Laura Dave - The Last Thing He Told Me

“Maybe he was testing out his software,” he says. “I don’t know. I’m just saying you’re making up quite an elaborate story when there are a variety of explanations as to what your friend did or didn’t find out about Owen’s past.”

He is trying to throw me off-balance. I won’t let him. I won’t let him try to control this narrative for his own agenda, which is feeling increasingly suspicious.

“What did he do, Grady? Before all of this? Before The Shop? Why did he change his identity? Why did he change his name?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do,” I say. “I think that explains why you came all the way to San Francisco for an investigation you have no jurisdiction over.”

He laughs. “My jurisdiction puts me firmly in charge of this investigation,” he says. “I think you should probably worry a little less about that and more about some other things.”

“Like what?”

“Like the fact your pal Special Agent Naomi Wu at the FBI is threatening to name Owen as an official person of interest.”

I pause. I haven’t said her name. He knew her name. He seems to know everything.

“We don’t have a whole lot of time before her team shows up at your house with search warrants. I’m fighting hard to hold her off for the moment, but I can’t guarantee you it will keep going this way.”

I think of Bailey having to come home to see her room turned apart—her world turned apart.

“Why, Grady?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why are you fighting so hard to stop that from happening?”

“That’s my job,” he says.

He says it assuredly, but I’m not convinced. Because something has clicked in for me. Grady doesn’t want any of this for Owen any more than I do. Grady wants to help keep Owen away from that fate. Why is that? If Grady were just investigating Owen, if he were just trying to bring him in, if he was just trying to end this, he wouldn’t care as much as he does. But something else is going on here—something far more nefarious than Owen being implicated in simple fraud. And suddenly I feel terrified that that something is worse than anything I have imagined yet.

Protect her.

“Owen left us a bag of money,” I say.

“What are you talking about?” he says.

“Really, he left it for Bailey. It’s a lot of money, and if someone shows up with one of those search warrants you’re threatening me with, I don’t want them discovering it. I don’t want it used against me or as an excuse to take Bailey from me.”

“That’s not how this works.”

“I’m still new to how this works, so in the meantime, I’m telling you about the money,” I say. “It’s under my kitchen sink. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

He is quiet. “Well, I appreciate that, it’s better that I take it than that they find it,” he says. “I can have someone in our San Francisco office come out and get it.”

I look out past Lady Bird Lake, at Austin’s downtown, its gentle buildings, the trees letting through the morning light. Grady is probably in one of those buildings already, starting his day. Grady is closer than I suddenly want him to be.

“Now’s not a good time.”

“Why not?”

Everything in my body tells me to tell him the truth. We are in Austin. But I’m still not sure whether he is a friend or a foe. Or both. Maybe everyone is a little bit of both, Owen included.

“I need to get some work done before Bailey gets up,” I say. “And I’ve been thinking… maybe I should take Bailey somewhere else until this all calms down.”

“Like where?”

I think of Jake’s offer. I think of New York.

“I’m not sure,” I say. “But we don’t have to be in Sausalito, do we? I mean, we don’t have to stay there for any legal reason, correct?”

“Not officially, but it won’t look good,” he says. Then Grady pauses. He pauses as if hearing something.

“Wait. Why did you just say ‘there’?”

“What?”

“You said, we don’t have to stay there . Talking about your house, talking about Sausalito. If you were home, you would have said ‘here.’ We don’t have to stay here.”

I don’t say anything.

“Hannah, I’m sending one of my colleagues over to check on you,” he says.

“I’ll put on some coffee,” I say.

“This isn’t a joke,” he says.

“I don’t think it is.”

“So then where are you?” Grady says.

If Grady wants to trace my phone call, I know he can do it. For all I know he is already trying to do it. I look out at Grady’s hometown, wondering what it’s been for my husband.

“Where are you worried I’ll be, Grady?” I say.

Then, before he can answer, I hang up the phone.

One Year Ago

“You think you can just pop in here whenever you want?” I said.

I was joking. But I was surprised that Owen snuck up on me, showing up at my workshop unannounced, in the middle of the workday. He didn’t usually do that. He spent his days at the offices in Palo Alto, sometimes heading to downtown San Francisco for a meeting. He was rarely home on a weekday, except when Bailey needed him for something.

“If I popped in whenever I wanted, I’d be here constantly,” he said. “What are we making?”

He rubbed his hands together, happy to be in the studio with me. He loved my work, loved being a part of it. And every time I saw how genuinely he felt that way, it was another small reminder how lucky I was to love him.

“What are you doing home so early?” I asked. “Is everything okay?”

“That depends,” he said.

He lifted my face shield to give me a kiss hello. I was in my work clothes—which consisted of a high-necked jacket and that face shield—a combination that made me look like I belonged in the future and the past at the same time.

“Is my chair finished?”

I kissed him back, draping my arms around his shoulders.

“Not quite yet,” I said. “And it’s not your chair.”

It was a Windsor chair I was making for a client in Santa Barbara, for her interior design office, but as soon as Owen had seen it in progress—the dark, chiseled elm; a heightened hoop back—he decided we couldn’t let it go. He decided it was meant for him.

“We’ll see about that,” he said.

This was when his phone buzzed. Owen looked down at the caller ID, his face darkening. He clicked decline.

“Who was that?” I said.

“Avett,” he said. “I’ll call him later.”

He clearly didn’t want to talk about it, but I couldn’t leave it there—not when I felt the heat coming off him. Not when he was getting this worked up just from a call he didn’t take. “What’s going on with him?

“He’s being a little irrational. That’s all.”

“About what?”

“The IPO,” he said. “It’s not a big deal.”

But it was flashing in his eyes—a mix of anger and irritation. Two things he rarely displayed. Two things he had displayed more recently. And, of course, he was standing in my workshop as opposed to in his own office.

I tried to choose my words carefully, wanting to help, but not wanting to undermine him. I didn’t have to work in an office, didn’t have to deal with the politics of having a boss I had to answer to—someone, like Avett Thompson, with whom I might not agree. And yet, I wanted to figure out how to say it—that I saw Owen’s stress level rising. That it was just a job. That, as far as I was concerned, he could always find another.

Before I said anything, the phone buzzed again. AVETT showing up on the caller ID. Owen looked down at his phone. He looked down at it, like he was going to pick it up, his fingers hovering there. But he hit decline again, pocketing his phone instead.