Page 274 of The Professor's Wife

The thought struck with such force that my knees weakened.

Maybe he’d grown tired of waiting—grown tired of me. I wrapped my arms around myself. It had only been a few days. That was all. Just a few days ago Tristan had been a stranger singing with his eyes closed on a restaurant patio.

I went back inside.

The woman at the front desk glanced up when I crossed the lobby again, but I avoided her gaze. I rode the elevator to the third floor and returned to room 333.

Still no answer.

I sat on the floor with my back against the opposite wall and waited. Stubborn, almost defiant—I felt like he ought to be here. Why did my heart keep telling me to stay? I didn’t want to leave. I came all the way here. It was a short distance to anyone, but to me, it was a dangerous odyssey.

People came and went. A couple emerged from a room arguing about directions and what to eat. A little girl skipped ahead of her father while he struggled with three suitcases, his wife trailing behind, arguing to someone on the phone. An elderly man stopped outside the room beside Tristan’s, stared at me curiously, then let himself inside.

I eventually stood and paced. From Tristan’s door to the window at the end of the hall.

Back again.

Door.

Window.

Door.

I knocked twice more.

When he still didn’t answer, I forced myself to leave.

There was this horrible energy in my legs. I didn’t know where I was going. I only knew I couldn’t return to that fucking prison.

The streets were crowded, and for a while, I followed random people. I walked past souvenir stores and coffee shops, past a bakery that smelled like warm cinnamon, past a woman arranging flowers outside a little market.

No one knew me or looked twice. For those few blocks, I was simply another woman walking through town on a summer morning. Near tears. Heart on her sleeve. But shit, I looked part of them. Even when that fucking cord that was tethered to Oliver pulled savagely inside of me, filling me with terror, I kept going.

I followed the hill toward the waterfront.

The ocean appeared between the buildings, blue and vast beneath the sun. People crowded the walkway. Couples moved slowly with their hands linked together. Children chased seagulls while their parents shouted warnings about that damn fucking railing I knew too well.

An ice-cream stand had been set up near the park.

The sight of it stopped me dead.

A little boy stood beside the counter holding a cone that was already melting down his wrist. His mother leaned over him with a fistful of napkins while another woman laughed nearby.

June?

The memory arrived so clearly that for a moment, I could smell her perfume.

Rowe had been four. Maybe five. He wanted blue ice cream because he was convinced it would turn his tongue permanently blue.

“It won’t,” I had told him.

“You don’t know that,” June argued.

I glared. “You’re supposed to be helping me.”

“I am helping. I’m encouraging my nephew’s scientific discovery. Rowe wants to be a scientist—”

“And fly to the moon!” he exclaimed, nodding solemnly at me as he wore half the blue ice cream across his mouth.