“Did you love them?” she presses.
“Yes. With my whole damn heart. They’re all I had, and when they left ...” Her words collapse under a surge of old loss that swells like a ravenous monster in her chest. It squeezes her lungs so tight she can’t breathe, can’t talk.
Lillith waits.
“No one else wanted me,” Poppy says. “But they did. I was—the media called me the Tardis Baby. I was left as a newborn in an old police box. Wrapped in a thin blanket in the middle of a London cold snap. Just dumped. That’s who I am, Lillith. Dumped. Unwanted. A baby abandoned in a bloody phone box. It was outside a hospital that offered specialist obstetric care, and they rushed me inside. A nurse—Catherine Montague—” She lets the surname slip.
“Your mother?”
“Yes. She helped care for me in that hospital while police searched for my real mother. Media made a huge spectacle of it. Everyone was talking about it, but no one came forward. They never found who left me there. So Catherine and her doctor fiancé took me home. They got married and officially adopted me. We became a family and they named me Helen, after Catherine’s mother. They did it because they were good people.”
Her voice hardens as old shame resurfaces. “So that’s who I am, Lillith. But somehow I think you already know all this about me. Because your security man has been digging up my past, and to be honest, if one digs, my dirty old past is probably not that hard to find.”
Lillith pushes back her chair and once more comes to her feet. She wraps both arms around Poppy and strokes her hair. “I’m so sorry, love. I’m so sorry.”
The soft, feminine scent of her perfume floods through Poppy, and her last inner walls simply just cave, and she crumbles into another blathering, snotty, crying mess—big, ugly, uncontrollable, body-heaving sobs shuddering her body. And she feels she’s a little girl of four again. Missing her mom. She doesn’t know what in God’s name has just happened to her, or how this weird woman has disarmed and broken her with kindness and simple questions.
Who on this sweet, violent earth still misses their mom in this way when they’re a middle-aged has-been?
When Poppy finally opens her eyes again, Avi has vanished. His table is empty save for the tiny Greek coffee cup. As though he were never there. Just a figment of her verdant imagination fed by a lifetime of fiction. The words from the Death List swim into her mind.
Give Poppy her due.
End it with Poppy.
RIP.
It’s Criminal:
The Mystery of theBlack Orchid
A Trinity Scott & Gio Rossi True Crime Production
Reenactment—Theo Pappas—Crew Cabin
Theo has returned from his date with Roshaan and is scrolling through cam feeds, watching guests filtering back into their rooms after their shore excursions on Crete.
He studies Hendrick Lodewijk, who takes a seat in the chair facing the windows. He’s scrolling through his phone. Theo can’t see his screen from this angle.
He watches until Hendrick checks his watch, pockets his phone, gives his room a quick scan, then leaves.
Theo switches to the Elysium. Still empty. So is the adjoining assistant’s cabin. Lillith and Poppy haven’t returned yet.
Nothing much in Dr. Marsh’s unit, either. The retired FBI profiler has drawn his blinds and isasleep. Theo rubs his chin as he watches the old man’s chest rise and fall.
He inhales deeply, then clicks over to Sarah Frost’s suite. Dr. Marsh’s daughter is out on her deck with her son. The pair sit at a table surrounded by books, and Sarah holds a pen. She consults a workbook—she’s giving her son a lesson. The kid looks restless. He kicks the back of his heel against a chair leg.
A ping sounds and Theo’s pulse quickens. He switches to footage from the Orion suite. Avi Galev has entered. He wears a golf shirt and jeans. He walks directly to his closet, removes his duffel, sets it on the bed.
He takes out a rigid case—or pouch—opens it. It’s the same case Theo saw earlier with the medical injection pens. But Avi suddenly pauses. For a moment he doesn’t move.
Then, slowly, he glances up. Right at the camera. He stares directly into Theo’s monitor, looking straight into his eyes.
Theo stops breathing. He doesn’t move.
Avi’s eyes are ice. A killer’s eyes. Before Theo can move, Avi is across the room. His hand comes up.
It closes around the camera.
