“I’m sure anyone else would have done the same.”
Ethan showed him out, and Finn drifted back to his apartment. He had nothing to do except wait for the evening and, he hoped, the return of Jonas. He spent a couple of hours reading a densely written book on Pope Innocent III, making notes, knowing he’d use almost none of it.
After lunch he phoned Mathieu, but Adrienne’s sister-in-law answered.
“Hello, Cecile—it’s Finn.”
Cecile’s English wasn’t great, but it was better than she pretended and Finn was certain she used it as an excuse to avoid talking to him. In his present mood of self-reappraisal, he could hardly hold that against her.
Even so, it rankled slightly when she said, “Hello, Finn, a moment please.” And she was gone, the phone placed down heavily.
A few moments later, Finn heard footsteps approaching, a labored sigh, the phone being picked up again, and Mathieu saying, “Hello, Finn, what can I do for you?”
His tone was disarming, and Finn briefly wondered if Debbie had been mistaken about Adrienne’s whereabouts, given everything else that was going on in her life, but even with a missing daughter it was the kind of detail Debbie Portman wouldn’t get wrong.
“Mathieu, I know she’s with you—her friend told me.”
There was silence, then another sigh—Mathieu was thirty-four, nearly two years younger than Finn, yet he had a way of sounding like a weary parent—and he said, “Yes, Adrienne is here, but she doesn’t want to speak to you.”
“Okay. Am I at least allowed to know what I’m supposed to have done, why she left without a word?”
“That’s none of my business,” said Mathieu, his tone ambiguous, suggesting an extra level of meaning that Finn couldn’t quite decipher. “But you know, Finn, when a man has a problem with his wife and he thinks he’s done nothing wrong, sometimes what he’s done wrong is nothing.”
“Well, thanks, I’ll give that some thought. But let her know I called, and that I would like to hear from her.”
He didn’t get any more effusive than that, in part because he refused to pour his heart out to a man who wasn’t even his brother-in-law, in part because there wasn’t a great deal to pour out. Far from asking her to come back, he had to resist the urge to ask what he should do with the rest of her stuff.
But something about his response seemed to mollify Mathieu, and he sounded sympathetic as he said, “Just give her some time.”
It seemed as if he was about to go on, but he stopped abruptly, and Finn knew that Adrienne was standing there listening. He could imagine the look she was giving her brother right now.
“She can take as long as she needs,” said Finn, unable to stop himself, despite knowing how those words would be interpreted. He ended the call and took both phones through to the living room, doubting that she’d call back or send a message, but not wanting to miss it if she did.
And he fell asleep there on the sofa, deep and fast, as if finally making up for the research trip and the confusion since. When he woke, it was already growing dark and he was disoriented, unsure of the day or time. He went to the bathroom, washed his face, brushed his teeth, trying to shake the grogginess out of himself.
Before making coffee, he decided to close the curtains in the living room, making it easier for him to spy on the street below without being seen. But he stopped short of closing them fully, and stood back to one side, because there Jonas was again, walking up and down on the opposite side of the street, occasionally looking up at Gibson’s apartment.
Finn took another step back, completely out of sight. The coffee could wait, he supposed—it was time to find out what Jonas thought he knew.
Chapter Eight
Jonas was wearing a different hat. It was the same design, but from this distance Finn could see that it was knitted, a more traditional alpine pattern. It was the only thing that would have differentiated surveillance footage from the two nights, because his behavior was identical: the walking, the checking his watch, the looking up at the empty apartment.
Finn had slipped out of the building and moved a little farther along the street. Now, having watched Jonas for a few minutes, and having once more looked up at the lit windows of the Portmans’ apartment, he crossed the street and started walking casually toward the kid.
He thought it was odd that Jonas didn’t seem to look at the Portmans’ place himself. Presumably, he knew Hailey wasn’t there and wouldn’t be there. He probably wasn’t much interested, either, in what her parents were going through, whether because of autism or adolescence.