A notification comes in on my phone as it lets out a quiet chirp in my ear. Not wanting to interrupt our moment, I lift my wrist to check the notification on my watch.
Only…it’s not there.
I check my other wrist, but it’s bare, too.
“What thefuck?” I whisper-shout.
“Weird reaction, but okay…” Kyla says slowly, a hint of confused panic in her voice.
“No—sorry, I just mean… My watch is gone.”
“Gone? Did you lose it? Was it stolen? You know you have to be careful with putting your stuff in your safe at the end of the day. I had a friend who went on a cruise, and someone came into her room in the middle of the night and stole her stuff.”
“Kyla, that doesn’t happen if you put the lock on the door, like you’re supposed to.”
“Oh. Right…”
“I don’t know where I would have lost it; the band wouldn’t have come off unless I undid the clasp…”
Then it dawns on me.
During my argument with Molly, she’d grabbed my wrists to hold me in place. It had been weird, I thought, in the moment. I didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary, but then again, I was paying less attention to what she was doing with her hands and more to what she was saying. I try to recall the last time I looked at my watch, but my phone had been dead for a while, so I wouldn’t have felt any notifications buzz on my wrist until just recently.
So, Molly has my watch.
Which means Mollyalsohas access to my credit card.
“One sec, Kyla,” I say, pulling my phone away from my face and opening the app that can track down any of my devices. It takes a few seconds to load, but sure enough, when I click on my watch in the device list, a tiny dot appears on the map. She’s near the mainland coast, heading north.
Where are you going?
I think back to everything I know about Molly. Her parents, the places she had talked about visiting, and the films she loved.
Suddenly, a memory floats to the surface of my mind of us stuck in a broken elevator in a dingy apartment building on our way to some party. We sat there for so long that we started going through each other’s wallets to pass the time.
She teased me for still having a condom I got in our twelfth grade health class in there, while I reminded her that I—surprisingly—lost my virginity first.
And then I had pulled out a photograph from Molly’s…
“I think I know where she is, Kyla!” I jump up and rush to the stateroom’s safe, where her wallet had been securedbefore filming started, and punch in the numbers Glen gave me before he left my room earlier.
The vintage Gucci wallet she had carried around in college has since been replaced by something smaller, a cheap brand I don’t recognize. But as I open it, I spot the photograph I’m looking for, tucked away in a small pocket, the edges worn and bent after years of traveling from one wallet to another.
I gently slide it out.
In the photo, a young girl with honey-blond hair and beachy waves stands smiling next to an older couple, their hands on her shoulders. The woman is laughing and pointing at something behind the person taking the photo, and the man is in the middle of saying something, his mouth slightly open and his face expressive. The only person looking at the camera is the young girl, Molly. And she looks the happiest I’ve ever seen her.
She had been thirteen, she told me when I asked about the photo, and her grandparents had splurged to take her to Europe for the summer. I still remember the emotion in her eyes as she told me how loved she felt on that trip. And my heart aches again, as I remember the words I hurled at her in that stupid cable car.
I study the black and white striped cathedral behind Molly and her grandparents and then flip the photo over in my hands. A date has been scrawled in delicate handwriting, and just below that, two words, faded with age: Amalfi Coast.
TWENTY-THREE
Nolan’s ‘90s Hits, Now Playing:
SPIDERWEBS — NO DOUBT
The doorto Nolan’s office is shut when I get there, but I know he’s inside. His presence is given away by the muffled music thumping through the worn steel—punchy, upbeat guitar bends; a driving, melodic bass line; and the familiar mellow horns of mid-’90s ska. The raspy voice of No Doubt frontwoman Gwen Stefani is a nostalgic surprise, and as she belts out lyrics about spiderwebs and screening calls, I make a mental note to add this song to my playlist.
