Laura Lippman by Tess Monaghan 04 - In Big Trouble (v5) Read Free Book Online Page A

did you do?”
    “We had an affair.” He smiled at Tess’s is-that-all-there-is expression. “Shocking, isn’t it? Shocking to think it was once shocking. Felicia’s husband was my thesis adviser at Harvard. I was his star student, I was going to bring home all the big prizes one day. I had theories that were going to change the world. Instead, I turned my own world upside down. I fell in love.”
    He rearranged the bird nests yet again, but his voice now had a warm, dreamy quality. He liked this part of the story.
    “I fell in love and Felicia became pregnant. Wait—that construction makes it sound as if it were something she did. When it was really something I wanted. I got her pregnant, because I was desperate for her. I didn’t think she’d leave her husband just for me, but I knew she would leave for a child. It’s not that she didn’t love me, but Felicia was a careful, deliberate woman. She didn’t have much experience in doing what she wanted, as opposed to doing what was expected.”
    “But you changed that.”
    “Eventually. Crow arrived before her divorce was final, and we never did get around to marrying officially. Yet it was the age difference that really scandalized people. Our ages, and the things I supposedly ‘gave up’ for her. I was twenty-two she was thirty-three. Silly, isn’t it, how age trips people up?”
    Tess, who had agonized at times over the six-year difference between her and his son, did not answer Chris’s question. “Does Crow know all this?”
    “Oh yes.” Chris frowned. “Actually, he may not know we never married. Little boys don’t care much about such things, do they? They don’t ask to see wedding pictures. If he had asked, we would have told him, but I don’t remember it coming up. We celebrate our anniversary every year, only it’s the anniversary of the night we met. May 30. A Memorial Day weekend party. Felicia was wearing pale green.”
    Tess ransacked her memory, trying to find some little piece of the story. Crow must have told her at least part of it. Yet nothing was there.
    “I didn’t know any of this,” she said, intending to sound plaintive, but achieving only a low-grade whininess. “Yet Crow knew how my parents met, what they did for a living. He knew which bars fell into my father’s territory as a Baltimore city liquor inspector. He even knew what my mother does at the National Security Agency and that’s technically classified.”
    “She’s a supervisor, right? A tall woman, like you, given to matching her shoes to her outfits as exactly as possible.”
    Tess stalked over to Crow’s bureau, where his childhood collection of Star Wars figures had been laid out on a rough woven cloth. “See? You even know how my mom dresses . That’s more than I knew about Felicia. How can you say I knew Crow at all?”
    “Crow is one of the world’s listeners.”
    “He chatters all the time,” Tess objected.
    “Yes, he does. But he never really gives out any information about himself, does he? He talks about the latest thing he’s read, the song he’s working on, something strange and wonderful he saw on the street. But he doesn’t talk about himself. He’s unusual that way. He fools a lot of people into thinking they’re close to him, but few really are. All the words, all that chatter, is a way of keeping people at a distance.”
    “So I’m right—I never really knew him. I’m even less suited to finding him than I thought.”
    Chris stood up. “I need to show you something. Down in Felicia’s studio. Do you mind?”
    The night was cold and crisp, one of the first true autumn nights this season. Their breath was visible as they walked through the garden, to the cottage from which Felicia had materialized that afternoon. Chris Ransome unlocked the door and flicked on a light.
    “Crow had his own studio here.” Chris grinned with a rueful self-awareness. “We’ve always been a little indulgent, I suppose.”
    “Would I understand