Carly’s body reacted to the pointed pause Marcelline left there, but it was over before she could name it.

Marcelline had a steady bead on John, who didn’t look away. She said, “You never know what’s next in this art business. Right, Carly?”

Their attention snapped onto her so suddenly that Carly jumped. “Right!”

John called out his number in a monotone.

“Great,” Marcelline said. “I’ll just send a text and then you’ll have mine, too. You can put my name into your contacts.” She gave her phone a solid little tap and looked back up into John’s face. “It’s just spelled the regular way.”

John’s phone chirred in his pocket. “There it is,” he said, but didn’t check it.

Marcelline smiled at him.

Donna reached around John to get to the closet.

“I’ve got it,” he said.

The women were in front of the door, still in chat mode. But Carly was off to the side, in view of John rooting around in the closet. He’d gone stiff again as soon as he’d taken his hands out of his pockets, and the sick look crossed his face once his head was buried in the shadow of the closet. He was listening, a lightning rod. Donna took a step back toward him and he flinched.

He moved fast, pushing a big garment bag down the rack, and inexplicably sliding the winter coats more to the center after pulling Marcelline’s jacket off the hangar. He went better than 50 percent less green as he pushed the door closed.

And as he wheeled back to them, Carly, jangling with a new and indistinct worry, feigned absorption in her fingernails. Her unease didn’t answer to any specific thing, but more than she could explain, she didn’t want John to catch her watching him just now.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Marcelline made it to the car before doubling over. She pretended she’d dropped her keys in case Jonathan or Donna or Carly was watching through a window. She couldn’t breathe. The wine burned her stomach, which had already been scoured raw by everything else in this day.

Poor Roy. Poor Roy. The idea, the words, the lament of it, had been in a loop since back in the library when Carly described what she had seen the night before.

But worrying whether Roy was all right had been on her mind since the second time he hadn’t met up with her at the gas station. She’d been concerned. A little more ill at ease as the hours went by. She knew something was wrong. She’d pushed too hard. She’d convinced him that he had to do it, that it was the right thing, the smart thing, and that he was the one to get it done.