Chapter 2

The question hung in the air so long I thought I could actually see it — a thin thread of something unspoken stretched between Pam and me, pulling tight across the smoothie bar. Pam’s smile didn’t fall, but it went brittle, the way old plastic does when you bend it past the point of comfort. She blinked, once, and I watched her sort through her options like a woman emptying a purse at the airport — checking each pocket for something that would get her through.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “The account is settled. I told you that.”

“Who settled it?” I said again. I kept my hand flat on the closed folder. “Because Dev hasn’t made a payment in twenty-one months. I’ve covered every one. So if the account is settled, I’d like to know who wrote that check.”

The locker circle had gone very, very still. Michelle had taken two steps toward me without realizing it, her towel still in her hand, her eyes moving between Pam and me like she was watching a tennis match that had suddenly turned dangerous. The younger woman from the 5 p.m. class had set her water bottle down entirely. Even the two background clients — the ones who’d been half-heartedly stretching by the lockers when Pam first walked in — had stopped pretending not to listen.

Dev’s hand was still on the protein shake, but he wasn’t holding it anymore so much as pressing it into the counter. His knuckles had gone white around the paper cup. He cleared his throat — a small, dry sound — and I saw Marisol look at him, really look, for the first time since they’d walked into the lobby. Her fingers closed around the white key fob so hard the lanyard bit into her palm.

“Dev?” Marisol said. Her voice was smaller than I’d ever heard it. She was thirty years old, she was wearing a pale-pink athletic set that cost more than my sneakers, she had a white key fob in her hand that was supposed to be proof of her new life, and she was looking at her husband like she’d just seen a door close that she’d never noticed was open.

Dev said nothing. He looked at the floor, then at the wall screens, then at the menu board — anywhere but at me, and anywhere but at Marisol. His jaw was doing something subtle, a muscle working under the stubble, and I recognized it because I’d seen it for eight years: Dev Whitaker swallowed his lies whole, without chewing.

Pam stepped forward. Her white walking shoes made that expensive squeak on the polished concrete, and she planted herself between me and her son, and her voice came out loud and warm, the way it always did when she was losing and needed the room to think she was winning.

“Rosa, dear. This is a lovely studio. Really. Dev and Marisol just wanted to see where you work, that’s all. A little… nostalgia.” She laughed, a single syllable with no air behind it. Her bracelets clicked as she gestured at the lockers. “And my daughter-in-law wanted to show off the new car. That’s not a crime, is it? A man buying his wife a car?”

“Whose name is on the title?” I asked.

Pam’s laugh stopped. It didn’t trail off — it just stopped, like a record lifting off a turntable. Her eyes flicked down to the closed folder on the counter, then back up to my face.

“His,” she said. “Dev’s. He bought it.”