STELLA
Sirens, so many sirens. I stepped out of the lobby with our prepacked luggage and Priscilla as the noise of approaching police cars pierced the air. I felt myself gasp for breath and fought back a wave of tears. Clusters of guests and employees turned in the direction of the noise, and so did I, frozen solid by a potted palm that had a WAIT HERE FOR VALET sign sticking out of it.
“Uber, you call Uber? Elizabeth? Uber for Elizabeth!” said a voice, jolting me out of my daze. I turned to find a black sedan in front of me. It was the same guy who’d driven us to the Ritz only yesterday, and what seemed like an entire lifetime ago. He got out of his car and hoisted my little carry-on—and Nick’s duffel—into the trunk, wedging the bags next to two bottles of radiator fluid.
I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not cry. Not yet.
From behind me came the sticky, rubbery noise of a set of tires on the shiny cobblestones. When I turned, I saw the thing that I hadn’t even let myself imagine was possible in the shower. It was a cop car, clear at first but then blurry and far away behind a sheen of quickly welling tears.
The radio clipped to the officer’s belt was going crazy. As he walked past me with heavy, authoritative steps, the dispatcher said, “Unit fourteen. Caller reports intruder in his room, over.”
The Uber driver opened the back door for me and guided me inside, asking, “Ma’am, are you all right?”
I swallowed and nodded, not trusting myself to open my mouth and do anything but let out a sob. Without allowing myself to think about what I was actually doing, without letting my mind register that I was leaving the man I loved behind in a whole world of trouble that I had caused him, I sank down into the back seat, and the driver closed the door. I turned to look over the rear headrests as another cop car pulled into the U-shaped driveway. And another. Bulky, husky guys in blue uniforms headed toward the revolving doors.
“Oh God,” I whispered into Priscilla’s silky fur. She climbed up awkwardly in my arms to get a look for herself, her little paws digging into the gray upholstery. Her tail swung slowly and tentatively, like even she knew everything had gone terribly, terribly wrong.
The driver buckled up and fussed with his phone for a second, and then we began to leave the driveway. A fourth cruiser pulled up, idling on the outside of the cobblestone U, as if awaiting orders to block anybody from exiting. The driver signaled left, and the cop waved him past.
But I was too stunned, too shocked, too empty to even breathe a sigh of relief.
We headed south on the PCH, and the cop cars and the Ritz grew smaller and smaller behind us. The sirens became faint, replaced by the sound of fresh air whooshing through the slightly opened windows. The driver rolled them up and turned on the air-conditioning, and the pineapple-shaped air freshener twirled on its string on the rearview mirror. “Ma’am, didn’t you come here with your husband?”
My husband. The word hit me so hard, I actually gasped. With all my might, I pulled myself together. On the outside, anyway. Spinning my gaudy rings on my finger, I met the driver’s eyes in his rearview mirror. They were kind eyes, actually. Worried and honest. “Yes, I did.” Now I spun the rings almost hypnotically, round and round. Round and round. Round and round. “He’s meeting me back at the campsite later on. Had some business to take care of,” I said, feeling my voice get wobbly and weak.
“Oh yes, indeed. I see.” He nodded and straightened his seat belt. “Would you like me to give you my card? That way he can call directly?”
My chest felt like it was collapsing on itself as I took the card from the driver, a print-at-home number with smudgy ink. It hit me then, hard and painfully, that there was no best-case scenario now. I would never sit in the back of an Uber with him again. I would never take a road trip again.
I might never see Nick Norton again.
I sank farther down into my seat, and the tears spilled out unchecked. Priscilla jumped into action instantly, licking my face and frantically trying to make it better. But all the dog kisses in the world couldn’t make me feel better right now, and I knew it.
Suddenly, my phone buzzed in my purse and I pawed for it, sniffling and wiping off my cheeks with my palm. It wasn’t Nick.
It was another post from the sheikh. On the screen was a photograph of the inside of the Zero Halliburton’s textured egg-carton foam interior, completely bare and empty. In the very corner of the frame was Nick’s tattooed forearm and a handcuff on his wrist. Underneath he had written, #SoPissedRightNow North Star is gone, but they got the guy. Watch this space.
I dropped my phone in my purse and slid my fingers into the side pocket, where I’d put the diamond in my hurry. It was cold and hard and meaningless. I pressed it into my palm, trying to focus on the way it felt against my skin. I gripped it so tight, I tried to make it hurt. But it didn’t hurt at all, not compared to how my heart ached and throbbed, breaking more and more each time I heard his voice saying, “Bite those stars. Do it for me.”
I found another campsite fifty miles north. Before I pulled in, I took off my wig and makeup and changed my clothes. I gave the owner a different fake ID, with my face but a different name. I paid cash for the night and parked the Love Boat underneath a parched pine tree with thin clusters of dry brown needles. I drew the shades, locked the doors, and sat on the floor of the living area. There, I stared at his zipped duffel for a long, long time. I kept replaying what had happened, trying to will a different ending to the scene, to the nightmare, to the disaster. Priscilla crawled into my lap as the sun was setting and flopped her face onto my thigh, looking just as heartbroken as I felt.
“I know,” I said, my voice shaking. “I miss him too.”
I had never wanted a hero. But I’d gotten one. And now he was gone.
Very slowly, I unzipped his duffel. His T-shirts and pants were neatly folded, and sitting on top were his phone, his keys, and his wallet. As if he’d known, all along, that things might go so very wrong. Or maybe he was just better at this than I was, courageous enough to plan for the very worst. I ran my fingers over the leather billfold, tracing the stitching, before finally mustering up the courage to look inside. Half of his face peeked back at me from the fake ID I’d made him. I reached across the floor and got my purse, from which I took my puzzle box. Inside, I’d hidden both of our real IDs. He was smiling wide in the one I’d made, so wide that there were smile wrinkles around his eyes. In his real ID, he looked angry and tough—the sort of guy that the phrase Don’t mess with me was made for. But that was not the Nick I’d come to know.
Or the one I’d come to love.
Then I noticed that peeking out from behind the fake ID was a strip of paper. It was our fortune, folded in half. He’d saved it, without a word, and neatly hidden it away. Swallowing a sob, I opened it, and my vision got blurry again. One big tear ran off my cheek and landed with a splat on Priscilla’s fur. She scrunched her back side to side and curled into an even tighter ball between my legs.
I woke up his phone and saw my own face looking back at me from the home screen. It was me in profile, when I’d been driving the RV. I had my hands at nine and three, granny-style, and I was giggling. I had my head thrown back and my face all contorted with a somewhat unflattering laugh. But then I remembered him saying how he loved my laugh. And my heart split right open one more time.
Eventually, I unfurled myself from the floor of the RV. My legs were prickly and asleep, but I hardly noticed the pins and needles at all. On autopilot, I made Priscilla dinner, just going through the motions. Scooping out the dry food, opening up a small can of wet. I put the bowl down on the floor, and she gave it a sniff, but then she looked at me with flattened ears and lay down again. Forlorn.
I scooped her up in my arms and carried his duffel into the bedroom. From the neatly folded stack of T-shirts, I pulled out the one on top. Priscilla sat on the bed and watched me take off my clothes. I stood naked in the dark, pressing Nick’s shirt to my nose. I could smell him on the fabric, and my lips quivered against the cotton. I slipped it over my head and crawled into the pink satin sheets, on the side where he’d slept. For a long time, I lay there, listening to the crickets outside, listening to campers laugh and sing. Through the back window on the RV, I looked up at the stars, blurry through tears. And in Andromeda and Perseus the hero I saw not possibility. But only what might have been.