Chapter 64 - Vanishing in Plain Sight
I did not run. An old woman running in an airport terminal is an immediate target for every pair of eyes in the room.
Instead, I slipped my coat over my arm, altered my posture by stooping slightly, and joined a slow-moving tour group of French retirees following a bright yellow umbrella. The guide was chattering loudly about bus transfers to the Algarve, holding her umbrella high like a beacon. I kept directly behind two tall men with matching windbreakers, using their shoulders as a visual screen.
The two security spotters swept past our flank, their gaze skimming right over the top of our group. They were hunting for a lone, well-dressed American woman walking with purpose, not an elderly tourist dragging a scuffed roller bag behind a guided excursion.
We reached the long glass elevators leading down to the metro concourse. While the tour group clustered toward the automated ticket kiosks, I stepped around the pillar toward the turnstiles. I swiped a pre-loaded transit card I had kept in my wallet since my first week in Lisbon, pushed through the gate, and hurried onto the platform just as the red indicator lights began to blink.
The train doors slid shut behind me with a pneumatic hiss.
I leaned against the stainless steel pole, my lungs burning as the train plunged into the darkness of the subterranean tunnel. Through the scratched glass of the doors, I caught a glimpse of the platform we had just left. Standing beside the tiled column was the woman in the dark trench coat. She had not reached the platform in time to board, but she wasn't panicking.
She was simply watching my carriage pull away, her lips parted in a thin, patient smile.
She knew where the line went. In a city like Lisbon, an underground train has only so many stops before it forces a passenger back above ground.
I stood in the center of the rattling carriage, my heart thumping against my ribs. For the first time since I had walked out of my house in New Hampshire, leaving Tori’s demands and Caleb’s spineless whining on the gravel driveway, I realized that my escape had never been about fleeing family drama.
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Tori and Caleb had merely been the catalyst. The door that Arthur had sealed shut thirty-six years ago had finally buckled under the weight of the past.
At the Alameda interchange, I did not wait for the platform to clear. I stepped off the train into the bustling throng of commuters, pulled my wool scarf high around my collar, and took the stairs two at a time toward the surface.
