Chapter 1
As Abigail Clement replayed the argument between herself and Byron the previous day, she cringed at some of the things she had said and wished she had been firmer on others. Giving in and letting him come with her to New York being one of the latter…
Her annoyance flared. More than the giving in itself, it was the way her mind had betrayed her by treating it as an argument in the first place—why did she need to convince him to let her go to New York? She was a grown adult who made her own damn decisions. He had only come around to ‘letting’ her go when he realized that it would, at least, get her out of town for a few days—which had infuriated her even more because it wasn't like being in town was a bad thing! He was overreacting.
Definitely.
Though she had to admit, his arguments were not entirely ridiculous.
They were, in fact, frustratingly sincere. “You don’t even know what you’re looking for,” he’d said. “You’re not sure why you’re going.” The one that had really gotten to her was, “What happens if you do find something?”
She really didn’t know the answer to any of the three questions. All she knew was that she wanted to go to New York City and see the place where her high school sweetheart had allegedly taken his own life after crashing a car with her in it and disappearing from Newport in the weeks that followed.
Simple, nothing to be alarmed over.
Obviously.
Abigail had caught herself thinking sarcastic thoughts about her situation ever since she had allowed Byron to convince her she couldn’t go on her own, and it annoyed her even more now than it had when it had first occurred to her. No, that’s not right, she corrected, not couldn’t—but shouldn’t. He had never actually made her feel incompetent or belittled… just that it would be a bad idea to go without him, considering the things they had been finding out about her and Jacob’s families in the last few weeks.
The story her parents had told her had never made a lot of sense to her, but she had always assumed that her confusion was because of her injuries from the crash and the memory issues the impact and the trauma had given her. Since coming back to town, though, her trust in her parents’ stories had eroded at every turn.
Abigail snorted at the thought that entered her mind, “to think you went back to Rhode Island to find peace and closure—all you got was chaos and questions.”
“What?” Byron asked sleepily, shifting in his seat next to her.
“Nothing,” she replied, annoyed that he had noticed.
“Nothing?” he repeated.
Her lips pressed together painfully. She was still annoyed at him for winning the argument over coming with her to New York.
Chaos and Questions: it would be the title of the made-for-TV movie featuring the last few months. The thought pulled at her heartstrings. How had it been so long since she had seen her girls? Abigail unlocked her phone, still connected to the plane's WIFI. There was no reply to her message to the group chat. There was another notification, though, one she hadn’t noticed. It was from Liam in their co-parenting chat. Abigail squinted as she read the message from her ex-husband,
From Liam: I'm just checking in. We’re going on a jaunt to Dad’s little town, where he wants to buy some stately pile. I'm hoping to talk him out of it. It’s a bit of a hike, though. We will send you the picture.
Along with the message was a link to a bookmarked location on a map. It was a few hours outside of London, and she was briefly torn between wondering if they simply had no cell signal or were having too much fun to think about her.
“You seem upset?” Byron said, startling her, “As in, more than you are at me…”
She glared. Although she was upset with him, she couldn’t really argue against it being for the best.
“It’s nothing. I’m just indulging in some unhealthy self-pity about my children having the time of their lives thousands of miles away without me.”
“Oh,” Byron said, nodding sagely.
From what he had told her, he understood the quandary. His own kids had spent a lot of their lives traveling between the States and France, where their mother had moved after their divorce.
Now, she was annoyed at herself for letting herself soften towards Byron. Part of her wanted to stay mad at him because it was nice and easy—a good distraction from all of the utterly bonkers things that had been happening to her since coming to Rhode Island and the anxiety-inducing hurricane of questions swirling around her head.
Chaos and Questions, she thought again.
Byron raised an eyebrow and she realized she had smirked at her own thought. He probably thought she was laughing at him, which was the absolute last thing she wanted—even when she was still mad at him on principle.
“I just… my life is so very weird right now,” she said, “I’m flying into New York with my maintenance guy to try and find a crime scene from twenty years ago because my dad’s a liar? And despite all that, the thing I’m thinking about is whether or not my daughters will still think I’m cool when they get back from their trip of a lifetime.”
Abigail looked over at Byron and rolled her eyes with as much sarcasm as she could muster, making him laugh. She smiled; it was a good laugh, but she resisted acknowledging how much she enjoyed making him laugh. That was firmly in the ‘Byron is off limits’ folder of her brain.
“Right, I get that,” he said, smiling softly at her, “sometimes it’s the simple questions that cause the most consternation.”
“Simple!? Getting pre-teen girls to think their mom is cool is simple!?”
Byron laughed again, and this time, she couldn’t ignore the flicker of happiness the sound caused in her stomach.
“Well, maybe not,” he replied, “but you know deep down they love you and you’re a great mom, so even when they go through the typical teenage tantrum of being too cool for their parents, they’ll always come back around—"
His reassurances were cut off as he glanced at his own phone. Abigail watched as his eyebrows rose and bit her tongue, waiting for him to choose to share or keep it to himself… It was his business, after all; she’d be mad if he demanded to know the contents of her texts…
“What is it?” she exclaimed less than a second after her decision not to pry.
The phone screen was lit up with an email, but she refused to glance down at it and see who it was from.
“The local police got back to me,” he said. “Your parcel from Shelley was one of the packages destroyed in the van fire.”
“Oh, okay,” she said, “we knew that, though? The courier company notified me.”
Byron shook his head, “but they were general because a lot of the packages were just damaged. Yours was completely destroyed. The fire investigators think it was next to a parcel containing some shoddy lithium batteries. The only problem is that there was nothing on the manifest about lithium batteries.”
Abigail shrugged, “Okay, so someone didn’t declare it because they didn’t want to get told no?”
A loud ding sounded in the cabin around them, and a calm female voice spoke over the speakers: " We are now approaching New York and are preparing to land. Please switch off all devices and return both seats and tray tables to their original position.”
As they fussed over turning their phones off, Abigail couldn’t help but notice that Byron did not look convinced.
In fact, he looked more annoyed than he had before.
“What? You don’t think?”
“No, because—and you can’t tell anyone this,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper, “all the packages are accounted for from the manifest. There were seventy-three packages on the list, and seventy-three can be identified. The one with the lithium batteries was almost completely destroyed. They’re quietly calling in the feds because they’re worried it was snuck onto the van when the driver was taking a break at a diner.”
“The FBI?” Abigail asked, “Why?”
“Shh! Because, if someone was to have sneaked a package onto a postal delivery van that was actually a…” he paused and glanced around them before looking at her intently, “…was a word I’m not even going to whisper on a plane—there’s a legitimate concern that it could be part of a larger plan…”
The way he was looking at her helped keep her mouth shut. Talking about bombs and terrorists on any flight was a poor idea, but maybe a flight into New York was the worst possible idea. She nodded instead.
“Right, but you…?”
“I don’t think it was that, no,” he replied, “I find it strange that the only thing totally destroyed was your package and I wonder if that was the target all along. Who knew Shelley was sending you something?”
Abigail blinked. “Wait, you think someone knew I was going to be receiving my father’s papers and—uh, targeted—them? No, come on… that’s ridiculous…”
Byron shook his head. “Just think about it, please?”
The seatbelt sign flashed with a ding and Abigail turned her attention to the view outside her window.
There was no way… right?