Chapter 3: Six Hours to Gone
My sister, Dana, opened the door before I could knock.
She looked at my face.
"It's done?"
"It's done."
She pulled me inside.
Sophia was on the sofa with a book.
Maya was asleep on the armchair, her cheek pressed against a throw pillow, her mouth slightly open.
I stood in the doorway and just looked at them for a moment.
"Did they ask?" I said quietly.
"Sophia asked once.
I told her you were finishing some paperwork." Dana handed me a mug of tea I hadn't asked for.
"She accepted that.
She's smart, Elena.
Too smart."
"I know."
I sat down across from my daughters.
Sophia looked up from her book.
"Is it finished, Mom?"
"Yes, sweetheart.
It's finished."
She studied me the way nine-year-olds do when they're deciding whether an adult is telling the full truth.
Then she nodded and went back to her page.
That nod cost her something.
I could see it.
Dana sat beside me and kept her voice low.
"The car is packed.
I put both bags in the trunk this morning.
Girls' documents are in the blue folder in your carry-on."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me.
Just go." She paused.
"Does he know?
About New Zealand?"
"No.
He knows nothing past the divorce filing."
She exhaled.
"Good.
Keep it that way."
My phone lit up on the table.
Mark's name on the screen.
I looked at it.
Let it ring out.
"He's already calling?" Dana said.
"He probably realized the penthouse mortgage is in arrears." I picked up the mug.
"He was so focused on winning the assets he never checked what was attached to them."
Dana stared at me.
"Elena."
"The SUV has fourteen months of unpaid financing.
The penthouse has a second charge he signed off on two years ago and never tracked." I set the mug down.
"I didn't take anything from him.
I just let him take everything from me."
She was quiet for a long moment.
"When did you figure all of this out?"
"The night Maya asked me why her father smiled at his phone."
Dana pressed her lips together.
She didn't say anything.
She didn't need to.
I woke Maya gently at four in the morning.
She blinked up at me, confused, then saw my face and became very still in the way small children do when they sense that something large is happening.
"Are we going on the trip?" she whispered.
"We are."
"Is it far?"
"Very far."
She thought about this.
"Will there be stars there?"
"Different ones," I said.
"Ones we've never seen before."
She reached up and put her arms around my neck.
I carried her to the car.
Sophia was already buckled in, her book in her lap, her face turned toward the window.
As I started the engine, she said, without looking at me, "We're not coming back, are we."
It wasn't a question.
"Not to the same life," I said.
"No."
She was quiet for a mile.
Then: "Okay."
That single word held more courage than anything I had managed in twelve years.
We were on the highway by 4:40 AM.
The city lights fell away behind us.
My phone buzzed again on the console.
Mark, again.
Then Patricia.
Then a number I didn't recognize.
I turned the screen face-down and drove.
The flight boarded at 6:15.
By the time Mark Vance woke up in his penthouse and opened his first piece of mail, we were already in the air.
And somewhere over the Pacific, Maya pressed her face to the oval window and said, "Mom.
The sun is coming up on the wrong side."
"That's because we're going somewhere new."
She watched the light spread across the clouds below us.
"I like it," she said.
I did too.
But my phone, buried in my carry-on bag, had received one final message before we crossed out of range.
Not from Mark.
Not from Patricia.
From the unknown number that had sent the Auckland confirmation.
*He's already made enquiries.
May you like
He knows the name Sterling Meridian.
Move faster than planned.*
