“And I’m in deep.”
“You’ve been there before. I’m guessing you’ve been there a couple of times since our divorce. You always manage. How is this time different?”
“My luck hasn’t turned. I can’t see my way clear.”
“I’m not sure what your situation has to do with me. Do I have to say divorced again?”
“No. I hear you, and you need to remember that I never wanted it.”
“Maybe not, but I gave you everything to get it. The house. What was left in our accounts. The stocks. The car. Your retirement fund. My first lawyer told me to find other representation because I didn’t want anything from you but your signature on the paperwork.” Ramsey pushed her plate away, appetite gone. She wrapped her hands around her coffee cup to steady them. Closing her eyes, she visualized standing in Sullivan’s walk-in closet. White beaches and crystal blue water were never her thing. Sullivan’s perfectly ordered closet calmed her.
“Enough,” she said, meeting his gaze again. “I don’t want to do tit for tat. What is it you expect from me, Jay?”
“I told you. Money. It can be a loan. I’ll pay you back. You know I’m good for it.”
“I don’t know that. You just said your luck hasn’t turned.” She put up a hand, palm out. “Wait. Why do you think I have money to loan you? This is crazy.”
Jay shook his head. “Don’t do that, Liz. Don’t pretend I’m stupid. Don’t act as if I don’t already know.”
“You’re going to have spell it out because Idon’tknow what you think you know.”
“All right.” He leaned forward, slid his plate out of the way, and set his forearms on the table. Keeping his rich baritone modulated at a low pitch, he said, “Liz Carpenter, née Ramsey. Elizabeth Ramsey. I don’t know how you decided on Masters for your new surname. There’s no obvious connection.”
She’d had an appointment for a trim and eyebrow wax at Master Cuts following her court appearance for the name change. She was thinking about that when she told her lawyer what she’d decided her new last name would be. Until then she’d been leaning toward Smith.
“The name change threw me,” he went on. “I don’t mind telling you that. I spent a lot time looking at other leads. You disappeared from social media. Nothing on the dark web. None of your friends tagged you in their photos. Your family was a dead end. That should have tipped me off, but I believed you fed them stories that made them want to protect you. It took me too long to realize they didn’t know where you were.”
“Must have been difficult, all the Googling.”
“Which speaks to how little you know, Liz. I considered how difficult it might be for you to find a job with your online social profile at zero. Employers look to the web these days to learn something about their prospective hires. We do at Willow Garden.”
“Not so much at Burger King,” she said dryly.
Jay ignored the comment. “You were so bent on getting your degree it was natural to assume you’d look for a position in design. I searched architectural firms. Interior design agencies. I even looked at landscaping businesses. Nothing. I imagine you kept clear of all those things quite purposefully. You might think I grew frustrated, but you’d be wrong. I was challenged, Liz, and I came to realize it was the first time since meeting you that I felt challenged.”
His ego was not to be believed, but Ramsey let him go on.
“It was when I settled on the idea of your employment that I was able to move forward. I found you through the standard background check we use at Willow Garden. You changed your name but not your social security number. It took some finagling with human resources, but I had enough information to complete the background form. When the results came back, HR alerted me. There was concern that you had an alias that you didn’t disclose. I took the information and assured them you were no longer a candidate for hire. Then I went to work locating Ramsey Masters.”
“And here you are.”
“Yes. Here I am.” He removed the napkin from his lap, crumpled it, and tossed it on top of his plate. “Give me some credit. I could have been here over a year ago. I let you be.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He offered up a slim, supercilious smile. “It amused me.”
She almost called him a liar, thought better of it, and stayed quiet.
“I didn’t know everything then.”
Ramsey recognized that what Jay had just said amounted to a big concession for him and an even bigger confession.
“Are you going tell me now, Liz?” he asked.
She shook her head. She was not going to give ground. “You think you know? You say it.”
The waitress appeared to take their plates. Jay waved her away. Ramsey offered an apologetic glance but stopped short of giving up her plate.
