She should’ve figured this out sooner; her plane was leaving in three hours and Richard was on his way to pick her up and drive her to the airport. She refolded her clothes and managed to fit everything but the floppy hat in her bag. She stuck it on top of the dresser; she’d leave it for Sam. Now she just needed to double-check that she hadn’t forgotten anything, since she wouldn’t be returning to her apartment again, and—
Her father’s handkerchief.
A few mesh pockets lined the inside of her suitcase, and she was certain she’d tucked it into one. But she hadn’t seen it when she’d unpacked the bag.
She unzipped her suitcase again and felt around for the soft pouch, her movements growing frantic.
All her clothes were getting wrinkled, but she shoved them aside to grope inside the mesh pockets. She couldn’t find the pouch; her socks and bras and panties were still there, but nothing else.
She sat on the edge of her bed and dropped her head into her hands. She’d packed most of her things a few nights ago. She’d been so conscious of that blue square of fabric; it was the one irreplaceable item she was bringing for the wedding.
A knock on her open bedroom door made her gasp. Her head jerked up.
“Nellie?”
It was only Richard.
She hadn’t heard him come in; he must have used the new key she’d given him.
“I can’t find my dad’s handkerchief!” she cried.
“Where did you last see it?”
“In my suitcase. But it isn’t there anymore. I tore everything apart, and we have to leave for the airport, and if I can’t—”
Richard looked around the room, then lifted up the suitcase. She saw the square of blue and closed her eyes.
“Thank you. Did I really not see it? I thought I looked there, but I was so frazzled, I just . . .”
“It’s okay now. And you have a plane to catch.”
Then Richard walked over to the dresser and picked up her new beach hat, spinning it around on his index finger. He placed it on her head. “Are you wearing this on the flight? You look adorable.”
“I am now.” It even went with her jeans and striped T-shirt and the slip-on Converse sneakers she always wore when she flew, to save time during the security check.
Her mother didn’t get it. Richard fixed everything. She’d be safe with him no matter where they lived.
He lifted up her suitcases and headed for the door. “I know you had some good memories in this place. We’ll make new ones, though. Better ones. Ready?”
She was stressed and tired, her mother’s comments still stung, and she’d never lost those damn eight pounds. But Nellie nodded and followed him out the door. Richard was sending a mover to pick up the brown packing boxes she’d left stacked in her closet, as well as the things she’d put in his apartment building’s storage unit, and deliver them to the new house.
“I parked a couple of blocks away.” Richard set her bags down near the curb. “Be back in two minutes, babe.”
He strode off, and Nellie looked around her street. A delivery van idled a few doors down and a couple of men were wrestling an oversize chair out of its back.
But other than for those guys and a woman waiting at the bus stop with her back to Nellie, the street was quiet.
Nellie closed her eyes and tilted back her head. Feeling the early-afternoon sun against her cheeks. Waiting for the sound of her name to tell her it was time to go.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
My replacement doesn’t see me coming.
By the time she senses my approach and shock fills her eyes, I am very close.
She looks around wildly, probably trying to find an escape.
“Vanessa?” Her voice is incredulous.
I am surprised she recognizes me so swiftly. “Hello.”
She is younger than me, and her curves are more generous, but now that my hair is back to its natural hue, we could be sisters.
I’ve anticipated this moment for so long. Remarkably, I don’t feel any panic.
My palms are dry. My breathing is steady.
I am finally doing it.
I am a very different woman today than when Richard and I fell in love all those years ago.
Everything about me has transformed.
At the age of twenty-seven, I was a buoyant, chatty preschool teacher who hated sushi and loved the movie Notting Hill.
I palmed trays of burgers at my part-time waitressing job and rummaged through secondhand-clothing stores and went out dancing with my friends. I had no idea how lovely I was. How lucky I was.
I had so many friends. I’ve lost every one of them. Even Samantha.
Now all I have left is Aunt Charlotte.
In my old life, I even had another name.
The first time we met, Richard nicknamed me Nellie. That was all he ever called me.
But to everyone else, I was always—and am still—Vanessa.
I can still hear Richard’s deep voice as he would tell the story—our story—whenever people asked how we met.
“I spotted her in the airport lounge,” he’d say. “Trying to roll her suitcase with one hand and holding her purse and a bottle of water and a chocolate-chip cookie in the other.”
I was returning to New York from visiting my mother in Florida. The trip had been a good one, despite that going home always conjured painful memories for me. I missed my father more than ever when I went back to my old house. And I could never escape the recollections of my time at college. But at least my mother’s erratic moods had somewhat stabilized thanks to a new medicine. Still, I hated to fly and I felt especially anxious about being in the air that day, even though the sky was a swath of azure dotted with only a few cottony clouds.
I noticed him right away. He wore a dark suit and a crisp white shirt and was frowning at his laptop while he typed.
“This little kid started pitching a tantrum,” Richard would continue. “His poor mom had a baby in a car seat and was at her wit’s end.”
I had that cookie, so I gestured to the mother, asking if I could give it to the crying boy. She nodded gratefully. I was a preschool teacher; I knew the power of a well-timed bribe. I bent down and gave the child his treat and his tears evaporated. When I glanced in Richard’s direction a minute later, he’d disappeared.
As I boarded the plane, I passed him, seated in first class—naturally. He sipped a clear liquid from a glass. His tie was loose around his neck. He’d spread a newspaper open on his tray but was watching the passengers file in. I felt a magnetic pull when his gaze stopped on me.
“I watched her thumping that suitcase down the aisle,” Richard would say, drawing out the story. “Not a bad view at all.”
I wheeled my blue suitcase to row twenty. I settled into my seat and performed my usual preflight superstitious rituals: I slipped off my Converse sneakers, closed the window shade, and wrapped a cozy scarf around myself.
“She was sitting next to a young Army private,” Richard would continue, winking at me. “And suddenly I felt quite patriotic.”
The attendant approached to say a first-class passenger had offered to trade seats with the soldier sitting next to me. “Awesome!” the soldier had said.
Somehow I’d known it was him.
When the plane lumbered into the sky, I gripped the armrest and swallowed hard.
He offered me his drink. His ring finger was bare. I was surprised he wasn’t married—he was thirty-six—but later I’d learn he had an ex, a dark-haired woman he’d lived with. She’d been upset when they broke up.
After Richard proposed, her existence haunted me. I felt her presence everywhere. And I was right—someone was following me. It just wasn’t Richard’s ex.
“I got her tipsy,” Richard would tell his enthralled listener. “Figured that way I’d have a better chance of getting her number.”
I’d sipped the vodka tonic he’d passed me, very aware of the heat of his body.
“I’m Richard.”
“Vanessa.”
Here was the part of the story where Richard would turn away from our audience and glance at me tenderly. “She doesn’t look like a Vanessa, does she?”
Richard had smiled at me that day on the plane. “You’re much too sweet and soft for such a serious name.”
“What sort of name should I have, then?”
The plane bumped through another air pocket and I gasped.
“It’s just like going over a pothole. You’re perfectly safe.”
I took a big gulp of his drink and he laughed.