I took a long breath and felt the steam reach down into my deepest corners. “If I left him, I’d have to do it in a way where he could never find me. Look what happened to Maggie Moretti.”
The edges of Petra’s face were blurry through the steam that billowed between us, but I could see her gaze sharpen. “Do you think he had something to do with that?”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” I answered.
* * *
Over the next year, Petra and I assembled a plan, choreographing my disappearance more carefully than a ballet. A sequence of events so perfectly timed, there could be no room for error, and now I sit, hours away from executing it. The hiss of steam clouds the air around us, Petra just a faint shadow on the cedar bench next to me. “Did you mail everything this morning?” I ask her.
“FedEx, addressed to you, labeled ‘Personal.’ It should arrive at the hotel first thing tomorrow.”
I couldn’t risk hiding all I’d gathered at my house, where anyone—the maids, or worse, Danielle—might find it. So Petra kept everything—forty thousand dollars of Rory’s money and a brand new identity, thanks to Nico.
“The new government technology is making it harder to make these,” he’d said, the afternoon I’d driven out to see him. We were sitting at his dining room table in his large home on Long Island. He’d grown into a handsome man, with a wife and three kids. And bodyguards—two posted at his gated driveway and another two at his front door. It occurred to me that Rory and Nico were not so different. Each of them the chosen son, pushed to carry the family into the twenty-first century, with new rules and regulations. Both expected to do more than the last generation—or at the very least, not lose everything.
Nico slid a fat envelope toward me, and I opened it, pulling out a pristine Michigan driver’s license and a passport with my face and the name Amanda Burns. I flipped through the rest—a social security card, a birth certificate, and a credit card.
“You’ll be able to do anything with these,” Nico said, picking up the driver’s license and tilting it under the light so I could see the hologram embossed on the surface. “Vote. Pay taxes. Fill out a W-2 form. This is high-level stuff, and my guy is the best. There’s only one other person who can make a full package this good, and he lives in Miami.” Nico handed me the credit card—a Citibank account with my new name on it. “Petra opened this last week, and the statements will be sent to her address. When you get settled, you can change it. Or toss this card and open a new one. Just be careful. You don’t want someone to steal your identity.”
He laughed at his joke, and I could see the boy he used to be flash across his face, sitting next to Petra and me at lunch, eating his sandwich while doing his math homework, the weight of who he was expected to become already bearing down on him.
“Thanks, Nico.” I passed him the envelope containing ten thousand dollars, a small fraction of the money I’d managed to siphon off and squirrel away over the past six months. One hundred dollars here. Another two hundred there. Cash back whenever I could, slipping the money into Petra’s gym locker every day so she could hold it until I was ready.
His expression grew serious. “I need you to know that if something goes wrong, I can’t help you. Petra can’t help you. Your husband has resources that would put me, my livelihood—and Petra’s—at risk.”
“I understand,” I told him. “You’ve done more than enough, and I’m grateful.”
“I’m serious. All it takes is one tiny thread connecting your new life to your old one and it’ll all fall apart.” His dark eyes latched onto mine and held. “You can never go back. Not once. Not in any way, ever.”
* * *
“Rory’s scheduled the plane to leave around ten,” I tell Petra now. “Did you remember to include my letter? I don’t want to have to rewrite it on hotel stationery ten minutes before I leave.”
She nods. “In with the rest of it. Addressed and stamped, ready to be mailed from Detroit. What did you say?”
I think about the hours I’d spent, the many versions I’d shredded, drafting a letter that would close the door on any possibility that Rory might try to follow me. “I told him I was leaving, and that this time, he would never find me. That he should announce our separation publicly, tell them it was amicable and that I was not going to be giving any public statements or media interviews about it.”
“One week before he announces his run for Senate.”
I give her a smirk. “Should I have waited until after?”
Once I’d saved enough money to carry me into a new life, I began to look for the perfect opening to leave. I studied our Google calendar of upcoming events, searching for a trip I’d be taking alone, focusing on cities near the Canadian or Mexican borders. I found it in the Detroit trip. I’m scheduled to visit Citizens of the World, a social justice charter school funded by the Cook Family Foundation. An afternoon school tour followed by an evening dinner with donors.
I lean back on the bench behind me and stare up at the ceiling, obscured by a layer of steam, and run through the rest of the plan. “We land around noon. The school event starts at two, so I’ll make sure we go to the hotel first so I can get the package and put it somewhere safe.”
“I called the car rental place. They’re expecting a Ms. Amanda Burns to pick up a compact around midnight tonight. Will you be able to get a cab?”
“There’s a Hilton just down the road from where I’m staying. I’ll catch one from there.”
“I worry about someone seeing you leave with a suitcase in the middle of the night. Following you. Calling Rory.”
“I’m not taking it. I bought a backpack big enough for a couple changes of clothes and my money. I’m leaving everything else—including my purse and wallet—behind.”
Petra nods. “If you need it, I booked a room with the credit card at the W in Toronto. They’re expecting you.”
I close my eyes, the heat making me woozy. Or perhaps it’s the pressure of having to get every detail exactly right. There’s no room for even the tiniest mistake.
I feel the minutes slipping away. Pushing me toward the moment when I’ll take the first step in a series of steps that will be irrevocable. A part of me wants to forget it all. Go to Detroit, visit the school, and come home. Have more days in the sauna talking to Petra. But this is my chance to finally get out. Whatever options I have now will narrow to nothing once Rory announces his run for the Senate.
“Time to go.” Petra’s voice is soft, and my eyes open again.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” I tell her.