Very, very bad, I thought. How much did I have to drink anyway?
"Good grief!" he exclaimed. "Now we're going to get towed. I've got to go. I'm worried about you, Lara. This is not like you."
"I'm fine," I said.
"You'd better pull yourself together," he said. "We need to talk."
"Did you not say you were about to get towed?" I said.
"I'm going to call you back to discuss this," he said.
"Please don't. I'm fine," I repeated. I wasn't though. The minute I stood up, I realized I was going to be sick, which I was. I couldn't believe it. What had I been thinking? Did I actually believe I could drown my sorrows? And more important, what had I done?"
The phone rang again. "I'm fine," I snarled into the mouthpiece.
"Well, I'm not," a man's voice said.
"Rob?" I said. "Sorry, I thought you were someone else." Was Rob calling because he'd seen on the wire that a nationwide manhunt for me was underway?
"I'm trying to understand this thing," he said.
"What thing?" I said. Yes, the police were almost certainly looking for me.
"Why you left me, of course," he said irritably. "Or have you forgotten that already?"
"I'm hanging up," I said. Praise be it was only about that.
"No, please," he said. "I'm sorry."
"Rob, we've been over this," I said.
"I know, but I still don't get it," he said. "I feel as if—I don't know—I guess I was missing all the signs or something, but it just came out of the blue. I don't understand what 'you and I just don't see the world the same way' means, in real terms."
I thought back over the last year, the things I'd done, the decisions I'd made that I had never felt I could talk to him about. "Maybe you don't really know me," I said.
"I think I know you pretty well," he said. "You are loyal to a fault, generous to your friends, you have a strong moral and ethical sense, you are a fine stepmother to Jennifer. She feels terrible about this, you know."
"Please don't play that card," I said. "That's not fair."
"Sorry," he said.
"Believe me, Rob, you don't know me. I have done things you would never approve of."
"Oh, please, Lara," he said. "Like what? Are we talking about your love for what we affectionately call French parking?"
"French parking?" I said.
"You know, that thing you do when you see a parking place on the other side of the road and zip into it, so you're parked facing the wrong way? That's a no-no here in Toronto the Good."
"It is?" I said. "They do it all the time in Europe, especially Paris."
"I believe that's why we call it French parking," he said.
"Oh," I said. "Well, we probably shouldn't. I'm sure it's politically incorrect."
He chuckled. "I do love you, Lara, for many reasons, not the least of which is that you make me laugh. What I'm trying to say here is that I can't imagine you doing anything that I wouldn't approve of. You didn't even ask me to call one of my esteemed colleagues at the Ontario Provincial Police when you got that speeding ticket. I loved you for that, too."
"I wouldn't dream of asking you to do anything like that," I said.
"My point exactly. Look, give me something I understand here. I'm a guy. 'You don't really know me' doesn't work for me. Do I bore you, in bed or otherwise?"
"No," I said.
"Do I have annoying habits you can no longer tolerate?"
"No."
"Do I watch too much baseball on TV?"
"No," I said. "Okay, maybe, but that's not the point."
He laughed again. "What if I promised never to watch another baseball game, not even the World Series?"
It was my turn to laugh. I shouldn't have. It made my head throb even worse. "You know that is a promise you would never be able to keep, and if you tried you wouldn't be fit to live with."
"Is…" he hesitated for a second or two. "Is there somebody else?"
"No," I said. "Let me ask you a question. Let's take your speeding ticket example. What would you have done if I asked you to make a call for me?"
"I wouldn't have done it," he said. "It would not have been right. You were speeding. You got caught."
"Exactly what I would expect you to say and do. Now what if our situations were reversed. I'm the cop, you're the driver. You ask me to make a call. What do you think I would do."
"I have no idea," he said.
"There you are," I said. "I'm going now."
"I can't decide whether to put my energy into getting over you or into trying to convince you to come back," he said.
"I think you should choose the former," I said.
"I know. But it's going to be the latter."
"Goodbye, Rob."
"Till next time," he said.
Two minutes later the phone rang again. "No, Rob," I said.
"Hello," a woman's voice said. "Is that Lara?"
"Sorry," I said. "I thought you were someone else." Why I was paying for call display on a fancy new phone I didn't bother looking at was a mystery to me. "Is that Diana?"
"Yes," she said. She sounded funny, as if she was talking underwater or something. "Have you heard the news?"
"I certainly have," I said.
"Isn't it dreadful?"
"It certainly is." Which one of us had been driving, I wondered, when we decided to take on the glass wall of the Cottingham.
"I just don't understand it," she said.
"What do you mean you don't understand it? It was your idea, surely."
"What did you say?" she gasped. "How could you!"
"You did suggest it, did you not?"
"I can't believe you are saying something so awful. What could I have done to make this my fault? You were always one to speak your mind, but I didn't realize you could be so cruel. You're nothing but a mean drunk," she said. "Poor Anna." The line went dead.
I stared at the phone for a minute, then started flailing around in the bedside table drawer to find the manual for the stupid thing. In a minute or two I was calling the last number that had called me. I got an answering machine.
"Diana, please pick up the phone. I think maybe we were talking about different things."
In a few seconds, she came on the line. "What were you talking about?" she said. She had obviously been crying.
"The break-in at the Cottingham," I said.
"Was there a break-in at the Cottingham?" she said. "I didn't know that."
"You did say we were going to steal the Venus right out from under Charlie's nose, did you not?"
"I didn't mean that literally," she said.
"Then what were you talking about?" I said.
She took a deep breath. "Anna's dead. She killed herself," she said.
"What!" I exclaimed. "No! What happened?"
"She threw herself off a bridge over Rosedale Valley Road," she said. "She landed on the hood of a car that was unfortunate enough to be passing under the bridge at that moment. Poor guy."
"Is the driver all right?"
"Not really," she said. "He's alive. His car was destroyed. I guess even someone as small as Anna would make quite an impact falling from that height. He's in serious condition but expected to recover. No doubt he'll be in psychotherapy for the rest of his life, but at least Anna didn't take him with her. I suppose that's something. It's on the news channel. You get to see the car every fifteen minutes or so."
"This is horrible," I said.
"It is. I thought she was getting better, you know. I really did. So did Cybil, who is, I have to say, absolutely devastated. She thought Anna was way better too. She was getting out of the house. She seemed to enjoy herself last night, at least part of it. Maybe we should have known this sort of thing could happen, but we didn't."
"Last night," I said. "What happened?"
"To you, you mean? You passed out."
"I know that. What happened then?"
"I'll pay for the damage to your car, okay? It will take me awhile but I'll do it."