“Begin what?” I said. “Victor, where is everyone?”
He pointed toward the kitchen. “The real instructions are in there. That one was just the draft.”
I found the second note taped to the granite countertop, in Brady’s handwriting, with the particular care of someone who has rehearsed what they wanted to say.
Gone on a Caribbean cruise with Hannah. Mom decided to come too since she needed a break. You’ll stay home and take care of Victor. He needs you back Monday.
Hannah was a colleague from Brady’s marketing department. She was the woman he had described to me for two years as loud, annoying, and professionally mediocre, the woman he sighed about when she was invited to departmental events he could not avoid, the woman he insisted, on the two occasions I had raised the question, was nothing more than a work acquaintance he barely tolerated. I stood in the freezing kitchen and held the note with both hands and processed the specific cruelty of being lied to about the particular shape of the lie.
