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“Just wait,” Bailey says. “We need to stop for a second.”
She puts her hands on her knees, catching her breath. I want to argue. We are so close to being on the safe side of the hotel’s doors, so close to the privacy of our small room.
“What if I told you I remembered him?” she says.
I look over at the doormen, who are chatting with each other. I try to meet their eyes, get them to focus, as if they will keep us safe.
“What if I said I know him, Charlie Smith?”
“Do you?”
“I remember being called by that name,” she says. “Kristin. Hearing him say it, all of a sudden I remembered. How do you forget something like that? How is that even possible?”
“We forget all sorts of things that no one helps us remember,” I say.
Bailey gets quiet. Silent, actually. Then she says it, the words both of us have avoided saying out loud.
“You think that woman Kate is my mother, don’t you?”
She pauses on the word mother, like it has fire in it.
“I do. I could be wrong, but I do.”
“Why would my father lie about who my mother is?”
She meets my eyes. I don’t try to answer her. I have no good answer for her.
“I’m just not sure who I should be trusting here,” she says.
“Me,” I say. “Just me.”
She bites her lip, like she believes me, or at least like she is starting to believe me—which is more than I could hope for in this moment. Because you can’t tell people to trust you. You have to show them that they can. And I haven’t had enough time.
The doormen are looking at us. I’m not sure they are listening, but they are looking. And I feel it. I feel how much I need to get Bailey out of here. Out of Austin. Immediately.
“Come with me,” I say.
She doesn’t fight me. We walk past the doormen and into the hotel lobby, head to the elevator bank.
But, as we step inside, a man gets on too—a young guy who I think is looking at Bailey strangely. He wears a gray sweater vest, piercings covering his ears. I know it is paranoid to think he is following us. I know it. If he is looking at Bailey, it is probably only because she is beautiful.
I’m not taking that chance though, so I move us off the elevator, and toward the back staircase, heart pounding.
I open the door, point toward the staircase. “This way,” I say.
“Where are we going?” she says. “We’re eight floors up.”
“Just be glad it’s not twenty.”
Eighteen Months Ago
“Is there anything else I should know?” I asked. “Before this plane takes off?”
“Are we talking metaphorically or actually? Like the actual mechanics of the plane? Because I did do a brief stint at Boeing when I first got to Seattle.”
We were on the flight from New York to San Francisco, a one-way ticket for me. The Shop had sprung for first class for both of us because Owen had been in New York for business in preparation for The Shop’s IPO. Owen had stayed on for the initial reason he’d been planning to be in New York that week—to help move me out of it.
We had spent the last few days packing up my apartment, packing up my studio. And, when we landed, I’d move into his home. His and Bailey’s. It would become my home too. And, soon, I would be his wife.
