Chapter Two Rory

Benvenuto,” says the impeccable man in a starched royal blue uniform with yellow braided trim, his white-gloved hand outstretched. Behind him looms the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express—a behemoth, glossy navy train meticulously restored to replicate its early-twentieth-century predecessors that traversed Europe in unfathomable luxury. The train has long been lodged in my imagination as the setting for the most glamorous Agatha Christie novel. A place inexplicably of both fun and murder.

Let’s be honest—nowhere has murder seemed more alluring than on the Orient Express.

Quite the leaving bonus, this train trip. Insanely extravagant, is more like it. Almost… strange, to be honest. And for hands-down the easiest job I’ve ever had in my life. Three months in magnificent Rome, where I was paid a small fortune to simply talk endlessly about myself. But Ginevra Ex is rolling in money, without a husband or children to spoil. Besides, we got along well, Ginevra and I. And the bestselling author does everything extra, indeed.

Still, when I looked up the price of a ticket, my mouth dropped so far down into my chin that I was basically a cartoon character. Thirty thousand dollars, at least if I were staying in one of the nicest suites. I’m sure my cabin will be less grand, but still, that won’t quite knock the last zero off the price.

“Your ticket, signorina.”

I fumble in my purse, a slick of perspiration on my forehead. “I… it’s… oh. Here!”

I clasp my fingers around the smooth ticket, relieved that my mouth can still eject speech, however clunky. In the past ten days, until now, I’ve spoken approximately five sentences. All to various people helping to transport me here: the Monte Carlo train station.

I’m not a freak—I was just on a ten-day silent meditation retreat.

After I finished my work for Ginevra, I took a train to an ashram in northern Italy to satisfy a long-held curiosity as to whether the whole meditation thing is all it was cracked up to be. For ten days, I meditated and practiced mindfulness and listened to dharma talks, all the while eating the same medley of vegetables cooked in different conglomerations, staring at the dingy eggshell walls, and walking the stunningly overgrown paths, with views out into Piacenza.

Verdict? I can see why people decide to become monks. It’s all a bit clearer, nicer, without the noise. Without your phone as a fifth appendage. But now, with this Technicolor train saturating my senses, the scent of honeysuckle permeating the swollen July heat, and the people milling about dressed outlandishly with printed Gucci totes and candy-pink stiletto mules and stiff Panama hats, I feel a bit like a baby who’s been birthed on Mars.

The porter lifts my luggage as if it is made of air and not the entirety of my belongings I’ve been hefting around ever since I left LA over three months ago. I follow him up the steps, running my fingers over my phone in my purse. I haven’t switched it back on yet, not since the start of the meditation retreat. It’s the longest I haven’t talked to my father my entire life.

But my phone means questions. The people closest to me want to know about my plans and when I’m coming back. I thought by now I’d have answers, but I don’t. That’s what this train trip is for, I suppose. Why Ginevra gifted it to me. A reintegration, to figure out what comes next. Time to decompress.

Time—both a blessing and a curse. In my prior existence as a news anchor, I salivated for more of it. But now I have endless time to ponder how my boyfriend of ten years broke off our engagement, and how I screwed up my career, and how I found out a life-changing secret while working for Ginevra—a secret that those closest to me knowingly kept. Infinite time to think about how, even when I call my father, he probably won’t know who I am (Alzheimer’s). And to top it off, in need of quick cash, I agreed to serve as the main character for Ginevra’s upcoming book. While a fun and once-in-a-lifetime experience, it also means that my failures and traumas will soon be splashed out for basically the entire world to judge.

The porter leads me down a narrow corridor and my thoughts blur as I wander after him, mouth agape. It’s all that high-gloss lacquer woodwork and art deco style that makes you feel like you’ve stepped straight into a smoky-air Hitchcock film. The pale yellow carpet is smattered in squiggly geometrics punctured with scarlet red lines all slashing out in different directions. Piano music wafts from invisible speakers, the air cool and heady with musk and neroli. One side of the corridor is all windows, and the other is lined with doors in the ubiquitous gleaming wood. At one, the porter stops and gestures.

“Your cabin, signorina. The Roma Suite. One of our newest.”

The Roma Suite. A thrill sweeps over me. I read about this suite—done by the premier design firm in Rome. It’s basically the most coveted accommodation on this train.

No freaking way.

The porter opens the door to a room that, while small, is the fanciest I’ve seen in my entire life. The walls are covered in the same intricate marquetry as in the hall, alongside Roman accents like mosaic flooring, slick bronze fixtures, and a frescoed ceiling. A full bed nestled in the window nook is styled in white bedding embroidered with lilies, and a gold baroque bed frame is set against emerald brocade wallpaper. On the wall opposite is a mosaic of colored glass, and astride it is the bathroom, where I glimpse a charming pale pink pedestal sink. I turn in disbelief, taking in the view toward the door. To my right, a small banquette table and forest-green velvet chairs line the windows. On the table rests a silver tray with artfully arranged fruit, cheese, and bread. At the end of the banquette, mounted on the wall, is a gold bar lined with crystal barware, aglow in the late afternoon sun. Then, to my left, a narrow walkway separates the banquette from a cream couch piped in green. Beside the couch is a brass side table with a malachite top. And beside the table is a man.

I yelp. I can’t help it. He’s inches from me but camouflaged somehow—the gold braid on his uniform melding with the room’s metal accents.

“This is your steward,” says the porter. “Meet Marco. Marco is here for all your needs, however big or small. Twenty-four hours of the day.” With a flourish, the porter gives a little bow and then leaves.

“Benvenuto, signorina,” says Marco.

“Grazie.”

Marco’s smile reaches all corners of his face, and I smile back my winning smile, the one my father has always told me reveals nothing. When Papa’s thoughts were still crystalline, capable of expression, he’d point out that I can smile brightly on the worst day of my life, and you would never know that anything other than pots of gold at the ends of rainbows percolated below my surface. Papa and my brother, Max, are different—they are incapable of masking their emotions. Prone to demonstrations of both great enthusiasm and great rage.

“Buon… uh… good afternoon.” I fumble for something, anything, to say to my twenty-four-hour steward, feeling weird and exposed. “You’re—you’re very kind to…” Kind to what? All he said was welcome. What am I even babbling? I should be able to engage normally and effortlessly.

Engage, Rory.Ask him politely to leave so you can sink into that bed and… do what?

Sleep? I’m not tired. I slept more in the past ten days than I’ve probably slept in the entirety of my adult life.

Meditate? I’ve already completed my new daily routine, both my twenty-minute meditations, one in the morning before leaving the ashram and one in the car en route to the station.

Cry? I’m not a big crier. I wish I were—the cries feel buried deep, denied their release.

“You will notice a tray of snacks.” Marco points pleasantly to the food. “If you are hungry from your travels. Then, a welcome letter.” He gestures to the chair. “Along with a travel kit, robe, and slippers, and a guard’s whistle.”

“A guard’s whistle?” I step closer and identify, indeed, a silver whistle on a chain. “Meant for what?”

Marco smiles. “A guard’s whistle,” he repeats, as if that explains it. I nod. I bounce the whistle in my palm, wonder vaguely if I’m supposed to wear it as a necklace. Is this like on a cruise ship, when you have to participate in some sort of drill? Eventually, for lack of anything else to do, I loop it around my neck.

Marco places his hands behind his back and straightens up, standing a bit like a statue who is about to pitch himself onto a pedestal and remain in this room forevermore. He’s sweet, but right now I could really do with one of those futuristic AI robot stewards, instead of having to make small talk with the real thing.

“Would you like me to unpack for you, signorina?”

“No,” I say quickly. I haven’t even washed the stuff I wore at the retreat. I cringe, imagining Marco handling one of my dirty tank tops and doubtfully arranging it on a silk padded hanger. “Thank you, but I’ll do it. There’s not much to unpack anyway.”

I point, forcing a laugh at my beat-up black suitcase with the busted wheel. I’m still so proud of myself for fitting everything into one suitcase for this extended three-plus-month trip to Italy. Admittedly, though, my suitcase certainly stands out amid the other passengers’ matching designer luggage. I watched it all file onto the train as I approached: trunks and other carryalls without wheels, uniformly spun out of silk and other impractical materials. Luggage with an almost ominous tenor, like the type the upper class took on the Titanic.

“A welcome cocktail? Perhaps you would like one?” Marco offers. “You would like me to show you to the bar car?”

A welcome cocktail. Now, that’s an idea. There was no alcohol on the vipassana retreat. No meat. No sex. No pleasure. We were supposed to find the bliss within ourselves.

I’m still searching.

“You know, a cocktail in the bar car sounds like just the ticket, Marco.”

He nods discreetly and starts toward the door. I glance around again, still in awe of this decadent room. A room fit for romance, if I ever saw one. I can’t believe this is the level of trip Ginevra sent me on. I’m basically on someone’s honeymoon. Well, I suppose I’m on my honeymoon.

Through our interviews, Ginevra discovered that Nate and I once dreamed of taking this very trip together: the Orient Express’s first foray into special trips that include overnight stops, rather than just traveling nonstop between destinations. So Ginevra decided to send me here on one of the train’s inaugural trips along the western Italian coast, all expenses paid, by myself. A gesture exceedingly kind and wildly generous. But as my eyes rove back to the bed, I can’t help but think about all the things I could be doing on that bed, with Nate. Or with Gabriele.

God, where did Gabriele come from? He was a fling, I remind myself. A fleeting Roman indulgence, like tiramisu.

Right. To the bar car we’ll go. I anticipate I’ll be spending a lot of time there, table for one.

Should I change first? Freshen up?

I bend down to give myself a quick once-over in the bar cart’s mirrored panel, wedging my face up beside a crystal decanter. My normally chestnut hair looks almost haloed in blond—crazy how quickly my strands turned in the Italian sun. My hair was previously accustomed to fluorescent lights, not endless walks around the vipassana property, and before that, on gorgeous spring days, exploring Rome in my ample free time when Ginevra was writing and didn’t need me for interviews. I’m tan, I realize. A tan I haven’t been since I was a kid, spending the summer boating on Orchard Lake with Max and my best friend, Caroline.

I peer closer at the freckles clustered by my nose, at my green eyes surprisingly soft and rested, at my ears that stick out a little bit, endearingly I now think, even though as a child I was teased for them (especially around Christmas, when there was an uptick in elf jokes). I’m makeup free, in a floaty white cotton dress and platform jute espadrilles adding four necessary inches to my five foot two. Then there’s the whistle, which almost looks like a cool dangly necklace. It sinks in that I look different from when I was a news anchor, all pale and buttoned up in a severe suit or sheath, with a slash of red lipstick, juggling fifteen tasks at once. I smile at myself, pleased that the smile finally travels to my eyes. I can see the years on my face—all thirty-three of them, present in the new spider lines that are setting off stubbornly toward uncharted frontiers. But I can also see the little girl in me, the one who used to spend full summers barefoot, living in her imagination far more than in reality. I realize that’s what I was doing the past ten days—living in a pretend world. And I suppose this train is an extension of it.

Three last days of make-believe before I have to face reality again.

I nod at Marco, suddenly self-conscious that he’s been watching my self-inventory.

Marco sets off out the door, and I follow him back down the corridor, past the blur of mahogany doors, once more throttled a hundred years back in time. After thirty seconds’ worth of steps and passing through a corridor connection, we arrive before a plaque that reads Carriage 3674. The bar car. I step inside to rows of sumptuous velvet sofas and matching ottomans, all upholstered in a luxe royal blue zebra print. There are gleaming brass fixtures and plush navy curtains and the now-familiar glossy wood polished to within an inch of its life, with lacquer tables interspersed among all the cozy, opulent seating. A buffet of antipasti flanks the bar, and a photographer is capturing shots with a vintage Polaroid. Off to the side, along the windows, a man is swaying on a bench, his tuxedo-ed back to me, playing pleasant notes on the grand piano by the bar. I feel as though I’m in some bootleg speakeasy, about to witness F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway clink their gin rickeys.

Chin-chin!

Nope, not the old literati, but a silver-haired man in a white dinner jacket and a woman in a floor-length red-sequined evening dress, whose face defies gravity, clinking their flutes of champagne. Tiny boxes of caviar and mother-of-pearl spoons litter their table. I consult my phone, see that I still haven’t switched off Airplane Mode.

Five thirty-five in the evening, and we’ve already got sequins and caviar.

If I had a hat, I’d tip it to them.

My mind conjures Nate in a white tuxedo. He has soft blond curls and almond brown eyes, almost prep-school boyish until your eyes lower to check out his hard-exercised body. Nate in a white tuxedo…

Swoon.

God, I hate Nate, though. I hate him. And I still love him. Ugh. I thought meditation would expunge all that heavy emotion. It did, for those drifty, unreal days at the retreat, but now it’s back. Somehow, almost sharper.

“Buona serata, signorina. What can I get you?” A waitress in the signature royal blue has materialized.

“I’ll have… what it looks like she’s having.” I point to the table to my right, to a girl whose back is to me, her hand cradling a crystal goblet with clear liquid and a single giant ice cube.

“A vodka neat?” the waitress asks, eyebrow raised. “Davvero? You are certain? Not an Aperol spritz?” She says it like she’s identified my type—bumbling American, who comes to Italy and downs them like water.

“Yes. I mean, no. Not Aperol spritz. Vodka neat, per favore.” I’m a bit surprised, too, but only because I’m not the lone woman drinking it here. “I’ll take Zyr, if you have it.”

I used to drink vodkas neat with Max when I was in college and he was in grad school, both of us together in Ann Arbor. When Papa found out I was downing Franzia wine in a box with my similarly broke friends, he shuddered and said a lesson in premier vodka was in order, given our Soviet roots. We Aronovs could—and certainly did—scrimp money in other ways, but with food and alcohol, the fine stuff was warranted. Before he got sick, Papa, Max, and I used to drink vodkas neat by the fireplace in winter, and in the summer out in the Adirondack chairs by the lake.

To us,Papa would say. The three musketeers. Then he’d clink our glasses and give us each a solemn gaze, holding my eyes with his for a few long moments that made me feel startingly transparent.

Max and I got Caroline into nice vodka, too. And Nate, when he joined our trio. Made us a quad. I allow myself a brief moment to slip back inside those memories. The closest people I have in this world. Had.

Then the girl with the goblet turns.

“Holy shit.” I hear the words come out of me, but I don’t feel myself saying them.

It’s Caroline.

I clap my hand over my mouth, my heart thumping fast. “Wha—Caro… what are you—”

“Ror!” Caroline runs a hand through her ice-blond hair, cut shorter now than when I last saw her a few months ago, in a piecey bob with wispy face-framing bangs. She’s thinner, too—not in a way anyone else would notice, only a best friend. Her oval face is surprisingly wan, deflated, almost elongating her already long forehead. A pseudo friend of ours in high school once nicknamed Caro “Horsey”; she declared that Caro had a five head—five fingers could fit comfortably above each other, she said, demonstrating. It was a cruel nickname concealed in that breezy teenage in-crowd way. Caro has always been acutely sensitive to outside opinions, so the critique stuck; she’s worn bangs of varied lengths ever since.

We always want what we don’t have, isn’t that the truth? Because to me, Caro is stunningly beautiful. Tall, regal, solid, with a butt and thighs way before TikTok made them aspirational. She’s got zingy curves where I can feel rectangular, like SpongeBob. Caro’s not the most intoxicating, maybe, not a conventional star—but in her quiet, unassuming way, in her kindness, her softness, she shines like the sun, and you find yourself wanting to launch into her orbit.

“Ror!” Caro’s face animates with a giant smile. She grabs my hand and dances it around. “We were wondering when you were gonna show up!”

We?

I’m still poleaxed with shock as my best friend—the closet thing I have to a sister—folds me into a hug, and my eyes catch upon the “we” she was eclipsing.

What in the world.…

It’s Max, my only sibling, my older brother, with his piercing blue eyes like Papa’s, his shaggy dark hair in that familiar threadbare navy baseball cap. Only Max could get away with a baseball hat in a place like this. In fact, he’s sprawled on the bar’s sofa, lanky legs outstretched, looking just like the nonchalant CEO in his recent Detroit Magazine cover (“Maximillions” was the headline, and below it, “The Thirtysomething CEO Whose Much-Anticipated Alzheimer’s Vaccine Is Spearheading Detroit’s Resurgence”). Although contrary to the cover, where he probably had makeup done and, now that I think of it, Photoshop, at this moment his eyes are bloodshot and the bags beneath them evident, almost bruised. He hasn’t exaggerated about those long hours; he wears them on his face. Max was a nerdy child, always buried in his science books, awkward. Bullied. He still is all those things, other than bullied, thank goodness, but he’s grown into his tendencies, certainly fills them out with more confidence now. My brother grins sheepishly as he stands up to hug me.

“LS!” Max has called me LS—Little Sister—since day one. He extracts me from Caro’s arms, pins me to his chest. “I missed you. You’ve been massively MIA. I would take it personally if… well, I do take it personally.”

I can’t bring myself to apologize, not now. But I’m unsurprised by his greeting. Max’s equilibrium is always throttled if someone in his inner circle is mad at him. And he realizes I am mad at him, evidenced by my not responding to his many calls and emails, but he doesn’t know why. Even though I’m furious at him, and hurt, I relax into my brother with a degree of comfort as if we were once in the same womb instead of born four years apart. I clutch his familiar back, not Nate’s jacked but Max’s teddy-bear soft, the worn cloth of Max’s turquoise Polo, his ever-minty smell. He’s eternally self-conscious about his breath, swigs mouthwash a good five times a day.

Then my eyes flicker behind Max. And my breath leaves my body as my eyes lock onto Nate.

I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything at all.

They’ve all crashed my solo trip? But… how? Why?

My ex-fiancé sits ramrod straight, massaging his forehead, avoiding my gaze. Nate, sturdy Nate, five-foot-ten to Max’s six-four, but with far more gravitas than my brother. Unless you know him intimately, and then he can be witty and silly. It’s Nate—the guy you’d trust with your life. Indeed, in his professional life, many in the most high-stakes scenarios do. God, it’s actually Nate, with his golden hair untamed and the mole above his left brow that he used to claim would grant me any wish I desired if I rubbed it right. Any wish at all! Just like a genie, Ror. I’m your genie in a bottle. Then he’d dance around like Christina Aguilera. Making me pee with laughter.

I can’t believe it. That Nate is actually here, in white slacks and an olive-green collared shirt, far more appropriate to the atmosphere than Max’s rumpled casual. Nate’s wearing the shirt I got him for his last birthday, I realize, the same one he wore four months ago, when I was still drowsy with sleep and he began breaking up with me. Swiftly, calmly, ending all the big things but the little ones, too—our little routines and traditions, our plans. All the little dirt paths of our life together that spanned a decade, the paths that wouldn’t appear on any maps but were the only routes I knew how to navigate, I realized after the fact. In a few sentences, Nate made all our little paths dead ends.

What the hell are they all doing here?