Chapter 2 - The Highway West
The flight from New York to Portland was half-empty, filled mostly with weary business travelers sleeping beneath thin blue blankets and the hum of the jet engines. Amy sat in a window seat near the rear of the cabin, staring out into the absolute blackness of the night sky.
Her phone sat in her lap, vibrating periodically against her thigh until she finally switched it off. The notifications had been relentless during the forty minutes she waited at the gate.
Daniel: Where are you? Daniel: Amy, this is ridiculous. My mother is hysterical. Daniel: What did you tell her? Call me right now. Daniel: We have the photo shoot for the merger announcement tomorrow at nine. You need to come back to the apartment.
Not once had he asked if she was safe. Not once had he asked why she had handed his grandmother’s ring to his mother. The messages were logistical, tactical, focused entirely on the breach of protocol she had committed by leaving his side during a high-profile evening.
Amy opened her leather bag and withdrew the cream envelope. Under the harsh overhead reading light, she pulled out the black-and-white printout. The fetus was clearly defined now—a tiny head, slender limbs, the curved spine lying peacefully within the dark shadow of her womb. On the back, in her neat cursive, she had written: He has your nose, Daniel. Let’s build something real this time.
She unfolded the paper, reading the words again and again until the ink blurred behind her tears. She let herself cry silently, pressing her forehead against the cool plastic of the oval window. She cried for the girl who had spent four years believing that every late night Daniel worked was a brick laid for their future family. She cried for the months she had spent sitting alone in their sprawling, silent apartment, convincing herself that his emotional distance was merely the price of ambition.
Most of all, she cried for the baby, who would grow up knowing its father only as a name in financial journals and a distant voice on a phone line.
When the plane touched down in Oregon just after four in the morning, the air smelled of salt, wet cedar, and cold dirt. Amy rented a modest silver sedan at the terminal, loaded her single trunk into the back, and pointed the car west toward the coast.
The drive across the Coast Range was quiet and foggy. Towering Douglas firs lined Highway 20, their heavy branches dripping with rain, closing over the road like a dark, green canopy. It was a landscape completely alien to the manicured avenues of Manhattan, raw, damp, and indifferent to human drama.
By seven in the morning, she reached Newport.
The town was just waking up. Fishing boats were idling near the docks along Yaquina Bay, their diesel exhaust mingling with the ocean fog. Seagulls circled low over the wooden piers, calling out into the gray light. Amy drove down the narrow asphalt street parallel to the harbor until she found The Anchor & Page, a two-story wooden building with faded green trim and a large brass bell hanging above the front door.
A light was already burning in the second-floor window.
Before Amy could even turn off the engine, the side door of the bookstore flew open, and Emily emerged, wrapped in an oversized knit sweater, holding two steaming mugs of coffee. Emily had been Amy’s roommate at Bryn Mawr fifteen years ago—a woman who had eschewed the corporate tracks followed by their peers to move west, open an independent bookstore, and live simply by the sea.
Amy stepped out of the car. The ocean air hit her face like a cold towel, sharp, clean, and full of salt.
Emily set the mugs on the hood of the car, pulled Amy into a deep, silent embrace, and held her there for a long time while the tide crashed against the jetty half a mile away.
“You made it,” Emily murmured against her hair.
“I made it,” Amy said, her voice raspy from exhaustion.
They carried the trunk up the narrow wooden stairs behind the shop to a small, warm apartment. It had exposed fir beams, a small wood-burning stove, and a window that overlooked the harbor masters' office and the gray expanse of the bay. It smelled of old paper, coffee, and dried lavender.
Amy sank onto the small sofa near the stove, letting the heat sink into her bone-deep cold.
“I left the ring with his mother,” Amy said, looking down at her bare hand. The skin where the platinum had rested for seven years looked strangely pale and vulnerable.
“Good,” Emily said quietly, handing her a mug of tea. “A ring is a promise. He broke his long before you took it off.”
Amy nodded slowly, resting her hands over her stomach. Beneath her palms, deep inside her body, she felt a tiny, faint flutter—so soft it could have been a bubble of air, but she knew what it was. It was the baby, shifting in the quiet morning light.
She slept for four hours, a deep, dreamless collapse born of pure physical exhaustion.
When she woke at noon, her phone was sitting on the bedside table. She turned it on. The screen lit up instantly, displaying a barrage of alerts. Thirty-seven missed calls from Daniel. Twelve from his assistant. Four from Margaret.
And one voice message from Rachel Sloan, the senior partner at Sloan & Vance, the firm that had managed the Bennett family’s legal affairs in New York for three generations.
Amy pressed the phone to her ear.
May you like
Rachel’s voice was crisp, controlled, and utterly devoid of panic: “Amy, I hope you are somewhere safe. Do not speak to Daniel, do not speak to his mother, and under no circumstances sign any document sent to you by Baron Capital today. Call me the moment you receive this. We need to discuss Bennett Family Holdings.”
Amy sat up, pulling the thick wool blanket around her shoulders, and dialed Rachel’s direct line.
