Page 143 of The Unfinished Line

“You know I’m here, yeah, if you ever need a chat?”

Dillon waved her off. “It’s all good, Sam, really. Every day’s forward progress.”

More headshrinker rhetoric.

Sam bumped her shin with her toe. “I ever tell you you’re a piss poor fibber?” But she let it go.

Two stops later, they parted at Paddington, promising to get together soon. Dillon was staying back at her flat in London, scheduled to meet with a new physiotherapist, and assured Sam she’d call her in the next couple of days. They’d get dinner.Maybe she’d even allow Sam to drag her from hiding to catch an Arsenal match the following weekend.

Something both of them knew wasn’t going to happen.

After Sam disappeared on the underground, Dillon skirted the turnstiles to theBakerloo Lineand took the stairs to the street exit. She could feel her knee with every step, the subtle grind that never seemed to vanish.

Another month.

The words rattled around her head. How easy it was for Dr. Monaghan to sit in his plush corner office and say that. To nod like he understood and then tap his pen against the screen and tell her to be patient.

We knew from the start a summer recovery would be a long shot.

She stepped off the curb, fishing her vibrating phone out of her pocket.

Kam was calling.

Behind her, a cabbie honked, hustling her along the crosswalk. Dillon flashed him a two-finger salute and sent Kam to voicemail. It was late in Morocco. She would call her in the morning.

Tentative, she jogged a few steps onto the pavement.

You’re basically her idol,the kid on the train had said.She’ll be rooting for you this summer.

Her gait felt stiff, her steps heavy beneath the staccato rhythm of her trainers.

Quickening her pace, she continued down the street, past the off-license advertising bottles of Smirnoff in the window.

There were twenty-five days until Yokohama.

She lengthened her stride, ignoring the protests from her weakened knee, and disappeared into the darkness of Hyde Park.

Twenty five days.

Fuck Dr. Monaghan.

Scene 47

I stood on the balcony of my seventeenth-floor high-rise, holding my modem up in an offering to the gods of WiFi. Briefly, my computer—perched haphazardly on a Balencia chaise lounge—chimed its connection, before promptly losing signal. I cussed, tempted to fling the device over the railing onto Pacific Coast Highway.

It was bullshit to live where I lived and still have sketchy service. I would have had more luck connecting toTico’s Taco Shopbut the owner had gotten wise and applied a password.

Sweeping through the wide French doors, I reset the router and pulled a bottle of Château Lafite out of the wine cooler. As I waited for the box to reset, I tipped the chilled red into a Waterford crystal goblet Dani had sent as a housewarming gift. Her version of a peace offering. The sight of the glass suddenly intensified my loathing for the superfluous opulence around me. The walls of windows. The high beam ceilings. The travertine and hand-carved crown molding and Miele dishwasher larger than my first refrigerator.

I’d moved to the oceanfront penthouse six months earlier. It was my second move in as many years, and though I’d instantly hated the extravagance of the suite and the maddening drive from the studio during rush hour, the building served its purpose. It was private. It was secure. And it was designed forpeople like me: people who lived high-profile careers and didn’t care how much they had to pay to buy their little piece of freedom.

But it didn’t stop me from missing my six-hundred-square-foot, run-down one-bedroom in WeHo.

I loved that apartment. I missed the bohemian vibe of the community. The tree-lined walk to the farmer’s market. The neighbor’s cat who used to sit in my screened window and yowl the song of her people.

And more than anything, in my present predicament, I missed the steadfast reliability of the internet.

Dillon’s start time in Yokohama was in less than twenty minutes.

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