Free The Three-Day Affair by Michael Kardos

it.
    Overhead, the rain on the roof sounded like the rotors of a dozen helicopters. I imagined the inevitable convergence on our windowless hideout: the SWAT teams, the police cars, the fire engines , the ambulances. The television news. But there were others out there, too, looking on, speechless in their horror and disappointment : my mother and father. My dead grandparents. Teachers who’d put their best hopes in me. The small, squinty kid in my third-grade class I’d given my windbreaker to one day because he told me he was cold. A peppermint-scented girl named Veronica, who, the summer I turned thirteen, called me a
gentleman
and kissed me on the boardwalk in Point Pleasant. I had led her through the funhouse and promised not to scare her. And I hadn’t.
    The ambush was inevitable. The only surprise was that it hadn’t happened yet.
    I looked at my watch: 8:10 already.
    I tried to read Nolan’s expression as he walked slowly back to the control room.
    Walk faster
, I thought.
Walk faster.

7
    “We’ve got one ethical girl in there,” Nolan said, back in the control room. “Good kid. Wish I had her campaigning for me door-to-door.” He sat down. “I offer her a thousand dollars, and she says, ‘Taking a bribe would be wrong.’ I finally convinced her at least to think it over.” He shook his head. “I even told her to let me know if a thousand isn’t enough. But do you know what the real problem is here, Will? Failure of imagination.”
    “Whose?” I asked. “Hers or ours?”
    “Hers! She can’t imagine living her life with a secret like this. It’s too big. All she can imagine doing is running straight to her grandmother and then both of them running straight to the police.”
    “You can’t blame her,” I said. “She’s terrified right now.”
    “Maybe I could try talking to her,” Jeffrey said.
    “No,” I said. “We could go around in circles forever. I’m sorry, but … no. Every minute she’s here makes things worse for everyone . We have to let her go.” Even as I said this, I was looking to Nolan for an objection. Some last-ditch plan that would save us. He said nothing, just returned my gaze, and I realized that he was looking to me for the same thing. “All right, then,” I said. “It’s settled.”
    I hoped there would be time, after letting Marie go, to phone Cynthia. I needed to let her know that our lives were going to change. That they already had.
    As I was thinking about using the telephone, it rang. My ringtone played the Popeye-the-Sailor theme song. A happy little melody . This connection to the outside world startled me completely. I removed the phone from my pants pocket and looked at the display.
    “Huh.”
    “Who is it?” Nolan asked.
    “It’s Evan.”
    “Answer it.”
    I hesitated.
    “Answer it.”
    So I did.
    “Save me some beer, you dickwads.” The connection was full of static. “I’ll be at the Newfield station in, oh, about thirty-five minutes.”
    “You’re on the train now?”
    “Yup.”
    “What about all your work?”
    “Right, so picture this. I’m working on this memo that I’m told has to be e-mailed out tomorrow morning? Hard deadline and all that? Then I find out from the dipshit partner that the client’s going to be at his daughter’s wedding tomorrow. He won’t even be
checking
e-mail until Monday. So I said to myself, the hell with it. I’m going to see my friends.”
    “Evan,” I said, “you can’t come tonight.”
    Nolan was glaring at me, whispering, “
Call him back
.”
    “Look, I need to call you right back.”
    “What do you mean, ‘I can’t come.’ I’m coming.”
    “Two minutes, I’ll call you back.”
    “The pleasure will be all mine,” Evan said.
    I hung up the phone. “I know what you’re thinking,” I said to Nolan, “but forget it.”
    “You were being rash. I thought we should discuss it for a minute.”
    “He’s our friend,” I said.
    “Our friend the lawyer,” Nolan said.
    “But