Chapter 2 - The Ticket West|
The woman behind the diner counter brought Naomi a towel without asking why she needed one.
It was a small kindness, and almost more than she could bear.
She had walked six blocks before finding a cab, then asked for the bus station because it was the first place she could imagine leaving from.
Now her duffel stood between her boots, and rainwater collected beneath her chair.
On the television above the coffeepot, a woman in a wedding dress smiled beneath a headline about Chicago society.
Naomi turned her stool away.
“Coffee?” the waitress asked.
“Please.”
She counted her money beneath the counter.
Two thousand eight hundred and sixty dollars.
She had earned most of it cataloging books for private collections, work her father called a pleasant distraction whenever anyone asked what his daughter did.
It had taken eighteen months to put that much aside.
The wedding flowers had cost more before the florist added delivery.
Her phone vibrated.
For one foolish second, she thought Duly might have noticed.
It was a promotional message from the hotel spa.
The bridal treatment she had forgotten to cancel was scheduled for nine.
Naomi laughed once, and the sound startled her.
Then she opened her contacts and found a number she had carried through three phones without using.
Her mother's older sister had mailed her a birthday card every year, even after Edmund Ward declared that June was no longer welcome in his house.
The last card contained a photograph of a crooked bookshelf and a sentence written along the bottom.
There is always room for one more.
Naomi pressed call.
It rang until she nearly disconnected.
“Somebody had better be bleeding,” a sleepy voice said.
“Aunt June?”
Silence followed, then the scrape of a lamp being switched on.
“Naomi?”
“I'm sorry it's so late.”
“Are you hurt?”
Naomi looked at her broken nail and the red marks the dress had left on her shoulders.
“I don't think so.”
“That's a peculiar answer.”
“I got married yesterday.”
“I know.”
There was no accusation in it, although June had not been invited.
Naomi swallowed.
“I left.”
June did not ask what she had done to make her husband angry.
She did not ask whether anyone had seen her.
“Tell me where you are,” she said.
For several seconds, Naomi could only grip the phone.
By dawn, she had a ticket to Rockford and instructions to stay inside the station until her bus was called.
Before boarding, she sent her mother a message.
I am safe.
I left voluntarily.
I need you to give me some time.
She did not supply an address.
Helen answered before the bus left the platform.
Your father is going to be furious.
Naomi stared at the screen until it darkened.
Then she tucked the phone away and watched Chicago loosen its hold beyond the glass.
Hours later, in the bridal suite, Duly stood with the abandoned ring pressed into his palm.
“Check the hospitals,” he told Lyall.
“Already done.”
“Then the airports.”
“We have no reason to think she flew.”
Duly turned.
Lyall rarely contradicted him twice.
The older man glanced toward the untouched breakfast tray.
“Her passport is gone, but so are her boots and her old sweater.”
“What does that mean?”
“She took what belonged to her.”
Duly looked at the bracelet on the dresser.
He remembered sending an assistant to choose it.
He could not remember its price.
His phone rang, and Edmund Ward's name appeared.
Duly answered with a question about Naomi.
His father-in-law interrupted him.
“Did she take the blue folder?”
For the first time that morning, Duly looked away from the ring.
On the westbound bus, Naomi shifted her duffel beneath the seat.
Inside it were clean socks, her grandmother's letters, and the folder of personal papers her father's lawyer had told her to bring for Wednesday's family business meeting.
May you like
She had packed it because her name was on the cover.
She did not yet know that her father had asked about the folder before asking about her.
