“Stop.” She waved a hand in front of his face. “Stop.I don’t want to argue about whether or not someone else is waiting for the elevator, and how I’m a selfish person for doing this here, now.”
“Okay,” Elliot said.
“Okay,” Birdie answered, though it was more of a huff.
They stared at each other. Elliot clenched his jaw. Birdie chewed her lip.
“Did you send me the letter?” Birdie asked again.
“What happened with Kai?” Elliot responded.
“That is not an answer, Elliot,” she snapped.
Elliot leaned against the side of the elevator wall, then pushed the bottoms of his palms against his eyes.
“Bird,” he said. “This is all really a mess. I...” He paused. Then: “Do you want me to have written you the letter?”
“I asked you the question first!”
“I am just trying to do my job, Birdie,” he said.
“I am not your job!” she shouted.
“Then why am I even here?” he shouted back. “You don’t seem to want me personally and now you don’t seem to want me professionally. What can I do to satisfy you?”
“You’re the one who said you had to walk away frommethat night.”
“And you’re the one who didn’t even wait for an explanation. You literally pushed me out the door. If that doesn’t sayregret, I don’t know what does.”
The seconds ticked past, and he frowned at Birdie and Birdie frowned at him. And Elliot, who always had the answers and when he didn’t have the answers found inventive ways to come up with them, could not understand how they kept getting stuck here, how he kept getting it so wrong with the one person with whom he wanted to get it right.
48
BIRDIE
Birdie was standingin front of Elliot, willing herself not to cry, feeling like a broken compass. Her feelings pointed everywhere, pointed nowhere, and offered absolutely no sense of bearings, no sense of direction or where she wanted to go next. This was why she relied on Imani and Sydney. They told her what to do, and she, in turn, then knew how to feel about it. But that wouldn’t do anymore, it wasn’tenoughanymore, so from here on out, it was going to get harder, but maybe, also, that meant it was going to get better.
“Kai sent the email,” she said finally. “But he didn’t send the letter.”
She saw something unlock in Elliot, his chest heaving up and down, like it was being freed from a weight he hadn’t realized he was carrying.
“You’re certain?” he asked. Something like worry passed over his face, but then he composed himself. Elliot the pro reporter back at it.
Birdie bounced her head, and her voice cracked. “Mona wasright, the question she asked. Kai never knew where I grew up. He couldn’t have mailed a letter to the house—he didn’t know that house existed.”
As she said it aloud, Birdie realized how preposterous this was: that for as long as she’d been pining over Kai, he’d never even known where she’d come from, who she was at her roots. That had been her fault, the lies that became foundational in her narrative, but finally she had a chance to correct them.
“So I’m going to ask you for a final time,” she said. Her hands were shaking, then the rest of her trembled too. “Did you send me the letter, the actual letter, the one I found in a box in my room?”
Elliot stepped closer. Birdie’s breath picked up speed. She didn’t dare move.
He reached for her chin and tipped it up toward his. She wanted to sink her face against the security of his palm, let him hold her there forever.
“Birdie,” he said gently. “I did not write that letter. And I guess what you have to decide is if you’re telling me that you wish I had.”
Then he dropped his hand and released the emergency button. They were going down again. No closer to answers than when they started.
49
