The Other Widow (22 page)

“
Really?
” Edward looks her straight in the eye across the table. “Odd, since Joe was the one who
okayed
the orders. That said, there were some questionable—” He clears his throat, sits back in his chair. He pushes his plate to the edge of the table; he's barely touched the food. “I confronted Joe on the phone,” he says, “the day before his accident. I told him we had to discuss a few things when he got back—Rhode Island, I think it was—and he agreed. We planned to get together and go over all my questions as soon as he was in town, only . . .”

“Yes,” Karen says. “Inconvenient, his accident. So what are you saying, exactly?”

“I'm
saying
that at this point I'm trying to find answers. I've even locked the staff out of the accounting program until I figure out what the hell is going on. I loved Joe, too, Karen. He was my best friend for my entire adult life. Since college. Please remember that.”

“I'm aware,” Karen says. She folds her napkin into a small triangle and sets it on the table. “I just don't see the problem with the company. We had a profit of nearly two million dollars last year!”

“Those numbers are only the tip of an extremely optimistic iceberg,” Edward says. “Dessert?” Karen shakes her head, and Edward wipes his mouth, tosses his napkin on the table. “The costs are barely touched on in those spreadsheets. You don't really understand, and Joe—hell.”

He lifts his hand in the air and the waiter hurries toward their table. “You aren't seeing the whole picture here. Check,” he says, and Karen's barely grabbed her bag before they're back outside, shivering on the sidewalk. Edward leans over and gives her a little hug. Karen looks at him, his haggard face, and she remembers how much she has always liked him, what a good friend he's been to both her and Joe—to the whole family, recalls the time Jon got arrested for driving without a license at the age of fifteen. He hadn't called home—the first person he had thought to phone was Uncle Edward.

The hug lasts a tiny bit longer than it should; Edward's arms around her are uncomfortably tight. Karen moves back a step or two and notices again that Edward's face is deathly pale, his cheeks sunken—the man looks absolutely haunted.

“I'm here,” he says. “I'm here for you, Karen. No matter what. Always loved you. Always will.” He smiles, gives her arm a little pat. Friendly, but not romantic. Not Edward. He saw her once with Tomas. “This is Tomas, our mechanic,” she'd told Edward. “He's given me a ride to town so I can keep my date with Alice.” It was a Wednesday, so she was meeting Alice later, but it was a lie about the ride. Her car was actually up the street in the parking garage. “Joe told me you guys found a good mechanic,” Edward had said. “In fact, he's convinced me to switch. Planning to take my car there for a tune-up.” But he'd looked uncomfortable. Jealous, maybe, she thinks now. He never mentioned their encounter, but after that, she'd wondered if he believed her or if he thought she and Tomas were having an affair. Did Edward tell Joe about their chance meeting, validate Joe's hiding Tomas's letter?

“Take care of yourself, Ed.” She reaches up, gives him a little peck on the cheek.

“You, too,” he says. “It isn't easy for either of us. Joe was such a big part of—” His voice breaks. He puts up his hand in a halfhearted wave, and walks away.

“Wait,” she calls, and Edward stops. “That twit Dorrie,” Karen says. “Fire her!”

Edward stares at her across the squares of pavement between them. “No,” he says, finally. “This sounds personal, Karen. She's good at her job, and without Joe, we need everyone we've . . . No, Karen,” he says again, and he turns on his heel and heads off down the sidewalk.

Well, shit.

On the way to her car, Karen hears the little dinging sound of a text message. She looks at her phone. Alice. For a second she allows herself to feel a pang of disappointment that it's not Tomas, a pang of regret that he's decided to back away, even if that's what she wanted, even if she's told him this a thousand times. “Hello?” she says. “Hello, Alice?” Sometimes Karen thinks the chance for anything to happen with Tomas has come and gone, or maybe wasn't ever there at all. He came into her life when she needed something, anything to keep her from disappearing, from being sucked inside the backdrop of her boring suburban neighborhood or the cold concrete of Boston—to make her feel, for that moment, that she sparkled, that she, too, could shine. And maybe that was all it was. And maybe that's enough.

XXVI

DORRIE

T
he new receptionist is out, and, considering her obvious difficulties with the phones, it occurs to Dorrie that Molly—or is it Maureen?—might never come back. Francine, too, has taken the day off, or at least the morning. “I might pop in for a few hours in the afternoon,” she said, phoning Dorrie on her cell. “Nothing much for me to do at work these days, aside from tweaking my Parisian itinerary, what with Edward's takeover.”

Dorrie has been left to answer calls. No promises, she's told Francine; she'll do her best.

“It isn't rocket science,” Francine snorted, “despite the new temp's issues.”

“I guess not,” she said. “It's just the whole logistics of the thing.” But there haven't been many calls at all this morning, and those that have come in she's managed to reroute to her own office. It's productive, if extremely boring, being in the office on her own. Len, from IT, is somewhere in back, but he's such a misanthrope, she barely knows him, even after all this time. It's boring, but she's managed to make headway with her backlog of paperwork, returned most of her clients' calls.

When the phone rings at ten thirty, it feels as if she's been at work alone for days, and Dorrie nearly jogs up the plushy hall to the front desk. She starts to answer in a businessy, generic voice, but then she puts on a thick British accent—another role, just before Christmas at the Colonial on Boylston. “Yes. Hello,” she says. “Might I be of service?” It's still a part of her, the accent. When a play ends, Dorrie can call up the character for ages afterward.

“Who is this?” Edward sounds confused.

“Dorrie,” she says. “Sorry, Edward. I was just—I was practicing. For a play I'm in.
Will
be in. At the—”

“I have news,” he says, and he sounds almost gleeful. “Jeananne's hit-and-run? The driver has come forward. Turned himself in.”

Dorrie sinks into the receptionist's chair. “Oh my.
Really?
That is so—that's—I am so glad to hear that. When?” she says. “Who was it?”

“This morning. And it was a teenager. Some fifteen-year-old kid. Took his mother's car without her permission. Grabbed the extra key and stole her car from the parking garage where she worked. Right near the office as a matter of fact. Rounded the corner too fast—waayyyy too fast—put on the brake, but it was too late. Smacked right into Jeananne. Said his conscience got to him in the end, but my bets are on the mother finding out and making him turn himself in to the—”

“Still. I am—
so
relieved, Edward. Thank you for calling.”

“Spread the word,” he says, “and hold the fort!” He hangs up, leaving Dorrie with an earful of bad clichés.

So it wouldn't have mattered what coat Jeananne was wearing.

Thank you, God!

Back at her desk, Dorrie sits for a minute, letting it sink in, this new information about what happened to Jeananne. If she was wrong about the hit-and-run, could she be wrong about what happened on the night of Joe's accident? Did she only
think
she was being followed? Did she just imagine, in her fragile state, that someone tried to run her down? Her lover had just died in front of her. And who knew what shape her brain was in at that point, after the damn airbag whacked her in the head. And the cold. Was she even fully aware of what was going on around her or was she bordering on shock? If so, how accurate was her take on what happened?

But there were the phone calls. There were the texts. There isn't any question about that.

And there were Joe's last words to her.
It isn't safe.

No. She is both grateful and relieved that Jeananne's accident was just that—a random hit-and-run, a stupid, frightened teenager unused to navigating corners—but this knowledge doesn't change what happened on the night Joe died. It doesn't make Dorrie any safer.

She brings her e-mail up on her computer and looks again at Joe's last message, the e-mail he sent on the day he died. Is that why he dragged her out on a night when everyone else was huddled inside, stretched across their couches, watching old movies on Turner? He was trying to tell her something as they rounded that corner, as he struggled to keep the Audi on the road. Did it have something to do with this? With this baffling e-mail?

She pulls up the company's site and tries to remember Joe's password. He'd changed it on a Tuesday afternoon while they were together somewhere in town. A pub. It was months ago and he'd just begun to train her on an updated design program Home Runs purchased. He changed his company password every few months, he'd told her, and the new one, it was something to do with her, with the perfect afternoon they spent together that last spring. She clears her mind, closes her eyes. Cambridgestreetfestival05. Or, no. Cambridgestreet
fair
05. That was it. The day he took the photo—a day in May, the fifth month, that gorgeous day—they'd strolled through Cambridge, so different, on that festive afternoon, so opposite the staid reserve of Boston, just across the Charles. Harvard Square was packed with students, the sun dripped down on mimes and clowns, musicians—stores were crowded with newcomers, with shoppers in bright clothes, with lovers holding hands, emerging from a harsh and bitter winter. Spring. A perfect day. She types in Cambridgestreetfair05 and hits
ENTER
.

What comes up is more than spreadsheets. What comes up is far more detailed—the company's expenditures, a list of charges. She gets up, makes herself a cup of tea even though she doesn't want it, really. She walks up and down the hall a few times, stalling, trying to shake her feelings of unease, of disgust at herself for spying. Still, whatever Joe was trying to tell her, whatever was important enough to end their relationship . . . it might be here. It might be somewhere in the files, a hint, a glimpse. She has to try. She brings the tea back to her desk and sits down in front of her computer.

There are columns of withdrawals, deposits. Something is wrong. Off. There are numerous purchases made at various Home Depot stores in the Boston area. And . . . She stares at the screen—almost as many returns, usually the next day or the day after. Was this standard? Did the contractors buy different versions of the same item to give the customers a choice and then return the options that weren't picked? Possibly. She jots down their account number and closes out, deletes this last visit from her computer's history.

She calls Home Depot's 800 number, relays the company's account number, and requests a copy of bills covering the last four months. “I'm tidying up our finances,” she explains. She puts on Francine's no-nonsense voice, her controlled and skillful tone. “I've lost my copies somehow,” she says, and gives her private e-mail address to the pleasant, eager agent on the other end of the line. It will be sent within the hour, the friendly voice assures her. “Thank you for your patronage.”

On the floor beneath the desk, her cell phone beeps, and Dorrie fumbles through her bag to pull it out. A text message. From Samuel, she hopes, and she thinks about suggesting they meet for dinner, all of them, Lily, too. She'll get her mind off things. They could go somewhere they've never been—the new Mediterranean place near her office or that bistro in Jamaica Plain their neighbors were talking about at the Christmas potluck that they'd been meaning to try. In fact, that would be best in this iffy weather, keep it close to home.

Meet me,
the text says, but then she inhales, a sharp intake of air; it isn't from Samuel. It's from Joe's old phone. Again. Her first thought is to delete the text and forget she ever saw it.
Tonight,
it says.
8:00. Meet me at the Starbucks. That last place.
That last place! How would anyone but Dorrie even know that? Dorrie and Joe? He must not have deleted his final text to her from his burner phone and whoever this is, whatever sadistic creepy person has it . . . She shivers. Her heart pounds and skips. She really has to calm herself down, figure all this out. She takes a few deep breaths before she reaches for a bottled water and guzzles it down.

She wants to leave. She wants to slip out of the building and into her car. She wants to be as far away from Summer Street as she can get. She looks up the hall. Francine hasn't come in yet. Besides the useless Len, there's no one else here.
Hold the fort,
Edward said, so she has no choice. She fidgets, makes a few more phone calls, preemptive ones this time. Follow-ups, to keep herself busy, to keep her mind off ghostly phones and Home Depot returns. She hangs up the phone and glances at her watch. Three nos, a maybe, and two yeses. She jots down the names, the numbers, the addresses.
Sunporch in the spring
, she scribbles next to the first address and then, beneath the second,
Reno on upstairs bathroom.

She checks her e-mail, finds a brief message from Home Depot. They've sent her four attachments—October, November, December, and January. She opens them, one at a time, and there they are again, the plethora of items purchased and returned almost immediately. She stares at the articles. Electrical supplies and tools. But not in January. In January there were only three returns: two faucets, a sink, and a light fixture, which sounds fairly standard.