At some point, I must have shared all these little tidbits with Camila. But it’s strange that even though I’ve only met her this morning, she knows everything there is to know about me. It also seems a bit unfair.
“Now it’s your turn,” I say, as Ziggy bounds forward, causing my body to jerk. “I want to know about you.”
She shoves her hands into her jacket pockets. “My favorite movie is Do the Right Thing. My birthday is March second. Don’t worry—I programmed it into your phone since I know you won’t remember.”
I shake my head. “No, not that stuff. I want to know something about you that nobody else knows.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. “That’s a little personal, isn’t it? Especially considering that in your head, you only just met me this morning.”
“That’s true,” I acknowledge. “But you’ve been with me day in and day out for an entire year. And also, who is the better person to tell your secrets to than somebody who won’t remember it tomorrow?”
She puts her hands on her hips. “You’re very persuasive, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been told I’m a successful businesswoman.”
Her expression is amused. “Okay, I’ve got one. This is something I’ve never told anyone before. Ever.”
I clutch my free hand to my chest. “Your secret is safe with me.”
“So when I was in kindergarten, my teacher took off her wedding ring to go wash her hands at the sink in the back of the classroom. And while she was washing her hands, I took her wedding ring and…” She takes a deep breath. “I ate it.”
It’s the last thing I expected her to say. Despite everything, I burst out laughing.
“It’s not funny!” Camila cries, although she’s laughing too. “I’ve been carrying this burden around for twenty years! I felt terrible about it! She was looking everywhere for it. She left school crying!”
“Why did you eat it then?”
“I don’t know! I was five!”
I’m laughing so hard now, tears are running down my face. Through my chuckles, I manage to say, “I’ll take it to my grave. I promise.”
She nods solemnly. “Thank you.”
Camila’s confession has defused some of the tension between us. As I grip Ziggy’s leash and Camila adjusts her purse string on her shoulder, we could be two girlfriends hanging out together. Rather than what we are. Now that I know her a little better, I finally feel brave enough to ask the question that’s been going through my head since I woke up this morning:
“What do you think of Graham?”
She stops walking for a beat and looks at me curiously. “Graham is nice,” she says carefully. “Why do you ask?”
“Why wouldn’t I ask?” I point out. “I mean, I just met him this morning, but apparently I’ve been married to him for the last four years.”
Camila laughs. “Yeah, I’ll bet that’s weird for you.”
“You think?”
She kicks at a crack in the sidewalk with her sneaker. “Don’t worry. He won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. I mean, tonight.”
It takes me a second to catch on to what she is saying. Graham is my husband. And tonight he might expect me to…
“Oh God, I can’t do that!” My fingers tighten around Ziggy’s leash. “I don’t even know him!”
“Relax. I just told you, he won’t ask you.”
“How do you know?”
She lifts a shoulder. “I’ve stuck around a few times in the evening. You usually get pretty groggy around dinner time. You almost always go right to bed.”
I think of the words scribbled on my thigh. Graham is drugging you. If he were drugging me in the evening, it would make sense that I would suddenly get groggy around dinner time. I had shrugged off those words as some sort of paranoid delusion, but I’m not so sure anymore. Something is going on. I need to know what it is.
I look over at Camila. Now that I feel closer to her, I desperately want to tell her about the text message I got, but how can I trust her? She works for Graham, not me. The last text was so insistent that I delete everything. It makes me think I ought to keep my mouth shut.
Of course, Camila is coming with me to the dog park. How am I going to talk to anybody there without her hearing?
My chest is feeling tight by the time we get to the dog park. There are quite a lot of people with their dogs in there, especially for mid-morning, which I suppose is a good thing. I scan the crowd, looking for a familiar face. There’s a couple holding hands. A tall man wearing jeans that are a couple of inches too short, like he had a growth spurt recently, even though he’s got to be at least forty. A college-age girl talking loudly on her phone. And another man with a baseball cap, thick beard, and sunglasses.
“You can go in with Ziggy,” Camila says. She pats her purse. “I’ll sit outside and read.”
I blink at her. “You’re not going in?”
She scoffs. “Sit in that crowded dog park with all the dogs barking in my ear, surrounded by dog poop? No thanks.” She points out a bench about twenty feet from the entrance to the dog park. “I’ll be right here if you need me.”
I can’t imagine what I would need her for. I know how to get home after all. But given the lock situation in our house, I’m guessing she’s not allowed to leave me alone. The bench she picked gives an excellent visualization of the only way out of the dog park. I’m just hoping that whatever she’s reading is very absorbing.
Ziggy nearly breaks down the door to the park in his eagerness. I throw open the latch and we enter the enclosure. I unhook his leash, and now he’s free. He races around the park, finding a place to dig. Meanwhile, I plop down on a bench in the dog park as I scan the occupants of the park.
I immediately rule out the couple. They are way too into each other. At one point, the woman sticks her hand in the man’s pocket—ew. The college-age girl is popping gum and having an enthusiastic conversation on her phone. She could not have cared less that I entered the park.
That leaves the two men.
I stare at the tall man. Does he look familiar? I watch as he bends down to pet the fur of a large bulldog. As he straightens up, our eyes meet across the dog park. He winks at me.