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Agent Walker’s brisk voice breaks my train of thought. “Now, there is a long way to go before we can apprehend him. He is in a country which does not have an extradition agreement with the United States, but we are working on it.”
“Okay, so, what do you need from me?” I ask impatiently.
Agent Walker coughs and continues. She sounds nervous. “Well, we wanted to ask you, your sisters, and your mother for assistance. We think you could appeal to him. Maybe make a video asking him to turn himself in, he would listen to you. We have reason to believe, from some of our intelligence, he deeply regrets leaving you behind and the impact his disappearance has had on your lives.”
I can’t help myself, I laugh. But it’s humorless and cold. “Yeah, right, Agent Walker. He doesn’t care about us. And when you say video, what do you mean? How would you get it to him? By email? Are you going to mail it to him on a flash drive?”
The agent clears her throat again. “No, Miss Dennis. We would actually hold a news conference. Invite all of the major networks to attend. You would make a statement. We are confident that he would see—”
I cut her off mid-sentence, unable to keep the anger out of my voice. “No way in hell! You can forget that right now. I am finally moving on with my life. I have a job. I have friends, a reputation. I am not going back to being Omar Hassan’s daughter again.”
“But Miss Dennis, Adelaide—” She begins but I interrupt her again.
“No. Don’t call me again about this. Unless you can get a judge to order me to do it, and even then I will go to jail before I do it!”
I hang up, seething. I have stop myself from throwing the phone across the room.
I want to call my sisters and rage at them. They knew what she wanted and didn’t think they should warn me. I bet they have agreed to do it. Well good for them. I will never take part in anything like this.
I am glad I had brunch with Simon today. I am glad I brought him home with me. I can’t wait for him to call me so we can pick up where we left off. I finally have something to look forward to. It makes the panic subside faster. I am soothed by the thought.
I am able to stop thinking about my phone call and focus on a memo I’m writing for the partner I’ve been assigned to recently. She has asked me to answer a fairly complicated question about the statute of limitations and the research required consumes me.
So when, at almost exactly 9pm on the dot, my phone alerts me to an incoming text, I don’t jump for it immediately. I finish my paragraph and absently reach for the phone.
What I read makes me wish I hadn’t bothered. Simon’s casual, brutally direct text message cuts me to the quick. It is the last thing I expected to hear from him, and I feel the sting of tears as I lay my phone back down.
I start to respond, but stop myself. What would I say? He made himself clear. He is not interested. Despite his pursuit and enthusiasm just hours earlier before, he has no problem casting me aside because he doesn’t “have time”.
I try, vigilantly, to hold back the broken sob which escapes me. I fail. I can’t. It’s too much. I am such an idiot. Why did I think he would be back?
This is what people do. They put themselves first and don’t even have the decency to tell it to your face. Fuck him and his fucking text message. I delete it, delete his contact, and turn my phone off. I get up to go to the fridge to get myself a b
ottle of water and grab two painkillers from the bottle in the cabinet next to the fridge. My head is pounding.
This doesn’t matter. Simon Phillips is nothing to me. As he should be.
September 1, 2014
As I stride into my office Monday morning, I feel like a fraud. I am wearing my power suit. A black, Stella McCartney skirt suit which had been made to fit and had been a gift from Milly when I graduated from Harvard. I had only worn it once before—on my interview for this job—and I felt like I needed it today.
I have never felt so low. I walk through the lobby and everyone sees a confident, well dressed, up and coming attorney.
If only they knew that the night before the FBI had called to ask me to do a news conference to convince my father to turn himself in and then the man I’d almost let fuck me dumped via text message less than five hours later, they’d laugh in my face.
I walk past my secretary and say good morning. She barely deigns to return the greeting. I don’t care, though. She has to work for me and I am not going to let her make me feel like this prestigious law firm, the coveted position, is one I don’t deserve.
I walk into my office and shut the door, fire up my computer and start going through the emails I’d flagged as important during my train ride in this morning.
Suddenly, there is a knock on my door and before I can even let the unknown person know they could come in, the door opens. It’s my mentor, a partner in our Project Finance department, Jack Westin.
He is a short, fifty-five-year-old man with a full head of greying dark brown hair, wire rimmed glasses, and wearing a bespoke, three-piece, navy blue pinstripe suit. From his crisp white shirt, to his pink tie, and the gold signet ring on his finger, he looks like the quintessential Eton to Oxford to Fleet Street lawyer.
“Adelaide, I’m heading to a meeting and I’d like you to join me. We have a new client, and if all goes well, you’ll be working on a project that will be based in their office.”
He pauses and looks at me expectantly like he is waiting for me to do something, and I realize he wants me to come with him now.
“Oh, you mean now? I just got in.” It was barely 7:30am. “I have a meeting at 8:00am and a memo due to Belinda at 10:00am I need to read through—”
