Tell No One

by Harlan Coben

Rebecca had been Elizabeth’s best friend. They’d shared an apartment near Washington Square Park before we got married. I should have returned her calls or invited her over or made some kind of effort. But I didn’t. Grief can be inordinately selfish.

Some things we pack away, stick in the back of the closet, never expect to see again—but we can’t quite make ourselves discard them. Like dreams, I guess.

“Peter Flannery, attorney at law,” a woman said mid-yawn. “May I speak to Mr. Flannery, please.” “He’s in court.” She could have sounded more bored but not without a quality prescription.

I’m not above making quick judgments based on appearance—or, to use a more politically current term, racial profiling. We all do it. If you cross the street to avoid a gang of black teens, you’re racial profiling; if you don’t cross because you’re afraid you’ll look like a racist, you’re racial profiling; if you see the gang and think nothing whatsoever, you’re from some planet I’ve never visited.

Brandon sat by a window. I could see his face. He waved to me. I waved back and as the bus pulled away, I said to myself, ‘There goes my whole world.’ That yellow bus with its flimsy metal sides and its driver I didn’t know from Adam chariotted away what was in effect everything to me. And at that moment, I realized what I had felt the day of his birth. Terror. Not just apprehension. Cold, stark terror. You can fear illness or old age or death. But there’s nothing like that small stone of terror that sat in my belly as I watched that bus pull away.

Our first kiss was exquisite and familiar and frighteningly desperate, two people who’d finally reached the surface after misjudging the depth of the water.