Things You Won't Say (8 page)

This was fascinating stuff, better than watching soap operas. Not that she did that. Regularly, anyway. Christie leaned
in closer, which meant she got a mouthwatering whiff of the fries. She cursed the sadist who’d invented carbs and tried to breathe through her mouth.

“So what do they do next?” she asked. “The wives, I mean.”

“That’s where you come in,” Elroy said. He used his napkin to wipe each of his fingertips in turn, then he took a small sip of water and pushed away his mostly full plate, which meant it was that much nearer to Christie.

“In my experience, a guy who’s already cheating isn’t going to turn down another opportunity, if you get my drift,” he said, giving her a meaningful look.

“You’re not that subtle,” Christie said.

Elroy smiled. “The thing is, you gotta walk a careful line. A girl like you—if you throw yourself at a guy, he’s going to say yes, unless he’s the Pope.”

A girl like you.
Christie soaked in the compliment like a hot bath. Simon hadn’t called last night, and when she’d called him at 10:00
P.M.
—the three glasses of wine she’d drunk had been coconspirators, urging her to do it—her call had gone straight to voice mail. She’d waited up, but he hadn’t phoned back. Then this morning, a bouquet of flowers had arrived with a note typed by the florist:
Sorry I missed you.

It wasn’t even an extravagant bouquet. There was baby’s breath filling a lot of spaces. What was it Elroy had said? A change in the air.

“So what do I need to do?” Christie asked, shoving the fries back toward Elroy.

“We trail the guy,” Elroy said. “Find a place for you to bump into him. An elevator, a sidewalk. Maybe you drop your purse to give him an excuse to help you pick it up. You send out signals—nothing too flashy, but you’ll let him know you might be interested—and see if he responds.”

“Isn’t that entrapment?” Christie asked. She was proud of herself for remembering the word; she’d heard it on a recent episode of
CSI.

“Nope,” Elroy said. “We’re not arresting anyone here.”

“Okay,” Christie said. “So if he responds, then what? Exactly how far do I take this?”

She fixed her eyes on Elroy and folded her arms over her chest. He’d better not expect her to actually fool around with a mark. She liked her new identity as a businesswoman, someone smart and strong and capable. Someone who didn’t get screwed by men physically
or
emotionally.

“You say you’re in town for a few days on business. Maybe he wants to meet you at your hotel for a drink. You set a time for him to come by and I get to the hotel first to set up my camera and recording equipment. You meet him in the room, get him to talk about what he wants to do to you—”

At Christie’s expression he hurriedly continued, “Just talking, no touching—then I knock on the door and call out ‘Room service.’ You tell him to sit back and relax, that you ordered champagne. Then you open the door and boom! You’re gone.”

Christie turned the plan over in her mind. “How do you know when to knock?”

“I listen in on the recording equipment. I’ve got a good hotel in mind; there’s a coffee shop next door. After the job we wait there. Or I wait there, because you’re done, so you can take a cab home. When the dude’s gone I gather my stuff and write up a report for wifey.”

“Who pays for the cab?” Christie wanted to know.

“The client,” Elroy said. “All your expenses plus sixty an hour, like we talked about. Most jobs will probably take about four hours, start to finish, including your transport time.”

Christie drummed her nails on the linoleum table. “It sounds too easy,” she said.

“You’d be the third girl I’ve hired for this job, and none of the others complained.”

“Why did the other two quit?” she asked.

“The first one moved away,” he said. “She was with me for
three years. The second one married one of the guys we’d set up when his wife divorced him.”

“You’re kidding.”

Elroy shook his head. “Wish I was. She was good at what she did. So, are you with me? We’ll probably work four, five jobs a week.”

“That many?” Christie asked. Five jobs a week, at four hours per job, and sixty dollars an hour would be . . . let’s see, about . . . Well, it would be a lot of money. Plus expenses!

“You wouldn’t believe how many more people are having affairs since Facebook,” Elroy said. “The number of folks who hook up with exes . . .”

Christie suddenly wondered if Simon had a Facebook account. “Do you ever trace people?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Like put a tracker on their car.”

Elroy shook his head. “Nah. But I did put up an ad on Facebook. My clients have doubled since then.”

He regarded her for a moment. “Any questions? Any moral objections we need to get out of the way?”

“Are you kidding?” Christie shook her head. “My mother cheated on my stepfather—or make that stepfathers, plural—the whole time I was growing up. Once she and one of the guys took me to the movies. They told me they were going to sit in the back row but I should sit up front, where I could see the screen really well.” She rolled her eyes. “Like that was what they were thinking about. They just didn’t want me to see
them
pawing each other. I finally told my stepfather when I was twelve.”

“What happened?” Elroy asked.

Christie looked down at her Diet Coke and swirled her straw around a few times. She cleared her throat before answering. “He left,” she said.

“Do you regret telling him?” Elroy asked.

“I regret not doing it earlier,” she said. He had been the
nicest of the many men who’d shared her mother’s bed. He’d bought her a harmonica once after she’d seen a guy on the street playing one and thought it sounded pretty. It was just a cheap toy, but he hadn’t given it to her until her birthday, which was weeks after they’d watched the street performer. She didn’t know what had surprised her more: that he’d remembered how much she liked the sounds the tiny instrument made, or that he’d noticed her enjoyment in the first place.

Elroy opened his battered briefcase and pulled out a file. He withdrew a photograph and slid it toward Christie. It was of a nice-looking guy, maybe in his early forties, the sort you’d see tossing a baseball to his kid at the park on a Saturday morning. Christie didn’t know what she’d expected, but it wasn’t this sandy-haired, smiling guy with freckles on his nose.

“Say hello to your first client,” Elroy said.

Chapter Four

RITCHIE’S ROOM IN THE
rehab facility wasn’t as intimidating as Jamie had expected. She’d thought it would be white and sterile, with sharp edges and high-tech machines—similar to the hospital room where she’d visited him—but it seemed almost homey. This was a space for patients who were here for the long haul, she thought. There were curtains on the window, and family pictures atop the nightstand.

Ritchie was propped up by pillows in bed. He was holding one of those squishy stress balls and seemed to be struggling to make a fist around it.

Jamie paused in the doorway, tears rushing into her eyes, memories rushing into her mind: Ritchie racing around his backyard on the Fourth of July, holding a silver sparkler and being chased by all the kids; Ritchie putting his arm around Sandy and kissing the top of her head as she leaned into him one weekend when they’d all gone to the beach together; Ritchie and Mike, side by side, standing straight and proud as they received an official commendation for apprehending an armed robbery suspect.

“How are you, handsome?” Jamie asked. She walked over to Ritchie and kissed his cheek. Only his brown eyes were the
same. His face was still swollen, and a worm-like scar curved around his right ear, cutting into his skin. His hair had been shaved for surgery and hadn’t completely grown back in yet. He’d lost weight, too.

“Good,” Ritchie said.

“Old buddy,” Mike said, coming closer and giving his partner a fist bump. “We gotta bust you out of here!”

“The doctor . . . said . . . another few months,” Ritchie said, his cadence much slower than usual, as if he were speaking a foreign language and first needed to translate the words in his head.

Another few months, Jamie thought. But then there would be outpatient physical and speech therapy. And after that? Nothing was clear. Brain injuries were notoriously complicated, and it was hard to predict if Ritchie would ever be able to return to the force. Sandy had talked about it at the pool, and Jamie had been glad she couldn’t see her friend’s eyes behind her dark sunglasses. She knew they’d look shattered.

“Yeah, but you like a challenge,” Mike was saying. “I’ll give you two weeks before they’re kicking you out.”

Ritchie smiled but didn’t say anything.

There was a small silence.

“I saw Sandy and the kids the other day,” Jamie said, her voice too bright. “We all went to the pool. Daisy is such a terrific swimmer! She’s a little fish.”

“Yeah,” Ritchie said. He frowned. “I was working with her . . . Last month? No, maybe last summer . . . I can’t remember . . .”

“Well, we need you to give our kids swimming lessons!” Jamie said quickly. “Eloise is still afraid to put her face in the water.”

“You need anything?” Mike asked. “Kale chips, maybe?”

Ritchie smiled and started to shake his head, but he immediately stilled the motion. Jamie wondered if the slight movement hurt.

“Did they give you . . . a new partner yet?” Ritchie asked.

“First of all, he isn’t my partner,” Mike said. “He’s a stand-in until the real thing comes back. And he’s a moron. My standards aren’t all that high, given what I put up with for the past decade, but even I can’t deal with the guy.”

“You’re used . . . to per-perfection,” Ritchie said.

Jamie turned as an orderly came into the room, carrying a food tray. He set it on the edge of Ritchie’s bed, checked the level of water in the giant plastic cup on Ritchie’s nightstand, and exited quietly.

“Want some . . . pudding?” Ritchie asked Mike. “It’s awful. That’s why . . . I offered.”

“Sounds tempting,” Mike said. He reached for one of the containers, peeled back the foil lid, and used his fingers to scoop up a taste. “Christ. They’re trying to kill you, aren’t they? They give life, then they take it away.”

Ritchie’s laugh was weaker than usual, but it was one of the most wonderful things Jamie had ever heard.

“Go ahead and eat,” Jamie said. “Get strong!”

“Gotta use this, ah . . .” Ritchie said, holding up a strange-looking fork. The handle was thick and there were two wide prongs instead of four.

“A spork?” Mike asked, quickly filling in the word when Ritchie stumbled over it.

In a moment, it became clear why he needed the special utensil: Ritchie’s movements were similar to those of a young child learning to eat on his own. He dropped more penne noodles than he managed to ferry to his mouth on his first bite.

“Crap,” he said, looking down at the mess he’d created. Luckily all of the noodles had landed on the extra-large tray; they must’ve made them big for a reason.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Mike said. “What the hell kind of hospital serves noodles to someone who just got shot and is getting his reflexes back?”

Mike was furious, Jamie saw. Or not exactly furious—his rage was on the surface, covering something fragile and turbulent underneath.

“Forget this,” Mike said. He pulled the tray away from Ritchie in a jerky movement. “I’m going to get you one of those cardboard veggie burgers you love, okay? Extra pickles and tomato. I’ll be right back.”

Jamie wondered if the pasta wasn’t precisely the point—if Ritchie were being given challenging foods so he could practice fine-motor control—but she remained silent. This wasn’t about Ritchie’s dinner.

“Do you want me to go pick it up?” Jamie asked.

Mike shook his head. “I’ll be fast.”

Jamie watched Mike exit the room and thought about Lou’s suggestion that Mike needed some more time off. Maybe her sister was right. She didn’t know anymore; she’d lost the ability to read her husband. She and Mike had had their ups and downs—what couple didn’t?—and during some periods, especially in the bone-wearying, endless stretch of time when Eloise was a baby and Sam and Emily were careening through toddlerhood, she’d felt a distance wedging itself between her and Mike. She’d been consumed with constant, draining caretaking, with feeding little mouths and cleaning hands and bottoms and settling squabbles and soothing boo-boos and running endless loads of laundry and dishes. She knew Mike’s job was stressful, but she couldn’t help feeling resentful when he came home after sharing a pizza and a pitcher of beer with the guys from his shift when she couldn’t even manage to drink a cup of coffee while it was hot.

Just last year they’d gone three days without speaking after a ridiculous fight sparked by whether Emily was old enough for a sleepover. They’d bickered over countless small things, and once Jamie had thrown one of her sneakers at Mike, incensed that he hadn’t discouraged Christie from flirting with him. Mike had slept on the couch that night before climbing back into
their bed the next morning as she showered. He’d still been wearing the Homer Simpson boxer shorts Henry had given him for Christmas, a memory that always made her smile.

So yes, they’d weathered anger and pain. But an invisible, powerful connection had always linked them. This time things felt different. It was as if a wall had sprouted up in front of Mike, too wide and tall for her to reach around and touch him.

In the six weeks since the shooting, she’d learned what it meant to miss her husband, Jamie thought as she sat down next to Ritchie and smiled to cover her sadness. She missed rolling over in the middle of the night and pressing up against Mike’s warm body. She missed having him walk through the front door and effortlessly scoop up a kid in one arm and reach the other around her waist as he dropped a kiss on the back of her neck. She missed the way they’d try to stay up together to watch reruns of
Modern Family,
and she’d invariably fall asleep against his shoulder, and he’d tease her about her snoring.