The Girl in the Green Raincoat_ A Novel - Laura Lippman [3]
“Is there anything else you need to make your haven perfect?” Crow asked.
“Binoculars,” Tess said.
That had been Sunday; she had the binoculars by Monday. And for the rest of the week, Tess did, in fact, read quite a bit and began to catch up with the films that Crow thought essential to cultural literacy. But each afternoon, she picked up her new binoculars and watched the dogs converge on the park, then studied the girl in the green raincoat as she stalked past them, her prancing little greyhound leading the way. The girl was always on the phone, it seemed, but perhaps she was shy and using that as a cover. The dog walkers of Stony Run could be a cliquey bunch. Even seen through high-powered binoculars, the woman’s face betrayed little emotion. Her walks lasted longer than most; at least she was giving her high-strung dog plenty of exercise. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, the pattern was the same. Only the footwear changed, her chic version of Wellies switched out for brown suede boots as the ground dried. Still, so impractical, Tess thought, watching Friday afternoon as the girl in the green raincoat glided into the park. Didn’t her dog ever leap up, leave muddy paw prints?
“You’re getting weird,” Crow said, bringing in her supper tray, their own dogs following like troubled handmaidens. They were upset by Tess’s displacement from the master bedroom, even if Esskay did enjoy having more of the bed. But Esskay seemed to sense a bigger change was coming, and she wasn’t sure she liked it.
Join the club, sister.
Tess had abandoned her binoculars and begun to eat her supper when she noticed Esskay, a sight hound at heart, perk up her ears and run to the window. Probably a squirrel or even a leaf. The sight hound’s sight wasn’t particularly reliable.
But what had drawn Esskay’s eye, in this instance, was her own tiny doppelganger, running through the park. Running through the park, quite alone, celery-green leash lashing. Running like a thing pursued, except—it wasn’t. For no matter how long Tess watched that evening—and she kept her vigil well into the night, turning out her lights the better to see into the gloom—the girl in the green raincoat never reappeared.
Chapter 2
If you’re going to play Rear Window, then I think Crow needs to swan around in a green peignoir set,” Whitney said the next day, as Tess continued her vigil on the sun porch. Neither girl nor dog had shown up for their usual sunset walk.
“I thought you for Grace Kelly, bony WASP that you are,” Tess said, frowning at the supper that Crow had fixed. It was perfectly healthy—a spinach salad, risotto made with shiitake mushrooms and butternut squash from the farmer’s market. It was delicious, too. But the lack of choice, the closing off of options, made her crazy. Occasionally she liked to have a Goldenberg Peanut Chew for lunch, or a bag of Utz crab chips.
“The Talbots and the Kellys are distantly related,” Whitney said. It was plausible, although with Whitney’s sharp jaw and athletic posture, the Kelly she most resembled was Jack, the rower for whom Kelly Drive in Philadelphia was named. Both Whitney and Tess had rowed in college, but Whitney had been better. That was pretty much the story of their long friendship—whatever they did, Whitney was better. Whitney got better grades. Whitney was faster, a more competitive rower who had transferred to Yale and been the stroke on a women’s lightweight four. She excelled in the newspaper business, too, a field where Tess had failed. Whitney then chucked it all to work at her family’s foundation. Because, yes, on top of everything else, she was rich, someone who had never known a single care about money. Whitney Talbot excelled at everything—except relationships. She lived in a guest cottage