“Even you. You’re normally as cool as a cucumber, but something has you rattled.”
“He asked me if I was sure I wanted to do this!” She still could not believe it. Did she seem like someone who would change her mind after getting hit with a challenge? Her whole life had been a series of challenges, from figuring out how to fly under the radar so her school wouldn’t know that she was home alone most nights while Pamela worked to scraping money together for clothing, books, and shoes. During her first year in New York, she worked at two restaurants and a coffee shop to pay her rent, often only sleeping threeor four hours between one job and the other. And when the doctor told them that Pamela had cancer, the only time she cried was out of sheer frustration when she’d had to fight with the insurance company about paying for the chemotherapy treatments. She could handle challenges. “Like I woke up one morning and casually decided to move to a foreign country and take on a multiyear research project—who would ask that?”
“Maybe he was trying to be helpful,” said Vilmari, rolling onto her back. “I know this is important, but I also know this solves a few problems for you too.”
“It’s true that making the choice to go to Switzerland solves a couple of issues, but you know I wouldn’t be doing it for just that.” Lora knew she was talking about Charlie. It was crazy to think their relationship started off so innocently, like the perfect meet-cute of an opposites-attract rom-com. She’d met him when she got called in for jury duty. Though it wasn’t his case, he happened to be sitting in the back of the courtroom, waiting to speak to the judge. She’d been desperate to know the best way to get out of it, and since he looked lawyer-ish in his windowpane-checked suit, she asked him for advice. Charlie told her exactly what to say in order to seem as unappealing a juror as possible, and when she was dismissed, he had waited for her at the exit to ask her to have coffee with him. He’d been sweet and self-deprecating, joking that he had the taste buds of a nine-year-old, and had ordered a hot chocolate. On their way out of the café, he’d knelt down and givenwhosagoodboyear scruffs to an adorably hideous boxer and promptly melted her heart. It was only on their second date that she found out who he was, that his family owned half ofthe Upper East Side, and their kind of people did things like avoiding summer traffic on the Long Island Expressway by taking a helicopter or hiring David Chang to come over and make bo ssäm. Her plan was to ghost him after that. In her mind, there was no way they would have anything in common. But then he’d been so sweet, so persuasive. He would make fun of himself for the way he was raised and go out of his way to make sure she felt comfortable around his family. Instead of being convinced that they didn’t belong together, she found herself being convinced that maybe they could.
When word got out that Charlie’s father and uncle had manipulated some data to win a big contract for their metals and mining businesses, he’d assured her that it was nothing—a misunderstanding in a family business that he wasn’t a part of—and it would be old news in a few days. She didn’t recognize the sound of a snapping shutter and therefore didn’t know she’d been photographed leaving his apartment until Vilmari called to tell her about the photos in thePost. The headline, “Scandal Scion’s Son Spending Summer with Student,” was clearly crafted to make it seem like she was some twenty-year-old college kid who’d been having an affair with the lecherous Hammersley heir. As much as Lora knew that part wasn’t true, she couldn’t excuse the rest.
She’d given Charlie the chance to distance himself from the mess. And although she didn’t want to believe it, there were only so many reporters she could ignore and news she could pretend to not hear before she had to accept reality. How could she have let herself believe otherwise? It was upsetting to think that she couldn’t trust her own judgment. The final straw, of course, was when she was brought in for questioningby the FBI like she was in a different kind of movie altogether. TheactualFBI. With twoactualFBI agents who sat across the table from Lora in a shitty office building wearing shitty navy-blue suits and asked her to talk about everything she knew regarding Charlie and his family from the second she met him up until that morning. Of course she knew nothing. Charlie had kept her completely in the dark—a fact that she wasn’t sure if she should be grateful for or embarrassed by. The agents seemed to give up early when it was clear that she didn’t know anything about the Hammersleys except that they threw big dinner parties and sometimes hid the good scotch from the guests. Lora walked out feeling like they pitied her more than anything. Still, the press kept hounding, and now there were even paparazzi to contend with. When the opportunity in Zurich appeared, it seemed perfect. She could get away, get out from under the mess, and go back to focusing on her own life—the one she’d fought to build on her own. There was just one tiny obstacle to overcome.
“I know you’re not just running away. I’m only saying that you can’t blame the guy for asking.” Vilmari smiled, stretching her arms up over her head.
“Fine, but you know that I want this so badly. I can’t think about staying in New York. I don’t want to. Gaining citizenship is literally the only thing in my way, so I have to get itoutof my way and everything will be fine.” She’d thought about whether it would be possible to stay in New York and get a gig as an adjunct professor or on another professor’s research team. But that would mean fending off journalistsandCharlie, having to get a second or even a third job, probably moving farther out of the city, and definitely notgetting any closer to having health insurance. In Switzerland, she’d have an apartment, a stipend, access to health care, and the right to apply for the research funds to make her dreams come true—all on her own.
“OK, OK.” Vilmari turned onto her back. She was quiet for a moment. “I still think you can resolve all of this and also think the mayor’s cute.”
“I’m trying to be frustrated!” Lora grabbed an accent cushion and launched it at Vilmari. “Don’t throw me off.”
“Hey!” she cried, blocking the cushion. “I’m just saying that if this whole thing is going to be complicated, why not let it be complicated with a little side of the sexy Superman? You don’t have to turn it into something permanent. Consider it a vacation romance. You know, make a memory that keeps you warm when you’re freezing yourchichisoff this winter in Iceland.”
“Switzerland,” Lora corrected.
“Same thing.”
“I don’t have time for sexy,” said Lora, waving her arm.
“And there’s where you’re wrong, Lor,” Vilmari said. “There’s always time for sexy.”
“She say she has eight other apartments that are only short-term. For you, they not good. There is oneprima casa, the right one for you. But there is aperdita. A—how you say? A leak.” Maria’s young nephew Stefano was doing his very best to translate for his aunt the real estate agent as Lora and Vilmari stood with them outside the town house they’d just toured. Andrea had made an appointment for Lora tosee whatever was available in town. However, Maria spoke zero English, and Stefano only spoke as much as he’d learned in school and whatever practice he got playingFortnite. The house had not been lived in for the last eight years, smelled of mold, and didn’t currently have a toilet, just a hole in the floor where it should be placed. Lora recognized rodent droppings inside the kitchen cabinets and a large burn mark next to the fuse box. She didn’t dare try to flip on the lights before ushering Vilmari outside onto the street, shaking her head the whole time. They’d spent the last ten minutes trying to find the kindest way to translate “Hell no.”
“A leak?” asked Lora.
“Yes, the roof.” Stefano nodded solemnly. His aunt looked back down at her clipboard as they stood outside a row of empty town houses on the east end of town and shook her head. She launched into a discussion with her nephew that was largely incomprehensible, but Lora didn’t need an interpreter for the bit of shoulder shrugging signifying,There’s not much I can do here.
“There’s one more,” Stefano said, eyeing his aunt while she prattled on. “But the owner must give permission. He has not yet.”
“And why hasn’t he given permission?” asked Vilmari. They all turned to Maria as Stefano conveyed the question.
“Eh, che ne so?” she replied, full-body shrugging again.
“She doesn’t know,” said Stefano, mimicking her movements.
“Can we find out where the house is? Maybe we can ask the owner personally?”
“È il sindaco.”
Lora almost visibly flinched but caught herself. She thanked Maria and Stefano profusely and said goodbye before rolling her head back in utter exasperation.
“This has got to be some kind of joke,” Lora said through gritted teeth.
“I’m sure there’s a very good reason why he didn’t mention—” Vilmari tried.
“How stupid we are! I bet it’s the house he was working on the other day.”
“Maybe he’s going to move into it,” Vilmari said, pulling out her phone and snapping a photo of an open window flanked by sunflowers where some kind of baked good was cooling.
“That’s ridiculous. Why wouldn’t he just live there already? Do you think he’s actively trying to hide it from me?”
