The Garden of Betrayal - Lee Vance [21]
“It’s six-thirty. I don’t think it’ll be a problem as long as you’re home in time to set the table. Say an hour from now?”
“Mom?” Kate asked.
Claire bit her lip and nodded.
“Take your phone.”
“I’ll be right back.”
The front door banged thirty seconds later, and Claire and I were alone. Walking around the piano, I began folding the music stands.
“You think she likes him?” I asked, when I couldn’t bear the silence any longer.
Claire shrugged, eyes fixed on her keyboard.
I tucked the music stands behind a curtain drape and gazed out across the treetops toward the Hudson. A tug was nosing a barge upstream, fighting against the current. Claire’s silences frightened me. Half the time I didn’t know what touched them off, and I never knew how long they’d last. She’d brighten suddenly, as if emerging from behind a cloud, and we’d have a couple of good days, days that reminded me of what things used to be like. But inevitably the cloud would return.
A movement on the street below caught my attention, and I saw Phil and Kate on the corner. They were standing beneath a streetlamp, in a puddle of light. He touched her arm and said something that made her laugh. She tipped up her face, and he kissed her.
“I’m scared, too,” I said, turning to look at Claire. “Every time she leaves the apartment. But Kate’s going to be in college next year. It’s normal for her to want to be more independent, and to start having relationships.”
“And what about us?”
The question surprised me.
“What do you mean?”
Claire shook her head and began playing. A nocturne: Chopin, op. 9, no. 2. It was an old favorite, a piece she used to play in the evenings after we put Kyle and Kate to bed. I’d slump on the couch with a glass of wine, exhausted from work, and travel, and baths, and pajamas, and endless rounds of “Baa Baa Black Sheep.” She’d glance up occasionally to smile at me as she played, and I’d remember the offer I’d made her at the biscotteria: whatever she wanted. It had been a good deal for me, and I’d wondered at my luck, right up until the moment when my luck ran out. I turned her words over in my mind as I listened to the familiar music. What about us—after Kate was gone? It was something I worried about. More than anything else, it was Kate who kept the cloud at bay.
I glanced out the window again. Kate and Phil were still embracing. I looked back to my wife. Her shoulders were hunched, the way they got when she was hurting. I felt a pang of guilt, remembering that I’d forgotten to buy flowers. Kate’s relationship with Phil was something I’d have to think about later. Right then, I needed to do what I could to ease Claire’s pain.
5
I was at the office the next morning, buried in fallout from the previous day, when the intercom buzzed. I’d slept badly and was feeling tired and irritable.
“What’s up, Amy?”
“Theresa Roxas calling on your direct.”
“Don’t know her,” I replied testily, assuming she was a journalist. The press had been hounding me nonstop, intent on learning where I’d obtained the Nord Stream video.
“She claims Alex sent you an e-mail introducing her.”
“Hang on.”
I grabbed my mouse and scrolled through my in-box. I’d received more than a hundred e-mails overnight and had time to get through only about a third of them. Sure enough, there was a note from Alex in the middle of the stack, the subject line theresa roxas. I noticed it had been sent just after three a.m. and hoped he hadn’t stayed up all night drinking. Alex stopped by most mornings to say hi, but it was after ten and I hadn’t seen him.
“Found it,” I said, clicking on the e-mail. “Is Alex in today?”
“I don’t know. Would you like me to check?”
I took a moment to read the e-mail