Chapter 34

34

As a child, Julie had never been alone. Her sister, Bridget, had been her constant companion. But as an adult, Julie was alone. She had no friends, she and her husband barely spoke, and her occasional nights with Cutler were a complete sham. She and her sister hadn’t spoken in five years, the result of a terrible misunderstanding that, to this day, Julie could not recall clearly. But even in her extreme distress there was no way she could see herself knocking on Bridget’s door, even if she had still been living where she had been five years ago—with Bridget no sure thing.

But there was Orrin, Bridget’s ex-husband, who had cried on her shoulder for weeks—no, make that months, she thought—after the very messy breakup. He had trafficked in the knowledge that she and Bridget didn’t get along; he had no girlfriend, no female friends at all, so far as Julie could tell. So she had come at his summons, had dinner with him, sat on his sofa, held his hand while he poured out his anguish. Evening after evening after evening.

Orrin worked for the attorney general’s office, one of those jobs for life, therefore his whereabouts were as predictable and unchanging as the rock of Gibraltar. That simile accurately described Orrin’s personality. Bridget had apparently found him boring. Julie wondered why she had married him in the first place, but even before their estrangement her adult relationship with Bridget was never intimate enough for Julie to ask the question. For Julie, Orrin was something of a landmark in the turbulent sea of conspiracy and secrets in which she often felt herself drowning.

So, leaving Sydny’s bloody apartment, it was to Orrin’s she went to seek shelter from her own private storm. It was near to daybreak when she rang his bell, but even at that ungodly hour she knew he wouldn’t be asleep. Instead, he’d be working out on his rowing machine. She just hoped he wasn’t already in the shower, unable to hear the bell. But a moment later, her anxiety was alleviated when she heard his voice, metallic and thin, asking who it was.

“Julie,” she said, her mouth up against the microphone grill.

“What the fuck are you doing here at this hour?”

Not Are you all right? “Can I come up?”