“Just like that?”
“What? Did you think I’d say no to you? After all this time. You should know me better than that.”
“At this point,” Nicholas said. “It’s me that I don’t know better than that.”
Some Secrets Need to Stay Secrets
Before they left, Owen and Nicholas made a plan for what happened next.
They made a plan for Owen’s final two trips out of New Zealand.
Trip five and trip six.
The fifth trip involved Owen crisscrossing four cities (Nashville and Los Angeles and Miami and Austin) in six days. Each stop riskier than the one before.
The sixth and final trip would begin with Owen going to find Hannah—in the last possible moment before he couldn’t. Then getting to Nicholas. Getting to Nicholas so they could get started on what needed to happen next.
They planned for all of this. In every machination it could possibly go. They looked for the holes, plugged them as best they could. It was crazy what they were hoping they could get away with.
They reminded themselves the final trip would just be a contingency plan—one they prayed they wouldn’t have to utilize.
Then they planned it again.
And then Nicholas said one last thing. Before they left the beachfront resort behind and the ocean air behind and got on their respective planes from that tiny airport in Kona. He said one last thing so that Owen would hear it.
“This can’t end with both of us getting out alive,” Nicholas said. “You need to know that.”
They were standing outside of the small airport in Kona. They were about to depart on two separate flights. Two flights that would take them eight thousand miles apart.
“I know,” Owen said.
“And it may be both of us.”
“I know that too. We’re not the two I’m worried about.”
“Me neither.”
They held each other’s gaze, as if waiting for the other to flinch.
They didn’t hug. They didn’t shake hands. But neither of them flinched.
This was how they said goodbye.
Part III
My dear friend, what is this our life?
A boat that swims in the sea and all one knows for certain about it is that one day it will capsize.
—Nietzsche
The View from the Eiffel Tower Can Make You Forget
“So this whole time,” Bailey asks, “the two of you have been planning this?”
Nicholas nods. “That’s fair to say.”
We are in the living room of the hotel suite. I’m sitting in an antique chair, leaning in toward Bailey and Nicholas, who are sitting on the sofa across from me. The sun is going down behind them, the wind coming in through the sheer curtains, lining Bailey’s bare arms with goose bumps.
