Page 277 of The Professor's Wife

She lingered before moving on.

I waited another twenty minutes, but now every passing person seemed to notice me.

At last, I left.

The sun was beginning to lower when I returned to Oliver’s street. The white sedan remained across from the house.

I stood several houses away, watching for any sign of Oliver. His car wasn’t in the drive. The curtains hadn’t changed. Everything appeared exactly as it had when I left.

I walked inside cautiously.

The house greeted me with silence.

“Oliver?”

Nothing.

He hadn’t returned.

I went to the laundry room and shut the door.

I gathered my pillow bag with the money and pills. I sorted through the fresh clothes and packed the underwear away. A change of clothes. A sweater, even though the day was hot. I added a bottle of water and a few wrapped granola bars from the pantry.

The bag looked pitiful.

Over a decade of my life reduced to something I could carry over one shoulder. But it was ready when I was. I hid it back in the basket.

I made myself something small to eat, but I couldn’t swallow more than a few bites. Tristan had been gone for nearly the whole day. Maybe he really had left. He could be long gone by now.

Panic crawled beneath my skin. I went upstairs and checked the time.

Seven forty-two.

I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to reason with myself.

Tristan was a single man. I hardly knew him. He owed me no explanation. He could drive where he wanted, whenever he wanted.

I lay down without undressing.

I didn’t sleep.

At the first thin light of dawn, I changed into another summer dress but didn’t shower. My hair was tangled, my eyes swollen. I slid into sandals and left.

The white sedan was still there.

Feeling suddenly annoyed by it, I marched straight to it and peered inside.

The back seat was a mess. A child’s booster seat buried beneath a tiny raincoat. Crushed juice boxes. Candy wrappers. A single pink sock. Two thick textbooks lay open on the floor beneath a university tote bag, their pages bent beneath an empty coffee cup.

I saw no files or cameras and certainly no detective waiting with a notebook in his lap, looking awkwardly up at me.

It was just someone’s cluttered life.

I stepped back from the window, embarrassed that I might have actually believed Oliver. He had looked at that car and seen someone watching him. And somehow, he had taught me to see it too.

I walked away quickly.

I went inside the hotel. The receptionist from the day before wasn’t at the desk. A young man sat there instead, looking at a computer screen. I hurried past before he could ask anything.