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An icy blast that has nothing to do with the blizzard rushes through my veins as I stop in my tracks.
“Oh my God. Oh my God.” I futilely run my hands over my person as though it will magically conjure up the handbag I already know isn’t there.
How could this happen? I, like most women, consider my purse an extension of my person. One does not forget it any more than one forgets their own arm.
And yet . . . I have forgotten it.
Tom is staring up at the screen, oblivious to my panic. “They switched our platform. We’ve got to get all the way over to eleven. Let’s get a move on, Tate.”
I will get a move on, but not in the direction he wants.
“I forgot my purse,” I say, and the panic in my voice finally cuts through because his head whips toward me.
“I’ve got to go back,” I say, already moving in the direction we came from.
Tom’s mouth drops open. “Go back? Don’t be ridiculous. That train is long gone. This one will be too if we don’t get to platform eleven now.”
I shake my head, still moving backward.
“Katherine.” His exasperation is clear. “I’ll buy you a new purse. Five of them.”
“It’s not about the purse,” I call back. “My phone is in that bag.”
Tom’s jaw clenches, and I can read his every thought.
Well, just the one thought, really: Katherine and her damned phone.
If there was such a thing as, say, a symbol of our divorce? It would be my phone. Nearly every argument we had in that final year of our doomed marriage had to do with my phone.
Specifically, my attachment to it.
I’m embarrassed by how many nights I had to be asked to put it away at the restaurant so that he and I could actually have a conversation.
I’m downright horrified to remember how many times I failed the challenge.
“This is different,” I say, a plea in my voice. “It’s truly important this time.”
Tom’s expression doesn’t soften. He’s heard it before. He’s heard it all before.
But this time is different. I know in my gut that this is the year I’ve been waiting for, that the call I’m waiting for will come.
I need that call. I need that call so that I can check off “making partner.” So that I can finally, finally close that chapter.
“Just . . . hold the train for me. Please.”
I start to run as best I can with my injuries, but I stop when Tom calls out, “Katherine! Don’t.”
I swallow, surprised to realize that I feel genuinely torn, as though there’s more at stake here than a phone.
I start to run. Away from Tom.
“Katherine!” he calls again, clearly furious. “I will leave without you.”
The words don’t land the punch he probably intends.
Tom already left me.
Years ago.
TWENTY-ONE
TOM
December 23, 9:44 p.m.
Hold it for her.
Only Katherine Tate and long-dead monarchs would be self-deluded enough to think they warrant holding up an entire train because they forgot their phone.
“Excuse me, Mr. Conductor?” I mutter under my breath as I hover in the train’s doorway, waiting for my infuriating ex-wife to come to her senses and make it to the platform in time. “Can we hold the train while a crazy, concussed woman looks for her long-departed purse? No problem? Thanks so much, we knew you’d say that . . .”
A woman trying to board gives me a wary look, and I smile, shifting to the side so she can get on the train. “Happy holidays.”
“Okay,” she says stiffly, and I start to ask myself who the hell responds to “happy holidays” like that until I remember that Katherine responds that way.
Katherine, who I will strangle if she ever shows up . . .
My phone buzzes, and in my haste to see if it’s from Katherine, I almost drop it.
Not Katherine. Lo.
Hey Babe! Elbow-deep in flour making Christmas cookies with the fam! Wish you were here!
She sends me a selfie of her and my sister. Lo’s hair is pulled into a high, perfect ponytail, and sure enough, there’s flour everywhere. Her smile is bright, Meredith’s just slightly less so, which tells me whose idea the selfie was.
I can’t . . . I can’t deal with any of that right now. Right now, my focus needs to be on getting to Lolo.
To end this nightmare.
I slip my phone back in my pocket and start to reclaim my post with one foot on the train, one off, when an Amtrak employee beats me to it. “You need a hand with your bag? We’re about to depart.”
“No, I’m good. It’s just . . . can you give me two minutes? My friend . . .”
He walks away before I can finish the asinine request, and I sigh. Yeah, that’s fair.
“Damn it, Katherine,” I mutter as I scan the platform once more, but there is, of course, no sign of an aggravating tall brunette, either with a purse or without.
