Page 25 of The Expat Affair
By the time I turn back to the path, she’s gone. I push off the bench and hurry into the stream of people, searching for a streak of red hair in the crowd of runners and walkers. I look one way, then the other, then back again.Shit.I’ve lost her.
And then I spot a flash of red ponytail at the edge of the grass field,mygrass field. Rayna leans against the back of a bench, stretching out her calves.
“Hey, did you happen to see a tennis ball?”
Rayna looks over, and she’s as pretty in person as she is online. Prettier, even. Big eyes, cheeks flushed from exertion and cold, skin so porcelain it’s almost see-through.
She shakes her head, looks about on the grass. “No, I don’t think so. Sorry.”
I point my face at Sem, chasing Ollie along the bushes at the back end. “It’s not here. Keep looking.” I shout the words even thoughI know they won’t reach Sem’s ears. My son is running the other way, and the only way to get his attention short of running after him, is by whistling for Ollie. Where the dog goes, Sem follows.
“Cute kid.” Rayna straightens, her gaze going to Ollie, streaking like a demon across the grass, a blur of fur and mud splatters. “Is that your dog?”
I nod. “Ollie. He’s a rescue.”
“He’s cute, too,” she says, but with a lot less enthusiasm than the first time. Ollie’s fur is patchy. His ears are too small and his legs are too short and his underbite gives him a hilarious snaggletooth. Even when Ollie is clean, nobody would ever describe him as cute.
“Liar.” I laugh. “Ollie won’t be winning any ribbons anytime soon, but he’s the sweetest.”
“Rescues always are.” She smiles.
“You have a dog?”
Rayna doesn’t have a dog, at least not one in any of the pictures I’ve found of her online. She’s the type, though, prim and deeply Southern, though hers would be a hunting Labrador, or maybe one of those bulldogs with the squished snouts. Not a mutt like Ollie. This woman is too pretty for a mutt.
She shakes her head, shiny ponytail swinging against her shoulder. “I used to. My ex has him now.”
Just this morning, deep in one of the comment sections on X, Ilanded on a post from a woman claiming to be from Rayna’s hometown. She spilled all sorts of dirt—about Rayna’s ex, a real-estate developer named Barry Broderick, about their talk-of-the-town divorce and the way it shot Rayna so far off the deep end that she drove Barry and his fiancée off the road. Apparently, she caught him in bed with her best friend.
Sorry—formerbest friend.
“He sounds like a real snake.”
She barks a laugh. “Taking my dog isn’t the worst thing he’sdone, not by a long shot.” She bounces on her toes, either because she’s cold or eager to get back to her run. Maybe both. “Anyway, good luck finding your ball.”
She takes off with a little wave, and that’s that. Conversation over. No, she didn’t confess where she stashed the necklace or give me a description of Xander’s killer, but my gut says she’s an innocent bystander in all this. An accidental victim who got swept up in a spectacular string of wrong-place, wrong-time bad luck.
I also learned that this girl is too easy to find, too trusting of strangers who chat her up in the park. I watch her body get swept into the throng of tourists and runners on the path, and worry pings me in the chest. I need to find a way to warn her.
“Mama, I’mstarving.”
I whirl around to find Sem, standing at the edge of the grass, covered from head to toe in mud. He wipes his hands down his clothes, leaving twin streaks of mud on his coat, his pants, across one grubby cheek. There’s not a restaurant in the city that would let us inside.
“Change of plans, big guy: I’m cooking.” I whistle for Ollie, and he gives a great shake, spraying some poor girl with grass and mud and water. “Looks like you two worked up an appetite.”
He gives me a solemn nod. “I’m gonna eat fourpannenkoeken. No,twenty-four.”
I smile. Sem, my sweet, fragile,skinnySem. I’ll be lucky if he eats just one.
I fish around my pocket for the bike key, then help them into the bike. On the other side of the pond, the wind is picking up, and dark, bloated clouds are gathering just above the tree line. Those are rain clouds rolling in. If I hurry, we can beat them home.
“Let’s go. I’m starving, too.”
Once everyone is settled and Sem buckled in, I pedal for the exit on the north end of the park, a little longer in terms of kilometersbut an easier route to navigate at this time of day—rush hour. The path spits me out onto the busy Van Baerlestraat, and I merge into the thick stream of bikes and follow the horde south.
I’m passing a couple of slow-moving tourists when something catches my eye across the street. I see the elegant set of a man’s shoulders as he comes out the door of the Conservatorium Hotel, the dark smudge of his glasses and the swing of his arms as he jogs down the steps. As the crow flies, no more than thirty feet away.
Not eighty kilometers away at a conference in Antwerp. Thomas is here, at a hotel in Amsterdam, wearing the sweater I gave him for Christmas, his favorite camel coat, and a smile I haven’t seen in ages.
