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Wil leaned forward to read the screen. “Damn,” she said. “That is fuckingcold.” She swiped at the screen a few times. “Although I have to say, even though I hate the clickbait, I’m not mad about the pictures.” She swiped again. “I should request a hi-res copy so I properly remember my own hotness.”
Wil slid the phone back, pushed her hands into her hair, and sighed.
Madelynn watched Wil, her face perfectly impassive.
Katie didn’t know what to do or say. She wanted to sink into the floor. The feeling of having disappointed everyone,everyonein her life, and having ruined everything, was so intense that it brought tears to her eyes, and her chest got tight, tighter, until she coughed, her eyes stinging, and realized she’d forgotten to breathe.
Wil turned in her chair, her hand on Katie’s arm until Katie had taken a few slow, deep breaths.
The room was completely, totally silent when Wil finally spoke.
“When you went to summer stock,” she said, “you were my best friend. More than that. You weremine. He took you.”
Wil let her hands drop.
What she had said made Katie’s heart feel like it would never land another beat again. There was color rising up Wil’s neck into her cheeks, painting them scarlet, and Katie wanted them against her own so badly, she ached.
“My name’s in his mouth.”
Katie closed her eyes. “What did he say?” Her voice sounded small to her own ears.
“Can I ask you something first?” Wil revolved her entire chair toward Katie, so that their knees touched. When they got dressed, Wil had put on a different pair of tight black jeans, but these had holes slashed in them all the way up, revealing a mosaic of edible thigh and a black tank that Katie suspected Wil had spent not a little money on. She looked like something Katie wanted to press between the pages of her diary and keep flipping back to for the rest of her life.
“Okay.” Katie took another deep breath.
“Wait. Before I ask you my first question, there’s another thing, which is that I have to tell you I do feel sad and angry about what I didn’t know. I know I’m not part of your professional life, but I feel like at some point there was an intersection ofuswith your professional life that I missed because I didn’t have your help to know we’d gotten there. And that meant I couldn’t do everything I might have done to helpyou.”
The tears that Katie had been hanging onto started to fall.
“But I think we’ll have to get to that when it’s just you and me,” Wil said quietly.
Katie nodded.
“Okay.” Wil rubbed her hands together. She was making the face that Beanie calledthinking face. “Secondfirst of all is Mr. Cook.”
Katie gave a faint laugh, surprised by her own shaky amusement. “Oh my God. Our very important investigation.”
Madelynn had startled at Katie’s laugh and was now poised to take notes. “Who the fuck is Mr. Cook?”
Katie and Wil answered her question at the same time.
“A bigamist.”
“An adulterer.”
Wil gave Katie an amused look and tapped one fingernail on the table. “Yep. In other words, Mr. Cook is like the most impossibly average white man in America.”
“We could literally swap him out for another completely different middle-aged white guy and no one would notice,” Katie said. “And for the last thirteen years, he has maintained a relationship with two different, objectively banging women.”
“Which should be impossible,” Wil said. “Right? Can we agree on that? Impossible. My guess is we would like these two women. They’re probably interesting and do amazing things. The ass on that brunette is a poem. I caught myself nodding along to all of Official Wife’s Facebook reposts, and some of her self-generated content made me cry. These are objectively powerful women. Tell me, Katie.”
“Yeah?” Katie said, leaning forward.
“What has Mr. Cook got that they even need?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing,” Wil concurred. “Absolutely nothing. Say it again.”