"Where are you?"
"Dinner. I told you." Her tone changed. "Reid, is something wrong?"
"Which restaurant?"
There was a fraction of silence. A man laughed somewhere near her, and I thought I recognized the sound from a holiday party, though I could not have sworn to it. "The location changed at the last minute," she said. "We're at a private dining room near the square. I'll explain later."
"Is Colin there?"
The pause was longer this time. "Of course Colin's here. He's leading the account. Why are you asking?"
"I was just wondering."
"Can we not do this tonight?" She exhaled. "I really need you to trust me."
I looked at the line of cars moving under the green light ahead of me. Trust me. I had said those words to employees when I needed them to accept a plan they could not yet see, but I had always understood that trust was something you backed up with the truth when the work was done. I told Sabrina I would see her later and hung up before I said something I couldn't take back.
When I reached the Bellwether Hotel near Rittenhouse Square, Nora was already in the lobby. I recognized her from the holiday photograph, although the woman in front of me looked nothing like the smiling face beneath the Christmas tree. She was forty, perhaps a little older, with dark auburn hair pulled back hastily and a charcoal coat still damp at the shoulders. Her eyes were red. She stood beside the polished brass lamp and a small American flag, looking down at a folded sheet of paper she had unfolded so many times it was beginning to soften at the creases.
"Reid?" she asked when I approached.
I nodded. "Nora."
For a few seconds we simply looked at each other. I saw the question in her face before she asked it: was I angry with her for calling, for knowing, for standing here? The truth was that I felt grateful and furious and ashamed all at once, none of which were her responsibility.
She held out the confirmation. It showed the date, the hotel's address, Colin's name, and the room number. The reservation had been made through a corporate travel service. Nora had circled the room number in pencil. I wondered whether she had circled it because it seemed important or because making a mark on the paper had given her hands something to do.
"The clerk won't discuss another guest's reservation with me," she said. "I wasn't expecting them to. I know they have privacy rules. I asked if they'd let us call the room from the desk, but they said they couldn't without the registered guest's consent."
"That's fair," I said.
"I think I needed somebody to tell me it wasn't fair that I had to be here at all."
She tried to smile. It failed. I looked toward the elevators, then back at her. "We can leave now. We can call them and ask. We don't have to do this."