I Asked a Stranger to Hold Me at JFK and Three Days Later Learned Who He Was

She followed.

"You do understand that women do not usually look at complete strangers and say, 'So that's her,' unless there's a very inconvenient explanation."

"Thank you, detective."

"I'm serious."

"So am I."

We crossed toward the parking garage while rain collected along the shoulders of my coat.

Mara lowered her voice.

"Did Sterling say anything about her?"

"No."

"Did he seem scared?"

"No."

"Angry?"

"Maybe."

"That is not comforting."

"None of this is comforting."

My phone buzzed before we reached the car.

Preston's name appeared on the screen.

For several seconds, I watched it ring.

Mara noticed.

"Don't."

"I wasn't going to."

The ringing stopped.

A voicemail notification appeared almost immediately.

My stomach folded in on itself.

Mara held out her hand.

"Give me the phone."

"I'm not twelve."

"You were checking his Instagram last night."

"That doesn't make me twelve."

"It makes you twelve with a mortgage."

"I don't have a mortgage."

"Fine, twelve with payroll obligations."

I put the phone in my coat pocket.

That small act felt less like strength than postponement.

We drove back to the hotel through lunchtime traffic.

Mara spent most of the ride answering emails and swearing quietly about a client in Connecticut who had apparently decided that "urgent" was a substitute for "organized."

I watched rain smear the city into gray streaks beyond the window.

Twice I considered listening to Preston's voicemail.

Twice I stopped myself.

At the hotel, Mara went upstairs to change before our return flight.

I stayed in the lobby and ordered coffee I did not want.

The cup came with a little wooden stirrer that bent when I tried to use it.

I spent an embarrassing amount of time fighting with it.

It was easier than wondering how Eleanor knew about me.

A man at the next table was helping his daughter with algebra homework over FaceTime.

She kept insisting that negative numbers were unfair.

He told her mathematics had no obligation to be fair.

I almost smiled.

My phone buzzed again.

This time it was an email from Sterling Capital.

I opened it too quickly.

The message came from Diane Walsh.

She thanked us for the presentation and asked whether Mercer & Vale could provide two additional sensitivity analyses by Wednesday afternoon.

That was good.

Very good.

It meant we had survived the first cut.

I forwarded the email to Mara with three exclamation points, which was one more than I normally permitted myself in professional communication.

Then I saw another message beneath it.

From Adrian Sterling.

No subject.

I hesitated before opening it.

Eleanor is my sister.

That was the entire email.

I read it twice.

Then a second message arrived.

She saw your name in my schedule.

I stared at the screen.

A third followed.

I should have explained before she made it strange.

Despite myself, I laughed.

I typed, She seems talented at making things strange.

I deleted it.

Then I typed, You don't owe me an explanation.

I deleted that too because it sounded defensive.

Eventually I wrote, Thank you for clarifying.

His response came less than a minute later.

That sounded very corporate.

I looked around the hotel lobby as though someone might have seen my expression.

I wrote, We did just meet in a conference room.

His reply was almost immediate.

We met at an airport.

Technically, I thought, I had assaulted him at an airport.

I put the phone facedown.

Mara dropped into the chair across from me five minutes later.

"You have the face."

"What face?"

"The one people get when they're pretending an email isn't interesting."

"I don't have an email face."

"You absolutely do."

I pushed the phone toward her.

She read the messages.

Then she looked up slowly.

"Oh."

"Exactly."

"His sister."

"Apparently."

"That explains one thing."

"Which thing?"

"Why she knew who you were."

"It doesn't explain why she looked at me like I'd personally ruined Christmas."

Mara handed back the phone.

"Maybe she's protective."

"Of a forty-something billionaire with private security?"

"People are irrational about family."

That was true enough that I stopped arguing.

My own father had once driven three hours because I told him over the phone that my first landlord was refusing to fix a leaking radiator.

He had arrived carrying a toolbox despite knowing almost nothing about plumbing.

The radiator had remained broken.

My landlord had become terrified of him.

That had apparently been the real objective.

The memory came so quickly that I had to look away from Mara.

She noticed anyway.

"You okay?"

"Yes."

It was not exactly a lie.

I had become skilled at being fine in narrow, temporary increments.

Mara opened her laptop.

"Let's get the Wednesday analysis done before we fly."

"Today?"

"We can either work now or spend tomorrow panicking."

"I prefer today's panic."

"That's why we're friends."

We claimed a corner of the lobby and worked for nearly two hours.

The discipline of it helped.

We adjusted pricing assumptions, reran utilization scenarios, and argued over whether a labor-cost sensitivity should be modeled regionally or at the state level.

For a while, Adrian Sterling became simply the man whose company wanted better numbers.

That was easier.

Then Mara closed her laptop.