Abruptly, she stopped, slipped her cane underneath her arm, and gripped a black railing on the right side of the alley. As Trent looked on, baffled, Arianna stepped down a staircase until he could see only her torso, her shoulders, her head. Like the sun dipping below the horizon, it was too captivating to turn away, despite the danger of watching. Then she was gone.
Trent stared at the spot where she had vanished beneath the street, racking his brain for an explanation. Was it an illusion? Where was he? What was happening? He put his fingertips on his forehead. A fleeting sense of disorientation made him glance up to the sky, but he never got that far. Instead, his gaze stopped on the steeple above the stairs she had descended.
NINE
So you didn’t lie to me after all, Trent thought, wiping his hand across his forehead. You are going to church.
He stared at the black railing Arianna had clutched only moments before. What could she be doing at the bottom of those stairs?
He had not moved from the edge of the alley, as if walking into or away from it would lead to an irreversible error: either a premature revelation of his identity or a wasted opportunity to possibly catch Arianna mid-crime. Careful, he told himself. Think.
He knew he had to consider his options, but then he also needed to ignore the feeling of vindication pumping through him, rejoicing at the fact she had not actually lied to him about attending church. Did this mean she really was Christian? Maybe she was part of a fringe sect that held their services underground for religious reasons, although that seemed unlikely. Suspicious, yes, he thought. But criminal? Uncertain. Do I have probable cause to go after her? No. Would following her down the steps damage any hope of solving the case? Possibly.
He took a step back. I’ll wait to act, he thought, until I investigate this place later myself, and I’ll wait to tell Dopp until I have it figured out; why get him all excited for nothing?
Trent retreated from the alley and hailed a cab at the first corner. He strained to recall what, exactly, Arianna had told him about her religion and the frequency of her church attendance. That night in her apartment, her tone had conveyed a subtle sarcasm that he did not understand at the time, but now, he felt as if he might be on the verge of deciphering why she had laughed so easily at his disbelief.
The watch, he remembered, her words were on the watch! He looked at the device on his left wrist that managed to be both old-fashioned and high-tech, and rewound it to their conversation from that night. Then he listened:
“What, are you imagining I have some secret double life? Doctor by day, superwoman by night?”
“You tell me.”
“Well, it might come as a surprise, but I’m actually going to church.”
His shocked laughter. “Why?”
“To practice my religion.”
“Well, what’s your religion?”
“I go to a Christian church, like most everyone else.”
Trent rewound the recording for a split second.
“I go to a Christian church, like most everyone else.”
“Which one?”
“It’s a small congregation in the East Village. You wouldn’t know it.”
Gaping, he stopped the recording and cleared through the fog of his own assumptions to recognize a fact that had escaped him:
She never said she was Christian.
His mind reeled from this realization for a few seconds before launching the next, inevitable questions: So what was really her religion? Why that carcass of a church?
He pictured her hobbled figure retreating into the alley.
And what was in that black case?
* * *
On the train ride to Long Island together the next day, Trent’s desire for the truth was maddening. It sprang not only from professional determination, but also from the hope lodged in his heart like a stray bullet—unwanted and yet impossible to remove. Such a stubborn wish—for her to be as innocent as the embryos in her care—persisted against his better instincts.
He felt even worse for her genuine excitement about meeting his family. A homemade chocolate cake sat on her lap, covered in tinfoil. Trent pictured her limping around her kitchen, gathering all the right ingredients to please the people who meant so much to him. How could she know how pathetic an effort it was?
“Hey,” he blurted after they left the train and got into a cab, “I know we haven’t talked much about religion, but I thought you should know my family’s actually pretty religious.”
She looked surprised. “They are?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. I didn’t imagine them that way.”
You weren’t supposed to, he thought.
“Yeah. I just thought I should—” Warn you, he almost said. “—tell you, in case you weren’t expecting it.”
“I wasn’t,” she said, not unkindly. “I didn’t think you grew up religious.”
“Yeah. I’m not so much now,” he said truthfully. “But they still think I am.”
“Let me make sure I have everyone straight,” Arianna said. “Your uncle Gideon is your father’s brother.”
“Right.”
“And what does he do?”
“He’s a retired consultant.”
“What does he do now?”
“His wife is pregnant with their third kid, so he’s staying home to help raise them.”
“Wow, that’s a big age difference between you and your cousins.”
“Yeah. His wife is fifteen years younger.” Trent smiled; this fact
