Chapter 9: Who Took the Picture

I woke up to the smell of coffee and the sound of my phone going off.

Rafe stood at my stove in his jeans and nothing else, frying eggs in my grandmother's pan.

He didn't turn around.

"Half a dozen calls," he said. "The last three are from the same number. You might want to look."

I took the phone back to bed with the quilt around my shoulders.

The Row Report had posted at six.

The photo was the one from my window, with the truck, and a second shot of me on the stoop with the roses.

The headline said, FLAT WIFE'S NEW MAN IS THE DEAD BROTHER.

Below it, in smaller type: Aldane scandal deepens as Joanna spends the night with Preston's long-lost half-brother.

There were nine thousand comments in the first hour.

I read none of them.

I was too busy staring at the time stamp on the photo.

2:14 a.m.

"Somebody was outside my window at two in the morning," I said.

He turned the eggs.

"I know. I went down and looked at three. There was a black car at the end of the block. It left when I came out."

"You went downstairs without waking me?"

"You were asleep," he said. "I put my shirt on. That's all the courage it took."

I laughed, and then the laugh turned into something else, and I put my face in my hands.

He crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed.

"You can still say this was a mistake."

"It wasn't a mistake."

"People are going to say it was."

"They've said everything about me already." I looked up. "I'm not hiding. I'm going to work."

At seven-forty we walked to the subway together, and he carried my sewing bag.

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