“Ethan.”
“And why don’t you like him?”
“I like him fine. I didn’t say I didn’t like him.”
“Nick, come on…”
“No, I just think Kate’s awfully young to like him so much. They both are so young. What’s the rush? And Meredith is no help. She loves him. It’s like they’re already planning the wedding…”
Frank smiled at him, his first smile in days, it seemed. Then he reached over and patted Nicholas’s arm.
“Get on board, friend. You don’t get a vote.”
“What do I get?”
“To keep your mouth closed and welcome him into your home with open fucking arms. Isn’t that what Meredith always says? I feel like I’ve heard her say that. That’s what Jenny always says.”
Then, hearing himself, Frank stopped smiling.
“Said. That’s what Jenny always said.”
Nicholas turned to his friend.
“I don’t know how to do this without her, Nick,” he said.
“I know.”
“I don’t know how to do this just me…”
“Well, good thing it isn’t just you then.”
Nicholas put his hand on Frank’s shoulder. And Frank started to cry.
The Big Island
Let’s talk it through.
There were only a handful of times when Owen had left New Zealand in the last five years. Six times, to be exact.
Each time that he left, he knew, was more dangerous than the time before it.
But that was the only choice. To fix this, he needed to move closer and closer to the problem.
The first time, he only had to mail a letter. He flew to Fiji to send a letter to Nicholas at The Sanctuary, Nicholas’s lake house in Texas Hill Country.
He couldn’t simply email Nicholas. He knew they would be checking Nicholas’s email. Forever now. Owen also didn’t doubt that Nicholas would be all too eager to turn Owen in, even if his email got past them.
That left him limited choices. And he couldn’t risk the postmark being from New Zealand. He didn’t even want the postmark to be from Australia. So he flew sixteen hundred miles just to mail that letter.
He put it on specific stationery—that first letter. He used the stationery from a hotel in Hawaii. Nicholas’s favorite hotel on the Big Island in Hawaii. Owen had downloaded the stationery from their website.
Owen chose to use that stationery so that Nicholas would know,beyond a doubt, that the letter was from him. Even though Owen didn’t sign it. Even though, of course, he couldn’t sign it.
If something happens to you, they’ll be in danger, he wrote. You know this is true. I’ll be in touch…
The second time Owen left New Zealand was six months later, the night before Bailey graduated from high school. He didn’t intend to fly back to San Francisco, not at the start of this. One could argue that there was no excuse for him flying so close to where Hannah and Bailey were unless (subconsciously, for just a moment) he needed to again be near where they were. Unless, and he was conscious of this part, he couldn’t stand to miss Bailey’s graduation entirely. What she had been working for, who she was becoming.
But he knew there was another reason as well. He was starting to test the waters. For this plan to work, he needed to be in and out of America. He wasn’t worried about himself. He was worried about Hannah and Bailey. He needed to see what he could get away with while Nicholas was still around to help protect them.
