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“I’m just wondering what’s so special about Santorini? It sounds so far away and so remote.”
Natalie shrugged. “It’s just where I’ve always gone. I wish there were a better story behind it.”
“Maybe your muse is there?” Avery asked in an offhanded way. She looked back down to the folder and the history Natalie had created about her relationship with Victoria. Eventually, Avery looked up and made eye contact with Natalie.
“Did you know that the medical examiner identified Victoria from a single tooth?”
Avery watched the shock register on Natalie’s face.
“Can you believe that?”
There was no answer.
“From the rubble of the Twin Towers, a single tooth was recovered. I didn’t believe such a thing could be possible at first, until the methodology was explained to me.”
Avery paused a moment but held Natalie’s gaze without blinking.
“Nothing else, though. No other specimens were discovered that belonged to Victoria. No other bone fragments. No portions of her jaw. Just that one tooth.”
Avery smiled and looked back down at the folder.
“Anyway, I just found it interesting.” She held up the notes. “Thanks for the history. I’ll let you get back to your writing. Good luck finishing your manuscript.”
“Thank you,” Natalie said, her voice shaky and hesitant.
“Emma gave me some boxes that contained a bunch of Victoria’s old keepsakes. I found a flash drive that had all of her manuscripts on it. Lost manuscripts stored in an attic for two decades.”
Natalie cocked her head to the side and feigned a smile. “Is that right?”
“Emma told me that Victoria didn’t share her manuscripts with anyone. Not Emma. Not even Jasper. No one, in fact, has ever read them before. So I was a little hesitant to read them myself. It felt like I was intruding on her privacy.”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Read any of her manuscripts?”
“Oh, all of them. They’re really good.”
Avery turned and opened the door.
“They remind me a lot of your writing.”
Avery waited for a reply. When none came, she walked out into the hallway and headed for the elevator.
CHAPTER 54
Manhattan, NY Tuesday, July 6, 2021
IT WAS JUST PAST 8:00 A.M. ON TUESDAY MORNING WHEN AVERY TOOK the elevator to the lobby, cut across the marble floor, and pushed through the front door. The valet had her Range Rover parked out front with the engine running. Avery climbed in and pulled away. The streets were crowded. Taxis beeped, cyclists darted through traffic as they transported their packages, and a steady stream of pedestrians filled the sidewalks. The long weekend was over and the city had taken back its role as the financial capital of the world. The relaxed and welcoming looks Avery had received on her run through Central Park Sunday morning were replaced by stoic expressions of those on the way to work.
The sun was low and bright when she made it to the George Washington Bridge, and it filled her rearview mirror until she made it into New Jersey and headed north on Palisades Interstate Parkway. Smooth reggae drifted from the car’s speakers and was Avery’s attempt to calm her nerves. On her mind was the postcard she had ripped to shreds months earlier before painstakingly taping it back together. She had somehow managed to misplace it since she arrived in New York, and she took the card’s absence as an omen that what she was planning was about to go wrong.
She had told everyone—her agent, her friends at HAP News, Christine Swanson, Walt Jenkins, and even Livia Cutty—that she had come all the way across the country to chase the story of Victoria Ford. But this morning’s drive was the real reason. In addition to her rendezvous planned for tomorrow with the German man named André, whom she had paid thousands of dollars to create a false passport, this morning’s trip to the mountains was the reason Avery had come so far. It was the reason she had driven her Range Rover rather that purchased an airline ticket. It was why she had paid in cash for everything she had done on this trip, avoiding her credit card at all costs. She was nearly certain about what she would find, but needed confirmation before she proceeded.
The trip to Lake Placid took over four hours. Avery remembered the tortuous journeys from her childhood. It seemed like days, not hours, to get from the city to the mountains. But she also remembered the joy of finally arriving at her aunt’s cabin. The lineage of the property’s owners had been immaterial when she was a kid visiting the cabin for the last weekend of summer, just before school was to resume—an annual excursion the Montgomery family took each year to celebrate Avery’s and Christopher’s safe return home from sailing camp. It was their salute to the end of summer. Back then, Avery was more interested in swimming in the lake and swinging on the long rope attached to the branch of a sycamore tree that hung over the water. A thousand times over, that knotted rope had sent Avery and her brother off the edge of a rock and out into the lake, where they’d release their grip and splash into the water. Time at Ma Bell’s cabin came only once a summer but represented significant real estate in Avery’s memories because of the glorious time she and Christopher shared there with their cousins.
The cabin was not a Montgomery property. Had it been, it would be three times as large and perched on a lake ten times the size. The latest (and most expensive) trends in architecture would have replaced the cabin’s rustic quaintness. A fleet of powerboats and jet skis would have lined the shoreline. Everything would have been ornate and overdone. It also would have been repossessed by the Unites States government, like every other property Garth Montgomery had owned. But Ma Bell’s cabin was none of those things. It was simple and charming and far removed from anything Avery’s family owned. It was an oasis from the glitz and wealth that followed the Montgomerys everywhere they went. The cabin held for Avery the same appeal as Connie Clarkson’s sailing camp. Avery had never been happier than when she was tucked away for summer nights in cabin number 12 in Sister Bay, Wisconsin. She found the same joy each year when she visited Ma Bell’s cabin in Lake Placid.
