KATRINA

Katrina

TWO DAYS BEFORE

Back in Park Slope, there was an envelope addressed to me, dropped through the mail slot. I locked the front door behind me, then sat down on a stool at the kitchen island to open it.

Inside were Doug's messages, the ones I'd asked Ahmed at Digitas to get his hands on. I hesitated, looking down at the stack of messages, so many and only from the last five days. There would be some from me in there. Was I also a little worried I might find messages to or from other women? Yes, maybe. Doug and I hadn't had any official discussions about being exclusive, but the thought of learning that he hadn't been made me sad.

But it turned out that it was hard to identify who had sent anything. There were only phone numbers associated with the messages, not names. I was able to pick out his daughter's number by the number of messages and the consistently snarky edge to her responses. Snarky, but not unkind. You could sense the love buried underneath—or I could. I don't think Doug had known that, though, which was perhaps the worst thing of all. He died never knowing that he'd had a fighting chance to get his daughter back.

Maybe I still had a chance with Cleo, or at least more of one than I'd thought. I would simply keep trying. But with an open heart and gentleness. And honesty, for once. I needed to tell Cleo that I'd threatened Kyle on more than one occasion. I needed to admit that there was a chance that my actions had put her in more danger, not less.

How about dinner? I texted her. I wanted a commitment. Would you come home? Please.

An ellipsis appeared almost instantly but then disappeared. I squeezed my phone, waiting. Hoping.

I know you don't want to come, I added. I understand, Cleo. I've made a lot of mistakes. And I'm not asking you not to be mad at me. Or to forgive me. I'm not trying to tell you how to feel. I'm only asking you to come to dinner. There's something I need to tell you.

I stared at the phone, and then finally: Okay. Dinner. Sunday. 6:30. At home.

My heart surged with relief. But I knew better than to overreact. Or I was at least trying to learn. Aidan was wrong about so much, but he was right that Cleo wasn't a little girl anymore. I couldn't force her to do anything. I never should have tried in the first place.

Great!

I turned back to the printout of Doug's texts. It was a lot to sift through. But I eventually found the one with the threat about Advantage—$500,000 was what they'd asked for, exactly as Doug had said. A stupidly huge amount of money. It was the mark of amateurs. Or … people who weren't after money at all. I was relieved to see that Doug's responses to the demands—three in total, of escalating intensity—matched exactly what he'd told me. And all of it within only a few days. The last message he got certainly did seem like a threat: You have 24 hours to get us the money. This is your last warning. Doug's car accident was hours later. Was it possible that the timing was a coincidence? Sure. But it didn't seem likely.

And then one of the last texts he received, from a 917 number I had no way of identifying: Doug, could you come meet me? I know it's late. My apologies. But it's important. We need to talk. You know that.

And Doug's reply, the last he would ever send: Where and what time?

Now would be best. 126 Nepperhan Avenue. 11:00 p.m.

The address in Yonkers belonged to a small, very run-down strip mall—liquor store, nail salon, dry cleaner's, according to Google Maps. All of which would have been closed at that hour. A late-night, last-minute meeting was suspicious under any circumstances, especially given the location and the fact that Doug had died on his way there—a setup, it seemed.

I called Ahmed.

"I'm pretty sure my work here is done," he said good-naturedly.

"I know. Thank you," I said. "I do need one last quick thing. A reverse number lookup. The name associated with a cell number."

"No good deed goes unpunished, huh? Okay, fine. Give me the number."

He texted back a few minutes later, presumably having paid off some cell phone company employee. That was the fastest way to get a number.

Number belongs to a Phil Beaumont, corporate account. Darden Pharmaceuticals.

I texted Mark the next morning after a night of fitful sleep. We need to talk about Phil.

My phone rang almost instantly. Good. A call would be more efficient. And I was done splitting hairs.

"What is it?" He sounded very tense, but short of alarmed.

"Doug Sinclair was on his way to meet Phil the night he died." I waited for it to sink in. Surely, Mark would connect the dots on his own.

"And?" he said.

"What do you mean, and ?" It came out sharper than I'd intended. "You already knew that?"

"I did," he said. "Doug Sinclair was having problems at work, competency issues, as we've discussed."

"So the Darden general counsel asked to meet him in a Yonkers strip mall at eleven o'clock at night?" I asked. "And now he's … dead?"

"Apparently," Mark said, a tinge of exasperation in his voice.

"Mark, seriously, what the fuck?" It had popped out. Mark wasn't the delicate type, but I also didn't usually swear at him.

"Listen, it's terrible what happened to this guy. He had a daughter, I know. And Phil feels bad, of course, that the accident happened on his way to that meeting. It's an awful, regrettable tragedy. But Doug Sinclair is not our client, Kat—Darden is. As you are aware, we have a fiduciary obligation to do what is in their best interest."

"Right," I said, because Mark was correct, technically. About Darden's being our client. But I wasn't buying that this meeting with Phil and Doug's accident were some sort of coincidence. It was utter bullshit.

"Sounds like you have the phone records now? I'm assuming that's where this new information about Phil came from—is there anything in there about this blackmail situation?"

"Not that I've seen," I said, the lie a reflex. I was beginning to wonder whether Mark's friendship with Phil, or the firm's financial situation, was clouding his judgment. "I need to go through them more closely."

"Great. Come into the office," Mark said. "We can do it together."

I crossed my arms, even though I was alone in my house. Or was I even alone? I wondered if there was a black sedan out there, watching me. All of this was suddenly feeling far too close to home.

"Okay," I lied. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

With a fair amount of I'm-a-worried-mom cajoling, I eventually got the security guard in Cleo's dorm to confirm that she'd swiped in that evening at about 7:00 p.m. and had still not swiped back out an hour later. Now darkness was settling quickly as I sat on a sidewalk bench alongside the quiet end of Washington Square Park, near one of those unexpected New York City honeysuckle bushes, the kind that always made me feel transported to some bucolic upstate town. I was facing Cleo's dorm across the street, watching to make sure she stayed safe and sound and inside. I was also waiting for Janine. She'd called while I was on my way into Manhattan. She wouldn't say why she wanted to talk, only that she was happy to meet by campus—circumventing my excuse for why I couldn't meet right then in Park Slope.

I racked my brain trying to think of what Janine could want. After an exhausting day smoothing the feathers of cranky clients, I wasn't sure I could muster the energy for any more drama. Could it be that she knew about Annie and Kyle? I was agonizing over whether to tell her Annie was using. What if she already knew and had decided she was okay with it? She was the cool mom, after all.

"Kat!" Janine was striding toward me, dressed in jeans and red platform sandals, her hair back in a chic red-and-yellow bohemian head scarf.

"What are you doing over here, looming in the shadows?" Janine laughed when she finally reached me. But then she looked up to where I'd been looking. "Oh, I see," she said. She sat down on the bench, resting her Balenciaga bag on the bench between us, the brand name emblazoned on the side. "I wondered why you wanted to meet by the park. Which window is Cleo's?"

Janine's face had softened. She knew exactly what I was doing: stalking my own daughter.

"Second from the corner."

"At least her light is on," she said. "Do we know whether she's in there?"

We —such a little thing, not to be alone with my worry for that small moment.

I cleared my throat. "I'm pretty sure she's home."

"Well, at least there's that," Janine said, like this entire situation was par for the course. "Eighty percent of what's dangerous is out in the world. Okay, maybe sixty percent." She checked her watch. "I told Annie I'd meet up with her and some friends for dinner. She's dying to take me to this little Thai place she found."

I shook my head. "Cleo would never take me out to eat with her friends."

"I am picking up the check."

"I think Cleo would pay me not to have dinner with her."

"Ha, well, Annie does plenty of mean things to me, too. Don't worry. Every daughter is a monster in her own special way."

Was this a hint about Annie and the drugs? I hoped it wasn't some sort of test to see if I would offer up what I knew, because I was waiting for an actual question.

"You and Annie are like best friends. It's really incredible—I mean that." And I did.

Janine shrugged. "Some people would say that I've crossed all sorts of lines. That I treat Annie too much like a friend and that puts ‘inappropriate pressure' on her and that actually makes me the worst mother of all."

"Oh, come on," I scoffed. "No one would say that."

"They would and they have!" She laughed. "To my face! Annie's therapist and my therapist were especially hard to dismiss."

"Oh," I said, and then we both laughed.

"Anyway," she went on. "The grass is always greener. We're all doing the best we can."

"You've always been so calm about all of it, though," I said. "Even when they were tiny babies. So unflappable."

"Don't confuse the ability to act calm with actually being calm. I didn't feel fine in those early weeks. But I also figured that admitting it would only make me feel worse."

"Well, you were good at pretending," I said, and then we were quiet for a moment. And I wondered maybe if motherhood wouldn't have felt like such a struggle if I'd been more open about how tough it was. Maybe I would have found that it wasn't some fatal flaw in me after all. "Thank you for not asking specifically what I'm worried about with Cleo tonight."

Janine smiled, her eyes going a little glassy. "The ‘what' never really matters, does it? Only the ‘who.' You're Cleo's mother. She's your daughter. And you love her. You're going to do what you have to, to protect her—no matter what …" She reached over and gave my hand a quick squeeze. "Anyway, I wanted to apologize, for the other night in the restaurant."

"What do you mean?"

"I shouldn't have said that about Kyle. I'd like to claim that I didn't mean to upset you, but … I've been so worried about Annie lately. I don't know what's going on, but she's so distant. When I'm worried, some mean little part of me feels better pointing to other people's problems. There's no excuse. I'm sorry. But I did want to ask you if you knew anything about where—"

My phone rang just then. A cell number I didn't recognize. "Janine, I'm sorry, do you mind?" I gestured toward Cleo's light. "I have to take this."

Janine looked a little taken aback, but then she nodded. "I'll watch her like a hawk," she said.

I stepped toward the street to answer.

"This is Tim Lyall," the voice on the other end announced. Like he was calling me back. I drew a complete blank. Who the hell was Tim Lyall ? And then it came to me—a junior corporate partner at the firm. Sat around the corner; his assistant shared the pool with Jules. But we'd never worked together. He had no reason to be contacting me. "Jules told me to call you about Darden?" He sounded distracted, maybe irritated. It was hard to tell.

"Oh, yes. Thank you. I was hoping to match notes." My voice sounded tight, but I hoped Tim Lyall would have no way of knowing that.

"Of course," he said, his tone still unreadable. But then he hesitated for just a beat too long. I had a feeling I'd lost him. "Listen, I'm racing to catch a plane to Zurich. And need to get on a conference call. Why don't I call you once I land, when I'll have a solid window to talk."

"That's fine," I said as matter-of-factly as I could, given that I had no clue why Jules had told him to call me. "I'd appreciate it."

"Perfect. Talk soon."

I felt sure Tim Lyall planned never to call me back. And when I tried Jules again in search of an explanation, it went straight to voice mail. My next call was to the office.

"This is Kat McHugh," I said to the weekend operator. "I need to get some documents to Tim Lyall at home. Could you get me his home address?"

Janine stood up as I walked back to the bench. "Is everything okay?"

"Not really," I said. "I'm so sorry to do this, but I need to run up to the Upper East Side to pick something up. Work-related. Do you think you could wait here until I get back? I know you're supposed to meet Annie and that it's a lot to ask, but—"

"I can do it." Janine put a warm hand on my forearm. "I see how worried you are. I can absolutely do it."

"Thank you. I need to know if Cleo leaves, or"—I scrolled through my phone until I located the photo of Kyle I'd used with Jimmy—"if this person goes in?"

Her forehead scrunched as she peered at the photo. "I'll stay as long as you need me to, of course. I'll text Annie. But can you … Kat, what is going on? Who is that?"

"It's Kyle," I said. I hesitated, then plunged ahead. "You should probably ask Annie about him, too, Janine. I think she may know him … better than she should. Better than you'd want her to."