Chapter 5: Dinner With a Stranger
I bought flowers on the way home.
Yellow ones, because Gwen had once mentioned she preferred them to roses.
I carried them through the front door and found her in the kitchen, standing at the stove.
She turned when she heard me, and her expression opened into something warm and easy.
"You're back," she said.
"How was the appointment?"
"Good news," I said.
"Everything looks fine."
I watched her face.
She smiled.
"I'm so glad, Franklin.
I've been worried about you."
She crossed the kitchen and took the flowers from me.
She held them up, looked at them, then kissed my cheek.
"Yellow," she said.
"You remembered."
"Of course," I said.
We ate dinner at the table by the window.
Gwen had made pasta, something she rarely did.
She poured wine for both of us and asked about the drive downtown and whether the traffic had been difficult.
She was attentive and warm and she refilled my glass before I asked.
I drank very little.
"You seem quiet," she said.
"Tired," I said.
"The appointment took more out of me than I expected."
She reached across the table and put her hand over mine.
"You work too hard," she said.
"Even now.
You should let yourself rest, Franklin.
Let other people carry some of the weight."
"Maybe you're right," I said.
After dinner she suggested we sit on the patio.
We did.
The evening was cool and she brought a blanket and laid it across my lap without being asked.
We sat together in the dark and she talked about a trip she wanted to take — Portugal, she said, in the spring.
She had been reading about it.
I let her talk.
I watched the way her hands moved when she described the coastal towns.
I watched her eyes, which were bright and easy and gave away nothing at all.
At nine-thirty she said she was tired and was going to bed early.
She kissed me on the forehead.
"Don't stay out here too long," she said.
"It's getting cold."
I listened to her footsteps cross the patio and disappear into the house.
Then I took out my phone and sent a message to Gerald: *She doesn't know I know.
What did Marcus find?*
Gerald's reply came eleven minutes later.
*More than we expected.
Call me in the morning.
Do not sign anything tonight.
Do not drink anything she gives you that you didn't pour yourself.*
I looked at the wine glass on the table beside me.
I had poured that one myself, from the bottle she had already opened.
I left it where it was.
I sat on the patio for another hour, alone in the dark, thinking about Portugal in the spring and what it would have felt like to believe her.
My phone lit up again.
Not Gerald this time.
An unknown number.
I answered.
Silence for a moment.
Then a man's voice, low and careful.
"Mr.
Sterling.
My name is Marcus Hale.
Gerald asked me to call you directly tonight because what I found cannot wait until morning." A pause.
"Your wife's name is not Gwen Whitmore.
May you like
That identity was created six years ago.
Before that, she was known by another name entirely — and she has done this before."
