Page 78 of Take Your Breath Away

“Brie told me. She told me everything.”

I did not know that.

“When?” I asked.

“A month or two before she disappeared. We could always talk, you know.” She took a breath. “Can you hand me that glass of water?” I handed her the glass. Her mouth moistened, she continued. “There Isabel was, making your life hell, and still you held your tongue.”

“Ruining Isabel’s life wouldn’t have done anything to make me look any less culpable.”

“Norman’s never thanked you, has he?” Elizabeth asked. “Never expressed any gratitude that you didn’t tell Isabel that her husband had slept with her own sister.”

“I’ve never sought it,” I said. “He doesn’t owe me a damn thing. It was a long time ago.”

“It’s never too late to offer regrets,” Elizabeth said. “Why do you think I wanted to see you before I’m gone?”

Thirty

More than a few people slept poorly Saturday night to Sunday morning. Matt Beekman was among them.

He didn’t get back to New Haven after his Hartford assignment until three in the morning. There was a note on the kitchen counter from his wife, Tricia, that there was a plate of Chinese food in the fridge. He took it out, reheated it in the microwave, but could only pick at it. He’d lost his appetite on the drive home, thinking about what might have gone wrong six years earlier.

Matt went up to bed, slipping carefully under the covers so as not to wake his wife, and stared at the ceiling until almost five, at which point his mind could dwell no longer on events of the past, and he fell asleep. But he was startled awake by Tricia shortly after seven as she pulled back the covers and put her feet on the floor.

“When’d you get in?” she asked.

“Around three,” he mumbled into the pillow.

“Did you get paid?”

“What?”

“Did you get paid? For the job?”

He sighed. “They pay when the job is done.”

“I thought you got something up front.”

“Well, this time I didn’t. I’ll see them today or tomorrow, settle up.”

“Because I need some money. I thought you’d have some cash. Cheryl needs new runners. I don’t want to put anything more on the Visa.”

Matt grumbled something into his pillow.

“And what was that call about last night?” Tricia asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Was it about another job? They think you’re getting good at this, more work’s going to come your way.”

“An old job,” he said, rolling onto his back, resigned to the idea that he was not going to have a chance to go back to sleep.

“Why would someone call you about an old jo—”

“For fuck’s sake,” he said, sitting up, “I’m barely awake, and you’re like the fucking Gestapo.”

Tricia didn’t even blink. “I want to be at the mall when they open.”

“You do that.”