Dominic's POV
On Monday morning there are two coffees on her desk again.
One for her. One for me.
I put them there myself at 6:50, before the floor wakes. I stand and look at the little white cups for far too long.
Then I go into my office and shut the door.
She arrives at seven. Black trousers, grey blouse, the silk scarf knotted high. Her face is composed and her eyes are very tired, and she sits down at her desk and lifts the cortado to her lips without looking at it.
Without a word.
Without a question.
That's the third time.
I could weep.
By eight, the corridor smells of printing and rain-wet wool, and Posy is demanding to know what the hell is going on with the board packet, and the Rockland situation, and why does Mr Vance keep calling for Ms Lowell's phone records.
"Ignore Mr Vance," I tell her.
"I can't ignore Mr Vance. He frightens me."
"Then tell him to put it in writing."
She grins and goes.
At nine, I open my office door and say, "Vera. A word."
She comes in.
I close the door. The glass wall is a window on the whole floor, so I turn the blinds, and the light goes soft and slatted and gold.
She doesn't sit.
"I'd like to start with an apology," I say.
"For what?"
"Saturday. Following you. Frightening you."
"I wasn't frightened."
"You were."
She lifts a shoulder. "Perhaps a little."
"I've been thinking about it. I'm not going to ask why you were in the archive."
"Thank you."
"But I'm going to tell you what I know, and you can decide what to do with it."
She folds her arms.
It's such a Serena thing to do that I have to look at the window.
"There are four people," I say, "who knew where my wife would be on the night of the explosion. I've known their names for three years. I've kept them in a room, on a wall, with a lot of string."
"A wall?"
"I'm not proud of it."
A pause. Her mouth twitches.
"Go on."
"My brother Caleb. His fiancée, Tessa. Edmund Vance. And me."
Her face doesn't change. But she goes still in a way that is almost a sound.
"And Augustus Brandt?"
"Augustus didn't know where she'd be. He was in Boston."
"Are you certain?"
"He was on the golf course with the governor."
"And the four of you knew."
"Yes."
"Including you."
"Yes."
She walks to the window and lifts one slat with a finger. Her back is very straight.
"That's brave," she says. "Putting your own name on the list."
"It's not brave. It's arithmetic."
"Most people would leave it off."
"Most people didn't leave their wife on a boat."
I hadn't meant to say it.
It drops into the quiet like a pebble into a pond. I see her shoulders move.
"You left?"
"Eight minutes before. I took the tender to Rockland. I had a meeting." My voice is steady and very flat. "I don't talk about it. I've told the police, and the FBI, and my brother, and a priest. I'm not going to tell you."
"I didn't ask."
"No."
"I'm only wondering..." She stops.
"Wondering what?"
She turns.
There's something odd in her face. A wariness, and underneath it a sort of dread. She says, in her husky, beautiful, damaged voice, "Who planned the surprise?"
The world holds still.
"What surprise?"
"On the boat." She says it very casually. "I heard someone say there was a surprise planned for that night. Champagne. Flowers. A thing in the cabin. That Dom arranged it."
I haven't moved.
I don't think I've blinked.
"I didn't," I say.
"You didn't?"
"I planned nothing. It was our fifth anniversary and I'd planned nothing, Vera, I'd been too proud, we'd had a fight, I thought I'd say sorry on the pier." I hear my voice crack, and I hate it. "There was no champagne. There were no flowers. I didn't arrange anything."
She looks at me.
"Who told you there was?"
"No one. I..."
"Vera."
"A rumour. A joke. Someone at a dinner."
"Who?"
"I can't remember."
The lie is so naked that it hurts.
I should be furious. I should be asking her a hundred questions.
But I'm thinking about a girl in a velvet dress, four days ago, saying Do you like her? in a voice she'd rehearsed.
I'm thinking about the champagne.
There was champagne. I remember now. A bottle of Krug, in a bucket of ice, in the lower aft cabin. A white card. From D. Happy anniversary. The police found the shattered ice bucket in the wreckage and wrote it up as a romantic gesture.
I never saw it.
I never sent it.
For three years, I've told everyone I didn't. They looked at me with that careful sympathy, as if I were a man who'd forgotten what he'd done.
"Someone told Tessa I'd planned something," I say slowly.
Vera says nothing.
"Someone used my name." I put a hand on the desk. "They told her it was a surprise. And Tess, who has never in her life asked a question she could avoid, said, Of course. She's in the lower aft cabin until ten."
"Dominic..."
"They didn't just want Serena dead. They wanted it to be me."
I've never said it aloud before.
I hear it hit the room.
For a moment she looks like a woman who has seen the ceiling come down. Her skin is grey. Her mouth is a thin line.
"And how," she says, very quietly, "do I know it isn't you? That you aren't saying all this because it's what I'd want to hear?"
"You don't."
"That's all?"
"That's all." I look straight at her. "I can't prove it. You'll have to decide whether you believe me."
I expect her to say no.
Instead she says: "What do you want from me?"
"A truce."
"A truce."
"Whatever you're doing, whoever you're doing it for. I won't ask. But I want to be in the room. We share what we find. No more alone at two in the morning, no more running, no more silence."
"That's a lot."
"It's the only way I'll let you stay."
"Let me?"
"Yes."
She laughs, short and disbelieving, and wipes under her eye.
"You're not the kind of man who gets to say that."
"I'm the kind of man who has four hundred security cameras."
"That's not a threat?"
"It's an offer."
She looks at the ceiling. At the floor. At the closed blinds, and the thin gold bars of light falling across my desk.
Then she holds out her hand.
"All right," says Vera Lowell. "A truce."
I take it.
Her palm is cold. Her grip is hard. For three seconds we stand there, shaking hands like two diplomats on opposite sides of a very small war.
My thumb moves, just slightly, over the back of her knuckles.
I feel the shiver.
I let go.
***
At noon, Marcus knocks.
He waits until she has gone to lunch. He closes the door behind him, and when he turns, his face is the colour of dishwater.
"The Rockland box," he says.
"Go on."
"Oyelaran was in the bank lobby all of Friday. Nobody came in. But there was a phone call at 4:12. A woman, very polite. She asked whether box 4417 had been opened, and whether anyone had asked to see it."
"Did the clerk give a name?"
"She called on behalf of someone. She left a number."
"And?"
"I traced it." He swallows. "It's a private line. Unlisted. It belongs to the chairman's office. Boss, it rings on Augustus Brandt's desk."
I stand perfectly still.
Outside, the rain has stopped. Pale light is spilling across the carpet. The whole city is going about its business, buying and selling and burying its dead.
"Are you sure?" I say.
"Yes."
"It could be his secretary. He gets all sorts of calls."
"It could."
"It could be a coincidence."
"Boss."
"I know."
I put a hand over my mouth.
Vance's man in Red Hook. Tessa's tears in Queens. Brandt's private line at a Maine bank, asking about a box that doesn't exist.
The man who taught me to ride a bike. The man who read the eulogy.
My godfather took the bait.