Chapter Twenty-Two Rory

Nate tries to follow me back to my suite. Insists on accompanying me in the boat back to the train, even though I scream, “Get the fuck away from me.”

Every time I say fuck it feels delicious, and then terrible. Eventually I shout, “Fuck you, fuck you,” right outside the bar car bursting with revelry, and it’s like that screech when the music halts, and all eyes come predictably to rest upon us.

Not my finest moment, but honestly, I feel pushed to the brink. I walk in a manic rush, past the Italian couple who stole our chairs, who now give me a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. Doesn’t matter that they’re bedecked in their finest, there is something overwhelmingly sinister about them. And they’re always there, right around every turn! They smirk at me as they pass—well, the dislike is mutual. Then I peer back, infuriated that Nate is still trailing me to my suite in the guise of my safety. When, really, he’s doing it for himself! How unsafe can I possibly be on this train populated with bazillionaires and tons of staff milling about? When we finally arrive at my suite, I don’t address Nate, don’t even acknowledge his existence.

“Can you please keep everyone out?” I ask Marco. “That includes him.” I gesture toward Nate without giving him the satisfaction of even roving my eyes his way.

By the fumble of his hands as he unlocks my door, Marco is clearly befuddled. “Can I get you something, signorina?”

“No, I’m fine, grazie.”

“Nothing? Hot water? Perhaps you’d like some brandy?”

“No, grazie.”

I’m nearly in my suite, but Marco blocks the entry. His eyebrows crease in concern. “A doctor? We have a doctor on board.”

“No. If you could keep everyone out, please, that would be doing me a great service.”

Then I appraise the suite, feel a slight claustrophobia as I prepare to step inside. Is it possible that I’ve been on this train a grand total of one day? It feels more like a hundred years. And there are still two nights left. Two endless, excruciating nights, with people I thought I knew. People I thought I loved. Where else am I going to go, though? Off the train? That’s an idea, actually. But at the sight of my beckoning bed, I sigh and force myself over the threshold. I shut the door, heave myself on the bed, and curl into a ball, the insanity of my life squeezing on my lungs.

I’m catapulted back to the blow of Papa’s diagnosis. How after the doctor said Alzheimer’s, even though I’d suspected it for a while, I wanted to scream, to rail against a God in whom I wasn’t even sure I believed—but I had to be strong for Papa, for Max, who both had emotions in spades. I consoled, I peptalked, I unleashed every optimistic take I had in my arsenal. It was only after, when I returned to LA, with Nate out of town, that I could feel it, the rumble threatening to erupt from within. And I just said a loud no and drove straight to work. Dove headfirst into reporting on some crisis or another. I convinced myself I was doing the noble thing, the strong thing.

I remember now what my meditation teacher said on the retreat: You can’t rise from the ashes unless you first allow yourself to burn.

Finally I cry. The biggest, deepest cry I ever remember feeling, or allowing.

Nate… Caro… Papa… the adoption… my career… everything I thought I was, I’m not…

When the tears ebb, I grab my phone. I thumb to the album I haven’t yet deleted, titled Nate with a red heart emoji. I scroll—my fingers know what they are doing, where they are going. Fifteen or so rows down, they stop, hover, zoom in on a shot of Nate sleeping, with his baby curls unfurling against golden muscles, where he looks like a toothy crocodile. A sweet, vulnerable crocodile. Mouth stretched open, midmorning light bisecting his face, big sturdy hands resting at his sides. Right now, through the screen, I can almost see the rise and fall of his chest, hear the occasional snore rip through a still morning.

I always marveled at the peace of his slumber. Whereas I tend to ball myself up, fists curled into my cheeks, I was in both awe and envy of Nate’s ease—his defenselessness.

I would just stare at him sometimes, a lot of times, when I would wake up to pee or because it was too cold or I’d had a bad dream, and he would start at my movement but then settle back into his impenetrable cocoon. As I watched him, I felt above all joyful that he was mine. That I was his. That this part of my life was wrapped up, tied in a bow, deposited in a vault. Certain. I felt safe with him, that was the startling thing. I didn’t feel safe, necessarily, growing up. I feel guilty at even permitting that thought access to float across my brain. Perhaps it wasn’t Papa’s fault or Max’s, but mine. In the story I invented about my childhood, I was the girl Salinger wrote about, holding the whole world together. With Nate, I could lay my head on his chest and exhale. I remember after I took his crocodile picture, how he grabbed me close. Called it creepy, my obsession with staring at him asleep.

I protested that it was merely my hobby. Some people crochet. Others watch their boyfriends sleep.

He laughed, claimed he was going to start charging me by the hour. But I knew he was pleased. Who doesn’t like to hear they are admired, lusted after, even when they’ve got their head lolled back and a stream of drool out their mouth?

Okay, then. Enough diving back into moments that no longer exist. And I’ve done the crying thing. Gold freaking star. Where did it get me? All I feel is strange and vacant. I place my phone face down on the side table, and that’s when I hear a knock at my door.

Great. Thanks a lot, Marco. I’m not entirely surprised, though. There’s probably a stipulation in the employee manual about not heeding guests’ requests when they appear manic.

I creep closer to the door, but I know instinctively who is waiting outside. Sure enough, when I whip open the door, it’s her.

My former best friend.

We face each other with exceeding formality.

“Ror,” Caro says, extending her hands across the table, like she actually expects me to meet them with my own. “I’m so sorry.”

“Mmm. For what, exactly?”

“Sleeping with Nate. Of course. But… there’s so much I haven’t told you. I’ve been in a horrible place.” She says it in a quiet way that rings of truth. But, like, why should I care? She slept with Nate, stole the books, and she’s also embezzling from my brother’s company.

“I know about your horrible place. I know exactly what you still haven’t told me.”

“You do?” Caro hesitates, plays with my whistle, which I’ve left on the table.

“Yeah. Ginevra told me. She had private investigators—did you know that?”

“Max told me.” Caro laughs. “Sorry. That’s totally crazy. She’s like a wild conspiracy theorist who lives in a bunker.”

“Wild or genius. And I can assure you she doesn’t live in a bunker but a lavish apartment in Rome.” I don’t add the sarcastic, gossipy thing I might have, if we were our normal us, that the apartment is also a shrine to Sophia Loren. In fact, I am almost shocked at my voice, oozing with contempt. But I can’t excise it from my tone or my heart. “Regardless, let me just say, what the investigators found was pretty illuminating.” I stand, walk over to the tiny closet where I stuck the letter Ginevra wrote me. When I return, I fan out the bank statements. “Recognize these?”

Caro’s arranging her hair back in a clip, but when her eyes catch on the statements, her hands flop to her sides. “My bank statements? But how—how in the world did she… That’s… I don’t get it. Did she, like, steal them?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how, but that’s not really the important thing, is it? Because you’re obviously embezzling from Hippoheal. How could you, C? How could you do that to Max? To Papa? The company is all for him, you know? What Max is doing… what you’re taking is actually from Papa. Making it less likely that Max will be able to cure him. I don’t understand how you can live with yourself.”

She stares at me, eyes darting from me down to the statements and back again, but not speaking. Dumbfounded. Stunned, it appears, at the evidence of her crime.

“How could you?” I say again. “And I mean, I get why you took the books, to make sure there’s no evidence, but I—I don’t even know who you are.”

“How could I?” she repeats in a monotone. Not denying it. “Embezzle from Max. Take the books. Right. How could I?”

“So you don’t deny it. Stealing from the company?” My voice drops to a whisper. Part of me hoped—believed—she would deny it.

“Deny it?” In the strangest flat voice, she says, “Why bother? You seem to know everything, then.”

“I think you should leave,” I finally say, feeling all my disbelief whoosh out of me, leaving something quiet and sure behind. “I just… I’m too angry. You must know, though—I’m going to have to tell Max.”

Caro pales. “Please… give me a couple of days. Until the end of the trip, at least. It’s not what you think. I just need a few days. Give me a few days before you talk to Max. Please.”

She looks so pitiful, so out of sorts, that I hesitate for a moment. I start to feel bad for her, to want to hug her, to make things okay. Then I remind myself—this is a person who slept with your ex-fiancé. Who stole the books and then lied about it to your face. Who is stealing from your brother.

“Until the end of the trip, that’s all.” I shake my head. “I thought you had so much more integrity than this. You really should be the one to tell Max first.”

“Right. I should tell Max that I’m embezzling from him.” Caro’s tone is so strange, so bland, almost devoid of emotion, that it puts me off-kilter.

“Why did you do it, C? If you needed money, you could have asked Max. He’s loaned you money before.”

“I could have… asked him for money. I mean, sure. Whatever you say.” It feels almost like she’s mocking me.

I shake my head. I’m confused about all of it. Talking to her right now—it feels like a whole lot of meaningless words and zero answers.

Caro shakes her head. She walks to the door, turns the knob.

“Ror?” She turns back.

“Yeah?”

“I love you. I’m so sorry for everything. I need you to know, I really love you. I love your family. Truly.”

“You’ll understand if I can’t say I entirely believe you.”

She nods. “I hope one day soon you will.”

“You have a strange way of showing it. Your love.”

“Yeah.” Her shoulders budge up. “I should have done it all differently. I can see that now.” She gazes around almost aimlessly, like a child who’s gotten lost at the mall, and my heart pangs at the memory of the little girl at school who was indeed lost. Who never had a family to guide her, to hold her. Just us. Just me, Papa, and Max. And now we Aronovs appear to be exiting her life, one by one. Guilt shivers through me. It’s Caro—my sister. But why should I feel guilty?

I can’t be her person now.

But I’m suddenly afraid, because this really isn’t like Caro—sleeping with Nate, stealing from Max, taking the books, now utterly defeated. Looking like she’d be fine if life chose to run her over, leave her on the side of the road for dead.

Suddenly the train starts rumbling. Right. We’re off. By morning, we’ll be in Rome.

Caro and I stare at each other for a long moment, then she slips out without looking back. I want to slam the door, or my brain wants me to do it, make a real statement, but instead, I peek out and peer after her, watching her walk down the corridor slowly, desolately, with tiny sobs that quake her frame.

And as I watch her, all my emotions seep out of me—the anger, the hurt, the indignation—and I just long for my friend. I suddenly want her to run back and hug me a smidge too hard, to sit cross-legged on my bed and eat through my stash of gummies and listen to the lunacy of this train ride. To help me see it all straight. I almost shout after her to wait, let’s talk, let’s work things out. I need her. I need us.

And I want her to give me the book back. I need to see it for myself. What it says that she risked everything to conceal.

But she doesn’t look behind, and I suppose that’s for the better. Because she’s betrayed me and my family in excruciating ways.

And what’s that thing Papa used to say?

Sometimes you have a blind spot for the people you love most, so that they can convince you of wild things—so you even start believing the earth is flat. One day, though—it might take a very long time—but eventually you will realize the earth is indeed round. And then you will have a choice to make. Because for some people, it’s easier to keep on living forever on their false flat earth.

I wonder who or what Papa was talking about. What experience in his life lent him such a wise conclusion. Too bad I can’t ask, not anymore.

Maybe he’s right, though. Maybe Caro had me entirely fooled. Because of her, I thought the earth was flat. And all I feel at the moment is excruciatingly sad that after today, I have to live on an earth I now know is round.