CHAPTER 86 LYRA
LYRA
The call came in at one in the morning. The world stopped for Lyra the moment she heard the phone ring—not her phone.
Alisa’s. Lyra’s heart leapt into her throat, and her lungs ceased to function.
Nothing in the world existed but the ringing of the phone.
Lyra didn’t even hear Alisa answer it, couldn’t hear anything but a continued ringing in her ears, couldn’t think anything—until suddenly, she was thinking everything.
Of every moment.
Of every kiss.
He’s okay. He’s okay. He has to be okay.
“Lyra,” Alisa said. And then there was a hand on the back of Lyra’s neck, so much like Grayson’s. Nash. Nash was on one side of Lyra, and Libby was on the other, and Alisa’s lips were moving as she said Lyra’s name a second time.
“Grayson?” Lyra managed to croak.
“Not Grayson,” Alisa told her. “It’s Odette. Our investigator found Odette Morales, and she’ll only speak to you.”
The call was a video call, and Odette looked just as Lyra remembered: silver hair dyed black at the tips, commanding features that age could not strip of their beauty.
The first time Lyra had ever seen Odette Morales, the woman had reminded her of an eagle on the hunt.
Lyra hadn’t known then that Odette was a former Hollywood starlet.
Lyra could see both the starlet and the bird of prey in the woman on her screen now.
“Enjoying the Adriatic coast?” Lyra said, her words coming out harsh.
“In a manner of speaking,” Odette replied.
“You went off the grid.”
“Did I?”
Odette had made herself very hard to find. Whatever she knew, if she knew anything else, it probably wouldn’t be much use now—not to Grayson and maybe not even to Lyra, given how much they’d managed to piece together themselves.
“I found out more about that favor you did for Tobias Hawthorne,” Lyra said.
“I suppose you’re wanting details?”
“Three truths,” Lyra replied. “You offered Grayson and me three truths during the Grandest Game, and one of them was that you didn’t know anything about what had happened to my father.”
“I knew nothing. I suspected quite a bit. Believe me or opt not to, Ms. Kane, but the truth is that there was a situation, and I was asked to fix it, and a lawyer of my caliber does not always need a surplus of details to incentivize third parties to be discreet. In fact, some might say, the fewer details one has about certain things, the better.”
“You pieced plenty of details together,” Lyra said, sure of that. “In the aftermath.”
“In the aftermath,” Odette replied, “I was rather more concerned with the change in Tobias and the reason for that change.”
Alice.
“Tell me,” Lyra said, her voice breaking. “Anything you know, anything you suspect, anything you’ve held back—I need to know.”
A look of understanding cross Odette’s features then. “Do you remember what I told you about love, Lyra?”
“You called it a strange and wild beast.” It hurt to even say the words. “A gift and a comfort and a curse.”
“I was not wrong, was I, Ms. Kane? About you and your Hawthorne.”
Lyra’s throat tightened. She had no intention of answering Odette’s question, but somehow, her lips parted.
“Love is real.” Lyra didn’t owe Odette more than that, didn’t even owe her that, but the words just kept coming.
“It’s knowing who you are and who the other person is and letting go, letting yourself fall, knowing damn well that there’s someone there to catch you. ”
“Love is agony.”
“Right now—yes.”
“But you’d do it all again.”
Lyra’s eyes stung as she pressed her lips together, just for a moment. “Yes.”
“And so would I,” Odette told her. “All those lives I’ve lived, every mistake I’ve made, every person I’ve loved, every person I’ve been—all of it means that I lived.”
Lyra heard in those words something she hadn’t realized before. “Past tense.”
“I’m ready,” Odette told her. “Or almost ready.”
“Why Italy?” Lyra asked. “And why did you ask to speak to me?”
“Those are the exact right questions. Well done, Ms. Kane.”
“Answer them, then.”
“I read lips. Quite well, actually. And I once was in position to watch the first dance between a Hawthorne boy and a girl who despised him. He couldn’t take his eyes off you, nor you him, and he told you about a file.”
“My father’s file.” Except it hadn’t been, not really.
“Thomas, Thomas,” Odette said. “All those years ago, when I was fixing Alice’s mess, not knowing that it was hers, not knowing that Tobias was still hers—body, mind, and soul—he asked me to do one more thing for him.
It involved setting up a fairly rudimentary trust and acquiring property in a coastal town in Italy, a town on the Adriatic Sea.
I thought nothing of it at the time, didn’t even connect it to the rest, but after I last spoke to you and Grayson, after I decided it would be prudent to disappear, I just couldn’t stop thinking about Thomas, Thomas.
And it eventually occurred to me that perhaps the most famous Thomas was the one known for his doubts. ”
“Doubting Thomas,” Lyra said.
“Saint Thomas to Catholics,” Odette replied. “And do you know where the relics of Saint Thomas are held? Where the Basilica of San Tommaso Apostolo is?”
Lyra saw exactly where this was headed. “Italy. A coastal town on the Adriatic Sea.”
“I knew very little about the situation I fixed,” Odette replied, “but it turns out that I did know my Hawthorne, my Tobias, at least a little. Enough to know that I would find something here.”
It was probably too late for anything she’d found to matter, too late for Lyra to be able to do anything. But still, she had to ask: “What did you find?”
“Not what, Ms. Kane. Who.”