Chapter 4 - Saturday Afternoon on Elm Street
Saturday arrived with a brilliant, cloudless sky that made the waters of Puget Sound look like molten silver.
According to his flight itinerary, Thomas’s return flight—Athens to Heathrow, Heathrow to Seattle—was scheduled to touch down at Sea-Tac Airport at 2:15 PM. From there, it would take him roughly forty-five minutes to clear customs, grab his luggage, and drive home to Elm Street.
At 1:30 PM, I was sitting at the kitchen island of our new Queen Anne townhouse, sipping a cup of chamomile tea while Alannah Cho’s process server—a formidable, gray-haired former detective named Miller—was already stationed three houses down from our former marital residence in an unmarked sedan.
My phone remained face-down on the granite countertop.
At 3:10 PM, it lit up.
Thomas.
I let it ring out. The screen went dark, then buzzed again ten seconds later. I picked it up and tapped answer, putting it on speakerphone so Priya, who had driven over to sit with me, could listen in.
"Cel?" Thomas’s voice came through the speaker, sounding breathless, irritated, and slightly disoriented. "What is going on here?"
"Hello, Thomas," I said, my voice as calm and flat as a frozen lake. "Did you have a good flight from London?"
A sharp pause crackled across the transatlantic-quality cellular line.
"London?" he stammered, a sudden, frantic edge creeping into his tone. "What are you talking about? I just pulled into the driveway on Elm Street. The house is... Celeste, where is the living room furniture? Where are Lily’s clothes? The master closet is half empty!"
"You mean the house in Seattle?" I asked mildly. "Yes, I imagine it looks rather sparse right now."
"Sparse?" he shouted, his voice cracking with sudden, unbridled panic. "The place is completely gutted! The TV is gone, the kitchenware is gone, half of Lily’s bedroom furniture is missing! What kind of sick joke is this? Did we get robbed?"
"You didn't get robbed, Thomas," I replied, taking a slow sip of my tea. "You got divorced."
Silence fell over the line—a heavy, suffocating silence so absolute I could hear the faint hum of the refrigerator in the background of his empty house.
"Are you... have you lost your mind?" he whispered, his voice trembling between rage and sheer incomprehension. "Where are you? Where is my daughter?"
"Safe," I said. "And you will not be seeing either of us."
"What are you talking about? I was in London all week! I just got back from a brutal international trip working my ass off for this family, and I come home to an empty house—"
"London," I interrupted, my tone dropping into a cold, lethal register that made Priya raise her eyebrows in silent approval. "That's an awfully strange way to pronounce Santorini, Thomas."
The line went dead silent. Not a breath. Not a sound.
"What... what did you say?" he breathed, the color draining entirely from his voice.
"Helios Cove Boutique Resort," I recited clearly, reading from the notes I had compiled on my desk. "Oia, Santorini, Greece. Private caldera suite with a plunge pool. Fourteen hundred euros per night. Check-in May fourteenth, check-out May twenty-first. Two guests: Thomas Beaumont and Olivia Marsh."
A sharp, audible intake of breath hissed through the speaker.
"Celeste... let me explain," he stammered, his bravado instantly evaporating into pathetic, sniveling terror. "It’s... it’s not what you think. Olivia was just—we happened to run into each other at the airport, she was heading to a conference, and—"
"Stop," I said quietly. "Don't insult my intelligence, Thomas. It’s pathetic, and it’s beneath you. Or rather, it’s exactly who you are."
"Where are you?" he demanded, panic overriding his cowardice. "Tell me where my daughter is right now, or I'm calling the police and reporting you for kidnapping!"
"Go ahead," I said calmly. "Call the police. Tell them your wife left you because you committed adultery with your ex-fiancée using marital funds to finance a luxury Mediterranean vacation while lying about a business trip. Tell them you want to explain that to a judge. In fact, you don't even need to call them—there's a gentleman waiting in a sedan three houses down from you right now who has a very thick packet of paperwork from Alannah Cho’s office with your name on it."
Before he could answer, I heard the faint, distant sound of a car door opening down his street, followed by heavy footsteps crunching on gravel.
"What is—" Thomas started.
"Goodbye, Thomas," I said.
I hung up the phone, placed it face-down on the counter, and looked up at Priya.
May you like
Priya raised her mug of coffee in a silent, reverent toast.
"And just like that," she murmured with a wicked, brilliant grin, "the castle falls."
