Page 48 of The Expat Affair

“Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

“Tell him I’ll make him breakfast, then.”

My heart twists for Sem, who will be crushed. He won’t understand, but I promise to tell him anyway.

Thomas watches me for another second or two, and just when I think he’s about to turn to leave, he steps closer and drops a kiss on my lips instead, one that’s lightning quick and perfunctory. Not a good kiss but a kiss nonetheless, and my eyes burn with the sudden shock of it, with nostalgia, along with the knowledge that this kiss wasn’t for me. It was for his mother, watching from behind the windshield of her car.

And then just as suddenly he’s gone, taking off at a brisk jog toward his father and sister waiting in the car. I step backward and give him plenty of room to back out, following the glow of his taillights as he swings the car around and points it to the street. Idon’t turn to Anna, not yet. I don’t want her to see my tears.

He’s pulling out when I spot her across the lot, a redhead in a giant puffy coat and black boots, pushing through a wall of willow branches. They swing behind her like a beaded curtain, long and graceful, and it’s her. It’s Rayna D.

“Kom je?” Anna says—Are youcoming?—and her voice snaps me out of the spell. I tear my gaze away from Rayna and look at Anna behind the rolled-down window of her Mercedes, stretched out alongside me. “If we’re going to beat the traffic, we need to leave now.”

I look back to Rayna, still standing in front of the weeping willow. Frozen at the edge of the gravel, staring me down.

I shake my head at my mother-in-law. “Thanks, but I think I’ll take the train.”

Rayna

The woman from the park stares at me with a bold, almost aggressive gaze, looking every bit the Prins. Fur-trimmed coat, knee-high suede boots, red soles peeking out from skyscraper heels. It’s such a different look than the first time I saw her, barefaced and hair blowing all around, her puffy coat streaked with dog hair and mud. It took me a minute to make the connection.

She comes at me across the pavement, holding out a hand. “It’s beyond time we made the official introductions, don’t you think? I’m Willow Prins. Sorry I didn’t introduce myself the first time.”

My gaze dips to her outstretched hand, the smattering of diamonds sitting on multiple fingers. When I don’t reach for it, she tucks it in the pocket of her coat.

“So why didn’t you?” I ask.

She gives me a smile, one that’s at the same time warm and self-deprecating. “Because what was I going to say? Hey, you’re the girl who found my husband’s business partner dead on the floor. Want to grab a coffee sometime?” She tucks a lock of hair behind a delicate ear, a gesture that makes her seem nervous. “That would’ve been weird.”

“As if this isn’t.”

Willow laughs like I’m joking, which I’m decidedly not. It’s beyond weird, standing here, outside of Xander’s funeral, talking to this woman who knows who I am. My tragic connection to herfamily. She knew it when she sidled up to the bench I was stretching against to ask if I’d seen her dog’s ball, and she knows it now.

“Did you follow me to the park?”

Her eyes go wide at the suggestion, and she gives a firm shake of her head. “No. I swear. You can ask Sem. My son. He and I go there all the time with Ollie, the dog you saw. He’ll tell you that grass field is our spot.” She pauses, gazing up the street her family just drove down when they left her here in a cloud of exhaust. “But when I spoke to you, Ididknow who you were. I mean, obviously. Xander was an associate of the House and a friend. I recognized you from the pictures online. I’ve been following this story from the beginning.”

Her and everybody else on the planet. Last time I looked, that picture was still everywhere, and now there are plenty of others floating around the internet, as well. Me, pushing through the reporters outside my door, hustling down the street as they shout my name, ducking into stores and behind buildings. I’m not all that great at math, but with dozens of pictures and clips of me floating around every social media site in a country of only seventeen million, the odds are good the killer has seen me, too.

“Those people you were with,” I say, “the ones who just drove off in the fancy cars...”

Willow glances down the empty road, then turns back with a nod. “My husband, Thomas. His parents and sister. Her family.”

Pretty, privileged people, born and bred Prinses who, despite this woman’s designer clothes, don’t fit her somehow. The way they bustled around the parking lot, all that urgency and self-importance, the way her husband kissed her, with his arms hanging stiffly at his sides, before he raced off and left her alone. Her face as she watched him drive off, with such obvious hurt and longing. I barely know this woman, but I saw it, and yet her own husband can’t.

“They seem like real gems.”

Willow snorts, her dark hair moving like liquid over her shoulders. “That’s one way to put it. They certainly think of themselves as the diamonds they’re so proud of peddling.”

“They left you here.”

Willow doesn’t seem all that torn up about it. She shrugs, the fur of her collar tickling her earlobes. “Diamond business. I’m used to it, unfortunately.”

A sudden and icy wind blows across the lot, stirring up leaves and tugging at our hair and clothes, and Willow points to dark clouds gathering above the field. Typical Dutch weather, and why no matter the temperature, the terraces fill up the second the sun shines because heaven forbid you miss a single ray.

“I’m headed to the train station. You?”

For a second or two, I consider denying it. The station is a good fifteen-minute walk plus another twenty on the train, and I’m not sure I want to commit to that much time in this woman’s company.

---