Jason came home from work and announced that we were meeting Peter Mertz and his wife at a restaurant in Midtown for dinner in twenty minutes.
“I’m sorry for the short notice, but this is important,” he said. “You need to get changed, and wear something nice.”
He wouldn’t look at me. His eyes shifted as he spoke, and there was something tight and forced in his manner. I couldn’t help but remember Stacey Allen’s mysterious insinuations that Jason was in trouble at work. I’d tried to get him to discuss that with me, but to no avail. At the housewarming party, Peter had seemed so skeptical when I told that white lie about Jason’s whereabouts, almost like he was on to Jason’s lies himself. At the time, I’d assumed that was about the Russian woman, but was it?
“What’s going on, Jason? Are you in trouble at work?”
“Honey, there’s always trouble at work. It’s not worth bothering yourself over. The car’s waiting downstairs. We need to leave in five minutes. Please.”
I was in the bedroom at the vanity table, doing my eyes, when my phone rang. Every time it rang now, I jumped, terrified it would be Aidan. But it was Lynn. I declined the call, and she called right back, so I picked up.
“I’m getting ready to go out to dinner. Can I call you back?”
“He tried to run me off the road.”
She was breathing hard, her voice panicky. I knew instantly who she meant, but I couldn’t admit that—not to her, not to myself. What had I brought into the lives of the people I loved?
“Who did what?” I said. “Are you okay? You sound bad.”
“I’m still shaking. Your boyfriend tried to sideswipe my car. No joke. Thank God a car was coming the other way. He was going to collide with it head-on, so he had to back off. It must’ve freaked him out, because he stopped chasing me.”
“Wait, who?”
“Who do you think? That fucking bartender.”
“Aidan?”
“Yes, Aidan. He’s as crazy as you said, Caroline. We need to go to the police. I didn’t get the plate number, but I can describe the truck to a T. Red, rusted out, banged-up door.”
“Why would Aidan go after you? That makes no sense.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I didn’t say that. But I do think you should calm down and ask yourself if it was really him, or some maniac who happened to look like him. Come on, what motive does Aidan have to go after you? How would he even know who you are?”
“He would go after me to get to you. And I don’t know how he knew. But he knew, and he said a lot of stuff. He claimed to be close to you, Caroline. Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“He said this while he was chasing you in his truck?”
“No. Before.”
“He came to your house, and said these things?” I said, stunned.
My phone. Aidan must’ve found Lynn’s address on my phone, tracked her down, and attacked her. My worst fears were coming true.
“No, not my house,” she said.
“Then where did this happen?”
“Near the bar where he works.”
“Why were you at the bar where he works?”
“Because. I told him to back off.”
“Ugh, Lynn. What did you do?”
“You’re being so passive that I felt I had to step in. I went there, and I told him to leave you alone.”
“Are you insane? That’s guaranteed to set him off.”
“Well, it did. You should thank me, because now we have enough to go to the police.”
“But you created the situation. Don’t you see? Now Aidan has an excuse. The police won’t do anything.”
“What are you talking about? How does telling him to back off you give him an excuse to try to kill me?”
“The police won’t take it seriously.”
“Of course they will. You’re not making any sense. Are you covering for this guy, Caroline?”
I was about to tell her that Aidan’s brother was the chief of police. I heard a noise and turned to see Jason standing right behind me. When had he gotten there, how much had he heard?
“Who’s that?” he said.
I held the phone away from me and covered the microphone.
“It’s Lynn.”
“What does she want?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.”
“Did I hear you say something about going to the police?”
“Someone stole something from her. Or, she thinks they did. Hold on, okay?” I said, putting the phone back to my ear. “Lynn, listen. Jason and I are late to dinner. I’ll have to call you back.”
“What are we going to do?” she demanded.
“Let me think about it. I’ll call you later.”
I hung up, then I turned my back to him. “Zip me up, and let’s go,” I said.
The Uber was waiting downstairs, a black SUV. When we were buckled into the backseat, Jason asked me again if he hadn’t heard me talking to Lynn about going to the police over something.
“She can’t find a piece of jewelry, and she’s wondering if her housekeeper took it,” I said.
“Rosario? Hasn’t she been with them for, like, twenty years?”
“It couldn’t be Rosario, right? I told her to look around. She probably misplaced it. You know how people hide their jewelry, like if a workman’s coming or something, and then they forget where they put it? That’s probably what happened.”
Fifth Avenue was clogged with traffic. I felt bad lying to Jason when we were trying to find our way back into one another’s hearts. But I couldn’t tell him about Aidan without risking our reconciliation, especially not now that Aidan might be volatile, even dangerous. Jason would blame me for bringing this element of instability into our lives. He might even start thinking that we should separate again. I stared at the reflections of the buildings on the window of the SUV and felt so alone. I was keeping secrets from my husband. And I wondered what secrets he was keeping from me.
Peter Mertz was sitting alone in the dimly lit bar area at the restaurant, a martini on the table in front of him. Where was his wife? He stood up when we came in. But there was no smile of greeting on his face, no move to kiss or even greet me at all.
“What’s this?” he said to Jason, but he was looking at me.
“Did I misunderstand?” Jason said. “I thought wives were included.”
“We never said that.”
I saw what was going on, and my stomach cratered. I had not been invited to this meal. There was something very serious going on between Jason and Peter that was meant to be discussed tonight, and whatever it was, it was bad enough that Jason was trying to avoid it. I was being used. My presence here was a shield.
“My mistake,” Jason said. “I do apologize. But since Caroline is here, why don’t we sit down and eat? Pete, you and I can talk at the office tomorrow.”
I had to hand it to him. Jason was smooth under pressure. The guileless expression, the even tone of his voice. Every word out of his mouth sounded so reasonable that the listener would ask themselves if they were the crazy one. I’d taught Jason well. The student had become the master, and now he used his powers of persuasion to keep me in the dark about what increasingly seemed like very important matters. First the Russian woman, now whatever this discord was between him and Peter. Maybe I was the one who should reconsider our reconciliation.
“If you two need to talk, I can always go home,” I said. “Honestly, I don’t mind.”
“Or, Pete could call Donna, tell her to hop in a car and come join us,” Jason said.
“I believe the reservation is only for two people,” Peter said.
“It’s for four. My secretary made it,” Jason replied.
Peter looked back and forth between Jason and me, presumably weighing his need to have it out with Jason against his reluctance to be rude to me.
“This isn’t really the place to have our business discussion,” Jason said.
“Yes. I said that when you suggested it.”
Jason shrugged.
Peter took out his phone.
“Fine, let me see if she can get down here.”
The four of us ended up having a lovely meal, despite a discernible undercurrent of tension between Jason and Peter. I’d put my phone to silent, so I didn’t know until later how many times Lynn had called, in a frenzy of anxiety, asking what I planned to do about Aidan. Nor did I know that Aidan had called me several times from an unfamiliar number, one I hadn’t blocked, demanding to speak to me right away. He claimed he had information that Jason was a danger to me in some way, and even a danger to Hannah. Not only was that ridiculous, it was a downright creepy thing to suggest. Luckily, I didn’t listen to that voicemail until the next day.
The four of us—the Starks and the Mertzes—sat together in the exquisite, airy dining room, under glittering chandeliers, toasting and chatting like the old friends we supposedly were. I ordered the duck, and drank two glasses of a fine cabernet, and had what appeared on the surface to be a roaring good time. I admired my husband’s good looks, laughed at Peter’s jokes, gossiped with Donna, commented on the elegant outfits of the women at the next table. It was a night I’d look back on like it belonged to a distant, untroubled century. Because the reckoning was coming for all of us. I could feel it.