Chapter 16

The days that followed were excruciating. Mark was still gripped by periods of guilt and concern about Julia. But these were now punctuated by wrenching feelings of regret about Lilith. There was something about the unfamiliar look in her eyes at the end -- which he knew must have been the product of shock -- the uncharacteristically monotone quality of her voice, and the way she had just stood up and left. All of that made it incomparably worse.

But most of all what he felt was an overpowering sense of physical need – an unbearable yearning for her touch, her scent, the eyes that danced in amusement at one moment and radiated passion the next. He found himself hoping she would suddenly appear in the night, awakening him with a kiss, slipping under the sheet, pressing her incomparable body against his.

She didn’t come.

On the fifth day, he could no longer bear it. He picked up the burner phone and dialed her number. He let it ring once and hung up as she had instructed him. He didn’t have a plan. He had thought vaguely about using the excuse that he just wanted the opportunity to apologize, but part of him knew she’d see easily through that. Better just to be honest and tell her he missed her and wanted to see her. To get some closure beyond what had occurred earlier. But in moments of clarity, he knew all of this was just self-delusion. What he really wanted was to go back to what they had had before.

Lilith didn’t call.

Mark checked the phone to be sure he’d called the right number. He had. He waited for two hours and then dialed again, letting it ring. On the third ring, he heard a mechanical voice telling him the number was no longer in service.

“Fuck!” he said, tossing the phone onto the bed.

Five more days went by with no sign of Lilith. Mark was at a complete loss. He’d checked every directory he could find, including the medical registries for every state. He’d written down every scrap of information he’d learned about Lilith and paid an investigative service a lot of money to do a rush, in-depth search based on that information. They’d come up with nothing.

He went over all of the information again, struck for the hundredth time about how little he knew about her. She’d been born in Switzerland; moved here when she was young; her parents were divorced; she had a sister she’d gone to college with in the U.S., but Mark didn’t know which one; and she had a degree in psychiatry from a medical school in Bern but didn’t practice. She’d obviously never registered as a physician in the U.S., because that would have shown up in the public records. He didn’t even know if the last name she’d given him – Keller – was real or fictional.

And then an idea hit him between the eyes – her sister, Katherine! He could look for her! He picked up the phone and called the investigative service.

Two days later, they found her. Her name was Katherine Keller and she worked at a research facility in the Chicago suburbs, something to do with computers. They’d send him a photo of her.

It was definitely her. Mark knew the moment he looked at the photo. It was the woman in the picture Lilith had shown him — Lilith with short hair.

The investigative service had also followed her and identified her home address. They had a work number and a cell phone.

Mark debated what to do. He could call her. But what would he say – “Hi, I’m a friend of your sister’s; where is she?”