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ELIZABETH
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“I WANT YOU TO COME here and evaluate my furniture collection,” Khalid said one evening, a few days after Azem and Lily’s visit. “I can find a dozen reasons—it’s easier, more practical, the photos may not be sufficient—but the truth is, I want to see you. I want to know you better. Will you come?”
His invitation had stirred all sorts of emotions in me. I’d expected it, yet I was taken aback. Was it time to take our relationship to a different level? Too soon? Not fast enough? We’d known each other only for a few weeks, yet often I had the strange feeling Khalid had always been part of my life.
I took a deep breath. “Yes.”
I heard him exhale. “I thought I’d made an inappropriate proposal. Lily and Azem live with me, you know that. Did they mention the Killians, my caretakers? Harriet and Jason. They’re here, too. You’ll have your room and your workspace.”
I swallowed hard. “I’m a big girl, Khalid. And I also want to know you better, you know that. We’ll take it from there.”
“And see where it’s going to take us.”
“Sounds like a plan. And I’m looking forward to working on the inventory. Lily said there were exquisite decorative and art pieces in your house. There isn’t much to do here in Rosenthal anyway, not before we start working on the Baker Block.”
There was a short silence and then he said, “I’d have come to Rosenthal if I’d been able to travel.”
“Not even by plane?”
Another pause. “Unfortunately, no. There isn’t enough legroom on today’s planes even for people who can bend their knees or sit for a prolonged period of time.”
“How tall are you?” I asked.
“Six-two,” he said. He sounded amused; I could almost see a smile on his face.
I was smiling too. So, he was tall. As in my dreams.
“You—”
“Tall enough to have trouble with present-day economy class legroom,” I said assuming we were still talking about height.
He chuckled. “You won’t travel in economy class. What I wanted to say is that you might travel with Lily. She’s going to Rosenthal next week to finish some paperwork for me. Jason will fly her there and back. You can come with them.”
“Fly her in what? You’re not renting a plane, are you?”
“No, I’m not renting it. It’s my plane. I just bought it,” he said casually as if we were discussing bicycles. “I’m still not well enough to fly her myself, but I hope I’ll soon be able to show you Copper Ridge from above.”
“You’re a man of many talents and skills, Mr. Nouri,” I said. And secrets.
As if he had plucked that unspoken thought from my mind, he said, “Trust your instincts, Elizabeth. If they tell you not to come to Copper Ridge, then don’t. We’ll find another way to meet.”
To tell the truth, my instincts were on his side from the very beginning of our unconventional acquaintance. As for the secrets, there were bad ones, and good ones, the ones you should keep and the ones you could share. My instincts were telling me Khalid’s secrets wouldn’t do me any harm.
“I’ll see you next week,” I said.
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THAT EVENING I HAD to break the news of my upcoming departure to my little friend, Jacob. Sam and Molly were both working night shifts and Jacob was staying with me.
“Do you really need to go?” Jacob made a heartbreaking sob and dipped the tip of his grilled cheese sandwich into tomato soup. He took a small bite, chewed it and swallowed it as two big tears dropped into the bowl in front of him.
I brushed the tears away and kissed his ruddy cheek, upset at his apparent distress with my leave. As if he hadn’t had enough disturbing news recently. “I’m not going to stay there forever. It’s more like a business trip. My boss needs my help with something, but I’ll be back in a few weeks.”
“What if you never come back? Like my mom.”
I lifted his small chin and looked into his eyes. “I will come back, Jacob. I promise.”
He nodded and smiled. “Molly will be my mom. She says she’ll never leave me and Daddy because she loves us from here to the moon and sun and the farther star.”
“I know she does,” I said and brushed away his hair from his forehead.
“Why can’t your boss come to Rosenthal?”
“His leg hurts, that’s why.”
“He doesn’t need to walk. He can drive a car. Or take a plane.”
Unfortunately, not even owning a plane would make a difference. “He’s probably too busy, Jacob.”
“I don’t want you to go,” Jacob repeated. “Who’s gonna take care of me when Dad and Molly are working? What if my mom wants me to live with her? I don’t want to go with her. She lives far away. I want to stay here with Dad and Molly and you.”
Jacob started sobbing heavily and broke into tears. I reached for him and placed him in my lap.
“Shhh ... It’s gonna be okay,” I whispered into his hair, rocking him gently back and forth. “Of course, you’re going to stay here with Dad and Molly. Everything’s gonna be fine.”
“Mom phoned me and said she’d take me to a big city with lots of fun things for kids,” Jack wept, his small head buried in my chest, “but if I go there, I won’t see Daddy and Molly anymore. It’s far away, one hundred miles from here. I don’t want to go.”
Damn woman.
“It won’t happen, Jacob,” I said, and I believed it. Not because justice was on Sam’s side; justice and the law didn’t go hand-in-hand too often. I believed in Sam’s lawyers—Azem Nimmani and, even more, in Gottfried Vandermeer, “one of the greatest legal minds of our times,” according to numerous sources.
I had to admit that, at first, I’d been a bit puzzled with Sam’s choice, since neither Azem nor Mr. Vandermeer practiced family law. Sam’s ex-wife had somehow managed to hire one of the toughest family lawyers in he country. But Sam and Molly looked as though they had won the lottery and Lottie behaved as if the trial was already over.
And sure enough, soon I was also drawn into this unexplained yet strong sense of positive energy and optimism that I always felt in connection with Copper Ridge’s and Red Cliffs’ people.
I didn’t know, though, how to explain to a four-year-old boy that he had a legal dream-team in his corner, so I held him and kissed him and loved him instead.
“Can I come to visit you?” he asked quietly once he calmed down.
I stroked his hair in gentle, rhythmic movements. “We’ll ask your dad and Molly what they think about it. Okay, young man?”
“Okay. How many sleeps are you going to stay there? More than one hundred?”
In Jacob’s wonderful little world one hundred was the biggest number. “Oh, not even close to one hundred, Jacob,” I said and kissed him. “I promise. Hey, let’s make a tent in the living room, and we can make s’mores in the oven.”
Jacob jumped from my lap, a big smile on his face. “Okay. Can we turn off the lights and use flashlights?”
“Sure thing. Come, time to set up our camp for the night.”
And so, for the next while, Jacob and I were busy transforming my living room into a campsite. I turned the sofa around and pushed it to the wall so that we could use its back to tape the bedsheets to its edge to improvise a tent. We used blankets, pillows and cushions to make a cozy tent interior. Red, orange and yellow printing paper cut in long strips were our “fire,” burning in front of the tent. We ate s’mores and drank lemonade beside it. Later we made finger shadows on the tent wall. I read Jacob his favorite books. He was holding the flashlight until it dropped out of his little hand and he fell asleep.
I lay awake beside Jacob in our improvised campsite, holding him in my arms.
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THE FOLLOWING DAY LOTTIE and I went to buy some wardrobe and footwear suitable for the mountain climate.
Fortunately, Rosenthal’s clothes stores and boutiques were, if not cheap, then well supplied and manageable in number, turning our shopping quest into a quick and stress-free affair. Two hours later we sat in Palatine Hill, a popular Italian restaurant in downtown Rosenthal.
“Now you’re well equipped,” Lottie said nodding approvingly toward the bags and boxes piled on the two empty chairs. “It’s still deep winter up there, and it often snows in April, sometimes even in May. Here, take half.” She cut the last wedge of a stone-oven pizza we shared. “It supplies the mountains with a fresh coat of snow and extends the ski season well into spring.”
I remembered another peculiarity. “Why are there no avalanches in the mountains around Red Cliffs and Copper Ridge?”
“Nobody fully understands why. It’s somehow related to the unique microclimate of Red Cliffs and Copper Ridge. It’s warmer, less windy, more humid, with longer summers and shorter winters than the surrounding area. It’s a meteorological phenomenon of a sort.”
“That area has hundreds of thermal springs. This could be a reason for milder weather.”
“That’s one of the reasons, yes. Thanks to mild winters and above average humidity, they have among the best pastures in the world. Their beef is of superb quality. And their dairy products, oh, my god!”
“Humidity, you say.” I snorted. “My hair’s gonna love it!”
Lottie tilted her head and looked at me. “I really don’t understand why you don’t like your hair. It’s gorgeous. Other women would kill for your curls, yet you want it straight.”
“Show me a woman happy with her hair. You should see it in the morning. A wild bush.”
The waitress arrived to refill our glasses with Coke.
“Lottie, you mentioned you went to Red Cliffs, but have you ever visited Copper Ridge?” I asked when the waitress left.
“I was at Astrid and Jack’s wedding last September. I stayed in Copper Ridge with Rowena and Ahmed for two weeks.”
“Did you go to Rowena and Ahmed’s wedding?”
She looked at me, amused. “Wedding? Rowena and Ahmed are not married. Not yet.”
I sighed. “But you always talk about them as husband and wife. You know, I’ve had a feeling you know way more than you’re telling me. Mind sharing a bit of your knowledge before I go there?”
She dismissed my concern with a slight movement of her hand, stirring the conversation back to Ahmed and Rowena. “I didn’t think it was that important. Rowena and Ahmed have a child together. If that doesn’t make them a husband and wife, no piece of paper ever will.”
“I’m the last person in the world who’d have a problem with that. You need a paper to be divorced, though.”
“And where did that come from now?” Lottie asked.
“I hope Khalid has it, in black and white.”
“A piece of paper doesn’t make you married any more than it makes you divorced.”
“Do you know he is divorced?”
“Well,” she said, “I haven’t seen his divorce settlement with my own eyes, but I know his ex-wife is happily married to someone else and has children with him.”
Good enough for me, I thought, relieved. “What’s her name?”
“Eve.”
All about Eve ... “Lottie, the Eve you mentioned a few times, from Red Cliffs, can she be his ex-wife?”
“That Eve is Jack Canagan’s mother. She’s married to James Mohegan, Astrid’s uncle, who’s her second husband. They have two more grownup children together.”
“Well, the internet says Khalid is divorced. I decided to believe it because it suited me. But now that I’m going to Copper Ridge—”
“You’ll have an opportunity to ask him in person,” Lottie cut me off. “You overthink stuff, Elizabeth. Relax. I know these people. You’ll be safe among them, trust me.”
Once more, I tried to extract some information from my secretive friend. “Why can’t you tell me what you know about them?”
She reached for my hand and took it between hers. “They’re my friends, and some things they told me are personal. I won’t share them with anybody, including you. I’m telling you again, there is no reason for any concern. They are good people. Go there and see for yourself.”
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JASON KILLIAN, A GOOD-looking man in his mid-forties, arrived with Lily in the early afternoon on Friday. We had lunch together and then they set off to finish whatever they had to do before our flight to Copper Ridge.
They came to pick me up the following morning just after eight o’clock. I’d already locked my house when I asked them to wait for a moment and ran upstairs.
I rushed to my bedroom, opened the bedside drawer and grabbed the box of condoms Rick had given to me before I parted for Rosenthal.
Just in case.
I tucked the box deep into my purse and rushed down.
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THE PRIVATE AIRPORT for small aircraft was about twenty minutes south of Rosenthal. The day was perfect for the flight: sunny, clear and calm. As we walked across the runway, Jason was filling me in on the technical details about the plane.
“It’s a Cessna Citation CJ1+, a real cutie. Maximum speed 477 mph, a single pilot aircraft, five passengers. One of the best and safest small aircraft.” He carried on with the engine height, wingspan, cruising speed and takeoff distance.
Cessna’s specifications didn’t mean much to me, but I didn’t want to show Jason he’d lost me after the speed of the plane. It was the interior that impressed me, with its comfortable reclining seats, upholstered in reddish-brown leather, thick beige carpet, glossy cherry wood cabinetry and a small bar. Everything was spotless and smelled new.
Jason took his place in the cockpit; Lily and I buckled up our seat belts.
“The distance between Rosenthal and Copper Ridge is 998 miles,” we heard Jason over the speakers as the plane started moving. “We’ll be home in about three hours. Enjoy your flight, ladies.”
My heart skipped a beat. Home. Am I going home?
As if she could hear my thought, Lily smiled and briefly squeezed my hand.
Ten minutes later, we got permission to take off.