“I’m on my way.”
18
Griffin and Barbara stood in front of the hospital. The wind picked up, blowing a cold drizzle over them.
“It’s amazing that he’s doing as well as he is,” Barbara said, hunching her shoulders to the wind. “They’re keeping him overnight to get him rehydrated and to get his blood pressure down. But, as long as all the blood tests come back normal, he should be able to go home in a couple of days.”
“I’m glad it all worked out,” he said. “Could have been much worse.”
She exhaled hard. “Yeah, I don’t even want to think about how badly things could have gone. Listen, I owe you a huge debt of gratitude for helping me find the bank and the diamonds. I know I wouldn’t have been able to do that without you.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” he said. “I was happy to help you.”
Barbara noticed a sadness to his eyes. It was the same emotion she felt. Their short time together was coming to an end and she wasn’t ready to let go. But Greece was waiting for him, his dreams, his career. There was no way she would tell him not to go. Neither was she going to get between the man and the things he needed most in life. She knew how important those things were to a person. They had been within her reach at one time, too.
He touched his hand to her face and kissed her gently, as if he tried to prolong the moment. “I know I don’t have a right to ask this, not with everything you have going on here,” he said. “But I want you to come with me. To Greece.”
Happiness rose from deep inside and cut through all the sadness. It felt right, being with him, the idea of traveling with him. “I would love that.”
He kissed her again. “But you’re going to say no, aren’t you?”
“I have to take care of my dad.”
“— your dad,” he said at the same time she did. “I understand. I just want you to know—that I don’t want to walk away from what we’ve started here.”
She drew her finger down the middle of his chest and detoured toward his heart, drew a circle around it. “I could visit.”
His lips flattened into a line and he nodded.
She knew what he was thinking, that long distance relationships didn’t work. In their case she wasn’t convinced that he was wrong. It didn’t seem possible to go from knowing one another for just a few days to a long distance relationship and have that even remotely work.
“Look, I know you’ve got family obligations here, I don’t want to get in the way of that. It’s just that—I think life is short. And it doesn’t always turn out the way we plan. So when the right thing comes along, when the stars finally align in such a way that put your dreams within reach, I think you have to go for it. And I—I went for it. If I hadn’t, I know I would have regretted that for the rest of my life.” He cradled her head in his hand and he kissed her. “And I don’t do regrets anymore.”
He kissed her again, a good-bye kiss this time, and it nearly broke her heart in two.
19
Barbara sat in the courtyard behind her condo. She let the soft winds caress her skin, let it run its fine fingers through her hair. As she had so often done over the last year and a half, she closed her eyes and tried to pretend that the crows calling in the distance were seagulls, that she was on the beach in Greece. That the rustle of the breeze through the trees was the deep blue ocean rolling onto the white sand. She’d done it so many times before and she knew if she concentrated hard, it would almost feel real.
But this time it didn’t work and she knew why. Before David died, she had it in the back of her mind that she would actually go to Greece. Now, she couldn't bring herself to visit the country, not now that Griffin was there, not now that she knew what she was missing. Their connection was meant for something beautiful, something long lasting. It would hurt too much to either go and miss out on seeing him altogether, or to see him for just a few days—knowing they couldn't have anything more. “Long distance relationships don’t work,” he had said. In their case, at least, she didn't disagree.
Her heart ached at the thought of him. It seemed unreasonable for her to miss someone she hadn’t known that long. But he had opened a door for her, one that made her want to live again, one that made her realize how she hadn’t lived in a very long time.
She would have thought the connection they shared would have given her the lasting sense of direction she wanted to rebuild her life, but it still evaded her. She wanted it back.
Kris had called earlier and said that Stephen was coming home. The army was letting him take his unused leave time to end his tour early, so he could be home for the birth of his daughter.
“My life is about to be completely different—with a husband and a baby in the house!” Kris had said. “You’re going to have to rescue me once a week, girls’ night out. Okay?”
Barbara was happy for her. Dreams like that should come true.
She’d like to think that Stephen would help with Pop, but he and their father had never gotten along. They were too much alike. Both of them were too headstrong and obstinate.
She went inside and scanned the quiet home that had once been so full of life. She had spent more than enough time mourning the loss of her dreams, the loss of David and the child they would never have together. But she hadn’t spent much time, if any, dismantling the framework of those dreams. She still wasn’t sure how she was ever going to effectively move on with her life, but she did know that she had to get rid of the condo.
There wasn’t much left to do. Kris had handled most of the packing while Barbara had been in Brevard. Barbara went upstairs and looked at the glow-in-the-dark stars that David had glued to the ceiling of what they thought would be their child’s nursery. The house would show better if all their personal touches were gone. So she dragged a ladder from the hallway to the center of the room and began to peel the stars from the ceiling.
The front door slammed on the level below. “Barbara?”
“Up here, Pop!” she called.
The adhesive was thick and gummy. She took a knife from the toolbox and jiggled it in between the bumpy plaster and the soft, decorative star.
“Where?” her father called, his footsteps trudging up the squeaky stairs.
“In here,” she said.
“Oh, wow. You want some help?”
“No, I got it.” She turned and looked at him. “You’re getting your color back, and those bruises are fading. You’re putting the arnica gel on them like I showed you?”
“No,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “What’s the point of people helping you if you aren’t going to follow orders?”
“I’ve never been all that good at following orders. I did just get a text from Detective Boone. A guy in London approached an upscale jeweler on Hatton Garden, their diamond district. He tried to cash in a bunch of diamonds. The jeweler called the authorities, said it was such a large quantity of jewels, something didn't seem right.”
“Ajay?” she said, hoping they caught him.
"Yeah, they have a photo from the store security camera.” He showed her his phone screen. "Detective Boone had an APB and an APW on him, so this information made it back to him. He got away but they'll get him. When they do I’m going to enjoy testifying against him.” Her father stretched his jaw as if it were still sore.
“Me, too," she said. They exchanged a look, one that said they were glad it was all behind them.
“Listen, sweet pea. I’ve been thinking.”
She tugged hard on one leg of the star and it ripped. A piece of the star bounced off the top of the ladder with a clink and landed in the carpet. She climbed down.
“Thinking about what?” She heard the irritation creep into her voice and she silently chastised herself. It wasn’t right for her to be frustrated with him. She was just disappointed about Griffin and the fact that he was gone. She would get over him, she would heal. Life moved on.
“I think we need to work out a new arrangement,
” he said.
“What kind of arrangement?” She dug her fingers into the long shag of the cream carpet and tried to find the piece whose clink sounded sharp.
“You’ve done so much for me since your mother died. I couldn’t have gotten through it without you. You’ve been my rock.”
She sat on her heels and looked at her father. He had a renewed strength such that the blue in his eyes appeared electric. Even youthful.
“Same goes for you, Pop. Not sure how I would have gotten through David’s death without you.” Something hit her funny about hearing her former husband’s name aloud. There was a finality to it. As if in that very moment, her life with him had moved further into the past. Relegated to far away memories like old pictures and things to be discussed at the Thanksgiving dinner table.
He sat on the carpet next to the door and leaned against the wall. “I think I may have done you a disservice. You’re young, honey, and—”
“Pop, you’ve been through two heart attacks and you lost your wife. It’s a lot and there’s no way I wouldn’t have been there for you.”
“See, that’s one of the reasons I appreciate you so much. You give beyond measure. But—”
“Pop, don’t.”
“No—Barb. Hear me out. I think we’ve gotten into a pattern, and maybe not a healthy one. After your mother died and the heart attacks happened, I thought my life was over. You’ve been so attentive, but I’ve leaned on you too much. You’re living more like you’re my age instead of your own. You have a lot of life ahead of you. You need to go live it.”
She opened her mouth to object and he gestured for her to wait.
“I would enjoy a little more independence in my life these days. Being kidnapped made me realize that I’m not ready for my life to be over yet. I have a son coming home and a grandchild to welcome into the world, I need to lighten up and live the life I have left.
“I love you, and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. But I don’t want you to sit on the sidelines of life to take care of me. Your mother and I saved well, I can hire companion care if things get that bad. Stephen might step up to the plate and help now and then, if I need him to. Becoming a dad might soften him.”
She gave him a wide-eyed look and he said, “I’ll try to be more agreeable with him, too. Look, I don’t know much about this Griffin guy, but I would just say that you’re smart and intuitive. If you think he’s a good guy, then maybe you should take a chance on him.”
“I’m not going to leave you to travel halfway around the world with someone I hardly know.” Her heart clenched.
“You have a gift for reading people. If you got a good reading on him, you should trust that.” His blue eyes, clear and strong, focused intently on her.
“Well, my gift doesn’t always work. I couldn’t read David.”
“I think I may be able to shed some light on why you couldn’t read him.” Her dad reached into his back pocket and slid a folded piece of paper toward her.
“When the police were here gathering fingerprints on the night of the break in, they found a set throughout the house that didn’t belong to anyone we knew. I had Detective Boone run a search on them, to see what might come up.”
Barbara opened the paper and it shook in her hands. There was a picture of David’s face on a California driver’s license.
“I didn’t get the report until this morning. Turns out that David Silver wasn’t his real name. His real name was Adam Drucker.”
She read the name aloud, associated it with the man she knew as her former husband: “Adam.” A bolus of energy shot through her and she recognized the information immediately: funny, kind, secretive, obsessed with having money, insistent to take care of her—it was her former husband.
She’d known that David had always kept something from her. But she hadn’t been able to put her finger on what it was. Now she knew. David wasn’t his real name! Her heart thumped heavy and hard and made her breathless.
“I had a hunch that if he had stolen this time, it probably wasn’t the first time,” her dad said. “So I had Detective Boone do some digging and he discovered that David had worked for another import export business in Los Angeles under his real name. That business was investigated in a case a few years back for—guess what?”
“Diamond smuggling,” she said.
“Bingo.” He pointed his finger in her direction. “My guess is that David somehow saw how easy it was to get away with taking a few diamonds and decided to replicate that business on the opposite coast. He was smart to do it under a fake name the second time around. Unfortunately, he got caught.”
Barbara thought of the photo of David and his mother that he always kept in his pocket. “He always said he was going to make damn sure he could take care of his family. No matter what life threw at them.”
“How would he have been able to replicate that business?” she asked.
“All of these smuggling rings operate legitimate businesses on the surface. I’m sure he left Los Angeles with their contact information. He probably solicited them as an honest import/export business looking to gain new customers. Only he knew their businesses were a cover for smuggling gems. Once they signed with him, all he had to do was wait for the shipments to roll in. Then, he would search the crates and their contents to figure out where diamonds were hidden. He would only have to take one diamond now and then to make a small fortune.”
She shook her head in amazement. “I don't know why he didn't just trade the diamonds in for cash?”
“He must have traded a few in order to pay off the medical bills. Beyond that, he was probably playing it safe. Cash is harder to hide than diamonds. That’s why the smuggling rings are such big business, diamonds are just so easy to hide.”
Her fingers finally found the small piece she had dropped in the carpet and she held it up. “Oh my gosh. Pop.” She walked it over to him and put it in his open palm.
“You found this in the carpet?”
She pointed to the ceiling. “It fell out of one of the stars.”
One by one she removed the stars from the ceiling, and behind each one, stuck on the adhesive, was a clear diamond. Fifty in all.
“Unbelievable. These are huge. They have to be worth what—twenty thousand each?”
“I’d say more like fifty thousand each.” Her father inspected one of the diamonds.
“That’s three million dollars!” She grabbed the top of her head and stumbled backward a step. “Why would David plant diamonds here and at the Statue of Liberty?”
The answer came to her as soon as the question left her lips. “Plan B,” they said together.
“David always had a plan B,” her father said.
“Sometimes a plan C, as well,” she said.
“I would bet he had the diamonds here or maybe at the warehouse until he thought they might have caught on to him. Then he moved them. Obviously kept some here, knowing you would be the only one to find them if anything happened to him.
Barbara nodded, realized he was right. “Do we turn these in to Detective Boone?”
Her father put the diamond into her palm and folded her fingers over it. “Keep them.”
“Are you serious?”
“Take them for the fresh start that David, or Adam, would have wanted you to have. The police already think Ajay has the entire stash. No sense in these collecting dust in a warehouse somewhere. You keep ‘em. Start that spa business you’ve wanted for so long. You deserve a break for a change.”
She held several diamonds to her chest in a closed fist and thought about what to do next.
20
Griffin stood at the roped edge of what looked to be the ancient Minoan settlement that he and so many others had searched for over the years. Luke stood under the white tent, holding a stack of surveys and maps and instructed a team of young archaeologists as to how the dig would progress.
Griffin rubbed the ache in his chest, the one that wouldn’t let go. He wondered abou
t relationships and if they could ever be truly happy for both people involved. He had watched his mother stay with his father because she thought it was best for the family, regardless of the cost to her. Then he watched her shrivel and nearly die under the weight of that obligation.
He had given up his archaeological work for Loralee, thinking that was what he needed to do to make her happy—for them to be happy. But that hadn’t been enough for either of them.
Two people had to want the same things in order for a relationship to work. Sacrifice was necessary and important, but their goals had to be aligned, or at least complimentary. Of course, love and trust had to be at the center of it all. He learned the hard way how to trust what was right for him. In relationships, it had taken him time to learn that he couldn’t override that small, wise voice.
He had traveled halfway around the world to accomplish his lifelong dream of making a significant discovery. He had left Barbara to her own decisions. He understood that she needed to take care of her father.
There would be plenty of work, and assuming they found the lost city, accolades. Money would follow, as would prestige, and offers to lead other expeditions. It was everything he ever wanted.
He adjusted his hat to block out the afternoon sun and stared at the sapphire-colored sea that stretched toward infinity. He turned his face upward to the sky so bright and cloudless that it didn’t look real. And yet none of its beauty touched his soul.
Rock and dirt crunched beneath Luke’s work boots when he walked toward him. “Good progress so far.” He patted Griffin on the shoulder.
“Yeah, I’m really pleased. Listen, I’m going to head out of town for the weekend.”
“Where are you going?” Luke asked.
“I’ll be back on Monday.”
* * *
The yellow Mercedes cab drove too fast along the narrow cobblestone streets. Barbara fumbled through her purse, trying to find her sunglasses and found the folded receipt instead. She opened up the letter-sized paper and examined the details, feeling a sense of pride.
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