Chapter 6: Who Calls at This Hour

Sera's POV

Grant set his coffee down so carefully it made no sound, and that was how I knew he was angry.

He had been home since seven. He had showered and shaved, but a cut still split his lower lip, and the bruise along his jaw had darkened overnight. He had not kissed me when I came down the stairs. He sat at the kitchen island in yesterday's shirt, with a clean one folded on the stool beside him, as if he had not decided yet whether to change.

"Marco says you had dinner with a man," he said.

I poured my tea and kept my voice even, and I was quietly pleased with that. "Marco was at Lucca's?"

"Marco is wherever I need him to be." He wrapped both hands around his mug. "Don't play games with me, Sera."

"I'm not playing anything. I had dinner with an old friend. You told me you had a meeting, so I went to one of mine."

"Stop seeing him."

"Seeing whom?"

"You know exactly who."

"You don't get to choose my friends, Grant."

"I'm your husband."

"Yes," I said. "You've mentioned that."

His voice went flat, and for a second he looked like the man who had shouted at the television during the football final. Then the look slid away, and what replaced it was worse. He was measuring me, the way he measured a shipment before he signed for it.

"Who is he?" he asked.

I could have lied. I had a dozen names ready, all of them harmless. But Marco had already been to the restaurant, and Grant would check every one of them in an afternoon.

"Dante Rivers," I said.

The name hung in the kitchen. Grant laughed, short and dry. "Vivienne's husband. The man who reads the news."

"That's the one."

"Marco says the owner of Lucca's wouldn't let him pay for his own wine."

"Then Marco should have ordered better wine."

He stood, and the stool scraped the tile. For a moment I thought he might reach for me. Instead he picked up his clean shirt, looked at it as though he had forgotten what it was for, and dropped it on the counter.

"You're going to end this," he said quietly. "Today."

"Or what?"

He did not answer. He walked out, and a minute later I heard the car door close outside, and then nothing at all.

My mother called before I had finished my second cup of tea.

"Vivienne came by last night," she said, with no greeting. "She was crying, Sera. She said you've been strange. She said you're lonely."

I set down my cup. "Did she?"

"She said you've been seeing someone. She didn't want to say who."

"Then she should have asked me."

"Don't you dare make a scene at Sunday lunch. This family has enough to bear." A pause, and then her voice softened in the way that always made me feel eight years old. "Your sister loves you. She just needs you to be patient with her."

I looked at the window. Rain had started again, thin and grey.

"I'm fine, Mum," I said. "Everything is fine."

"Good girl."

I wanted to tell her that I had been a good girl for thirty-three years, and that the good girl had just found out what her silence had cost. Instead I said nothing, which was becoming a habit.

I hung up before she could say anything else. I did not tell her about the folder. I did not tell her about the photographs, or the red scarf, or the forty-three pictures I could still see when I closed my eyes. She would have taken Vivienne's side before I finished the first sentence, and I would have spent the rest of the call defending myself to a woman who had already decided.

That was the last time I told my mother anything true. I understood that only later.

After the call, I went to the hall closet where Grant kept his briefcase. The second charger I had noticed weeks ago was gone. In its place sat a single black cable, neatly coiled, as if someone had tidied the bag after taking something out of it. I stood there longer than I should have, listening to the rain against the glass, and wondered who in my marriage had started keeping secrets from whom.

I left the briefcase exactly where I found it. I had learned that much from the folder: the person who notices first is the one who gets to decide when to speak.

I called Dante from the bathroom with the taps running, because it felt like the kind of thing a woman in my position would do.

"Yes?" he said.

"Grant knows."

"I know. Marco reported at seven."

"You're not even surprised."

"I am not." His voice was calm, unhurried. "Where are you?"

"Home. Alone, for the moment." I turned off the tap. "Meet me. I want answers, and I want them without the candles."

"Ten o'clock. The park behind the library. Come on foot."

"You're asking me to walk alone through a park?"

"I am asking you to walk through a park where nobody will photograph you," he said. "There is a difference."

The park was nearly empty. Wet leaves stuck to the benches, and a man in a yellow raincoat threw a stick for a dog that did not want to fetch it. Dante sat at the far end of the bench nearest the fountain, his coat buttoned to the throat, a newspaper folded under one arm. He did not get up when I approached.

I sat at the other end. Between us there was a gap wide enough for a third person.

"Marco," I said. "You told me he works for Grant."

"I told you he works for Grant's supplier."

"And?"

"And he works for Grant's supplier's supplier, Sera. Marco reports to two men." He turned a page of the newspaper without reading it. "I am only one of them."

I waited for him to smile, or to soften it, or to give me the story that would make all of this fit neatly into the folder. He did none of those things.

"Who is the other?"

"Ask me something I can answer without ending a life."

"Did you have Grant summoned last night?"

"Yes."

"Did you have him touched?"

"No."

"Is that the truth?"

"Yes."

I believed him, which annoyed me more than any lie could have. I believed him because he had given me the uncomfortable answer instead of the comfortable one. Liars were not that careless with their own pride.

"Then tell me one thing that makes Grant look guilty," I said. "Not the photographs. Something he did that I didn't see."

Dante folded the newspaper slowly and set it on the bench between us.

"Grant has been carrying messages for eleven years," he said. "Some of them were not his to carry."

The dog finally fetched the stick and dropped it at its owner's feet. The man in the yellow coat laughed.

"That's a half answer," I said.

"It is the only whole answer I can give you this morning." He stood, buttoned his coat, and looked down at me. "Go home, Sera. Act tired. Let him watch you."

Before I left the park, I watched Dante walk toward the gate. He did not look back, and he did not hurry. Two men fell into step behind him at a distance, and neither of them looked at me. I told myself that was reassuring. It was not.

Grant's car was parked across the road from my house when I got back.

It sat under the bare oak with its engine running, exhaust curling white into the cold air. The windows were dark, and I could not see him clearly. But I knew the shape of his shoulders behind the wheel, and I knew he was not looking at his phone.

He was looking at my front door, and then, slowly, he turned his head and looked at me.