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The intercom buzzed, startling them both. Emily pushed back her chair and stood. “I’ll be right back.”
Myron slid the phone off the marble-top table. It dropped into his palm. He leaned back and jammed the phone into his front pocket. Myron heard Emily tell the doorman to let him up. Myron rose and headed toward the door.
“When I found the phone,” Emily explained, “I called you first. Isn’t that odd?”
“I don’t know. Is it?”
“It was just a gut reaction. But when I hung up, I felt weird.”
“So you called someone else,” Myron said.
“Yes,” she said. “And he’s here now too.”
The three of them—Myron, Emily, and now Greg Downing—sat at the same kitchen table with the flip phone in the middle, equidistant from all three of them.
Greg spoke first. “It’s a setup.”
“Yes,” Emily said, leaping at Greg’s explanation.
“That’s what this serial killer has been doing, right?” Greg turned to Myron, ready to make his pitch now. “They kill someone and then they frame someone else for it. This time, they framed Jeremy.”
“Exactly,” Emily said.
“That would be two separate frame-ups then,” Myron said.
“What?”
“The killer framed a woman named Jackie Newton. She was arrested already. Jeremy would be the second person.”
Greg locked eyes with Myron. It brought back the memory of the first time they met. Sixth grade. When Myron’s Kasselton All-Stars got to play Greg’s Glen Rock Greats at a high school gym in Tenafly, both kids had already developed reps as two of the best in the state. Myron had dominated every game so far that season. The Kasselton All-Stars were undefeated. But that day, a few of the guys had come up to him and said Glen Rock got a kid as good as him. Myron and Greg never spoke before the game. They shook hands and played hard. Myron got the better of that battle, though he remembered envying Greg’s cool under pressure. Myron showed emotion on the court. Greg never did.
And here too sat the first woman Myron ever loved. She had been an awakening, an explosion, an eruption of pathos. Perhaps it hadn’t been built to last, but at the time, when he lost her, Myron had felt as though he would never feel this way again or with anyone else. How wrong he’d been, but hey, youth is wasted on the young. Still, even now, even after all these years, it made no sense. He understood Emily’s (frankly) mature decision not to marry him. It had been too soon. So why didn’t she just say that? Why break it off altogether? And even if that made sense—and he got that it did, that it is hard to go back after a rejected proposal—why move on so fast to Greg Downing? There were a million guys out there. Why Myron’s rival? When Myron was in middle school, his mom continuously played Jim Croce’s album You Don’t Mess Around with Jim on repeat in the car. Her favorite song from the album, which she always sang along with, was “Operator,” a heartbreaker about a man futilely tracking down the lost love of his life with the help of a phone operator. It was a tough listen sometimes, this man who wanted to show his ex-love that he had moved on, that he was doing well, though clearly he hadn’t and wasn’t, but what made the song extra heart-wrenching for Myron even back then, even when the only thing he knew about relationships were schoolyard crushes, was that the love of this man’s life had run off with his “best old ex-friend, Ray.” Not bad enough she’d broken his heart. She had made it so damned personal.
“We tell no one about this,” Greg said. “Jeremy is innocent. We all know that. If the police accuse him or arrest him, his life will be severely damaged. We can’t have that.”
“Should we destroy the phone?” Emily asked.
“Whoa,” Myron said, “let’s slow down here.”
“We don’t destroy it,” Greg said, ignoring Myron. “I’ll keep it for now. If push comes to shove, I’ll say it’s mine.”
“And if Jeremy is involved somehow?” Myron asked.
Greg looked at him. “You’re not his father.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do,” Greg said. “If it comes down to it, I’ll take the hit for him. This”—he raised the phone—“officially belongs to me. I bought it. They already have my DNA at one of the crime scenes. So I’m the bad guy. I’m the one who did it.”
“Either way, we get Jeremy the help he needs,” Emily added. “I don’t believe he’s involved. Not for a second. But if he is, well, maybe something happened to him overseas. He’s experienced horrors we can’t understand. We get him the best care possible.”
“Myron,” Greg said with a nod, “we need to know you’re with us on this.”
Myron looked at Greg, then back at Emily.
“You’re not thinking straight,” Myron said. “Neither of you.”
Greg now turned his focus on Emily. He shook his head and said, “Why did you call him?”
