Today's Reading
"He just walked out one day..."
"How else do you think they do it?"
"I just mean, there was no special reason?"
"He had plenty of special reasons."
I frown.
"Heydon was diagnosed bipolar," she says.
"Like, sometimes happy, sometimes sad?"
Bobbie stares at me for a moment.
"Ground Floor," says the robotic voice of the lift.
"What I'm saying is Heydon wasn't always himself."
"Who was he when he walked out?" I ask.
"When he walked out, he was someone else entirely." I raise my eyebrows, but she quickly goes on. "The police found his car parked illegally on Albert Bridge at four in the morning. The driver's side door was wide open."
"I'm sorry. Albert Bridge is&"
"The one beside Battersea Park," she says. "Overlooking the Thames."
"Did they find anything in the water?"
Bobbie smiles sadly.
"Most of the time, they don't," she says. "You need to get lucky with tides and times and river traffic and stuff. Anyway..." She sounds like she's trying to draw a line under it all. "I just wanted to explain what that was back there. Convince myself I'm not going crazy."
It's the perfect chance to smile or say something nice, but I don't trust my motives, and in the time it takes to second-guess them, the moment passes.
"Are you flying in or out?" I ask instead.
"Out," she says, recalibrating. "Or that was the idea. My flight got canceled at the last minute. Some union thing with the crew. Now I'm on the eight fifteen to LA tomorrow morning. What about you? Are you staying at the hotel?"
"Sounds like a long day," I say, dodging the question.
"Oh, I don't know. So far, it's been fine. At least BA comped the room. Truth be told, I'm sort of dreading LA."
"Why? What's so bad about LA?"
"Oh, it's kind of a family thing."
"Are you guys traveling together?"
"No," she says. "I'm on my own tonight."
I see myself reflected in her shades.
"You don't get along?" I ask.
"We're volatile."
"Since your brother, or—"
"Since always. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm really fortunate and stuff. But in my family, nothing you do matters if you step even slightly out of line..."
"Have you stepped out of line?" I ask.
"I was talking about my brother," she says coolly.
"Did you really think I was him?"
Bobbie looks away, then back at me.
"Why not? You look like you've been out of the country for a while. And I don't think he killed himself."
"Right," I say. "Yeah."
"That's not based on nothing," she says, responding to some skepticism in my voice. "You don't know what Heydon was really like. You don't know about his heart."
"His heart," I say slowly.
"Heydon got a tattoo on his face a short while before he walked out." She touches her shades to show me where it would have been on his cheek. "A tiny heart, like a teardrop at the corner of his eye." Bobbie smiles. "That's one of the reasons I don't think he hurt himself," she says. "Why go to the trouble of doing it, then..." She trails off. "Daddy went ballistic. Miranda couldn't speak."
...
