Читать книгу The Affair - Colette Freedman - Страница 9

CHAPTER 3

Stephanie Burroughs.

All of the lines beside her name in the phone were filled in: an address, a phone number, a cell number, two e-mail addresses, a note of her birthday. And a little red flag beside her name.

Kathy’s fingers felt numb, hands trembling slightly as she tapped the flag on the screen. The calendar opened, a series of little rectangles representing the days of the month. Friday last had a little flag on it; the flag on Stephanie’s name was linked to it. She tapped the screen again, bringing up the day.

Friday had been a busy day for R&K Productions—or at least for the R part of it. There had been breakfast with a client at eight a.m., then a ten a.m. meeting followed by a voice-over session at the studio at eleven thirty. Artwork was scheduled in for three o’clock, then nothing.

Except for a red flag at five. No notation.

Kathy frowned, remembering. Last Friday . . . Robert had been home late last Friday; he’d been meeting a client, he said. It had been close to midnight when he’d arrived home.

Conscious that time was slipping by, she changed back to the month view and moved to the next red flag. It was for the previous Tuesday. Again, late in the afternoon, the last event of the day, with no appointments scheduled after it. The flag before that was for the previous Friday. She nodded quickly. He’d been late that Friday, but she couldn’t remember anything about the Tuesday. Robert was often late getting home from work; in fact he was late more often than not. The flag before that was for the first Tuesday of the month. Leave it to her husband to develop a red flag pattern.

Now she scrolled forward in the calendar. The next red flag was for tomorrow night, Friday night. Red flag at four, with no appointments following it. Apparently, Tuesday nights and Friday nights were date night in the world of red flags, Kathy thought bitterly.

She changed back to the Contacts app and quickly scrolled down through the names. She only came across two other names with red flags, and she recognized both as longstanding clients.

Feeling unaccountably guilty, she went through the other jacket pockets, not entirely sure what she was looking for. He’d taken his wallet with him, and all she found were a couple of parking receipts, a packet of mints, and a receipt from Au Bon Pain in the CambridgeSide Galleria. Two beverages. She smoothed out the receipt on the bed, trying to decipher the date.

It looked like last Tuesday, at 5:10 p.m. What had Robert been doing in Cambridge last Tuesday? Robert hated shopping, hated shopping malls particularly. Getting out to the shopping mall in pre-Christmas traffic would have been a nightmare; getting back, even worse. When Robert wanted to pick up a quick gift, he usually just popped over to Brookline Booksmith and bought a book.

Lights suddenly flared against the bedroom window as a car pulled into the driveway. Calmly, Kathy put the parking receipts and the mints back into his jacket pocket. She stuffed the Au Bon Pain receipt into her own pocket. Then she slipped the phone into her husband’s jacket pocket, and she was in the process of descending the stairs when the hall door opened and Robert, followed by Brendan and Theresa, bundled into the house in a tumult of noise and chill air.

“We got takeout,” Brendan called, holding up the brown paper bags.

“More than takeout, I see,” Kathy muttered. There was a smudge of chocolate on her son’s upper lip, the hint of white on his cheek. They’d probably stopped for ice cream on the way home.

She looked up at Robert. He saw her looking at him and raised his eyebrows in a silent question. Kathy wondered when Robert had become the “fun” parent who took the kids out for dessert before dinner and she had become the disciplinarian who nagged them about homework and chores. She could be fun. She was fun . . . She used to be fun. Kathy smiled at Brendan. “Great. I was going to suggest takeout.” She was looking at her husband, at the man she had thought she knew and realized she didn’t.

Robert caught the quizzical look and tilted his head. “Everything okay?”

“Fine,” she lied, “just fine.”