“Hey.” I clear my throat as I turn around. “Could I use your phone for a second?”
His expression freezes. “For what?”
“Mine is out of batteries and I want to look something up.”
“What do you need to look up?”
Great question. “Bobby has a half-day one day next week and I can’t remember what day.”
Ooh, that sounded very legitimate.
Elliot frowns at me. “You need to know that right now? At ten o’clock at night?”
“I need to plan for the week.” And also, I need to take a peek at his call list.
He glances over at the refrigerator. “Isn’t that a list of all the holidays and half days posted on the fridge?”
Dammit, he’s right. My organizational skills have backfired.
My brain is struggling to come up with an alternate reason to look at his phone, but before I can, he kisses me on the cheek. “I’m going upstairs. I hope you can come join me soon.”
I watched him trudge up the stairs to our bedroom. Those text messages are getting me paranoid. Just because he was on the phone when I walked in and then quickly hung up, it doesn’t mean he was doing anything suspicious. It doesn’t mean he’s cheating on me.
Although it wouldn’t be the first time.
As soon as I finish the dishes, I take out my phone one last time. I look at the text message, still on the screen. After a moment of hesitation, I swipe to delete the message.
Chapter 15
Owen and Bobby are becoming best friends. And honestly, it’s a relief.
There’s nothing wrong with Leo Bressler, Bobby’s former best friend. Except for the fact that his mother is Julie. Don’t get me wrong—I love Julie. But sometimes I get the distinct feeling she doesn’t care much for my son. Every time Bobby goes to Julie’s house, there’s some sort of a problem. The last time he went over, she went on and on about how he didn’t take his shoes off and now there was dirt on her white carpet. I swear, she acted like he had committed murder.
Who gets a white carpet when they have young sons? Tell me, who?
Maria doesn’t have carpeting at all, and she doesn’t have a hysterical meltdown if you don’t remove your shoes the second you step through the door. I swear to God, Julie makes the mailman take his shoes off to deliver her mail.
This afternoon, Bobby and Owen are having a playdate at our house and are out in the backyard, while Maria and I sit in the kitchen and discuss the silent auction. We have gotten a record-breaking number of donations so far, and people are bidding enthusiastically on the app. The bid for Chelsea’s Yankee tickets just surpassed $3000.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Maria says as she takes a sip of peppermint tea, “but people in this town are too rich for their own good.”
“I agree.” I pick up one of the raspberry tartlets I made earlier this afternoon and pop it in my mouth. I did a show on raspberry tartlets a few months ago—the secret is using vanilla bean rather than vanilla extract for the pastry cream. I’m allowing myself exactly two tartlets and that’s it. “But I’m also wildly jealous.”
“Well, of course.” She giggles and picks up her purse, which she had hung on the back of her chair. “By the way, I brought something for you. A present.”
“A present?” I clap my hands together. I will never be too old to be excited about getting a present. “What is it?”
She pulls a little white box out of her purse and slides it across the table. A white box. That can only mean jewelry—maybe something from Helena’s.
I crack the top open and see a necklace-length chain inside. There’s a charm on the chain, which is a tiny silver woman with a squiggly circle on her abdomen. Well, it’s not really her abdomen so much as her giant pelvis.
I’m not entirely sure how to react.
“It’s a fertility charm,” Maria says. “My sister used that to conceive my niece and my nephew. She says it really works.”
“I see…”
“You’re skeptical,” Maria notes. “I don’t blame you. I am not into all this weird charm voodoo stuff either—I mean, it sure didn’t work for me, but I have other issues. But my sister was trying to have a baby for five years, and one month after she got this charm, she got pregnant.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Interesting.”
I look down at the charm again. It does seem rather hard to believe that a necklace could be enough to get me pregnant. If I told Elliot, he would laugh at me. He would tell me to go to that infertility specialist and finally get worked up.
I shudder. I really, really don’t want to go down that path.
“Anyway, my sister is done having kids,” she says. “So you can keep the necklace and wear it if you want. Hey, what have you got to lose?”
That’s true. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“But for the record,” Maria adds, “I don’t think there’s any chance Elliot would leave you because you can’t get pregnant again.”
I close my fingers around the tiny silver charm. “You haven’t seen his secretary. She’s gorgeous. And really young. Probably very fertile. He could probably get her pregnant just by looking at her the wrong way.”
“Oh, come on! Elliot wouldn’t do that to you.”
I swallow. “Yeah. I’m sure you’re right.”
Maria excuses herself to go to the bathroom. She’s been over enough times lately that she doesn’t have to ask where it is. Even though we haven’t known each other that long, there are times when I feel like I’ve known her for ages. And I’ve completely forgotten about what she did to me during that book club. Well, I haven’t forgotten it, but I know she didn’t do it on purpose.
I glance out at the backyard, to where Owen and Bobby are playing together. They look like they’re playing tag. I still feel uneasy about how Bobby disappeared from the backyard that time. And the text message. But then again, nobody stole him—he left on his own volition, according to Maria. Either way, I’ve been keeping a much closer eye on him lately, especially now that the text messages have continued. The only thing besides school I allow him to do is go to the park to play soccer with Sean Cooper. I trust Sean.
A buzzing sound draws my attention away from the backyard. It’s coming from Maria’s purse. Her phone must be ringing on silent.
I start to call out her name to tell her she’s got a phone call, but then I realize something. Her iPhone is lying on our kitchen table.
I glance over at the hallway leading to the bathroom. No sign of Maria. I get up out of my seat and look down inside her purse to see what’s making the noise. I try not to touch anything, because I don’t want her to think I’ve been going through her purse, even though I sort of am.
There’s a phone in there. A flip phone.
Why does Maria have a flip phone in her purse when she has a perfectly good iPhone? That is really strange. It looks like one of those burner phones that you can buy with a prepaid card if you don’t want somebody to track you down. But why would Maria have one of those?
I glance at the hallway one more time, then quietly remove the phone from her purse. It stops ringing just as I get it in my hand. I open it up and see a number on the screen, but no name attached.