“I guess,” he offered, in that brooding yet curious teenaged way.
I pulled up a screenshot of the rummage-sale photo on my phone and handed it over to Matthew. “Do you see him in this picture?”
Matthew immediately shook his head. “Nope. Not him.”
“Are you sure?” He’d answered so quickly it was like he hadn’teven looked. “This picture was taken a couple years ago. He could look different now.”
“That dude in the picture is a diamond,” Matthew said with absolute surety. “The guy who came in here was a circle.”
“Um …”
“He means the shape of the face,” the woman said. “Officially there are seven. But Matthew—”
“Mom, twelve,” he corrected sharply. When she raised an eyebrow at him, he shrugged again. “Whatever. But therearetwelve.”
“Mathew has identified some new subclasses, too,” his mother said, smiling. “We had him tested when he was little—long story how we got there, which has everything to do with my opportunistic ex-husband—but he is officially gifted at facial recognition. If Matthew says it wasn’t that man in here, it wasn’t him.”
Mathew finally looked directly at me. “If you have other pictures, I could definitely pick the guy out. No doubt.”
I tried not to feel dejected as I approached Sarah’s house. Even if they had recognized Xavier Lynch at Blooms on the Slope, that wouldn’t be the same as having his fingerprint to compare. I’d probably be headed to St. Colomb Falls regardless.
Sarah’s brownstone had seen better days. As I made my way up the steps, I noticed the signs of wear and tear—the cracked facade, a slope to the stairs, peeling paint on the shutters. Nonetheless it was a Park Slope brownstone, a four-million-dollar home I could never afford, but I did wonder if its relatively ailing condition was a sign of Sarah’s need for money.
“Can I help you?” a man’s voice called up to me as I was about to knock on the door. I turned, feeling like a trespasser.
At the bottom of the steps, in a Brooklyn Nets T-shirt and dark athletic shorts, was a burly guy with saggy eyes and a warm smile, presumably Sarah’s husband. He had a pizza box in one hand and a six-pack in the other—at three in the afternoon on a weekday.Not a lawyer at a big firm, that was for sure—then again, successful people everywhere did play hooky occasionally. People other than me.
“Oh, I’m looking for Sarah?” I began, hoping I could get through this without having to identify myself as Zach’s lawyer. The thought made me want to gag.
“Lunch and then a book-club outing to some author event at the 92nd Street Y,” he said. “I’d say come in and wait, but it’s more of a wine club than a book club. She’ll probably be gone for hours. You’re here about the emails, I suppose?”
“Yes,” I said, grateful for the gift of an alternate explanation as I made my way down the steps.
“You and the rest of the world,” he said with a rueful shake of his head. “I can take your name if you want. But I do know she’s working on making the school get more information out to everyone. And I’m sure she’ll have another meeting about it soon. There arealwaysmore meetings. And they arealwaysin my home.”
“I’ll try her another time then,” I said, smiling as I turned away and started down the sidewalk. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” he called after me. “Only do me a favor and don’t tell her you saw me here at home at this hour. I wanted to watch a little Wimbledon, and that woman will never understand the importance of sports.”
I nodded and smiled back. It was so hard to imagine this soft, affable guy with Sarah. “No problem.”
By evening, Sam had sent half a dozen texts I’d ignored—all some version of: “Please, Lizzie, can we talk?” He’d called, too. In the third voice mail, he’d started to cry.
“I never deserved you,”he’d said.“You’re kind and understanding and honorable. You’re a much better person than me, Lizzie. You always have been.”
I felt sick to my stomach.
I parked myself at Café du Jour again. I checked in with Thomas and my secretary, answered emails, then spent a couple hours finalizing the overdue cell-phone-battery motion to dismiss. When the café closed, I moved to Purity Diner near our apartment, which somehow survived even though it was always empty. Their spanakopita was crap, but even my mother would have approved of their fries. “A front,” I imagined my dad proclaiming as he so often did about such restaurants, with no evidence whatsoever. He never did like cheaters.
I stayed at Purity until there was at least a reasonable chance Sam would be asleep. If we’d had more money, I would have gone to a hotel. If we’d had more money, I probably would never have gone home. It wasn’t as if there was anything Sam could say now that would make me feel better. He didn’t know where the earring had come from and also couldn’t say for sure that it didn’t belong to some woman he’d screwed while too drunk to remember. That was really the beginning and the end of the conversation, at least the conversation I wanted to have.
And I was convinced Sam was telling the truth about not remembering. It would have been too much easier to lie. Part of me wished Sam had. That way we could have just continued on as we had been. We had deep fissures, sure, but we were still in one piece. Now we’d be trapped in a place where doubt would nibble at our edges until, at long last, it devoured us whole.
When I finally got home, Sam was asleep as I’d hoped, propped up on the living room couch, having apparently lost the battle to wait up for me. His head was tilted back, mouth slightly open. When I leaned in close, he didn’t smell of alcohol. Asleep and not passed out drunk. Victory once again.
Standing there watching him sleep, I wasn’t even angry anymore, only overwhelmed by grief. Alcoholic or not, Sam wasstillsmart and kind and passionate. Seeing him across a roomstillmade my heart pick up speed. My life had begun again when I met him. And yet none of that meant we should stay together. I’d been so foolish tothink love could change the essential nature of anything.
My phone rang in my bag.
