Page 31 of Silver Lining (The Diamond Trilogy 3)
No sorry about the part where we invaded a church and stole Elijah North from you. No apologies for chaining you to a table. It’s protocol. You understand.
Nothing.
Nothing except the days I spent afterward, sobbing into my pillow and shouting into my phone. I was probably on a watch list before but I’m definitely on one now. I’m the crazed woman who sometimes puts on a serious voice as she inquires again and again if there is any way to contact Elijah North. If there are any personnel records for Elijah North. If there is any possible clue that he once existed. I’ve tried everything. I’ve tried lying. I’ve tried impersonating a reporter. I’ve tried letting my voice go thick and pretending to be his widow.
I tried for days, then weeks, then months.
The coffee brews and I stare out the window, actively searching for a white van now. Even if he did show up here, he wouldn’t show up in a white van, but I can’t stop looking. They’re the symbol of my former life, aren’t they? A white van brought me to him in the first place.
Search. Wonder. Pour the too-hot coffee into my clean mug. Wonder some more.
Is he dead?
If he’s not dead, where is he?
There are so many days where it seems like I created him wholesale in my mind. It’s not unheard of for a writer to feel like their characters are real people. This is different.
Elijah wasn’t a character. Not one of mine, anyway. Which does call into question my general level of sanity.
A knock on the door pulls me away from the kitchen. I’m a ghost with hot coffee making my way through the apartment. There are quite a few takeout boxes on various surfaces.
I don’t care.
I open the door without looking through the peephole. The worst that can happen is that I get kidnapped again, and what are the odds of that?
Not zero, certainly, but probably not very high at this point.
“Hi.” My sister doesn’t wait for me to answer before she pushes past me, her arms full of two paper grocery bags. “Did you eat today?”
“Yes,” I say automatically, closing the door behind her. This might not be strictly true, but I can’t remember. All I remember is standing in front of the sink. Earlier, I was writing. Or at least I was sitting on my couch, hand poised above a notepad.
The fridge opens and closes in the kitchen, followed by several cupboards. I wander into the living room and look down at the street. No white vans there, either. Paper bags crinkle when London folds them up. In the window I see her reflection emerge from the kitchen carrying something black. A trash bag. She tips several of the takeout containers into it and straightens an abandoned stack of mail on my coffee table.
I swallow hard around a thickness in my throat. “Hey.”
London flicks her eyes up to mine and continues tidying my apartment. “Hey.”
“You’re feeding me. And cleaning my apartment. It’s weird.”
She raises her eyebrows. “Yeah, it is weird, Holly. It’s weird when you’re acting like a dead person in your own apartment. It’s weird when I’m the responsible one between us.”
“Dead people don’t leave takeout containers everywhere.”
London gestures at me with a half-empty carton of Chinese food. “I never know what’s going on with you. You don’t even come out. It’s like you’ve disappeared.”
I snort. “I’m right here. The question is, what are you doing here?”
“I got worried when you didn’t answer my calls.”
Turnabout is fair play, sure. I’m usually the one cleaning up after London. Following her to Paris. Getting her unstuck from shady diamond deals. So on, so forth. But I don’t buy that she’s worry-stricken enough to change her entire personality. Plus, I only missed three calls.
“What’s going on with you?”
“You tell me first.” She sticks out her tongue and goes out into the hall to put the garbage in the chute. “Anyway,” she says, breezing back in. “You’re the one who was detained by the government for questioning in an assassination.”
“You’re different,” I tell her, and the moment I say it, I know it’s true. “You look different.”
“I look like I’m working a regular job. At a coffee shop. I’m taking a social media detox, which means no large influencer checks. Thanks so much for noticing.”
It’s not that. I study her more closely as she shakes out the blanket on my couch and lets it waft down over the back. It’s accurate that she has less of an influencer shine on her. She’s not as tan as she looks in her photos when she’s traveling.
London looks good—she always looks good, because she’s beautiful, but she looks comfortable, in a cream-colored sweater that sets off the red mark on her neck.
It looks like beard burn.
As if she’s been with a man. Recently.
