Page 55 of Just One Look

“In the toilets?” Sofia asked. “That’ll be interesting. I’m coming.”

“Suit yourself.”

No Elizabeth on the way over there. Not in the jewelry department, not in the purse department, and not in the hosiery department, in which he got a bit distracted, because women didn’t wear stockings nearly enough anymore, in his opinion, and there were some nice ones here. Not in the shoe department, either, where a lesser woman may have lingered.

Sofia said, “Told you. Bolted.”

He said, “Go into the Ladies’ and see if she’s there.”

“What, charge in there and shout, ‘Dr. Whosit! Paging Dr. Whosit! Your patient needs you, stat!’ What’s she going to think of that? Reeks of desperation. Anyway, I thought you were dating another model. I saw your photo with her at some awards thing. You cheating again?”

“I don’t cheat,” he said. “I often date non-exclusively.”

“Oh,” she said. “Is that what you call it?”

“Yes,” he said, “because that’s what it is. And are you going in there or not?”

“Not,” she said. “Because this is good for you.”

He headed for the door. She said, from behind him,“Luka.Are you mad? You can’t!”

He pushed the door open. He didn’t go inside. He didn’tlookinside. He called out, in the voice that could carry across a rugby field over fifty thousand screaming supporters, “Elizabeth? If you’re in there, come out, because I’ve got your bottle of scent, and I need to take you to dinner. If you want to say no, say it, but you’re not allowed to hide. You’re a surgeon. Surgeons don’t hide.”

* * *

Piper was saying,“I can’t believe you didn’t tell us you were here! Did you think we wouldn’t want to see you? Of course we want to see you. And I’m sorry we lost touch. I was a bit …” She bit her perfectly full lower lip. “A bit … underwater for a wee while there, and by the time I tried again, your email address bounced. What are you doing now? Did you become a doctor after all? Why are youhere?You still haven’t really explained.”

Elizabeth said, “I’m a surgeon. As planned. I’m working. On a … a prolonged working visit.” That had come out a bit stilted, but it sounded all right, less like she’d been deliberately avoiding Piper. She could have said,I didn’t know how to reach you,but with her luck, Piper would have kept her same email address, and there Elizabeth would be, squirming like a worm on the hook, exposed in her lie.

If you lied, you had to protect your lie, which meant that you were always on the defensive, having to produce more lies. So much better to tell the truth, however hard it was in the moment, so every interaction after that could come from a genuine place. With patients, and in life.

Turn the conversation.“What are you doing now?” she asked. “How’s your mom?” Everything she’d said so far had come out awkward, but that didn’t mean she had tostayawkward. She was thirty-four, not eighteen. She was eminent! “Where are you working?” she decided to ask. “Do you, uh … have any kids?” That was a question people asked, right? She’d already noticed that Piper wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but that could mean anything. Not everybody did the marriage thing anymore.

With luck, Piper was happily settled down with the filthy-rich, jaw-droppingly handsome, extremely generous boyfriend she’d always joked about, not heartbreakingly divorced from Luka after fifteen wonderful years together and four beautiful children. With luck, there was no love-of-my-life thing going on at all.

She gave another scrub to her arms, not because the perfume wouldn’t be washed away by now, but because, the minute she walked out of here with Piper, she’d have to see Luka. She’d have totellLuka. She’d also have to find out the truth and witness the reunion.

It would be sixteen years ago all over again. Eighteen years ago. Twenty years ago. Too much of her life.

That was when his roar filled the tiled room and bounced off the walls, and every woman in the place jumped and stared at each other.

Piper said, “Is thatLuka?”The blue eyes looking … stricken.

Elizabeth thought,No.After that, though, she said, “Let’s go.”

Luka was right. Surgeons didn’t hide. When you had to go out and tell a husband, a wife, a mother whose whole world had just collapsed that the person they loved best was gone, you did it, and you stayed while they cried. When you had to throw an inappropriate resident out of your OR, you did that, too. It was up to you, and it was nobody else’s job. You were responsible.

She’d run from this feeling for most of two decades. She was tired of running.