Living Proof, стр. 22

But the task of building trust was arduous. He lugged his patience around like a stone block, slowly stacking the base. As he and Arianna cooled off after their rides, they shared basic aspects of their pasts. It was simpler to keep his as truthful as possible.

He told her about growing up an only child—a rarity they had in common—on Long Island, with his still-married parents and his dog, a black Lab. Skateboarding after school, eating home-cooked dinners, camping with his family in Maine. His was a childhood that had not known adversity. In his most rebellious stage in high school, he had tried smoking marijuana. It lasted a month; he’d quit after his mother found the plastic bag in his sock drawer, a gram of ziplocked sin. Instead of reacting angrily, which would have been easy for him to combat with defensiveness, she told him that she was disappointed in him.

Two years later, he had moved into the dorms at Hofstra University, fifteen minutes away. After graduating with a degree in journalism, he moved to a studio apartment near his childhood home, and began writing for their local newspaper, the Long Island Post. Eventually he made a name for himself and moved on to the biggest Island paper, writing high-profile stories. But it wasn’t satisfying enough. So at age thirty-three, he moved to his current apartment in the city at Seventy-third and Columbus and—here, he fudged—began writing creatively and freelancing on the side. For three years, though, the freelancing had taken up more time than he expected and sidetracked him from his creative pursuits. Now, finally, he was focusing on his novel. His savings, he said, would last several years—long enough to finish and publish the book, if all went as planned. If not, he told her he could always fall back on journalism. In his crafty mind, his improvised life plan seemed well thought out, and she did not appear to disagree. The past he painted for her was like a Monet: sweeping brushstrokes that provided enough information to understand the whole, but omitted key specifics, like the devoutness of his upbringing. It was the major detail he left out, so as not to alienate the daughter of two scientists.

What he had so far gathered from her was mostly insignificant. She had grown up in NYU faculty housing, raised by her father alone after her mother’s death in a car accident when she was sixteen. She attended Columbia University for both undergraduate and medical school, NYU for residency, and then established her small fertility practice with several colleagues in Greenwich Village, along the border of the park that tethered her to the nostalgia of home, across from the fountain she had splashed in as a child. She spoke of her mother fondly—in two decades, her mother’s memory had eased into a beloved recollection, rather than a traumatic one—but rarely mentioned her father. Trent learned why after he asked one day what had happened to him. She responded in a strained voice, her topaz-blue eyes watering, that he had died unexpectedly from colon cancer two years prior. Although Trent felt certain that her father’s influence somehow tied in to the case, he did not mention it again.

They talked about books and movies and music only if she had an opinion to share. It was time Trent considered wasted, although Dopp told him it was not. It reminded Trent of practicing scales on the piano: nothing enjoyable came of it directly, but it would enable fluid playing later. He couldn’t always manipulate the conversation back to her interest in biology, but when he did, she would discuss only cutting-edge research in fertility treatments that affected her practice. He encouraged her to tell him more about her practice, but she never hinted at anything unusual, so he tried another approach; when he asked for a primer on biochemical research for his “novel,” she directed him to a textbook, explaining that research was not her field of expertise, though she did offer to guide him to certain sections that would be clearer for him to understand. Her graciousness frustrated him; she was so willing to help him that he half doubted she might be hiding something from him relating to exactly that topic.

But a curious incident yesterday had kindled his suspicion again.

Squirming on the wet bench now, with the rain driving tiny pellets into his umbrella, he moved the knob up on his watch to listen to their short, perplexing exchange from the day before. They had just been mounting their bikes when her phone rang.

Their voices emerged from the circular face—hers abrupt, his surprised:

“Hang on, I have to take this call. Hello?… Uh-huh … hmm … Okay … Soon. Bye.” Her phone snapping shut. “I’m really sorry, but I have to go.”

“What do you mean? Where? We haven’t even started—”

“Something came up.”

“What happened?”

“Look, I can’t— Call me later, okay?”

The recording clicked off, and in the ensuing silence, he recalled her wheeling her bike to the curb and then hailing a cab. He played the exchange for Dopp this morning. They listened to it several times, trying to detect nuances in her tone. But beyond an obvious impatience and a slight excitement, they could glean no substantial clues from the recording except for one: The watch had picked up the low-frequency grumble of a man’s voice coming from the earpiece of her cell phone.

“What does it mean?” Trent demanded. “She can’t what? Stay? Tell me where she was going? And who was so important that she dropped everything for him?”

“I don’t know,” Dopp had said, lifting his pointed chin. “Have you mentioned her off-nights yet?”

Arianna always scheduled their bike rides around certain evenings, telling Trent she was busy then. Otherwise, she never mentioned those nights, let alone offered an explanation for her whereabouts. The nights had no consistent pattern—one week, she said she was busy on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but the next week, it was Wednesday