Chapter 29: “He’s showing off”
The bus terminal in that small New Hampshire town was a liminal space, a purgatory of cracked asphalt and the smell of stale diesel. It was a place meant for passing through, not for the culmination of a two-decade-old promise. Clara Davies stood near the rusted ticket booth, her fingers curled so tightly into the palms of her gloves that she could feel the faint thrum of her own pulse, a frantic, uneven rhythm that betrayed her practiced legal composure. For eighteen years, she had lived in a world constructed of vellum and ink. She knew the slant of Liam's handwriting, the way he looped his g's when he was tired, and the specific cadence of his humor that arrived in envelopes postmarked from the Irish coast. But as the heavy rumble of the afternoon bus vibrated through the soles of her boots, she realized with a jolt of pure terror that she didn't know the sound of his footsteps. She didn't know how his shadow would fall against hers. The air was crisp, tasting of the...