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ANNA PULLED INTO HER DRIVEWAY NEXT TO PAUL’S CAR AND TURNED off the engine. She glanced up at her father’s bedroom window, noticed that the light was on.
“Thanks again for everything,” Paul said, pulling on the handle of the passenger door.
“You’re welcome. Thank you. It was quite a day.”
Paul held his position. He looked at Anna and knew, at that moment, what he wanted to do. Something he couldn’t. Something he wouldn’t.
“Time to go, Paul.” She smiled. “See you at our next session.”
“Right, of course,” he said.
He got out, closed the door, found his keys, and unlocked his car. Anna waited until he was out of the driveway and heading up the street before she got out and went into her house.
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DRIVING HOME, PAUL FELT AWASH IN GUILT.
He’d done nothing wrong, he hadn’t acted on his feelings, but the fact he’d had them made him remorseful. Just when Charlotte was being so supportive, sticking by him, helping him through the worst crisis of his life, he finds himself attracted to another woman.
He’d spent so much time lately with Anna. He could tell her things he could tell no one else. She listened.
Of course, you idiot. It’s her job.
At an intellectual level, Paul knew that. Her concern for him was rooted in professionalism. He’d be a fool to think she felt anything for him that went beyond that.
Except it didn’t change how he felt.
He had to push her out of his mind. Any other kind of relationship with Anna White was a nonstarter.
If there was anything Paul needed to work on, to reward and nourish, it was his life with Charlotte.
Don’t make a complicated life even more complicated.
So he struggled to replace thoughts of Anna with a review of his meeting with Kenneth Hoffman.
Had the encounter been helpful? Was Anna right, that if nothing else, seeing Kenneth face-to-face had diminished his stature? He was, indeed, a broken man. Paul thought the days and weeks ahead would be the test of whether seeing Kenneth was a good thing. Would the nightmares fade? Would he stop hearing Kenneth in his head?
He hit the turn signal indicator, turned down his street, then pulled into the driveway behind Charlotte’s car.
Well, there was some good news. He actually remembered driving here.
As he wearily got out of his car, it occurred to him he’d had nothing to eat in hours. On the way up, he and Anna had joked about dining on prison food, but once they were inside, they pretty much lost their appetites. He figured Charlotte was home from New York by now. Maybe she’d made dinner and set aside a plate for—
Oh God.
The front door was wide open.
Forty-One
Paul charged into the house, shouting, “Charlotte!”
He threw the door closed behind him and took the stairs up to the kitchen two steps at a time. As he reached the top, Charlotte came around the kitchen island, her face full of alarm.
“What?” she asked.
He put on the brakes. “The door was open. I was worried. I didn’t know—”
“I left it open,” she said, cutting him off. “You know how you were asking about a surveillance system, getting the locks changed? Well, I found a guy and took the first step today. I’d set up an appointment for late in the day, after I was back from the city. We’ve got new locks. I’d left the door open a crack so you’d be able to get in. I guess the wind blew it all the way open. God, you’re a nervous wreck.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, glancing back down to the front door to be sure it was closed. “I’ll close it now.” He scurried down the flight, turned the dead bolt, and returned. Charlotte was standing by the island.
“Give me your keys,” she said.
He handed her his set. On the granite countertop was a single key that looked, at a glance, identical to Paul’s house key. Charlotte picked up his set and worked the house key off the ring, then replaced it with the new one. She took his old key and tucked it into the front pocket of her jeans.
“You did this because of Hailey?” Paul asked.
“What about Hailey?” Charlotte asked, looking nervous.
“She called me.”
“I was gonna tell you,” Charlotte said, looking like she’d been caught in a lie. “I knew there was a chance Hailey’d rat me out. But you remember the other day, how she strolled right in here?”
“You don’t really think Hailey snuck in here and—”
“I don’t know, okay?” she said defensively.
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them I was worried about you. So shoot me. I’ve been worried sick about you, and honestly, I can’t predict what you’re going to do next. Not these last few days. Not since I bought that goddamn thing and put it in your think tank.”
Paul glanced at the open door to his study, as if to confirm that the typewriter was no longer there. He mentally breathed a sigh of relief to see that it was not. He knew where it was, but he was not going to go into the garage to check this time.
You could take paranoia a little too far.
“Whatever’s going on, whatever the cause,” Charlotte said cautiously, “I see it driving you to the brink of . . .”
Paul gave her a look.
“Just hear me out here. What if Hailey is behind this? She had a key. She could sneak in. What if it’s a custody thing? What if she and that smug asshole Walter are somehow setting you up, trying to make you seem mentally unfit, so they could go after sole custody of Josh?”
“No!” he said firmly. “She wouldn’t do that! She wouldn’t do it to Josh. She wouldn’t keep him from me.”
“Sometimes,” Charlotte said, “you don’t know what people are capable of.”
Paul sighed, moved his head from side to side sorrowfully. “I just spent the afternoon learning that lesson.”
He recounted his prison visit for her.
“Are you glad you did it?” Charlotte asked.
He told her he thought he was, and why.
“Good,” she said. “You know what I’d like?”
“What would you like?”
“One night where we don’t talk about any of this. Nothing about Hoffman. Nothing about typewriters. Nothing about your legal problems with that asshole Hitchens.”
“God, him. There’s been so much going on, I nearly forgot I might be going to jail myself.” He tried to laugh.
“Stop.”
“Okay.”
“I want one night that we devote just to ourselves.”
“Sold.”
“Have you eaten?”
“I’m so hungry, I’d eat airline food.”
He perched himself on one of the island stools while Charlotte pulled out an already prepared plate from the refrigerator. She said, “Spinach-and-ricotta-stuffed cannelloni with tomato sauce. Sorry, I had mine about an hour ago. I was starving.”
She put it into the microwave, then went back to the fridge and brought out a bottle of red wine. “Got this, too.” She found a corkscrew in a drawer, opened the bottle, and filled two wineglasses.
Charlotte handed one to him, raised her glass to make a toast. “To a new beginning. To putting the bad behind us, and looking forward to the good.”
Paul, struggling to be enthusiastic, clinked his glass to hers and drank. “I like that.”
Charlotte, wineglass in hand, turned back to the microwave to check on the progress of her husband’s dinner. “Three minutes.”
“I’m gonna wash up,” he said, leaving his glass and heading for the stairs to the top floor.
“Be quick,” she said.
By the time he returned, his dinner was waiting for him and Charlotte was refilling her glass. “It is my intention,” she said with mock seriousness, “to get drunk and make some bad decisions.”
Paul smiled as he retook his spot on the stool. “Sounds like a plan,” he said, picking up his glass and downing the rest of his wine in a single gulp.
“Hit me,” he said, setting the glass back down. Charlotte filled it to the brim, then looked at the trickle left in the bottle.
“Good thing I have more than just this one,” she said.