Lisa Jackson - Most Likely To Die

“No, I’m going to walk,” she said, anxious to be alone with her thoughts now that the evening with Aurora was drawing to a close.

Yes, it was time to try to prepare herself for what she faced tomorrow.

Standing beneath a large wall map, pretending to be studying the network of subway lines, she watched Lindsay remove a fare card from the automated machine and hand it to Aurora.

Then Lindsay pointed at the row of turnstiles, obviously explaining how to get through them, then find her way down the stairs to the right track.

The place was a zoo even at this hour of the night. And she herself was intimidated. There were so many different numbered and lettered lines coming through this station that she couldn’t imagine how people figured out where they were going. She wondered how Aurora was ever going to find her way back to the hotel.

Lindsay was obviously not planning on accompanying her. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be giving such a detailed explanation. She kept emphatically indicating the overhead sign, as if trying to make sure Aurora understood exactly where she was supposed to go.

Finally, they both seemed satisfied, and they exchanged a long, tight hug.

She found herself feeling resentful, watching them.

They looked as though they cared so much about each other, even after all these years.

They never cared about me that way. They pretended to, like everyone else did, but they didn’t really care.

Nobody did. Not even Jake.

And toward the end, he didn’t even bother to pretend anymore.

Fury bubbled up inside her, and it took her a moment to realize that Lindsay had disappeared.

She looked around, trying to spot her in the crowd. No sign of her.

There, though, was Aurora, about to go through the turnstile, poking her fare card into the slot.

Ah, the turnstile failed to open.

Momentarily amused, she forgot to look for Lindsay. Instead, she watched Aurora bang on the turnstile, then kick it.

Still it didn’t open.

Aurora whirled around abruptly, as if hoping to find Lindsay still standing there.

Oh my God…

Shocked, she found herself locking eyes with Aurora despite the throng of people that bustled between them.

She sees me!

Relax, you’re wearing your disguise.

Yes, she was…but it didn’t seem to matter. There was no mistaking the flicker of recognition, then shock, in Aurora’s gaze.

Then a uniformed MTA officer materialized at Aurora’s side to check the turnstile, and she seized the opportunity to duck behind a nearby signpost.

Oh my God.

She definitely saw me.

Now what?

Peering out from behind the sign, she watched as the officer leaned in and did something to the turnstile. It immediately opened.

Aurora faltered, glancing over her shoulder.

She’s looking for me.

The officer was gesturing impatiently for Aurora to hurry up and go through the turnstile, and several impatient locals waited behind her for their turns.

Helplessly, Aurora slipped through the turnstile with one last backward glance.

She still doesn’t see me…

No, but she did. She definitely did.

And you know exactly what you need to do about that.

What on earth was she doing here, in New York, of all places? Aurora wondered uneasily as she waited on the packed, cavernous platform for the next subway train to pull into the station.

Still unsettled by the unexpectedly familiar-yet unfamiliar-person she’d glimpsed upstairs, she tried somewhat unsuccessfully to ignore the hordes of strangers surrounding her down here.

She had never been entirely comfortable in crowds, and this was extreme. So many people, some passing so close they were practically touching her, some with terrible body odor, others speaking in various languages. There were crying babies and panhandlers shaking cups of change and someone, somewhere, was playing Van Morrison’s “Moon-dance” on a clarinet.

Maybe that wasn’t her upstairs, Aurora tried to convince herself, yet again.

But that didn’t work for more than a hopeful second or two.

It was her. Definitely.

She was wearing some kind of bizarre disguise. Her body was much heavier, and she had on a blond wig.

But her face was unmistakable.

And the look in her eyes…

God, that was scary.

Never before had Aurora seen her look that way. Darkly serious, almost…

Sinister.

That was why she kept trying to convince herself that it had been somebody else, standing there, watching.

Because it didn’t make sense for a friend to be looking at Aurora that way-much less be here in New York City at all, in fact.

Aurora stared blindly into the train tracks, wondering what she should do about what she had seen.

I’ll call Eddie the second I get back to my room and run it by him, she decided.

She always shared troubling developments with him first. Shared everything with him, really. Bad, good, exciting, scary.

Suddenly, she was fiercely homesick for her husband. For her house. For Portland.

Especially when she spotted movement amid the litter strewn over the rails just below the platform and realized it was a rat.

A real live rat.

Oh, God. This was too much. Aurora wanted nothing more than to go home.

Nothing was reassuringly familiar here, not with Tina so uncharacteristically wan, with Lindsay no longer at her side-and with her, up there in the station, looking eerily like a stranger.

Except a stranger wouldn’t have returned Aurora’s gaze so intently.

She shivered at the thought of that strange stare.

No, there was nothing familiar about New York on this night at all; she felt as though she had been dropped into an exotic foreign land-a war zone or something, because she had a vague, inexplicable sense of impending peril.

That’s just because you’re alone in a big city. Thirty-eight years old and you feel like you desperately need to hold somebody’s hand.

It was kind of pathetic, really.

I really am a bumpkin. That’s all it is. A bumpkin, and a baby.

Below, on the track, the rat scurried away abruptly and she felt, then heard, a distant rumble. It scared her for a moment-was it an earthquake? A terrorist attack?

Oh my God. Eddie…I’m so scared, Eddie.

Her heart pounded as the rumble grew steadily louder.

Dear God in heaven, Blessed Mother, please, please help me.

She looked up to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

The train.

Oh.

That was all it was.

The subway train was roaring into the station.

Aurora instinctively stepped back from the edge of the platform as it approached-rather, she tried to.

Somebody was right behind her, of course-it was crowded. She felt herself being jostled. The person behind her was pressing up against her. Hard.

No.

Not pressing.

Pushing.

Panic worked its way into her throat as she realized she was too close to the edge.

She was losing her balance, and the train was coming, and she was falling, dear God, please, no, she was falling, and-

The last thing that went through Aurora Zephyr’s mind was that she wasn’t going to live to be a grandmother after all.

Saturday morning, Lindsay went to the gym first thing for her usual one-hour spinning class. Whenever she was stressed, she could count on finding relief there, mindlessly riding the stationary bike over imaginary mountain roads in the dark, music blasting.

But the exercise didn’t relieve her physical tension today, and it wasn’t mindless.

She kept seeing Wyatt’s face, and Leo’s.

Rather, seeing Leo’s as a younger version of Wyatt’s. In Lindsay’s mind’s eye, her son had morphed into the Wyatt she had known back in Oregon, tall and lean with a shock of black hair, flashing black eyes, and a smile like a sunburst.