My husband passed the test. He is true.
Thomas is mine again.
“Thank you, Jessica.”
The view from the window displays a winter landscape: you walking down the sidewalk in your black leather coat, the tails of your red scarf a splash of color against the night.
“And that is all you two talked about?”
“Yeah, that was the essence of it,” you say.
“Enjoy your evening,” you are told. “I will speak with you soon.”
Three twenties are put on the table—an enormous tip, inspired by the happiness that feels too big to contain.
As a cab is hailed outside the café, my cell phone rings.
Thomas, again.
“Have you left the restaurant?” he asks.
Instinct shapes my response: “Not yet.”
“I just wanted to let you know I’ve run into a little traffic,” he says. “So there’s no need to rush.”
Something in his tone triggers an alarm, but he is told: “Thanks for letting me know.”
Data is swiftly considered: Twenty-two minutes at Deco Bar. Too brief for a romantic interlude. Yet it seems unlikely that the contents of the conversation you reported with Thomas would require so much time.
You are barely visible two blocks ahead. But you are traveling in the opposite direction of your apartment. Your stride grows swifter, as if you are eager for what awaits.
You are in a rush, Jessica. Where are you going?
Thomas’s delay affords the opportunity to gather more information. And a brisk walk in the cool air helps to clear the mind.
You proceed another block. Then you rapidly spin around. Your head swivels from side to side as you survey your surroundings.
Only the dark cloak of nightfall and the distance separating us, combined with the fortuitous location of a cordoned-off building, which provides a shield, prevents you from noticing your pursuer.
You turn and continue.
Several minutes later, you arrive at another small restaurant called Peachtree Grill.
A man waits inside the glass doors to greet you. He is approximately your age, with dark hair, and he wears a navy puffy coat accented with red zippers. You lean into his open arms. He hugs you tightly for a moment.
Then you both disappear deeper into the restaurant.
You profess to be honest, yet you’ve never mentioned this man before.
Who is he? How important is he to you? And what have you told him?
How many other secrets are you holding, Jessica?
CHAPTER
FIFTY-TWO
Friday, December 21
My conversation with Thomas at Deco Bar was exactly as I described it to Dr. Shields.
He found me there at a few minutes past eight P.M. at a table in the back area. I was nursing a Sam Adams, but he didn’t even order a drink. The bar was crowded, but no one seemed to be paying much attention to us.
Still, we stuck to the script.
“Why have you been following me?” Thomas asked as my eyes widened in surprise.
I protested that it was a coincidence. He looked skeptical and told me that he was married to a wonderful woman and that I should leave him alone.
We repeated variations of this dialogue until the two women at the next table turned to stare. I didn’t have to pretend to be embarrassed.
This was all good; we had witnesses. And although I hadn’t seen Dr. Shields when I’d surreptitiously looked around the bar, I wasn’t going to rule out the possibility that she had engineered a way to track our conversation, or at least watch our interaction.
That meeting with Thomas didn’t last long. But it was actually our second encounter of the day.
At four o’clock, several hours before we met at Deco Bar, Thomas and I had convened at O’Malley’s Pub, the same place where we’d met exactly one week ago before I brought him to my apartment. Back when I had no idea he was Dr. Shields’s husband.
Thomas had to cancel a client appointment to create a gap for the late-afternoon meeting; our conversation was too important to have over the phone. And we needed to talk before the date Dr. Shields had orchestrated.
I arrived first at O’Malley’s. Since it wasn’t even happy hour yet, only a couple other people were there. I made sure to take the table farthest from them. I positioned myself with my back to the wall so I could have a full view of the room.
When Thomas walked in, he nodded at me, then ordered a Scotch from the bar. He took a big gulp even before he sat down and removed his coat.
“I told you my wife was crazy,” he said. He ran a hand over his forehead. “Now, why did she have you ask me out on a date?”
We both wanted the same thing from each other: information.
“She told me you cheated on her,” I said. “She manipulated me into seeing if you’d do it again.”
He muttered something under his breath and finished his Scotch, then signaled to the bartender for another. “Well, I guess we have an answer for that already,” he said. “You haven’t told her anything about us, have you?”
“Whoa, you want to slow down there?” I suggested, pointing to his drink. “We’re meeting again in a few hours and we need to be sharp.”
“I get it,” he said. But he still stood up and retrieved his second drink.
“I didn’t tell her we slept together,” I said when he returned to the table. “I’m not planning to ever tell her about that.”
He closed his eyes and sighed.
“I don’t get it. You say she’s crazy and you want to leave her,” I said, “but when you’re around her, you act like you’re in love with her. It’s like she’s got this weird hold on you.”
His eyes snapped open.
“I can’t explain it,” he finally said. “But you’re right about one thing: It is an act when I’m with her.”
“You’ve been unfaithful before.” I already knew the answer, but I had to smoke him out.
He frowned. “Why is that any of your business?”
‘It’s my business because I’ve gotten sucked into the middle of your twisted relationship!”
He glanced behind him, then leaned closer to me and lowered his voice. “Look, it’s complicated, okay? I had a little fling.”
One fling? He was only being partly honest.
“Does your wife know who she was?” I asked.
“What? Yeah, but she was a nobody,” he said.
I felt myself bristle. I wanted to throw the Scotch in Thomas’s face.
A nobody who was a subject in Dr. Shields’s study, just like me. A nobody who was now dead.
He saw the expression on my face and backtracked: “I didn’t mean—It was just some woman who owns a clothing boutique a block over from my office. A one-night thing.”
I looked down at my bottle of Sam Adams. By then I’d almost peeled off the entire label.
So he wasn’t referring to April. At least his story aligned with Dr. Shields’s about this affair.
“How did she find out about it?” I asked. “Did you confess?”
He shook his head. “I sent Lydia a text that was meant for the other woman. Their names started with the same letter; it was just a dumb mistake.”
This was interesting, but it wasn’t the affair I wanted to know about. What about Subject 5?