Chapter Thirty-Five
Five Years Earlier
Ethan
It wasn’t until the elevator doors were sliding open that Ethan realized he’d made a terrible mistake. He never should have
answered the phone, but the big office building in Midtown Manhattan was a tower of glass and steel and strangers, and Ethan
wasn’t thinking clearly as a security guard waved him through a turnstile and pointed toward the elevator that would take
him where he had to go.
The ringing phone had felt like salvation—like a sign. He was looking for any excuse to turn around, go home. Hide. So he’d
answered the phone on instinct, totally unprepared to hear—
“Where are you?” Ethan’s father hadn’t worn a uniform in more than a decade, but he still sounded like a commanding officer—like
it was the whole world’s job to salute and say yes, sir . “I told the board you’d be here. We’re doing Maui. Did I tell you it’s Maui?”
He probably hadn’t, but that didn’t matter. Ethan wasn’t going—a fact he’d mentioned on more than one occasion. He had a laundry
list of excuses and could have picked any one: He still had physical therapy twice a week. Long flights made him antsy. He’d
lost forty pounds of muscle and his suits didn’t fit him anymore. Plus, no one wants the family disappointment at Christmas
dinner. But Ethan couldn’t say a word of that to his father, so he pushed the button for the twenty-seventh floor with his
left hand and adjusted the contraption that held his right.
He’d wanted to ditch the sling for the party—had started to leave it home a dozen times—but physical therapists are better
than poker players: they can always tell when you’re bluffing. So he’d thrown it on over a dark blue blazer and even darker
jeans and hoped he’d gotten the dress code right.
“Thought you’d be happy about that” was his father’s response to the silence. “I know Aspen’s not your favorite, and you can
golf, right? I put you in my foursome.”
“Well, being that I can’t use my right arm, Dad, no. I probably won’t be golfing in the near future.”
“Watch that tone, boy.”
Ethan did watch his tone, but only because it was easier. “I’m not coming, Dad. I have rehab. You pulled a lot of strings
to get me into that clinic.”
“Damn right I did. I need you back in shooting shape. Say, when will they let you hit the range?”
“Listen, Dad...” he was saying as the doors started sliding closed—just before he heard someone running, calling—
“Hold the elevator, please!” A small hand reached inside and the doors sprang back in an instant.
He heard his father say, “Where are you? I’ll send the jet.” But the words were static in Ethan’s head as the elevator opened
to reveal a woman. Cashmere coat and snowflakes in her hair, a little out of breath because she’d been caught out in the storm.
It felt like she’d been chasing him his whole life and had only now caught up. Ethan wished he’d stopped running a lot sooner.
“Son? Ethan?” The voice was a dull roar in his ears. He could barely hear it over the pounding of his heart.
“I gotta go, Dad. Bye.”
And then it was just the two of them and the sliding doors and the knowledge that Ethan didn’t believe in love at first sight,
but that didn’t mean he could make himself stop staring.
“Uh, can you push...” She shifted, trying to see around him, and when she spotted the illuminated button, she exhaled.
“Oh. I guess we’re going to the same...” But she trailed off as she spotted her own reflection in the elevator’s shiny
interior. Black half boots and tights. That long coat and (now damp) hair. “Please tell me I don’t look like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like a Victorian street urchin someone tried to drown in a rain barrel.”
Okay, so the snowflakes had melted, and her long, dark hair was matted under the weight, clinging to ivory skin that was tinged
pink from the cold.
But something about the picture that she’d painted made him smile. “Are you an author?”
She looked like an angel when she smiled. “What gave me away? The fact that I can’t remember how to walk in these heels or
the emergency paperback in my purse?” She tried to finger comb her hair but that just made it do other things she evidently
hated because she groaned.
Ethan wanted to smile, to laugh, to ask her if they’d met before but that would sound like a line, and besides, it would also
be a lie. If he’d met her, he’d remember.
She pulled off her right glove and kept working on her hair, but something in the reflection caught her eye and her whole
demeanor changed.
“Are you kidding me?”
“What’s wrong?” he asked, suddenly worried.
“My pass has the wrong name on it!” She pointed to the sticker building security had to give all visitors before they were
allowed in. “Did you know Eleanor Ashley might be at this party? Eleanor Ashley is going to think my name is”—she squinted
at the name tag—“Marcie.”
“Oh no. What will you do?” he teased, but no one had ever been more serious than she was in that moment.
“I will legally change my name to Marcie.”
She would have done it too. She had the look of a woman who would have done anything, and Ethan found himself smiling for
the first time in a year.
“What if I act like that’s always been your name?”
She brightened. “You’d do that?”
He leaned his good shoulder against the elevator wall and smiled. “Absolutely.”
The last sixty seconds were officially the best Christmas he’d had in ages and he was just starting to wish the elevator ride
would last forever when the lights went out and the car stopped moving.
It felt, to Ethan, like the luckiest break in the world, but the woman beside him obviously didn’t agree because she started
quietly chanting, “Oh no. Oh no. Oh—”
“It’s okay.”
“Oh no.”
He could feel her trembling. She pressed against the wall and her breath grew ragged and too fast.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he told her. “It’s fine. I promise.”
“I don’t...” She started but trailed off like there wasn’t enough oxygen in her lungs—in the elevator. In the building.
“I don’t love the dark. Or small spaces.” It was the kind of intensely private thing she probably hadn’t meant to share, and
he watched her take him in through the red glow of the emergency lights. He saw her shudder and swallow hard, then force a
smile.
“Or tall, strange, bearded men who look like they live on a mountain and kill all their own meat?” He smiled back because
Ethan knew how he looked those days. Ragged and burned out and practically feral. But that wasn’t the weird part. The weird
part was that, until that moment, he hadn’t even cared.
For a moment, she just stood there, weighing her options. “Um, just out of curiosity, is there a not-rude way to answer that
question?” Ethan’s laugh was his answer, and he felt her relax, just a little. “So... uh... Killhaven?” she tried.
It took him a moment to remember the name of his publisher and where he was going. And why. “Yes. Yeah.”
“Are you an author too?”
“Yeah. I mean no. I mean kind of?” He looked down at the floor, almost embarrassed to admit, “I just sold my first book. It
won’t even be out until next year.”
Ethan realized with a pang that it was the first time he’d said those words aloud. He hadn’t told his friends and former colleagues,
and he sure as hell hadn’t told his father. Even his sisters-in-law were in the dark because they would feel obligated to
tell his brothers and once the brothers knew... Well, then a dozen guys would rappel out of a helicopter and break his
other arm. His father would be that angry.
But this woman... He wanted to see what she would say, do. He wanted to hear her smile.
“Congratulations!”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“Yes, it is.” Her voice was soft and low and somehow he knew he’d never forget it—knew he’d be able to recognize it in the
dark for the rest of his life. “It’s a big deal.”
Ethan met her gaze through the glow of the emergency lights. “It’s a big deal.” Her smile didn’t just brighten her face. It
transformed it, so he asked, “Hey. How’s that panic attack going?”
She made a sound that was part hiccup, part laugh. “Okay? Maybe? I think we might have cut it off at the pass.”
“Good,” he said just as the lights flickered on.
The elevator started to move, but Ethan wanted to go back to standing still because that was the first time in a long time
that he had felt like moving forward.
“Thank you.” She looked away. She sounded sheepish.
“You’re very welcome...” He glanced back down at her security pass. Her fake name was a whisper on his lips. “Marcie.”
She smiled. He laughed. And all he could think as the doors slid open was that they’d known each other for less than five
minutes and they already had an inside joke.
He could hear the sounds of the party. Glasses and chatter and Christmas music playing low, and Ethan knew he was supposed
to be out there, meeting people and making connections and starting his next act, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it
had already begun, somewhere between the twenty-first and twenty-second floors.
“Hey, do you want to—”
“There you are!” It was like it happened in slow motion—the way she turned at the sound of the voice. And smiled. And took
off her other glove—her left glove. It was like someone turned the volume down—on the party. On the world. Because Ethan didn’t hear a thing as he stood
there, staring at the diamond on her left hand.
“I’m sorry,” she was saying even though the words were somehow muted. “I didn’t get your name. This is my husband, Colin.”
Husband. She had a husband.
And then the sound came back at ten times the volume, loud and almost violent in his ears as she asked, “Is Eleanor here?”
There was so much hope in her voice, but the husband, Colin, just shook his head, bewildered.
“Who? How should I know? What did you do to your hair?”
Ethan had never seen someone shrink right in front of his eyes, but that’s what happened as her husband looked her up and
down.
She tried to smooth her hair again. “It’s snowing, remember? You didn’t want to get your shoes wet so I parked the car?”
He’d made her park the car, then walk in heels in a blizzard. Her husband.
“They’re suede,” the asshole said, and then the anger Ethan was feeling turned to rage.
It was the first time he’d ever really felt like murdering someone, and right then—right there—he knew he’d found his true
profession.
“Maggie!” an older woman called and he could feel her getting swallowed up by the party; she was being swept away.
And all Ethan could do was watch her go. And whisper, “Take care, Marcie.”