Prologue
Wednesday April 10th, 2019
It’s the day every path led back to.
April holds the coffee cup with both hands; fingertips pressed lightly to the paper folds. Her reflected face ghosts against the rush of passing trees and gray office buildings. Her neat red bob is caught in the flickedy-flick of the changing landscape. It was still dark when she left the apartment, still dark when she fumbled with the email saying where they were to meet. Only she always knew where they would meet. Still dark when the Amtrak left South Carolina.
And there it is again – the feeling.
She should have told him. What if he never understands?
The world clickedy-clacks its way past. People fumble with luggage and make their drunken-like stumbles to the bathroom, reapply lipstick and slap tired faces awake with cold water. Seven hours on a train – but April is sick of driving, sick of flying, sick of the lies.
She pictures Joe back in Lexington, folded into the lilac duvet, a Post-it stuck to the refrigerator. Not the note he wanted. She was planning on talking to him; she didn’t mean it to turn into a fight. There’s something I have to do. And there she was, fingers teasing open the blinds, looking out onto the street, listening for the cab, hoping he didn’t stir, because if he did how could she explain?
What would she say? That she isn’t who he thinks she is?
