“No, Dad’s office.”
Matthew comes into the kitchen, holding a big cardboard box. “What’s going on?”
“Bennett found these.” Marissa holds up the candy.
Matthew shrugs. “Guess Skip dropped them last night.”
Marissa forces a smile, even though the sound of Skip’s name makes her stomach clench.
“So can I have them?” Bennett asks.
“No!” Marissa and Matthew say in unison.
“Maybe a few after dinner,” Matthew concedes. “But only if you eat something green. Like a pile of broccoli taller than a tree!”
Matthew tickles Bennett, who laughs and squirms away.
Marissa’s fingers close around the hard roll. A thought comes to her. It’s so insane she almost doesn’t ask the question.
Then she does. “Were you and Skip in your office last night?”
Matthew pauses in flattening out the box. “Huh? No, we just hung out in the living room and kitchen.”
He looks at her quizzically, then appears to grasp the reason for her question. “Oh, maybe Skip wandered in there for some reason when I ran upstairs to tell Bennett his pizza was ready. Maybe he had to make a private call or something.”
Marissa nods. “That must be it.”
As Matthew reaches for a ruler and he and Bennett begin discussing how big to make the cardboard base, Marissa glances in the direction of Matthew’s office.
If someone wanted to break into the house, the office, which faces the leafy side yard, would seem like the easiest entry point.
Enough, Marissa tells herself sharply. She isn’t thinking straight; her mind isn’t reliable right now.
Skip has no connection to the open window in Matthew’s study. Skip was a guest in their home last night—not an intruder this morning.
If he wandered into the office last night and dropped the roll of candy, it was because he bent over to tie his shoe or something, not because he was wrestling with one of the windows.
Matthew reaches over and begins to massage Marissa’s neck. She can feel the tightness of the cords under his strong fingers. “You okay, babe?”
“I didn’t sleep well.” It isn’t a fib; although she fell asleep shortly after climbing into bed, she awoke in the middle of the night and tossed and turned until she finally rose at a little after 5:00 A.M.
“Why don’t you take a nap? Bennett and I will tackle the dinosaurs.”
She doesn’t want to leave her little family. She yearns to be here, in the cocoon of the kitchen, shaping warm clay in her hands as the three of them create an imaginary world.
“We can’t have you stressed and tired for tomorrow night. And I can’t wait to see you in whatever you picked up from the store.” Matthew’s voice drops to a low whisper: “And get you out of it.”
Marissa briefly squeezes her eyes shut. She doesn’t have any outfits Matthew has never seen.
She could tell Matthew a partial truth about why she rushed off to Coco, filling him in on the disturbing Natalie-Polly connection. But she is not going to spend her anniversary talking about Natalie.
She’ll have to come up with a plausible-sounding reason for wearing something she already owns to their special dinner, she thinks.
An excuse. A fib. Smoothing things over for the sake of appearances.
I should just call it what it is, she thinks. I’m lying to my husband.
Something I’ve learned to do well.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
AVERY
I’M IN LUCK. The Whistler Bar & Grill opens at noon on Saturdays. I need to confirm what I strongly suspect—that Chris Bishop, Matthew’s father, was sneaking around the dock while Matthew and I spoke. The question is, did Chris go to see his son—whom he’s supposedly estranged from—or was he following me?
I’ve already determined that the Whistler is four blocks from Chris’s office on Sixteenth Street, in northwest D.C.
If the axiom is true—like father, like son—it’s possible Chris also stops in at a regular place after work for a meal or a couple of his favorite drinks. And men talk to bartenders the way women talk to hairdressers.
I know I can’t simply barge in and act all nosy about one of their customers. That’s why I ran a few errands first.
Now I sit in my car, parked at a street meter outside the bar, assembling my props. I pull out the flimsy fake-leather wallet I just purchased at CVS—it seems like something Chris might actually own, given his predilection for cheap options—and remove all the cash I have in my own billfold, a grand total of $24, tucking the money inside. The wallet looks a little pathetic, even if it’s one I’m claiming to have found in a nearby parking lot, so I contribute an old metro card of mine, a business card I picked up the other day for a new nail salon in my neighborhood, and a few random receipts I grabbed out of a trash can at CVS. I just have to hope whomever I hand it off to won’t examine the contents too closely. Which leads me to the final items—ones I hope the bartender will take a good look at.