Chapter 4: The Condo

At nine the next morning, Heath drove me to the condo himself.

He didn't ask whether I was sure.

He didn't ask about Tucker's whisper either, and I was grateful.

I had lain awake over it.

What had he done, the summer I was twenty?

I knew what he'd done in August, because I had the text.

I didn't know what Tucker thought he had on him.

I put the question away for later, and I held onto the boxes instead.

He parked at the curb, took four flat cardboard boxes out of the trunk and carried them up to the sixth floor ahead of me.

"His office doesn't open till ten," I said, unlocking the door. "He'll be at his father's table, eating a free breakfast. We have an hour."

"Then we take an hour."

The condo smelled like Tucker's cologne and old coffee.

I stood in the doorway of the bedroom and looked at the closet, because the left half was wrong.

My dresses hung on the right.

On the left, where Tucker's suits ended, hung six dresses I didn't own.

A cream wrap. A green silk slip. A winter coat with a dry-cleaning tag stapled to the sleeve.

I read the tag.

The date on it was in March.

I walked into the bathroom.

There were two toothbrushes in the cup.

One was mine, with the bent blue handle.

The other was pink, with a half-moon of someone else's toothpaste dried on the bristles.

Heath stopped in the bathroom doorway behind me.

"Don't look at the tag," I said. "Please don't read it."

"I read it from the hall."

"Mallory's been in this bathroom since March."

"At least since March."

I picked up my toothbrush, dropped it in the box and kept going.