Free The Affair by Colette Freedman

Brookline?”
    “No,” she said truthfully. “I’ll see you at Top of the Hub later . . .”
    “No, not Top of the Hub . . .”
    Kathy kept her eyes fixed firmly on the road, refusing to glance down at the phone’s lit screen. She took a breath before responding, careful to pitch her voice just right. “I thought you said last night you were going to Top of the Hub. . . .”
    “Kathy, I’m having trouble hearing you. Listen, there was a screw-up. I phoned earlier to confirm, and they couldn’t find the reservation.”
    Kathy frowned. She knew this to be the truth. So maybe everything else was explicable also. Maybe all her suppositions had a rational explanation. She shook her head; they didn’t. “So where are you going to go?”
    “Don’t know yet.”
    “Well, look, call me when you find a place, and I’ll drop by. I haven’t seen Jimmy for ages. How is Angela?”
    “They’ve separated. He wants a divorce. She says no.”
    Kathy shifted in the driver’s seat, feeling trapped by the traffic. The lights of Boston burned amber and white in the distance. “Listen, I’ve got to go, there’s a cop nearby, and I shouldn’t be on my cell,” she lied again, and stabbed a finger to end the call.
    If Robert wanted a divorce would she say no?
    Kathy shook her head. She’d say, “Go.”
    If he didn’t want her, if he’d chosen some slut over her, she certainly wouldn’t want him hanging around. But if he was going, she would make sure she’d keep everything that was rightfully hers.
     
    It took forty minutes to get down to Beacon Hill. The stores were open for last-minute shoppers, and street parking was at an absolute premium. She drove around the hilly side streets, looking for a place to park.
    For years, Kathy and Robert had run R&K Productions out of their home. About ten years ago, when the company started making some money, they had decided that they needed a legitimate address. It had to be close enough to the city center to impress clients; a respectable address always suggested success, Robert had told her. After all, perception was everything. They’d eventually taken a single room on the first floor of a Federal-style row house on Beacon Hill, less than a mile from the State House. When a second room had become available, they’d taken that. Now R&K Productions occupied a suite of four ground-floor rooms, an outer office, a large conference room, a tiny kitchen, and a bathroom. Kathy had always thought it was an outrageously extravagant expense; Robert claimed it was good for business. And deductible, of course.
    As she drove through Beacon Hill, she smiled, as she always did in this neighborhood. Why did people pay so much to live in narrow row houses that were hundreds of years old? The same reason Robert wanted to set up the company here. Location. Location. Location. And the homes were charming. When she got to Charles Street, she could see the offices; they were in total darkness. Kathy glanced at the clock on the dashboard. The amber digits said it was six forty-five. She drove around the block. There was no sign of Robert’s car.
    She was . . . disappointed.
    What had she been expecting? To see Robert’s car outside the office and then the door opening and Robert and his mistress coming out arm in arm? And if she had seen his car outside, what would she have done? Gone in, or skulked outside in the shadows, watching like some shabby detective in a cheap novel?
    Kathy made one last drive around the block before heading toward the Charles River back onto Storrow Drive. There was one other destination she had to visit.
     
    She found Stephanie Burroughs’s address easily enough. It was in one of Jamaica Plain’s historical Victorians that had been broken up into condominiums. Holding the printout she’d taken from Robert’s computer in her hand, she peered out, trying to make sense of the numbering.
    “Can I help you?” The voice was querulous, suspicious. The tiny figure of a