“He likes you.”
Mary set her spoon down. “I know. I’ve told him no, but I don’t think that’s stopping him from hoping I’ll change my mind.”
Carla leaned forward on her forearms. “So how is it going with the exclusive boyfriend?”
Mary found her happy place. “He’s fabulous.”
Mary decided she spent her life on the phone. She’d just put a tea pod into her Keurig coffeemaker and pressed the button when her cell phone rang.
“Mary Kildare.”
“You’re a bitch!” Female voice, hostile.
Mary stopped looking through her mail. “Who is this?”
“I cannot believe you had Jacob hauled into the police station. First you tell him about my affair, then you do this . . . to what? Cover your ass?”
“Nina.”
“You know, I was told that therapists were just as screwed up as their clients. But you take it to a whole new level.”
It took every ounce of energy to avoid engaging in an argument. It was becoming increasingly obvious that the Golfs could both benefit from seeing a psychiatrist. “I’m sorry you feel that way. Please understand that after my last conversation with your husband, I had to go to the authorities.”
“Do you have any idea how hard it was to walk away from that man, and now you’re giving him all kinds of ammunition to blame me for everything. You’re such a bitch. How do you even know a man was responsible for breaking in? Look in the mirror, women can be just as vengeful.” The woman was hysterical.
“It’s clear we’re not going to have a productive conversation. I’m truly sorry you feel the way you do—”
“You’re not sorry for anything. You will be. I’ll make sure of it.”
Nina hung up.
Mary tossed her phone on the counter. “I do not have the energy for this today.”
She took her lukewarm tea outside on her back patio and tried to call Glen.
It went to instant voice mail.
“Hey, Glen . . .” She sighed into her message. “It seems like we’re always missing each other. Let me start with the good news. I’m feeling a little better. Between the flowers, the monkey, and the soup, you’re making me quite spoiled. Thank you for all of it. The bad news . . . Jacob wasn’t a match on the fingerprints. Which puts us back at square one. Another one of my clients? Someone in the building . . . I don’t even know where to start looking. I’m frustrated, but at least everything has been quiet. No peeping Toms or anything like that.” She laughed at her words. “Now I have Jacob’s wife on a rampage. Nothing I can’t handle, but again . . . it’s frustrating. Doesn’t help that I don’t feel a hundred percent. And I miss you. I really hope you miss me as much as I miss you. I know that sounds selfish and completely high school, but I would hate to be the only one this pent up with longing. Boy, that sounded terribly sappy. I should probably delete this message. I won’t, but I probably should. Anyway . . . I’m home for the night. If you get this before ten my time, call me. I’ll be in bed working toward that hundred percent mark for tomorrow. Talk soon.”
She looked at the phone in her hand and opened a picture that was taken of the two of them when they went to Catalina. If it wasn’t for the swimsuit, she’d make the image stick on her lock screen so that every time she glanced at the time, she’d see Glen’s face.
Mary’s phone started ringing every thirty minutes after nine o’clock. No one spoke, just called, breathed, and listened.
Her first thought was Nina. The woman wanted to upset her. What better way than to interrupt her sleep? By eleven, Mary turned off her cell phone altogether.
Eleven thirty her home phone rang.
The line was silent.
“This is the definition of harassment,” she said into the quiet line. “Something I’ll need to report to the police.”
The line went dead . . . and at midnight, it rang again.
Mary unplugged the second line in her room and turned the volume off on the phone downstairs. She’d unhook the thing altogether but her alarm system connected through the landline.
By two o’clock she finally fell asleep. When she woke, her throat was sore again and her headache was back.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Glen had to listen to Mary’s message three times to hear the whole thing. Reception over the Atlantic wasn’t always the best.
“I miss you, too,” he whispered to himself. “You’re not alone in that.”
“Now you’re talking to yourself.” Jason smiled from the captain’s seat of the cockpit.
“It was Mary.”
“So I guessed.”
“The only suspect they had just came back clean. His prints don’t match the house.”
“Maybe he wore gloves.”
“Yeah, but someone left fingerprints in her house that matched the door of her office. Now she has irate clients and she’s been sick all week. I just want to take her to the Bahamas until all this is past.”
“She might like that.”
“At least nothing new has happened. No dead cars or broken-in doors.”
“Sad that you have to set the barometer so low.”
“It makes me wonder if this is a onetime thing. Which I want, but then we may never know who did it . . . double-edged sword.”
“Did she get the monkey?”
Glen laughed . . . “Wait, how did you know about the monkey?”