Vero took one look at my hair and my clothes as I came through the door, folded her arms thoughtfully, and said, “You made out with him, didn’t you?”
“I did not,” I whispered, darting a look into the family room, hoping Delia hadn’t overheard.
“Don’t try to deny it.” She tapped the side of her neck, jutting her chin toward mine. “The detective left a little evidence at the scene of the crime.” She wagged her eyebrows.
“No!” My hand flew to my throat. I hadn’t had a hickey since high school. “I swear, I’ll kill him—”
Vero doubled over, stifling a cackle. “See, I knew it. You should see your face right now!”
I bundled up my sweatshirt and threw it at her.
“Relax,” she said, choking back her laughter, “they’re napping.” She dragged me by the sleeve to the kitchen, shoved me into a chair at the table, and set a bag of Oreo cookies in front of me. “On a scale of one to ten, how was he?”
I reached for a cookie. Vero yanked the bag away, holding my Oreos hostage. “Spill! I want to know everything.”
I snatched it out of her hands. “He’s an eleven,” I mumbled, stuffing a cookie in my mouth.
She leaned back in her chair and stole one for herself. “I knew it. I’ve always wanted to make out with a cop. I bet he was all fifty shades of assertive,” she said, fanning herself.
“Not exactly.” Vero narrowed her eyes at me, as if she was rarely wrong about these kinds of things. “I sort of egged him on.”
She smacked my arm, stifling a cackle.
“I didn’t have any choice! I had to keep him from spotting Theresa and Aimee together, so I pretended I had something in my eye, and he leaned in to help me, and then one thing led to another—”
Vero’s laughter died. Her mouth dropped open around her cookie. “Theresa and Aimee were together? What happened? Did he see them?”
I shook my head. “Aimee showed up at Theresa’s office. It looked like they were going out to lunch or something. Nick didn’t see them leave. But there’s more,” I said, peeling another cookie from the package. It had definitely been a two-Oreo morning. “He already knew she’s been meeting with Feliks Zhirov.”
“Shit,” she said. “That didn’t take long.”
“He’s still convinced she was involved in Harris’s disappearance, only now he thinks Feliks was behind it. Not only that, but Nick went back to The Lush and talked to Julian. He showed Julian a photo of Theresa, and when Julian insisted it wasn’t the same woman he’d talked to, Nick suspected Julian was just covering for her. So now, on top of everything else, Julian knows I lied to him.”
Vero winced. “It could be worse. You could have given him your real name. Then you’d really be in trouble.” She pushed her glass of milk across the table, letting me drown a corner of my Oreo in it. “You think Nick will find anything that’ll lead the investigation back to you?”
I sighed. “I don’t think so. There’s nothing connecting me to Feliks or his business.”
Vero pushed the entire bag of cookies at me. “Nothing but Andrei Borovkov.”
That night, I sat in front of my computer watching the cursor blink. I’d revised a solid chunk of my manuscript to keep my secrets safe. I’d written the hot young lawyer out of my story and replaced him with a hotshot cop, and while the heroine and the cop had great chemistry on the page, the lawyer’s absence from my story felt wrong for reasons I couldn’t seem to shake. I missed the banter between them and his easy smile. I missed the way he seemed to see right through her—through her wig-scarf and her makeup and her borrowed dress—and even though she was a killer with a complicated backstory, he still seemed to like what he saw underneath.
I nudged my phone closer and scrolled to Julian’s name, staring at his number. My finger hovered over the delete key. There were so many reasons I should press it. So many reasons I should have edited him out of my life days ago.
Instead, I picked up my phone, slid to the floor beside my desk, and tapped his name on the screen. Hugging my knees, I listened as Julian’s phone rang, waiting for the telltale voice-mail beep. When he actually answered, I was too stunned to speak.
The line was silent.
“My name isn’t Theresa,” I confessed quietly. “And I’m not really in real estate.” I listened for any sign he was still there. “I’m not blond. And you were right, about all those other things you said about me at the bar. I didn’t belong there. The dress I was wearing wasn’t even mine.”
I held my breath through a long pause, certain he’d hung up. I was just about to give up and disconnect when he asked, “Was any of it true?” There was no suggestion of blame in his tone. No expectation or demands.
“Some.” I buried my head in my hands, surprised by how guilty I felt. “I have two kids. I’m divorced. I’m in the middle of a messy custody fight with my ex.” I looked down at the Oreo crumbs on my stretched-out T. “And you more or less nailed my sense of style and dietary preferences.”
He sighed. Or maybe it was a heavyhearted laugh. “Who are you?” He sounded genuinely curious.
I leaned my head back against my desk. “I don’t think I can tell you. Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“I want to.” I raked my hair back, my nails dragging over the phantom itch in my scalp. “I just … need to clear some things up first.”
“Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“I don’t want to be,” I said, fighting back tears. “I keep trying to do the right thing, and somehow it keeps backfiring.” All I had wanted was a chance to hold on to my kids. To prove to Steven that he was wrong about me. But what if he wasn’t?
“Did this Mickler guy—the one who went missing,” he asked gently, “did he hurt you?”
“No,” I said. But I thought about all those names on his phone. “Not me.”
“Did you hurt him?” There was no insinuation of guilt. No condemnation or judgment. Maybe there should have been.
“No. But I doubt anyone would believe me.”
“Maybe if you tell me what happened, I could help.” He sounded so earnest. So honest. I wondered if it would feel like confessing at church, to pour all my ugly truths into the phone to him. I wished I could utter a few Hail Marys and the rest of the world would absolve me the way Julian seemed to want to.
“I can’t. This thing I’m tangled up in … It’s complicated.” It was wrong of me to drag him into this. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called—”
“Why did you?” he asked before I could hang up.
The question pulled me up short. I picked at the fraying knee of my jeans. “I guess I just wanted you to know that I’m not a terrible person. And I never wanted to mislead you. If things weren’t so screwed up right now, I would tell you my name. I’d take you up on that offer to go out for pizza and tell you everything over a beer. But…”
“It’s complicated,” he said softly. “I know.”
“Do you believe me?” I closed my eyes and braced for his answer, surprised by the wash of relief I felt when he finally spoke.
“Yeah, I do.”
“Why?”
“Ever heard of Hanlon’s razor?” I tipped my head back and closed my eyes. The low timbre of his voice was even and calm, a balm on my frazzled nerves. “There’s an old saying that goes something like … ‘Let us not attribute to malice and cruelty what may be referred to less criminal motives.’ I make it a point never to assume the worst about people.”
“Maybe you should.”
“Sometimes people just make mistakes.”
We both fell quiet. I wondered if he would feel the same way if he knew the depths of the mistakes we were talking about. If he knew Harris Mickler’s body was buried at the bottom of them. “I should probably get rid of this phone and never call you again.”
“Is that what you want?”
“No.”
“Then keep it.” It was the voice of a lawyer giving counsel. There was something reassuring in it, something solid I could hold on to. “I still don’t know your name,” he reminded me. “This could be anyone’s number in my phone. The detective’s only interested in some woman named Theresa, and since your name isn’t Theresa, there’s no reason for me to tell him about you. Is there?”
I swallowed the painful lump in my throat. “No.”
“Promise me if you need help, you’ll call.”
I wished I could tell him this wasn’t as simple as a bad alternator. That I was in way over my head, and it was going to take more than a set of jumper cables and a wet wipe to fix the mess I’d made.
“I’ll be okay,” I said as I disconnected the call. I only wished I believed it.