Part 8
Lydia had spoken too quickly.
She looked at Adrian, then back at Jamie. “The photograph was taken twenty-five years ago.”
“That doesn’t tell you my age.”
“No.”
“How old do you think I am?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Why?”
Lydia had no answer that did not sound like a claim.
Adrian stepped in. “Because I’m twenty-five.”
“That’s not a reason.”
“No. It isn’t.”
Jamie looked from one to the other. Rain gathered along the edge of his hood. He seemed suddenly more tired, as if suspicion itself required energy he no longer possessed.
“I was born in February,” he said.
Adrian’s face drained.
“What day?” Lydia asked.
Jamie’s eyes moved toward her.
She did not apologize this time.
He looked down at the watch. “The seventeenth.”
Adrian’s birthday.
Lydia’s hand found Nora’s forearm and gripped it.
Nora did not react to the pressure.
Adrian took one step backward. His heel struck the curb. He regained balance without looking down.
“Where?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I mean I don’t know.”
“Birth certificate?”
“Delayed registration.”
“From where?”
“Rhode Island.”
“Who registered it?”
Jamie closed the watch.
“You ask too many questions.”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“No. You’re trying to build a case.”
Adrian flinched because it was true.
Jamie tucked the watch away again. “I grew up outside Providence. That’s all you get.”
“With your parents?” Adrian asked.
Jamie’s face became unreadable.
Lydia touched Adrian’s arm. “Enough.”
He pulled away. “How is it enough?”
“Because he said it was.”
“And we let him disappear?”
The word made Jamie look at him sharply.
Adrian heard himself and closed his mouth.
Lydia’s voice softened. “No one is disappearing.”
Jamie laughed once, without humor. “That sounds like something you say when people disappear all the time.”
A second phone appeared among the commuters. This one belonged to a young man standing near the taxi line. Nora moved into his field of view, but he adjusted his position.
Adrian noticed and turned his back to the stranger, blocking the shot.
Jamie watched him do it.
“Come inside for five minutes,” Lydia said. “Not to the hotel. The station has offices. Nora can arrange a room. You choose where you sit. You keep the door open. No security.”
Jamie shook his head.
“You don’t have to answer anything,” Lydia continued. “We can wait until the people with phones leave.”
“They won’t leave.”
“Then we can leave separately.”
“I said no.”
Lydia stopped.
Jamie’s gaze settled on Adrian’s back. Adrian was still shielding him from the phone, shoulders squared beneath his navy coat.
“Why is this happening today?” Jamie asked.
The question was directed at no one and all of them.
Lydia looked toward the watch hidden in his pocket. “I don’t know.”
“I’ve sat here for three weeks.”
Nora’s attention sharpened. “Three weeks?”
Jamie ignored her.
“Every day,” he said. “Same place. Same clock. Thousands of people. Then today you walk out.”
Lydia glanced across the street at the Commonwealth.
Three weeks. She had been in New York for part of that time, then Toronto. Adrian had been inspecting a property in Vermont. Nora had crossed the terminal twice, perhaps more, but always through the underground garage.
Today, their train from New York had been delayed. A mechanical problem forced passengers to exit through a side concourse. Lydia’s driver had been redirected to the terminal entrance instead of the private pickup lane.
Coincidence had begun the moment.
Coincidence did not explain the watch.
“Why here?” Adrian asked. “Why have you been sitting here?”
Jamie looked at the station clock.
“I fix things.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
“Do you work here?”
“No.”
“Does someone here know you?”
“Luis.”
“The guy with the coffee?”
Jamie looked annoyed that Adrian had noticed.
“Sometimes station employees bring me repairs.”
“Watches?”
“Watches. Clocks. Cheap jewelry. Anything small enough to keep in my pocket.”
“Where did you learn?”
Jamie’s hand moved inside his coat. “From the man who raised me.”
Lydia’s breath caught.
Adrian heard it. “What was his name?”
Jamie looked at him with flat disbelief. “You think I’m going to give you names now?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You say that a lot too.”
“I learned from her.”
The reply escaped before Adrian could stop it.
Jamie looked toward Lydia.
For the first time, a real flicker of humor touched his face. It was gone quickly, but Lydia saw how young it made him.
Pain followed so closely that she had to look away.
The hotel event staff still waited beneath Nora’s watch. One of them checked his phone, anxious about the schedule. Lydia knew what he was seeing: calls from the ballroom, questions about the delayed rehearsal, perhaps the first alert that a photograph of their host was circulating online.
The foundation dinner would begin in two hours.
Eight hundred guests would gather beneath chandeliers while Lydia stood outside in the rain trying not to call a stranger her son.
Nora’s phone vibrated again.
“This is spreading,” she said.
“How badly?” Lydia asked.
“A local account reposted it. They identified Adrian. People are commenting on the resemblance.”
Jamie stepped away from them.
Adrian turned back. “What are they saying?”
Nora did not answer.
“Read one.”
“No.”
“Nora.”
She looked at Lydia.
Lydia shook her head.
Jamie laughed again. “Protecting him?”
“Protecting all of us,” Nora said.
“You don’t know me.”
“I know you did not consent to becoming public.”
The answer quieted him.
Nora opened her tablet bag and removed a plain black umbrella. She extended it toward Jamie without stepping closer.
He looked at it.
“This is not charity,” she said. “It is raining.”
“That’s usually how charity starts.”
Nora considered this. “Then consider it property management. The hotel prefers not to have unidentified men become hypothermic where guests can see them.”
Adrian looked at her.
Lydia almost objected.
Jamie’s mouth twitched. “That’s honest.”
“It is not entirely honest.”
“No?”
May you like
“I also don’t want you standing in the rain.”
He took the umbrella.
