“Triani,” he said. “All right? Bobby Triani.”
“Thanks,” she said, “but you’re a little late. You can tell him next,” she said, “that you don’t trust me enough to believe I come here every damn Wednesday because I love you and want to be with you and not because I’m hanging bugs all over the place. You can tell him, too,” she said, “that I’m walking out because I didn’t hear what I wanted to hear from you, I didn’t hear a single word of apology for getting me involved in your damn corporate maneuverings. I didn’t once hear you say, ‘Gee, I’m sorry that strangers were listening to everything you said to me, all those things you said to me, complete strangers hearing all those things. I’m sorry you landed in the middle of all this, whatever it is, I’m really sorry about that, because I love you to death and I wouldn’t want you hurt for anything in the world. You can tell Bobby Triani that’s why I’m walking out,” she said. “Because you never once told me you’re sorry you got me into this whole damn mess!”
She realized all at once that she was not acting. This was not the Sarah Welles who was “owned” by the district attorney. This was the Sarah Welles who’d lost her heart to a gangster, a mobster, a hoodlum, a bum. And she was talking about something quite other than business spying. She stood motionless, looking at him, tears streaming down her face.
“I know you had nothing to do with this,” he said, and took her in his arms.
“Serve you right if I did,” she said, sobbing.
From where Regan and Lowndes sat listening in the room on Grand Street, they heard only her muffled sobs now, and figured she was weeping into his shoulder. But they had heard and recorded all of the earlier conversation as well, because whoever had yanked out the Bradys and the slave had missed at least the one-watt transmitter Freddie Coulter had installed as a wall receptacle last February.
Heather looked as if she were already flying. Her new haircut was swept back and away from her face to give an appearance of windblown flight. In exactly forty minutes, she would be boarding the plane to the Dominican Republic, where she would get her overnight divorce before flying back to New York the day after tomorrow. She was in constant motion already, though, tapping her fingers on the tabletop, jiggling her foot, spasmodically sipping at the gin and tonic she’d ordered.
“I wish you were coming with me,” she told Sarah.
The sisters sat in a small lounge near the security gate. There weren’t many people flying to the Caribbean this time of year. Most of the passengers moving through the X-ray machines looked like natives going home.
“I keep asking; myself why I’m the one doing this,” Heather said. “Why isn’t Doug going down for the divorce? He’s the one who wants to marry Miss Felicity Twit in such a hurry, isn’t he? He’s the one yearning to be so goddamn free of me. But on the other hand, there’s something fitting about my being the one who does the actual thing, who gets the actual papers signed and sealed down there. I’m the aggrieved party, do you see, Sarah?”
“Yes,” Sarah said, and wondered if she should tell her sister about Andrew and the awful situ—
“I don’t want people thinking Doug’s the one leaving me because of something I did,” Heather said. “He’s the son of a bitch who broke the contract, the covenant, whatever. He’s the one who fouled the marriage bed, Sarah, not me. If he went down to Santo Domingo, people would think I’m so reluctant to give him the damn divorce, he’s got to run down there himself to get it. Am I making any sense to you?”
“Yes, I understand completely,” Sarah said.
Everywhere around them urgent messages erupted from hidden speakers, announcing arrivals and delays, boardings and departures. Sarah wondered if on a Sunday like this one, she would soon be sitting in this lounge again, sipping drinks with her sister, who’d be seeing her off instead. Or would Michael, as the injured party, be the one to fly south for the divorce?
The injured party.
She wondered who, after all was said and done, would truly be the injured party.
She could think of no one but Mollie.
“... laughing at me,” Heather was saying. “That’s the one thing I couldn’t stand. She’s so young, you know, that’s the thing of it. I wouldn’t have minded so much if he’d chosen someone closer to his own age. But nineteen? Jesus! Well, she’s twenty now,” Heather said, and sighed deeply. “Twenty to my thirty-two, where’s the competition? Closing fast on thirty-three, in fact. You don’t know how lucky you are, Sarah.”
“Heather,” she said, and paused, and then said, “There’s something I ought to tell you.”
Heather looked at her over the rim of her glass.
“Michael and I...”
“No, please don’t,” Heather said. “That’s all I need right now. Please, Sarah, no.”
“All right,” Sarah said, and picked up her own drink, and looked away because she was afraid she might burst into tears. Heather kept staring at her across the small round table.
“What is it?” she asked at last.
“I don’t want to burden you.”
“You’ve already burdened me. What is it?!’
“Trouble.”
“What kind of trouble? Tell me.”
Sarah told her.
Heather listened intently, one eye on the clock. The airline announcements riddled Sarah’s recitation, making it difficult for her to complete a single sentence without being interrupted by what sounded like bulletins from the front. Heather finished her drink. She did not ask for another one. She listened wide-eyed to what Sarah was saying, her face expressionless, only the eyes revealing a mixture of horror and disbelief. A final boarding announcement exploded like a mortar shell, but Sarah was finished now. She sat looking down at the wedding band on her left hand.
“When did this start?” Heather asked.
“St. Bart’s.”
“Not the handsome kid under the angel’s-trumpet?”
Sarah nodded.
“What do you plan to do?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Does Michael suspect?”
She had left a few salient points out of her story. She had neglected to mention, for example, that Andrew Faviola was a criminal and that Michael hoped to put him behind bars. She had also left out the part about the eavesdropping warrant. She had not told her sister that every word she and Andrew uttered in that third-floor bedroom was recorded by detectives. Telling her sister she was having an affair had been bombshell enough. Heather still looked as though she’d walked into a wall.
“I don’t think he knows,” Sarah said. “Yet.”
“Do you plan to tell him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sarah, this kid’s asked you to marry him! You’ve got to decide one way or...”
“He’s not a kid. He’s twenty-eight.”
“Just a bit older than Felicity Twit, “Heather said, and grimaced. “Do you love him?”
Sarah hesitated for what seemed a very long time.
Then she said, “Yes.”
The loudspeaker erupted again, announcing the boarding of American’s flight five eighty-eight to Santo Domingo. Heather picked up her carry-on.
“I’ll get this,” Sarah said, and took the check from the table.