Instantly, Elise nestled her hands in her lap, then closed her eyes. Her whole body seemed to relax.
Arrieta looked away from Elise. “She’s already there. She wanted to get out of this world so very much. But if you two don’t want to go...”
“Sorry,” Olivia said. Elise was smiling. She looked like she was sleeping—and like she was very, very happy. Whatever she was dreaming of, she was enjoying it. Olivia looked back at Arrieta. Whether what she was proposing was true or not, Olivia would like to again feel as happy as Elise looked. “I want to go back to exactly three weeks before they came to get Kit. I want every second I can get to change a lot of things with many people. I want—” She didn’t say any more because she felt herself drifting off, floating. Kit, Kit, Kit, she thought. With a smile, she imagined Uncle Freddy and Mr. Gates, the children, her parents, and... She felt too good to do any more thinking. She just gave herself over to the
feeling of being weightless, of not having a sad thought or feeling. She drifted. It felt like all the unhappiness of her life was being taken out of her mind, being removed from where it seemed to have settled down into her bones. She was smiling as she hadn’t done since... Since the day Kit left.
Arrieta looked at Kathy. “What do you want to do?”
“Be as happy as those two look. Do I click my heels?”
“To stop talking would make a start,” Arrieta snapped. “Sorry. I’m new at this. I’m not used to dealing with sarcasm and doubt and all the other bad things that go with this job that I never wanted in the first place.”
Kathy was looking at her with wide eyes. “When Ray went to Chicago,” she said softly, then closed her eyes. She was so skeptical about everything that it took minutes before she began to feel a release from what her life had become.
“Kathy!” she heard her father order. “Get us some coffee.”
“Get it yourself,” she heard herself say, and that made her smile. No one had ever talked to her father like that. Kathy began to smile so broadly that it was about to take over her entire body. The sheer size of the smile seemed to turn her inside out. She had no body, just an enormous, life-changing smile.
Arrieta looked at the three women, glad that they were where they should be, then got up and went into the kitchen to call her aunt Primrose. Everything was going well. So far, anyway.
Chapter Twenty-Two
As Elise pounded on the door of Carmen’s hotel room, her only thought was Alejandro. The skirt of her big wedding dress was thrown over her arm and her fist ached from hitting on the door. She was doing her best not to think of the horror of the last four hours. “Open up!” she rasped as she looked up and down the corridor. No one was there, but then they were probably all in the church waiting for Elise to march down the aisle.
Just hours ago, she’d been sitting in the little library of that woman, Arrieta, doing as she’d been told, and thinking hard about the time she wanted to return to. When the silence continued, Elise opened her eyes, expecting to see Olivia and Kathy sitting beside her.
Instead, she’d found herself in the big hotel suite her mother had booked for her to use for the wedding. Elise was sitting on a hassock with her ghastly wedding dress spread out around her. It was like a silk cloud left over from a nuclear explosion.
To her left was a full-length mirror, and to her right were four of the six bridesmaids that her mother had chosen. They were the unattractive daughters of the two mothers’ college friends. “They’re all rich and they’ll help you in the future,” her mother said when Elise protested them.
As she glanced in the mirror, she saw the girls huddled together, whispering.
For a few moments, Elise was caught in a halfway point between then and now, and she could still feel the elation she’d had on her wedding day. She was going to marry Kent! The man of her dreams. And a side effect was that in doing so she’d please everyone. She had a vision of both families smiling and sharing meals together. It was going to be heaven!
But now, years later, she knew how wrong she’d been. Marrying Kent had brought her more under the control of the families—and made her more unhappy.
It had taken her a few moments to adjust to the transition and she heard Kathy’s voice in her head, telling her what she needed to do was run away. She sent a bridesmaid to get the limo driver to come to her. He said that yes, her bags for the honeymoon were in the trunk, and he’d been told to take the newly wedded couple to a nearby hotel. There wasn’t to be a honeymoon as Kent couldn’t be away from work for long. Elise gave the driver a check for five grand and told him that in about an hour she wanted him to drive just her to the airport. He smiled as if this kind of thing happened all the time, and said he’d be glad to. She’d then booked a one-way flight to Bangor, Maine, on her cell phone.
After he left, her heart was pounding, but she was also exhilarated. She was going to do it! She looked at her left hand. No wedding ring. On impulse, she asked one of the girls where Carmen’s room was, making it sound like she truly cared about the help. Cared enough to strangle her, she thought, but kept smiling. When the girls didn’t giggle or exchange knowing looks, Elise was relieved. At least it didn’t seem as though they knew about Kent and Carmen.
It was only by accident that Elise found out that the limo driver had betrayed her. Just as she was about to leave for her triumphant scurry out of the church, one of the bridesmaids burst into the room saying that there had been a bomb threat. They all came to a halt. The girl had reached the conclusion that there was a bomb because Elise’s father had called a security company and they’d come quickly.
“There are men with guns standing in front of the church doors. And you should see the limo! There’s a guard in the front seat and one in the back. And I just saw two more security men waiting for the elevator. I think they’re coming up here.”
For a moment, Elise’s heart seemed to stop. When it began again, it was in her throat.
Think! she told herself. What would Olivia do? She wouldn’t stand for this! Elise thought. She’d probably say she wasn’t going to—
Okay, Elise thought, I’m not Olivia and never will be. But she knew of one place where it was guaranteed that no one would look for her.
Turning, she smiled at her bridesmaids and said that she’d like to be alone for a while. “To pray,” she added, knowing that that would clear them out quickly.
She closed the door behind them, waited about two minutes, then opened it and ran out. There were some hotel guests in the hall who ooohed and aahhed at the bride in her big white dress. Elise grabbed all forty pounds of the skirt and hit the stairs just as the elevator dinged.
Kent had rented his pregnant mistress a suite at the top of the hotel. No doubt he’d told Carmen that he needed her there. That he couldn’t get through the wedding to the bland Elise without the lusty, fiery Carmen nearby. Oh yes, if people were looking for Elise, the last place they’d look was in Carmen’s room.
She pounded on the door harder. What if Carmen was gone? What if—?