December 13
"I'm not going to spend another day cooped up in this apartment," Rosalind told herself when she woke on Sunday morning.
Although the temperature was near freezing, the sun was shining brightly and there was no wind chill, so she put on a warm jacket, a wool cap and a pair of gloves and took to the streets of New York. She walked along Fifth Avenue, enjoying some harmless window shopping, and through Central Park, stopping for a pretzel and a cup of hot chocolate. When the temperatures began to drop in late afternoon, she headed back to her apartment.
Feeling domestic, she took a chicken breast out of her freezer and put it in the microwave to defrost. Then she began preparing a salad to go along with it. Although she was first and foremost a career woman, she occasionally enjoyed cooking. She remembered the last meal she had made for Brett: roast duck, green beans almandine, potatoes au gratin and, for dessert, a scrumptious chocolate mousse cake. At the time, she had no idea it would be their last evening together, that she would later liken the delicious dinner to the final meal of a condemned man. At least, Brett had waited until he'd eaten and was ready to leave before springing the terrible news on her.
It was still too painful for Rosalind to recall the details of their conversation. Instead, she decided to turn her attention to her secret admirer, who was by far the lesser of two evils.
As she took down the advent calendar, Rosalind wondered if number thirteen would live up to its reputation of being unlucky. There was only one way to find out. She looked inside the drawer and found a familiar object: a cheap key chain Hobson and Rowe had given away to promote its books. It was a small solid piece of plastic, around which a miniature reproduction of a book jacket was glued. Her employer must have given out hundreds of thousands of these key chains, advertising cookbooks, self-help manuals and more than a hundred novels. Surely, it was no coincidence that the keychain in the advent calendar advertised In the Path of Righteousness, Brett McCord's first bestselling novel.
Whoever the stalker is, Rosalind realized, he knows about my affair with Brett.
