Nicholas looked up at him.
“It doesn’t pass. You learn to live with it but it doesn’t fucking pass…” Frank shook his head, his voice catching. “But you know what did help? The only fucking thing, really. It was when I was with you. Because I knew that you loved Jenny too. That it was hard for you too. That helped…”
Frank leaned across the table. He leaned closer to Nicholas.
“I watched your daughter grow up,” Frank said. “I loved her, Nick. I loved her like she was mine.”
Nicholas cleared his throat, feeling that, feeling how deeply Frank meant that.
“I know it.”
“So I’m going to tell you exactly what you told me back then,” Frank said. “Do you remember?”
“I don’t.”
“You said stop looking for joy anymore because you’re not going to find it. Look for purpose. That will get you through.”
Forty-eight hours until prison. Tomorrow, he would spend the afternoon with Charlie and his family. He could see the strain between Charlie and his wife, but he’d pretend not to. For the afternoon they would all pretend. And then tomorrow night, the last night, it would be just him and Meredith.
Why couldn’t he find the purpose in any of that?
Nicholas knew the answer before he finished asking himself the question. Because if he could no longer help Kate, the only other thing he could find purpose in was what mattered most to her.
Kristin. Kate’s daughter. Nicholas’ granddaughter.
Now, she was also taken from Nicholas. Now, she was gone too. If his son-in-law had his way, she would be kept away from Nicholas for good.
Nicholas reached for his coffee, took a long sip. He was buying time while he considered it—what Frank was offering here, what (if anything) he really wanted to ask for.
“I know what I would want that favor to be,” Nicholas said.
“Is that right?”
Nicholas nodded. “If the time comes.”
“Okay. And what’s that?”
“Bring her back to me.”
Frank didn’t ask who Nicholas was talking about. He didn’t have to ask. He knew that Nicholas meant Kristin.
“What about him?”
“I don’t care about him. Just find her and bring her home.”
“If it’s the last thing I do.”
The Lights Stay On in Paris
After Bailey falls asleep, I sit on the balcony of the hotel suite—the Eiffel Tower in the distance, the tree lights blinking in the park across the way, the stars and moon bright in the night sky. Couples are still out enjoying the night. Couples walking hand in hand down this small street. Even at 2 a.m. At three.
Nicholas and I stayed up long after Bailey went to bed. We went through what I needed to know about the plans for tomorrow, working through it together. We worked through the entirety of the plan for the party: what he and I would be doing there, what it all would look like. Where Owen would be.
Now Nicholas is asleep too, and I keep myself awake—awake and focused—with a pot of fresh coffee beside me. I go over everything we discussed, trying to keep my emotions about it in check as I stare down at my laptop, Owen’s flash drive files open on the screen, that marine compass staring back at me.
The compass takes me back to it, to my very first sailing lesson. My instructor at the academy handed me a marine compass, which looks eerily similar to this one, and he told me that it was the most important piece of equipment I needed. It was the most important because it was the most reliable.
He explained it simply: how it has a permanently magnetized needle that always points north, irrespective of a boat’s position. When the boat turns, the compass continues to point at magnetic north, andthe course is shown in reference to that line. That was most of my first lesson: how the compass is the one piece of navigational equipment that will operate when everything else you think you know fails.
