“Romeo,” he heard suddenly, and turned back. It was Evie calling out to him as she walked backward.
“Yeah?” he said.
“I think I’ve decided whichSherlockepisode I’ll start with.”
Romeo thought this was a very random thing for her to be telling him, but he replied anyway. “Which one?”
“Season two, episode three:The Reichenbach Fall. I remember really loving the ending of that one,” she said, looking at him with a strange smile. “Goodbye, Rome. See you in a few weeks, hopefully.”
And then she was gone, leaving Romeo with the puzzling feeling he used to get whenever his father would make them verse him in a game of chess. The feeling that he’d lost a game he did not know how to play.
Right then it felt like Evie had just played her winning move.
SHANGHAI, CHINA
The decision to audition for the ballet in Shanghai had been a strategic one for Evie Gray.
Her parents weren’t entirely thrilled when she told them about it; at least Italy had been only an eight-hour flight that they could theoretically board with a moment’s notice. But if Evie was selected for this ballet, they might not see her for a long while—which, if she was being totally honest, she’d intended.
Evie loved her parents, but she also resented them in a lot of ways for allowing Mr. Button to capture her and her brother’s childhoods. If they hadn’t agreed to let Mr. Button use their children as his guinea pigs for hismethod, maybe Adam would still be here today. She knew it wasn’t fair to blame them entirely—they had thought Mr. Button wanted the best for them, and they wanted to give their children the best. But she did blame them a little. She was just glad they wereallfree, at last, from Mr. Button.
When the plane landed in the coastal city, she headed straight over to the assigned dormitories in Huangpu to register her arrival and drop her things off. But she didn’t linger long; as soon as she could, she left the dorms and headed to the nearest station.
This was how she found her way on the metro from the epicenter of the bustling city to a smaller town on the outskirts, where she had to walk from the metro stop, down a long residential pathway with houses on either side of the lanes, following the directions she’d written for herself in her notepad. She felt jittery as she traipsed down the narrow path, probably because of theamount of airplane coffee she’d consumed in anxious anticipation for this very moment.
She finally reached the street and the house that matched the description in her notes and knocked on the door three times.
For several moments, there was no sound or sign of any movement behind the door. She raised her fist to knock again, and was surprised when the door swung open, revealing the round face of a supposed dead man.
“Henry Xu,” Evie said with a nod.
He looked nothing like the tense, buttoned-up man she’d seen months ago.
This version of Henry looked…happy. His skin was darker and had a healthier glow.
Henry wordlessly stepped to the side to let her in, and she obliged, stepping over the threshold into the living room.
Evie noticed an older woman sitting comfortably on one of the couches, sipping tea and watching what appeared to be a Chinese drama. The woman paid them no mind, completely engrossed.
“Should we speak in here?” Evie asked.
Henry shook his head. “Ma hates it when I speak over the television,” he said with a smile that revealed the crooked lines of crow’s-feet around his eyes. “Let’s go into the dining area. It’s just through those doors.”
She followed Henry into the adjoining room, watching him close the doors behind him and then gesture for her to take a seat.
She did just that, and he joined her, taking the seat opposite.
Henry was the first to speak then. “You’re a very persistent person,” he said. “I’m not even sure how you found me, but I have to say, it is impressive.”
“You were hard to find,” Evie admitted.
After everything with Adam and Adelina, Evie had spent months researching the Buttons, trying to piece together her theory about the tampering she was certain Mr. Button had done. Her research into the Buttons had also involved research into their senior staffers—those who might be part of thecleanup crew, as well as any other parties that would have known about the accidents. She’d looked into their online profiles, including anything that had been written about them in the countless articles published about the Button Estate. Henry had been the main employee she had centered her research on, as he had not only been one of Mr. Button’s longest-serving employees but, as his secretary, was also likely privy to the most intimate details of Mr. Button’s day-to-day dealings. At the time, she didn’t find much—only small, seemingly inconsequential and nonspecific details, such as where he’d lived before moving to the States and how long he’d been working for the estate. It had not proved useful for Adam and Adelina, but it had come in handy once she’d decided to look into Henry’s so-called death.
“How did you know I was alive?” he asked her.
“Well, at first it was wishful thinking. But then I had a hunch that, as Mr. Button’s longest and most loyal employee, you probably had some resources available to you, and that if you were alive, the most likely option given the high-profile nature of the case—the only option really—would be for you to leave the country. I figured you would go by a different name here, so I had to go through the online directory of your town once I’d found out where you’d grown up. After many failed attempts, I managed to look up your mom. The rest I worked out through a series of educated guesses and trial and error.” She was making it sound easier than it actually was; in truth, it had taken her the entire year, and even then, it felt like she had just gotten lucky.
“Wow,” Henry said, looking and sounding impressed about all that went into finding him. “I of course received all thirty-six of your phone calls, as well as your encrypted messages that you were not trying to turn me in, or to sell my story or expose me in any way, and that you just wanted to say hi. Honestly, that made me laugh. You remind me so much of the kids.”
