When he joins her, Jonathan says, “You saved me from a boring conversation about golf. Thank you.”
“You don’t like golf?”
“I like it, but I don’t need to hear every detail of other people’s golf vacations.”
“Where’s Lily?”
“Dancing.” Jonathan points to the dance floor, where a group of women in strapless dresses undulates to “Walk Like an Egyptian” by the Bangles. Lily and her friends square their hands to imitate hieroglyphics and shimmy across the floor. “She’s had a few cocktails.”
“Looks like she’s having fun.” Diana swallows a lump in her throat. How fortunate Lily is to have everything she wants. “Sorry I haven’t responded to your texts. What did you want?”
“I wanted to see how you’re doing.”
“Right.” She decides then to voice the question she should have asked the minute she returned from Vermont: “What can you tell me about Jessica O’Connor?”
Jonathan doesn’t respond, but she can tell by the pulsing vein along his brow that he’s heard her question. He lifts his cocktail—vodka on the rocks with a twist of lime, Diana remembers, that’s his drink—and empties the glass, placing it next to hers. She wasn’t sure he knew about Jessica until he met her question with silence.
“Do you really want to talk about this now?”
“No,” Diana answers truthfully, “but you’re here. And I’m here. This is as good a time as any.”
Jonathan gestures to a café table at the perimeter of the tent. “Shall we sit? It might be quieter over there.”
“Stop delaying,” Diana snaps.
“You didn’t ignore Tom’s letter.”
“Of course I didn’t. Now tell me about Jessica.”
Jonathan avoids looking at her, focusing instead on pulling at his shirtsleeves and lining up his cuffs with the edge of his jacket. “I never met her. Never even knew who she was until Tom took her on as a pro bono client. All he said about her was that she was a single mom who had gotten in trouble—drug charges, I think.”
“What kind of charges?”
“Possession, maybe? I don’t remember the details. After you visited, I went through our old files to see what we had documented about her case, but there wasn’t anything there.”
“Don’t you typically have files on all your clients?”
“Yes, we do. Or weshould.” Jonathan clears his throat. “It’s possible Tom never opened a file for her, or it was destroyed at some point. Either way, at the time, all I knew was that he wanted to help her. I had a feeling he’d known her before, but nothing then made me suspicious.”
“Nothingthen? When did you start to question their relationship?”
“I always knew something was off about it. We were open about our clients. We bounced ideas off one another all the time, but he was vague about Jessica. It was almost like he made a point not to talk about her. It didn’t worry me until afterward.”
“The money.” Diana wishes she’d sat down as he suggested. “You think she might have been the something important that drove him to steal from the firm.”
The vein in Jonathan’s brow pulses again. “It’s all in the past. I really mean that.”
The DJ switches to “At Last” by Etta James, and as the ballad fills the tent, couples gravitate to the dance floor. Ramesh leads Lakshmi to a spot near Lily and her friends, all of whom are being claimed by their significant others.
“If thisisall in the past, I’d like that copy of the letter back.” Diana hadn’t expected to ask for it, but it’s the right decision. The message was for her, not Jonathan.
Jonathan waves at Lily as she beckons him onto the dance floor. “I promised to keep it confidential.” His voice is brisk and businesslike, and Diana senses he’s hurt by her request. “I would never violate my oath. You have my word.”
“If this really means nothing to you, you don’t need to keep it, right?”
“I can destroy it for you. We have a service we use to dispose of our papers. They’re reputable.”
“No, I want my letter back,” Diana says, trying to forget that “At Last” was the first song she and Tom danced to at their wedding. “I can swing by the office on Monday to pick it up. When’s a good time?”
