his tender notes left behind on the pillow. So I’d watched him that afternoon with minute fascination. He’d slept on his stomach, an expression of utmost peace relaxing his features; his naked back, crossed by a white sheet just above the curve of his buttocks, rose and fell with the slow patient rhythm of his breathing. On his right forearm, lying palm-down alongside his face, I could just discern the erratic line of his scar as it trailed through the pale fine hair, glinting in the sun.

Thank you
, I’d prayed in wonder.
Thank you so very much. I’ll take good care of him, I promise.

Eventually I’d risen, reminded by our location of the dangling question of the mysterious book sender’s identity. Julian hadn’t ever pressed me on it, and after trying the phone number a few times and getting nothing but voice mail, I’d given up and moved on to far more agreeable activities. But it was still saved on my BlackBerry, and with Julian dozing peacefully away on the bed, I’d slipped away to the sitting room and tried again. It rang once, and then someone answered.

“Warwick,” he’d said gruffly.

I’d hung up.

Later that night, I’d settled into Julian’s arms and asked quietly, “Why didn’t you tell me it was Geoff Warwick who sent the book?”

He hadn’t answered at first, only stroked my arm the way he often did. Finally, after a long interval of silence, he’d kissed my temple and said, “Because he’s my closest friend, and I want you two to get along.”

“You should give me more credit.”

He’d let out a little snort. “To be perfectly honest, once I knew it wasn’t someone dangerous, it didn’t matter anymore. I more or less forgot about the whole thing.” He’d dropped his lips against the round ball of my bare shoulder. “Are you angry?”

“Sort of. Though I guess it’s ancient history now, isn’t it?” I’d turned in his arms and faced him. “But tell me next time, okay?”

He’d kissed my nose. “Okay.”

We’d gone to sleep, and left the next morning to sail back to Lyme.

Where I had
not
started a new month of pills.

I sat down on the bed now, staring at the empty case in my hand. No need to panic. Let’s see, statistics. Wasn’t there only one chance in ten per month, even without contraceptives? Or was it one in three? Holy crap. I put my hand on my belly. Surely not. And oh my God. Julian would kill me. Or no, he wouldn’t. He would probably be delighted at the excuse to haul me before the altar, posthaste. But I wouldn’t forgive myself, for trapping him like that.

How the hell had I forgotten? Just
forgotten
? Just like that? All freaking
month
? Me, so organized and methodical? Were my brains that scrambled? The thought had never once entered my head:
Gosh, Kate, have we been taking our pills lately?
Never once. Almost like I’d
wanted
to get pregnant. As if I’d been in the grip of some sort of brazen subconscious urge.

No. Impossible.

My fingers began to shake. What was today? August twenty-ninth, right? How many days was that? I tried to count and gave up. Enough that the deed, if it
was
done, was already done. So just wait. Forget about it for a week, until I could find out for sure. Too much other stuff to worry about.

I stood up and began to throw things into my overnight bag. Some shoes I’d missed. My favorite headscarf for bad hair days. A few shirts.
Jeans. Then I zipped up the bag, shoved the file boxes back under the bed, and walked back out to the living room.

“Dude, this is wild,” Charlie said, still staring at the TV screen. “Bartiromo’s out there, trying to interview people. They keep showing the clip of Laurence walking into the building. Look, there it is again.”

I squinted at the screen and saw Julian, his dark blond hair gleaming in the TV lights, dressed in a navy suit and red Hermès tie, striding confidently into the revolving doors with a brief wave to the phalanx of reporters screaming questions at him. Terribly photogenic. No wonder they kept replaying it.

“What are they saying?” I forced myself to ask. To even care.

“The big question is whether they let it fail or not.” Charlie folded his arms.

“Fail?” That penetrated the mist. “
Fail?
For real?” I’d tossed the concept around before, of course, but without truly believing it. Without thinking Sterling Bates, the august and admired Sterling Bates, would actually and for real blow up. It was unthinkable. Had Alicia really done that? Had one thoughtless petty vengeful bitch brought down
Sterling
Bates
?

“Yeah, that’s what they’re saying,” Charlie said. “Gasparino was on a second ago, talking about Southfield—well, not naming it, just saying ‘certain hedge funds’—and the rumors that it had, you know, put Sterling Bates in the crapper with those bad assets. The whole SEC complaint they filed in May, all that shit. He was like, ‘and there’s Julian Laurence, head of Southfield Associates, walking into the building, wonder what that’s about…’” Charlie shook his head. “Don’t let him off the hook, dude. Get the full story. Work your wiles. This is, like, historic.”

Historic. My spine felt cold. “Okay.” I cleared my throat. “I have all my stuff here. Should we bail?”

Charlie looked over at me. “What’s that? Oh, yeah, sure,” he said, picking up the remote and switching off the TV. “Where are we going?”

“I guess we’ll just head over to Julian’s house, if that’s okay.”

“Sure. I’m just the bodyguard. Can I, like, take your bag?”

We walked down Lexington, weaving through the swarm of sidewalk traffic, until we reached Seventy-fourth Street and Julian’s townhouse. I reached into my bag for the key and couldn’t find it. “Hold on,” I said, taking the bag from Charlie and setting it down on the stoop. “It’s here somewhere. Probably at the bottom.” I began to rummage, looking for the envelope he’d given me all those months ago.

“Hey, dude,” Charlie said quietly, “I hate to, like, feed the paranoia or anything, but there
is
a guy hanging out at the corner over there. He just kind of looked over here.”

“What?” I exclaimed, straightening.

“See? Corner of Park.”

I glanced over in time to see a male figure disappear around the corner of the apartment building at the end of the block. “Are you sure, Charlie? He just left.”

“Dude, he was standing there watching us, I swear it.”

“Well, he’s gone now.”

“Do you want me to go check?”

“You’re taking this bodyguard stuff pretty seriously, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, well, I don’t want the big guy coming after me if you get ’napped. He’d fucking kill me, right?”

“Look, the man took off, so don’t worry about it. Here’s the key. I’ve got the alarm code.”

We went inside, to the warm woodsy-plaster smell of an old house left empty all summer. I looked down the hall. It was all exactly as I remembered it. I’d stood right here last Christmas, when Julian had asked to see more of me, and stroked his finger along my jaw. I covered the skin with my hand.

“Nice place,” Charlie said. “Good work, Wilson.”

“Yeah, thanks.” I went to the living room to look out the window at the street corner.

A man stood there, leaning against the apartment building, talking intently on his cell phone and staring at Julian’s front door.

20.

I holed up obediently with Charlie all day, except for one brief trip for some basic groceries, watching CNBC on the computer and trying to figure out what was happening. No new information was coming out of the meeting, so the screen was full of endless replays of Julian walking into the Sterling Bates building and various market insiders speculating on what might be taking place inside.

As dinnertime approached, I sent Julian a message.
Are you coming home tonight? What’s going on? Your picture’s been on CNBC all day
today.

He fired back quickly.
Won’t make dinner tonight.
Will certainly be home for a few hours’ sleep. Don’t wait
up.

I looked up at Charlie. “I think he’s tired. And maybe cranky.”

“Your problem,” he yawned, “not mine. Dude, is this okay for Per Se?’

I looked at him. He was wearing a respectable button-down shirt and khakis, but no tie. “Don’t know. Never been there. Maybe you could borrow a tie from upstairs.”

He frowned. “Would that be okay?”

“If he’s mad, it’s on me, okay?” I got up and went upstairs, taking my overnight bag with me. I knew Julian’s bedroom must be in the rear, because I’d already visited the piano room at the front. Remembering, I felt the color rise in my cheeks.

I thumped my bag down the hall and opened the door. I was right. This was definitely his room. Dark spare furniture, white bedding. I stuck my bag in the corner and looked for Julian’s closet. Only one door, other than
the entry: I opened it, and saw it led down a short hall, lined on both sides with paneled wardrobe doors, to the bathroom. He wouldn’t mind, would he? I wasn’t going to snoop. Just find a tie.

Of course he wouldn’t mind. He’d want me to. I could hear his voice in my head, impatient:
Kate, for goodness’ sake, it’s your home
now.

I opened one door and saw, to my surprise, it was completely empty. I frowned and tried the one next to it: also empty. Another one, fitted with drawers this time. Empty. The whole side, nothing but hanger rails and drawers and empty space, smelling of paint and sawn wood, never used.