Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(8)

What are you supposed to do when you meet the right person—and realize you’re married to the wrong one? Suffer on indefinitely? Or seize a chance at happiness?

That night, for the first time in years, he considered reaching out to his mother. He’d lost track of her—hadn’t even bothered to find her and let her know when his father passed away a few years earlier—but if you really want to locate someone in this day and age, you probably can.

He climbed into bed beside Lauren, sound asleep in flannel pajamas, and he thought about his mother, and then he thought about Beth.

It was the first time he ever wondered what he might be missing. And so, Beth later told him, did she.

And now I know.

Good old pretech days forgotten, Nick checks his BlackBerry.

There’s a text message.

He smiles.

Did you find Sadie’s toy? Are you on the train yet?



“Not yet,” he texts back to Beth, and “I wish.”

A woman behind him emits a phlegmy cough. Hoping she covered her mouth, though it doesn’t sound like it, Nick looks up to check the progress at the counter.

“This is it,” the teenage girl decisively informs the very patient middle-aged woman behind the counter. Then the girl turns to her friend and adds, less decisively, “Don’t you think, Miranda?”

“Huh?” Her friend looks up from her phone.

“Like, don’t you think this is my iPod?”

“Check the playlists.”

“Yeah, but everyone, like, has the same playlists as me, you know?”

“I don’t have the same ones as you.”

“Yeah, but you’re a freak.”

Miranda sticks out her tongue. “Brat.”

The businessman makes the impatient sound Nick was just about to make, sparing Nick a couple of dirty looks from the two blondes. Behind him, the woman coughs again.

“So what’s the consensus, ladies?” asks the lost and found woman.

The one who isn’t Miranda shrugs. “I guess it’s mine.”

“Great.” She hands over a form. “You’ll need to fill this out, and I’ll need to make a photocopy of your ID.”

Photocopies? Paperwork? No way is Nick going to make the 6:22. Unless the paperwork is only for valuables?

Apparently not. The businessman, it turns out, left a five-dollar folding umbrella on a New Haven local the other morning. It takes him forever to figure out which of the couple dozen black folding umbrellas in the “July: Umbrellas” bin belongs to him, and when at last he does, he, too, has to fill out a claim form.

Finally he’s on his way, and it’s Nick’s turn.

It’s 6:20.

“My daughter lost her stuffed animal in the station,” he tells the woman, admiring the patience in her chocolate-colored eyes. If he had to work here and deal with people all day, he’d want to kill them or himself.

“When did she lose it?”

Good question.

“Recently.” He’d assume today, considering that Lauren told him Sadie couldn’t live without it—if his ex-wife didn’t have an annoying habit of turning even minor household issues into urgent crises.

“Recently as in this week? This month?”

He nods. For all he knows, the toy has been missing for a month, but…

“She lost it in the station?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know where, exactly?”

Nick quells the urge to challenge her exceeding patience and remind her that if he knew where, exactly, he most likely wouldn’t be here.

“I have no idea. She was with my wife. Ex-wife,” he amends hastily…and is rewarded with, not a dirty look, but not exactly a pleasant one.

“Do you know what the toy looks like?”

“It’s pink,” he tells her, “and it answers to Fred, and if I don’t get it back to Sadie, then, believe me, life as we know it is over.”

She smiles, God love her.

“You have kids,” he guesses.

“You bet. Hang on a second.”

She turns to peruse the shelf behind her, and returns to the counter with a large blue bin marked “July: Misc.”

“It’s pink, you said? Is it a pink flamingo?” She pulls one out.

“No. Not a flamingo.”

The woman behind him hacks away like she has tuberculosis.

Repulsed, he tries to remember what Lauren said about Fred. Was he a cat? A duck? Whoever heard of a pink duck?

“Is it a dog?” She shows him one. “It’s the only other pink toy in here.”

He nods vigorously. “Yup, that’s Fred.”

“You sure? Because it’s been here for a week.”

“Positive,” he lies. “That’s when she lost it. About a week ago.”

Maybe not, but it’s pink, and it’s furry, and there are no other pink toys, and the woman behind him is coughing up God only knows what, and he’s desperate to get out of here. If it’s not Fred, Sadie will probably never know the difference.

“I just need your driver’s license so that I can make a copy, and I need you to fill out this claim form.” The woman slides a clipboard across the counter.

“You actually keep a record of every single thing people lose and find around here?”