“I know you’re tired,” I say because I feel exhausted myself. “But we’ve got a few more hours before you can go to sleep.”
“Right,” she says wearily, lifting a hand toward her head and flinching when her fingers brush over the spot that clearly still hurts.
“You can sleep soon,” I whisper, feeling an unavoidable surge of sympathy. “I promise.”
She makes a quiet grumbling sound but nods.
I close my eyes for a second, then give her a sheepish smile. “I don’t suppose it would be fair if I slept?”
She spares me only a brief, withering glare, but a moment later I hear a weird puffing noise and look over to see Katherine blowing up that stupid inflatable pillow from the airplane.
She hands it over with a smile. “Here. I’ll wake you when we get to our stop.”
“Thanks,” I say in genuine surprise, and I kid you not, everyone on the train turns to glare at me.
I shake my head in bemusement and tuck the pillow around my neck. In what universe does everyone seem to prefer spiky Katherine to likable Tom?
An even more vexing realization is quick to follow:
I like Katherine’s spikes.
A lot.
I always did.
TWENTY
KATHERINE
December 23, 9:39 p.m.
“Hey, Flo-Jo. You think you could slow down a bit?” I call to Tom, who is hurtling himself through the Buffalo train station at what feels like a near run.
He gives me an incredulous look over his shoulder. “Flo-Jo? Did you seriously just compare me to a female track star from the eighties? And I told you not to wear your stupid high heels for once.”
“Okay, you know stilettos are an essential part of my personal brand. And it’s not the Jimmy Choos making it hard to keep up with you so much as the concussion.”
Tom slows his pace immediately.
“Thank you,” I say, shoving away the guilt at my teeny-tiny fib. The headache isn’t all that bad right now. The blister on my heel, on the other hand . . .
He grunts in response to my gratitude.
I look up at him as I fall into step beside his more manageable pace. “I don’t know why you’re so grumpy. Those nice people on the train could just not have been any more pleasant.”
“You don’t know why I’m grumpy?” he asks as we descend an escalator to the platform where we’ll catch our connecting train. “Really?”
“Can you believe that man on the train recognized me from the news?” I say, smiling at the memory. “I told you that Jacobsen case would put me on the map. Do you remember when I told you that?”
“Yeah, Katherine,” Tom says, his tone sharp as we step off the escalator again. “I remember. I remember that we were at dinner at Boulud. I was trying to tell you that we hadn’t seen each other for more than five minutes in two weeks because you were always working, but couldn’t fit it in around your brush-with-fame story. When I finally did manage to tell you what I was feeling, you asked the server for a box of tissues. For me.”
My smile falls off my face. I’ve been in a surprisingly good mood given the day I’ve had, but it definitely falters as I hear Tom’s version of that long-ago night.
I don’t remember it quite like that, but I also can’t claim that he’s wrong.
I’m sure I owe him an apology. Not just for that night. For a million nights, and that’s the crux of the problem. Not any one mistake, but the sheer quantity of them. If I open that can of worms, if I go looking into the well of wrongs on both our sides, I’m not sure either of us will ever climb out.
Instead, I force a smile back on my face. “I still can’t believe that guy asked for my autograph. I think that’s a first.”
Tom squints. “Is that what happened? Because the way I remember it, you pulled a wadded-up Starbucks napkin out of your purse, scribbled your name on it, and shoved it at him. He seemed visibly startled and a little grossed out.”
Usually Tom’s zippy little retorts fill me with a puzzling combination of annoyance and delight. This time, however, his mention of my purse causes a rush of soul-shattering panic.
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 . . .”