Page 65 of The Circle

I pause long enough to twist my neck. Because I’m frustrated. Because I do not like not having control, but it is something with which I am becoming colossally familiar.

“Point being: Someone has been well ahead of every step we’ve made, and someone is shadowing us in a very curious way. And they have now requested a trade. For what exactly, one can only assume. But all I can come up with is that it is something inexpressibly valuable. And the only thing I can conjure that possesses that level of inherent value is a fokken seven-carat diamond.”

I breathe in deeply through my nose and let the breath out heavily the same way. Eliza stares at me for a good long moment, absently swirling the now mostly liquid, ice-diluted contents of her tumbler.

“All right then. So why involve my child?”

“Because she is also my child.”

“That’s not—”

“I know. I don’t know. I’m not Magnus Carlsen,” I admit aloud.

She thinks for a moment, says, “He’s the chess—?”

“The chess grandmaster, yes.”

She sighs. “Okay. Yes, well. I suppose we’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?” She takes another breath, stares at her drink, and says, “So, what did you want to talk with me about?”

I lick my lips without thinking. Despite my ice water, they are unexpectedly dry. “I wanted to say two things,” I start. “First, when this is all over and we get Andra back safely”—she shoots me a glance—“which we will,” I emphasize, “that will be that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I say. You will never see me again. Or us. Me. Danny. Christine. We will disappear forever and you never need tell the child I exist. I will not bother you again. But I will see to it that you have enough resources to give her the finest life a person could possibly want.”

“I don’t need—”

“I know you don’t need it, but I’d like to provide it.”

“Okay, well, I don’t want it.”

“But—”

“I don’t want it, Alec.” She isn’t firm or coarse or harsh in her tone. She just states it very simply. “You can pay my brothers the two hundred fifty thousand you owe them, but that’s it.”

It takes a moment for me to recall what she’s talking about, but then I have this vague recollection of us stealing from them and they from us and how almost quaint and fun it all was. As if it was all just a silly game.

I nod yet again and say, “Very good.”

“What’s the second thing?” she asks.

I pause, look her in the eyes as deeply as I can, screw my courage to the sticking place, and say, “I’m sorry.”

The fact that the train whistle blares at that exact moment is both startling and comically appropriate.

After the whistle has faded and she has had a moment to digest what just came out of my mouth, she says, “Say again?”

“I’m sorry,” I repeat. “I apologize. For putting you in this situation to begin with. For not being more careful. For… everything. From the start. I’m sorry. I never deliberately set out to cause pain in your life. I just can’t seem to help doing that to people from time to time. I’m striving to change that. For whatever lot of uselessness that’s worth.”

She looks stunned. Of course she does. I would be too if I heard myself say any of those things. But I am myself, so I suppose I have to believe me.

And then she clears her throat, shifts in her seat, and says, “All right. Anything else?”

Hm. That was not the response I expected. I don’t know what I expected, but—“Um… no. No. That’s all. I suppose.”

“Okay,” she says, standing to walk away.

She starts off, leaving me sitting alone, staring out the window at the night-blackened countryside. Seeing my own reflection, I almost don’t recognize myself for a moment. I mean, the approximate shape of me still exists, but the other, less corporeal parts of me feel foreign somehow. Not bad. Just different. I suppose.