“Explain, please.”
“You’re the only person I’d ever dare admit this to. There was a very brief period last night when I was thinking about Jess Nolan and how her story kept coming up again and again, and I actually wondered if Jamie might have been the one who murdered her.”
She doesn’t overreact—that wouldn’t be Megan—but I see her eyes widen a little. “Okay, tell me why you think your mind went there.”
I rest my elbows on the table and my chin in my hands, staring out the window.
“I found out that he knew Jess Nolan through some volunteerwork he did. I’m never going to know whether they were just friendly or actually dated, but he told Sam that he’d never met her, and he definitely never mentioned her to me. Plus, Percy West had told me Jamie was looking for forgiveness and that he needed to pay for his sins. That added to my concerns.”
She cocks her head. “Kiki, over the past days, you’ve had a lot of weird and conflicting information coming at you, and you had to sort through it all. No wonder that idea popped into your head.”
“Fine, I’ll let myself off the hook with your permission, but I’m still wondering if there was some side of Jamie I never saw.Didhe need to be forgiven for something? There were times during our relationship when Jamie seemed preoccupied or worried, but claimed to be fine, and I wondered if he was troubled by things I didn’t know about.”
“Let’s unpack this one detail at a time,” she says after several beats. “First, Jamie not coming clean about knowing the murdered girl. Since we’re sure hedidn’tkill her, he obviously had some other reason for not admitting it to Sam. He might have been embarrassed to tell Sam he dated someone as young as Jess—and someone who worked at the club, where it was probably a no-no.”
“Okay.”
“As for Percy, as I told you, she seems to be suffering from some kind of disorder. She probably said those things about Jamie to get a rise out of you, make you think less of him.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I wouldn’t take anything she said seriously. Even if Jamiehaddone something for which he needed forgiveness, he certainly wouldn’t have told her after a couple of dates.” She takes a quick bite of salad and then sets her fork back on her plate. “And finally,allof us have sides of ourselves we never reveal to others, even the people we care about most.”
“But in Jamie’s case, what could it have been?”
“Well, he lost both his parents when he was relatively young, and he probably felt heartbroken about it but didn’t want to burden anyone. And I know this might be surprising, but he might have found it tough always turning on that charm people expected from him—family, friends, and clients alike.”
“Right,” I say, nodding. “And, who knows, maybe he even sensed my ambivalence, but didn’t dare raise the topic.”
“Yeah, that’s possible, too,” Megan says, smiling wanly. “The bottom line is that we can never completely know our romantic partners, and we just have to accept that. It’s one of the mysteries that comes with living—and one of the risks that comes with loving someone.”
“Thanks,” I say.
What she’s also saying is that dwelling on it is a futile task, and I need to let it go.
We clear the dishes and I carry a bowl of clementines out to the living room along with some chocolate chip cookies and a bottle of sparkling water.
“So, do you want to tell me about Sam now?” Megan asks.
“Why don’t we table that for the moment,” I say. “Talking about him just makes me think about him more, and I’m pretty sure it’s over and done with.”
We split a clementine and devour a few cookies, and then it’s time to hug goodbye. I thank her profusely for being here tonight. After she leaves, I pour myself a fresh glass of sparkling water and plop onto the couch with my feet on the coffee table.
Despite how weary and sad I am, Megan’s comment—that I should be proud of myself—echoes in my head. I guess Iamproud. I stuck with my mission, and I didn’t let Drew or anyone else intimidate me.
And for the first time I have the sense that the kind of confidence I had in my midtwenties, before R assaulted me, is fully within reach. Yes, I’d regained some self-possession when I finally moved out of HR—the field I fled to in a state of panic—but trying on a new career and then starting my own business have often been super stressful. I’ve second-guessed myself plenty of times, like I did on a couple of those Zooms in New Burford.
The time has come to silence my doubts and take some bigger risks. Over the next days and weeks, I’m going to regain my focus during Zoom sessions and sign as many new clients as possible. I also want to follow a few leads I have for more corporate training work. And I’m going to email the book proposal to the agent I met at Ava’s.
On the personal front, I decide, I’m going to finally fix up my apartment as well as schedule a trip to Phoenix to see my mom. Maybe I’ll even summon the nerve to download a dating app and try it out.
As I consider whether I can keep my eyes open through a TV show, my phone rings, and to my surprise, Sam’s name is on the screen. I honestly didn’t think I’d hear from him this soon, if at all.
“Hope it’s not too late,” he says when I answer.
“No, no, I’m still up.”
“You got back okay?”
