Page 71 of The Perfect Deception

She didn’t an­swer. He craned his neck to look at her—at her eyes, glassy and fo­cused in­ward; at her hands, clasped tight in her lap; at her mouth, com­pressed into a firm line.

“Dina.”

Like some­one awak­en­ing, she opened her hands, re­leased her lips and turned to him. “Are you ready to go?” she asked.

“It’s go­ing to be fine.”

She gave him a bright smile, one that didn’t reach her eyes. It re­minded him of the smiles he of­ten gave. “We should go in­side now.”

He reached for her hand. It was icy cold and he rubbed it be­tween his. She stared down at their en­twined limbs like they were aliens. And al­though he honed in on the soft­ness of her skin, the del­i­cacy of her bones, he sus­pected right at this very mo­ment, she thought noth­ing of their touch. With a sigh, he pulled away and opened the door.

In­side the ho­tel, they re­trieved nametags from the reg­is­tra­tion ta­ble in the black and tan lobby. Manned by three women, none of them showed recog­ni­tion when Dina picked up her tag, nor did they in­ter­rupt their con­ver­sa­tion with the guests who stood be­hind him wait­ing for their turn. But that wasn’t too un­usual. Not ev­ery­one re­mem­bered their en­tire class, even if they were on the re­union com­mit­tee.

Fol­low­ing the sound of mu­sic play­ing, they en­tered a ball­room dec­o­rated with enor­mous crys­tal chan­de­liers. Gold table­cloths cov­ered round ta­bles with cen­ter­pieces of green bal­loons. A Wel­come Class of 2007 ban­ner, also in green and gold, hung over the DJ sta­tion on the far end of the room. In the cen­ter was a dance floor, where cou­ples min­gled and danced. To the left was a mir­rored wall, lend­ing enor­mity to the room. Wait staff zigzagged through the crowd, of­fer­ing hot hors d’oeu­vres. A ban­quet ta­ble on the right was filled with cold ap­pe­tiz­ers, and a crowd surged by the bar.

“Would you like a drink?” Adam asked.

When she nod­ded, he cupped her el­bow and led her to­ward the crowd. He watched her scan nametags, with only a dis­creet frown in­di­cat­ing her re­ac­tion to any­one. But still she re­mained silent.

“Pick a per­son,” he said, as he handed her a gin and tonic with lime.

“What do you mean?”

“Pick some­one for us to go up and talk to.”

“I don’t want to do that.”

“Okay, then I will.” He started to walk to­ward a clus­ter of peo­ple and she grabbed his arm. Only the fact that he’d an­tic­i­pated her re­ac­tion, and kept his drink in his other hand, pre­vented him from slosh­ing his beer ev­ery­where.

“Wait! Please don’t,” she said.

He turned to her and stepped close enough to see worry etched in her vi­o­let eyes. “Come on. The first time is the hard­est. Af­ter that, it gets eas­ier.”

“But no one is go­ing to have any idea who I am.”

“So what? We’ll in­tro­duce our­selves, talk about our jobs, say how nice it was to see them and move on. It’s easy.”

“It’s em­bar­rass­ing.”

“Okay, then, let’s play a game. Pick some­one.”

When she looked at him askance, he held his hand out to the room. “Come on, pick some­one.”

With a quick scan, she pointed to a cou­ple nearby.

“Do you know them?” he asked.

“I can’t see their nametags, but I don’t think so.”

“Per­fect. What do you think they’re do­ing now? I mean ca­reer wise.”

She stud­ied the red-haired woman and the brown-haired man. They were well-dressed, if not or­di­nary, with him in a suit and her in a black sheath dress. They each held a soda in their hands and she was scan­ning the crowd.

“Doc­tor and lawyer?”

He shook his head. “Ac­coun­tant and teacher. Now we find out who’s right.” Be­fore she could protest, he pulled her by the hand to­ward them.

“Adam Man­del. This is Dina Ja­cobs. Nice to see you here.”