“Maybe it’s good that they’re not calling you back,” Willow said.
From her seat at their kitchen table, Tom across from her, Willow could see the tiny path where Avery had pushed through the bushes on that first day. Poor Avery. “Maybe the police have solved it. Without us.”
Willow hoped against hope this was true. After Olive’s phone call earlier this morning, Tom had changed his mind about keeping things secret. They’d decided, together, that they’d face the world, or at least the police, together. And the consequences. Even if they had to start another new life. Secretly she also hoped that if she spoke up, if she told the truth and made the world right, the universe would forgive her. Leave her alone. Leave them alone.
“We’ll wait,” Tom said. “It’s only seven-thirty in the morning. Maybe it’s not their shift. Maybe they don’t care. They’re cops, after all.”
Willow watched the steam curling from her white mug of coffee, felt Tom’s leg touch hers under the checked tablecloth. Morning was special in The Reserve, with a gently filtered light. Maybe the peace and solitude they’d longed for would follow. Tom had said the right thing, done the honorable thing, in California, told the feds about the financial house of cards at Untitled constructed by the embezzling Roger Hayden. They’d been moved three thousand miles in witness protection because of it.
Now it was her turn. She had witnessed Avery Morgan’s murder—she guessed you could call it “murder.” She would say the right thing, too. If she had to.
And if she needed proof that the world was a calculus of irony? Last night their handler, Olive Brennis, had called Tom, telling him Detective Brogan had left her a message saying her informant was dead. Until Willow called her, Olive—and briefly, Tom—had assumed the detective meant Willow.
Olive had called the Galts again, half an hour ago, having followed up on the detective’s call. “I get it now,” Olive had said. “Brogan probably meant Avery Morgan, can you believe it? Because of her Untitled connection, apparently he thought she was the informant. Close,” she’d scoffed, “but no cigar.”
The feds were now calculating how much they could say to set Brogan straight.
“Tom,” she began.
“Willow,” he said at the same time, and that’s because they loved each other, and why the world would work.
“When I thought about you being dead,” Tom went on, stirring his coffee, “I understood how much I loved you, what you gave up for me. For us. And no matter what happened in the past, I knew you’d forgive me. But part of me worried. That you wouldn’t.”
“There’s nothing to worry about.” Willow felt her heart melt. She loved him, too, and there was nothing he could say or do that would ever change that.
“Here’s the thing. I knew Avery, in California. Uh, pretty well. Before you came,” Tom said. “She was a freelancer at Untitled. But she probably didn’t tell you that, right, as Willow? It was like working at Enron, or some disgraced corporation—everyone touched by it tried to erase it from their past. When you told me her name … well, I didn’t want to tell you. But when she was drowned…” He pressed his lips together, closed his eyes briefly.
“Roger Hayden,” Willow whispered. “I told you, from the beginning.…”
Tom nodded. “I know. I know. I started thinking, though. He’s the only person who could know that she was here and we were here. And God knows what he might have said or concocted or lied about. I mean, you and I had been here for a month before she arrived. What if there was more to it? Maybe Hayden had arranged it. Then sent Avery himself! To threaten us! And when he ratted us out, the police would put two and two together and might blame me for Avery’s death, figure that I was trying to keep her quiet.”
Willow frowned, remembering. It couldn’t have been Tom she’d seen at the pool that morning. “But—”
“Let me finish. That’s why I never wanted to ‘meet’ Avery. What if she recognized me? You insisted you hadn’t seen anyone at the pool, so you couldn’t say it wasn’t me. I’d been walking on the Common, so I had no great alibi. Once the police suspected me, questioned me, our life would be over. For real, this time. Last night Olive told me you were running, and part of me was … relieved. But I had to go to the police, because what if they discovered you were missing? And I hadn’t reported it? When you finally came home last night, I truly believed you were Hayden. I was ready for him.”
Tom, her dear strong Tom, was more paranoid than she was—and she’d ridiculously decided the crosswalk man was a blue-blazered assassin. She almost laughed, but nothing was funny. Tom was in anguish. Exactly as she had been. “But you didn’t do it! They’d never have convicted you.”
“Of course I didn’t. But convict an innocent man? It’s happened. Way too often.”
Willow saw her husband sigh, then he stood, putting his hands on her bare shoulders. “I was terrified,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t want you to say anything. If you had told me the truth, from the beginning, about what you saw, we could have—”
“But I couldn’t! I was worried about you!” She leaned into his soft, strong chest, her words muffled in his still-pristine new white T-shirt. “What would happen if I told, and they found out who we were?”
“I was worried about you,” Tom said. “If they accused me, and I couldn’t prove it wasn’t me, what would happen to you, and—”
“Shhhh,” Willow whispered. The scrapbook was safely hidden but still accessible to them, just like their pasts. “We’ll tell the truth, and go on with our lives, and never keep anything from each other again.”