Chapter 5 - Dinner With a Stranger
I stopped for flowers on the way home. Yellow ones, because Vivian had mentioned once that she liked them better than roses.
I carried them in and found her at the stove.
She turned when she heard the door, and her whole face opened up, warm and easy. "You're home. How'd it go?"
"Good news," I said. "Everything checks out."
I watched her.
She smiled. "I'm so relieved, Walter. I've been worried about you."
She came over, took the flowers, held them up, and kissed my cheek. "Yellow. You remembered."
"Of course."
We ate at the table by the window. She'd made pasta, which she almost never did. She poured wine for both of us and asked about the traffic downtown, refilling my glass before I'd touched it.
I barely drank.
"You're quiet," she said.
"Tired. The appointment took more out of me than I expected."
She reached across and laid her hand over mine. "You do too much, even now. Let other people carry some of it, Walter."
"Maybe you're right."
After dinner she wanted to sit on the patio. She brought a blanket and spread it over my lap without my asking. She talked about a trip she wanted to take — Croatia, in the spring. She'd been reading about the islands.
I let her talk. I watched her hands move as she described the water. I watched her eyes, bright and calm, giving away absolutely nothing.
At nine-thirty she said she was worn out and going to bed early. She kissed my forehead. "Don't stay out here too long. It's getting cold."
I listened to her footsteps cross the patio and vanish into the house.
Then I texted Harold: She has no idea I know. What did Victor find?
His reply came eleven minutes later.
More than we expected. Call me first thing. Do not sign anything tonight. Do not drink anything she hands you that you didn't pour yourself.
I looked at the wine glass on the table beside me. I'd poured that one myself, from the bottle she'd already opened.
I left it sitting there.
I stayed on the patio another hour, alone in the dark, thinking about Croatia in the spring and what it might have felt like to believe her.
My phone lit up again. Not Harold. An unknown number.
I answered.
May you like
Silence for a second. Then a man's voice, low and level.
"Mr. Hargrove. My name is Victor Salas. Harold asked me to call you tonight, because what I found can't wait until morning." A pause. "Your wife's name isn't Vivian Crane. That identity was built six years ago. Before that she went by something else entirely — and she's done this before."
