“I just told you—” Amanda began, but Martin cut her off.
“You get loads of tips that are wrong or go nowhere, right? Conroy told me that earlier when I broached the reward idea with him. He said it would only bring out more cranks.”
“He’s probably right.”
“Yes, well, I don’t give a damn how many bottom-feeders come nibbling to the surface. It only takes one real call to get the answer. If I have to pay a thousand people to man the phones, I’ll do it. Whatever it takes to bring Chloe home.” His fiery delivery seemed convincing, but Reed still believed the man was holding something back.
“I’d like to speak to Mr. Lockhart alone, if I could,” he said to Amanda.
“Fine.” She uncrossed her arms and stopped glaring at Reed long enough to give Martin’s arm a sympathetic squeeze. “I’ll add a thousand to the total, whatever it is. Just let me know how I can help, okay?”
He covered her hand with his own. “Thank you.”
As she left, Reed noted the crisp linen skirt, the high heels, and a heavy scent of perfume and makeup in her wake. Whatever her relationship to Martin Lockhart, she’d come dressed for a date, not a strategy meeting over reward money. Martin watched her go with a searching expression that Reed couldn’t decipher. The heavy quiet was interrupted by a child’s happy shout and the noise of barking. Behind Martin’s shoulder, Reed could see Tula with Margery in the backyard. His daughter laughed as she ran in circles, presumably with a little white dog yipping at her heels. Martin heard the giggles and turned to look. “Who’s that out there?” he demanded, rising from his chair. “I didn’t let a child in here.”
“She’s my daughter. She and I were visiting Boston when Chloe went missing.”
Martin turned to him with fresh understanding in his eyes. “You have a daughter.”
“She’s seven.”
Martin nodded dumbly. “I liked seven. Chloe had such an intense curiosity back then. She wanted to know all about my trips. We’d sit in here and look at the atlas together. She was especially fascinated with Egypt. I brought her back a little pyramid with a mummy inside and she slept with it for a week. I think she still has it in her room.”
“I take it almost-thirteen is harder.”
“She doesn’t laugh like that anymore,” answered Martin, looking out the window again. “She hasn’t for a long time.”
“Why do you think that is?”
He turned with a heavy sigh. “Adolescent hormones, maybe. Also, as I mentioned, she wanted more independence, more freedom. I suppose I did, too, when I was her age. I remember thinking my father was like a fossil and he was fifteen years younger at the time than I am now.” He gave a ghost of a smile, thinking on it.
“Someone thinks you’re having an affair with Ms. McFarland,” Reed said. “She seems pretty convinced it’s your wife.”
Martin snorted and picked up some papers from his desk. “Teresa sees threats that aren’t there. It’s rather her defining characteristic, if you will.”
“So there’s nothing there between you and Amanda McFarland,” Reed replied, unconvinced. “Nothing at all.”
Martin shuffled paper and didn’t answer for a long time.
“Mr. Lockhart?”
He frowned at the papers with faint accusation. “I met Teresa two years after Trevor died. It was at a benefit for the hospital and she gave an impassioned speech about the medical profession and ‘the duty to care,’ about how patients come to the hospital at one of the worst points in their lives and doctors need to be mindful of how utterly terrifying that is. We need to see the person, she said. Not the disease. I remember thinking at the time that she must have been a patient herself at some point and something went wrong. You could see it in her. There was a woundedness in her eyes, like she hadn’t properly healed. I wanted to take care of her.”
“Did she tell you about Trevor’s death?”
“No, someone else did when I started asking around about her. I was appalled. I—I tried to fix it. I offered to pay a private investigator to look into the case, but she refused. She said they had hired one back when the murder happened, but he didn’t have any luck. The entire Philadelphia police force couldn’t solve it, she told me. What’s one more person going to do at this late date? I asked what I could do—something, anything, to help her. She said she wanted to plant some spring bulbs at her home and if I wanted to, I could help her with that. We started seeing a lot of each other after that.”
“You fell in love,” Reed said.
“I did,” he said, lowering himself into his chair like a man much older than he was. “I told myself Teresa did, too. She didn’t say the words, but there was tenderness and care in her actions. She would make the coffee strong, the way I liked it, and just add more milk to hers. She would bring along my sweater when we went out because she knew I’d get chilly and wouldn’t think to bring it. She kissed my cheek every morning before she left for work, no matter where I was in the house. She would find me and give me that kiss.” He touched his cheek, rubbing it absently. “Then Chloe was born and I saw it at last—love, real love. Not just for the baby, but for me, too. She beamed. She laughed. The passion she always had at work spilled over into our home, and it was glorious. It was like she came back to life. Teresa’s heart expanded and we all fit inside, snug as a bug in a rug, as my own mother used to say.”
“So, what happened?”
His smile faded. “Chloe got older, more mobile, and she wanted to explore the world. Teresa’s fears started to grow as she imagined all sorts of terrible fates befalling Chloe. Poisons, predators, accidents on the street. We put up bars on the windows and cameras around the house and we stopped taking Chloe out in public as much, but none of it seemed to calm Teresa’s fears. I asked her to see a doctor, someone to help her manage her anxiety, but she snapped at me that she wasn’t crazy, that her child had died and I would never understand that.” He looked at Reed, his eyes wet. “What can you say to that?”
Reed had no answer. “And Amanda McFarland?” he asked.
“We kissed,” Martin admitted, shamefaced. “Once. No, twice. She initiated it, not me, although I didn’t push her away as quickly as I might have. She wanted more, but I was clear with her. I would never leave Chloe. I would never betray my family.”
Reed’s cell phone buzzed from his pocket, an insistent ring. He dug it out and noted the name. Sarit. He declined the call and stuck the phone back in his jeans. “Who besides Amanda McFarland knows about the kisses the two of you shared?”
“No one, or so I thought.” He shrugged. “Maybe Teresa has been paying more attention to me than I gave her credit for.”
Reed’s phone rang again. Sarit would not be denied. He reached into his pocket and silenced it. “You never considered leaving? Moving out or starting over?”
“And risk leaving Chloe alone with Teresa? No.” He leaned back in his seat, seeming defeated. “I owe her an apology, it seems. All these years, I thought she was stifling, too overprotective. I thought she’d been broken in a way I could never fix. It turns out she was right all along.”