Danielle pressed her lips together. “I don’t know. And maybe there’s another explanation.” She laid her hands in her lap.
Rowan considered the woman sitting across from her on the couch, for a second picturing the young girl who used to drive Edith around Meriweather in a golf cart. She’d been Aster’s friend, not Rowan’s, but Rowan had always found her entertaining. One summer, when they were all sitting on the beach together, they’d watched an older couple fighting as they walked along the water’s edge. The wind had snatched away the couple’s real words, but Danielle had adopted a high-pitched nasal whine for the woman and a phlegmy rumble for the man.
“I told you not to wear that Speedo,” she’d said in a pinched voice.
“You worried about the competition?” she’d then rasped, holding her arms out at the same time as the old man.
Rowan knew the arguing couple—the Coopers were one of Meriweather’s few year-rounders—and Danielle had mimicked their voices perfectly. Danielle’s mother, Julia, had dashed by at that moment on her morning jog. “Be nice, Danielle,” she’d admonished, her bright red hair flying behind her.
“Have you told the FBI?” Rowan asked.
Danielle shook her head. “They haven’t contacted me. And instead of going to them directly, I thought I should let you know first. Especially since I don’t even know if it is anything. I hope that was the right thing to do.”
“Of course it was.” Rowan shifted in her chair. “You did what anyone in the family would do, and I appreciate it.” She shifted in her chair. “You don’t have any idea who was on the other line in those blocked calls?”
Danielle shook her head. “Shoshanna might, but she didn’t tell me.”
Rowan stared out the window. Lights twinkled in the building across the street. “I wonder if Foley looked into Poppy’s calendar. Maybe those appointments were a clue about who she might have been seeing,” she murmured, mostly to herself, hardly believing the words coming out of her mouth. She’d assumed James’s theory about Poppy’s affair was just that: a theory. A thought that justified his own infidelity with Rowan. But here was another person echoing James’s suspicions. The idea of Poppy having an affair still didn’t compute, though.
A knock sounded at the door, and James poked his head in. “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I interrupting?”
“Oh, hi.” She blinked confusedly at him. “Um, no, of course not.”
“We were just finishing up.” Danielle stood and smoothed her pencil skirt. “Well, if you need anything, call me, okay?”
“I will,” Rowan said, and Danielle slipped out of the room.
Rowan turned to James. “So . . . what are you doing here?”
“I’m coming from work,” James explained. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his dark-wash jeans, looking suddenly sheepish. “The kids are with Megan. I thought you might still be here. I just . . . wanted to see how you were doing.”
Rowan blinked rapidly, feeling disoriented. “How did you get in?”
James shrugged. “My wife was the president. They always let me in.”
Rowan nodded. Of course.
She rubbed her eyes. “God, I’m sorry. It’s just so quiet here. Kind of spooky.” She wondered if he’d heard the conversation she’d just had with Danielle. But he looked guileless, one corner of his mouth lifted up in a smile, revealing the dimple she hadn’t seen in so long.
She put her head in her hands and rubbed her scalp. Should she tell him what Danielle had said? Switched appointments, secret phone calls—that did seem to add up to an affair. Maybe the signs James sensed were really there. Suddenly Rowan felt somehow offended, as though she was the one who’d been betrayed. The woman she’d considered her closest friend felt as unknowable as a stranger at a bar.
Rowan’s anger was a hot prickle on the surface of her skin. She stared hard at a picture of her and Poppy that sat on her desk, wanting suddenly to turn it facedown. Tears filled her eyes, and she immediately regretted her thoughts. Her cousin, her best friend, had been murdered. She couldn’t be mad at her.
“Hey, everything okay?” James stepped forward and reached out as if to put a hand on her arm, then retreated, as though worried she’d brush him off.
“Yeah. It’s just been a long day,” she said, blinking back tears. “So how are the kids?”
“Briony’s feeling better.” James sat down on Rowan’s couch.
“And how are you?”
James stared at her for what felt like forever. “You want the truth?”
“Of course.”
He took a deep breath. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”