The Widower's Wife: A Thriller by Cate Holahan Page B

screen. How had they not told me that they were being blackmailed? For years? I could have helped before. I had to help now.
    “It’s okay. They will understand. We don’t have it anymore.”
    I’d confessed Tom’s job loss to my parents after he’d been out of work a few months and I’d needed to reduce the amount of money I sent each month. At first, I’d mailed two-thirds the usual amount. A few months later, I was sending half that. They’d never asked when the checks stopped coming. They both knew what it meant.
    “Tell me how much.”
    “A thousand.” Tears gurgled in my mother’s words. “It was a hundred a month, but we haven’t paid in a while and they say there’s interest.”
    I’d once taken eighty thousand dollars from Tom’s seven-figure bonus check and bought my parents an apartment. Tom had complained that, in the right investment, the amount could balloon into a healthy retirement savings. But I’d convinced him that the missing money wouldn’t mean anything to us. At the time, it hadn’t. Now I couldn’t imagine how I’d find a spare hundred dollars, let alone a whole thousand.
    “I’ll get it. When are they coming again?”
    “You don’t have it,” my father said. “And when they want more than a thousand, what do we do? It’s better they realize now.”
    “And what, kill you? It was enough before, right? When are they coming?”
    “Next month,” my mother mumbled.
    My father scowled at her from beneath his swollen eye. “You have to take care of Sophia and Tom right now.” His hands reached out toward the screen, toward me. The gesture made me hurt. It had been so long since I’d felt the touch of either of my parents, so long since I’d hugged them. “You have to take care of your family.”
    “I am taking care of my family.”
    “How will you do it?” My mother couldn’t hide her hope.
    I didn’t know, but I’d find a way. I’d always come up with money before, even when I’d only had a Starbucks job. Now I was working for a multibillion-dollar hedge fund.
    “I’ll figure something out.”

11
    November 24
    R yan stood outside a former furniture warehouse off I-95. A plastic banner hanging above a stairway leading to a basement door read, “Appleday, Where Kids Can Play.” Each letter was colored differently, as if children with perfect handwriting had constructed the sign.
    He knocked, crossing his fingers that his GPS had led him to the correct place. Amazing, the number of daycares with apple in the title located in the NYC suburbs. AppleView, AppleSeed, AppleTree, Apple Montessori, Appleday. He’d called no fewer than eight places before getting a harried aide on the line that had remembered Sophia. The woman had referred him to her boss, a lady named Ms. Donna, who hadn’t bothered to return his message. Ryan figured showing up would prove more effective than playing phone tag.
    He would rather have been confronting Michael about the paternity of Ana’s unborn child than interviewing employees at Sophia’s old daycare, but he didn’t have a choice. Even if he did manage to reach Ana’s old boss in the Bahamas, Michael wasn’t likely to confirm that he’d been sleeping with his secretary while on vacation with the wife and kids.
    In the meantime, he would try to get a better handle on the Bacons’ finances by speaking with someone they’d needed to pay regularly, who could also confirm or deny Michael’s story that Ana had picked up Sophia often. With luck, one of the daycareworkers might even have some insight into whether Ana had seemed stressed or depressed. Afterward, he could gauge Tom’s reaction to questions about Ana’s working relationship with her former boss.
    A broad woman with screaming red hair opened the door. Children’s shouts drifted into the cold outside. The woman looked down at Ryan’s knees before returning her suspicious gaze to his face. “You’re here to drop off?”
    “No. Actually, I was—”
    “Picking