She nods with a faint smile that twitches as if she’s battling a grin. When she scurries away with the giggly pack, I set my shoulders and venture inside.

***

The train sits on my pillow, daring me.

Retrieved from my trunk, it’s but an arm’s length from where I’m planted on my bed and working up my nerve. Oh, stop dragging this out and look already.

I grab hold of the blasted train and disengage the cab. From the compartment, I pull out my tightly folded note to uncover Arie’s.

But there isn’t one. Just vacant space.

I gaze back at my own note, the very one he returned.

Did he write something inside? A penciled message I missed? To add his final goodbye to what I believed to be my own seems a crude choice. Unless…he figured it a natural link for me to correlate.

I gear up with a breath and unfold the page. By light streaming from the sky of gray clouds, I examine both sides. What I discover is…

Nothing.

Nothing past my own writing, anyway.

No scrawling in the margins. No additions to the blank side.

I search my mind for an explanation, an alternative, but can think of no other “missive” I already possess.

Might he have sent me a letter back in the States? If so, addressed to where? His parents’ home? In which case, why have Moretti deliver the hint to me here—or ever?

Then a prospect forms, though a grim one.

Prior to our full amends in Utrecht, our emotional spat revealed the grudge Arie carried for years. Before his trip, did he leave me the unsolvable riddle as revenge? Would he really have been that vindictive?

Or am I simply reaching for reasons to further justify my resentment?

As I seek other options, my gaze lingers over my nightstand candle. A childhood memory drifts back: the notes Arie and I used to share, each elusive in another way. From the first magic book he gifted me, we learned to write messages using acidic ink. With a paintbrush dipped in lemon juice, we’d scribe words that vanished once dry and were meant to reappear when hovered over a flame.

While doing so, I’d often relate a tale of Houdini and his wife. How he promised that, if able, he’d send her a message from the grave, a secret code only they would understand. For ten years after his passing, his hopeful bride held annual séances to no avail.

He should’ve just sent a telegram, Arie would smirk, to which I’d groan, indignant.

Well, I think it’s beautiful, I would say.

And now I question…if maybe…

I bring the page to my nose and take a sniff.

No trace of citrus. On either side.