“That picture Stephanie found, the one you told me about? Paul happened to show it to me when I was visiting him in Hastings that day. He was really impressed by you, and he loved your book. Said it had actually clarified a few points for him professionally, and he was going to have the photo enlarged and hang it on the brag wall in his home office. But when I saw it, I recognized the man standing at the edge of the photo. Richard Carrington. Paul told me you’d married him last year.”
I exhale. Okay, it’s all a simple misunderstanding. “My husband’s first name isn’t Richard, it’s Guy. Richard’s his middle name. Like I said, you’ve mixed him up with someone else.”
“I’m aware that he doesn’t go by Richard now, but he did in Dallas. Paul let me borrow the photo so I could show my wife and make sure it was him. Paul wrote something on the back of the picture about it being the only photo he had with your husband in it. When I showed the photo to my wife, she confirmed that the man in the picture was the same person she’d worked with. At the time he went by the name Rich Carrington.”
I realize I’m shaking my head back and forth, though of course Bloom can’t see me.
“The man your wife worked with may look like my husband and have the same last name, but it’s not him,” I say. “My husband lived in Chicago, not Texas. And then he moved to Miami.”
“I know he lived in Florida eventually. Allison heard he moved there, and was going by Guy.”
“And you’re saying that the reason Paul came to see me in Boston was because he was under the impression—mistaken impression, I should say—that my husband once lived in Texas, and he wanted to tell me that?” I’m trying to sound controlled, but I hear the mix of frustration and fear leaking through my words.
“Ms. Harper, look, I know this must be upsetting. And that’s why I was reluctant to say anything when you phoned yesterday. But based on details you told Paul about your husband, he suspected that he hadn’t been straight with you about his past.”
“Why would my husband be afraid to admit he lived in Dallas?”
“Because . . . because there was a situation here.”
He pauses, gathering his words or his nerve or both.
“He embezzled funds from the charity,” he says finally. “Close to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He’d worked out a whole system—accepting checks directly from several donors and then depositing them into a checking account he’d established with the initials DG. My wife discovered the deception and reported it to the board. Once Rich was caught and fired, he paid the money back and after much agonizing, the board chose not to prosecute. They wanted to avoid the damage bad publicity would cause.”
I feel like I’m suffocating, as if I’ve been wrapped tight in a blanket and heaved into the trunk of a car. I want to protest, to tell him he’s wrong, but I can’t get the words out.
“Ms. Harper— May I please call you Bryn? Is there a—?”
“There’s got to be a mistake,” I say, ignoring his question.
“I don’t think so, unfortunately.”
I’m shaking my head again, but thoughts are ricocheting in my mind, demanding I pay attention to them. There are Guy’s omissions over the past days—about the drink with Eve, about going to the police. There’s the flirty text. None of it seeming like the man I thought I knew.
And then a memory rams me from out of nowhere.
It was last April, a few months before our wedding, and I was midway through the book tour for Twenty Choices. Guy and I were missing each other intensely, and during a phone call we’d discussed the possibility of him flying out to be with me during the San Francisco leg of the tour. He’d been totally game, it seemed. But when I called the next morning to inform him that joining me in Dallas would probably be a better option, the situation changed.
Damn. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get away after all.
Why? What’s happened?
Brent happened. He’s got a huge project he’s demanding I take on.
“Bryn, are you still there?” Bloom asks.
“Yes.”
“Is there someone you can be with right now? A friend?”
“I don’t need a friend. I need proof of what you’re saying. You don’t expect me to simply accept your word that my husband is a liar and an embezzler, do you?”
“Of course not. I can send you a link, to an item in the Dallas Business Journal that I shared with Paul. It’ll prove your husband was in Dallas. As for the embezzlement, I’ve only my word to offer on that.”
I mutter okay and spit out my email address. There are too many questions I want to ask, but my need for answers is overridden by my desperation to jump off the phone and try to think this through, make sense of it. He assures me that I’m free to call him back.
“But please,” he adds, “this is an extremely delicate situation for my wife, so you can’t tell anyone where this information originated from.”