Remember Mia Read Online Free PDF Page A

is torn to shreds.
    Jack grabs the pen and pulls it from between my fingers and checks his watch.
    “That doctor will help me remember and we’ll find Mia. We’ll find out what happened, right, Jack?”
    He closes his briefcase and leaves the room before I can even get my feet on the ground.

CH A PTER 5
    O ne day after I finished college, I told myself,
Take one year and figure out what you want to do with your life
. I was waiting for a sign, some sort of higher intervention one might refer to as palm-reader stuff. I’d walk down 57th Street and tell myself the next billboard that catches my eye, the next car graphic, tote bag, or flyer blowing my way was going to be the answer.
    At the time, I worked at a health insurance call center, where I met a woman who at first glance seemed out of place. Delilah, middle-aged, short, and heavyset, was covered in tattoos she hid amazingly well under white oversized blouses and cardigans. She was far removed from the twenty-somethings filling up the cubicles around us. Every time she pushed back her cardigan sleeves, a gesture signaling a difficult customer, a tattoo on her forearm emerged:
Dead Men Tell No Tales
.
    “You keep looking at my tattoo,” she said one day from the cubicle next to mine, and muted her headset.
    “Quite a message,” I replied.
    “Kind of a funny story,” she said.
    “Dead men tell no tales? How funny can that story be?” I asked.
    Delilah told me she’d been a prison guard for twenty-five years. With every passing year her people skills and faith in humanity took a turn for the worse. Her husband left her and she had no relationship with her five children—they weren’t even speaking to her. As a matter of self-preservation, she decided to spend the rest of her working career in customer service. “Forces me to work on myself every day,” she said and switched to a noncommittal voice accepting the next call in the queue.
    The concept intrigued me and I wondered about my own character shortcomings. I’d never sought lasting friendships, never seemed to truly connect to anyone else, and I had basically remained a loner all my life. I wondered if I just needed to meet new people or maybe the right people, or just put myself out there so I’d fit in somewhere. I quit my job at the call center that very day.
    Two days later I found a job as a hostess at La Luna, a bar and grill in Manhattan, mostly frequented by judges, DAs, defense lawyers, prosecutors, and armies of executives working in the surrounding buildings. La Luna’s neighborhood on Lexington and 50th was a hodgepodge of restaurants and bars, office buildings, law offices, and an occasional Starbucks to break up the monotony.
    Weeks later, I saw a man standing in line, waiting to be seated. He wasn’t stunningly attractive and there wasn’t anything unusual about him that caught my eye, but still I couldn’t wait for him to get to the front of the line.
    “Jack Connor,” he said and straightened his tie. He was expecting a party of two to join him and wanted me to give him the best table in the house. I liked the way he looked into my eyes and weighed his words before he spoke.
    He followed me to a table at the far end of the restaurant, lookedaround, and pointed at a table by the front window. “I think I’d prefer that one.”
    That’s how I met Jack. Me challenging myself, him telling me what I offered him wasn’t good enough. Later Jack read my name off the tag on my blouse, his voice a soft baritone.
    “Estelle Paradise.”
    Over the years, I had heard many jokes regarding my name and I was prepared for one then but none came. Jack was lanky and wholesome, but the dark circles under his eyes spoke of long hours and work beyond his physical capacity. I realized that his left eyebrow was noticeably raised and had a much more pronounced curve, as if the world was under his constant scrutiny.
    “You keep looking at my eye,” he said.
    “I don’t mean to, I’m sorry.” I