“Yet,” she pounced.
“And I won’t,” he said, “because I’ve worked hard to find balance in my life and to find a reason to live.”
“It doesn’t matter how much reason you have,” she said, “you still don’t get it. I don’t have a choice.”
“That’s not true,” he said. “Please don’t believe his lies. It’s not true.”
She started to back away from the bridge. As long as she kept going in that direction, he was okay with it. “Please go home and rethink all this,” he said quietly.
In the background he heard Kate.
“Simon, is that you?”
He reached up a hand and said, “See? She’s the police.”
“The police,” Mali gasped, then turned and looked at Kate, coming up behind him. But in a reaction that he hadn’t expected, she said, “God, I have to get out of here.” And, with that, she turned and bolted.
He tried to run across, but she darted into the traffic. Even as he tried to get across, a huge bus came up, and he saw a vehicle on the other side stop to give her a lift.
He cried out, “No, no, no.”
At that, Kate reached his side, panting from her race across the bridge. “What the hell is going on?”
He pointed and said, “Did you see the woman I was talking to?”
“Well, I saw someone, yes. Why?”
“It’s her,” he said. “It’s her.”
“Who’s her?” she asked quietly. “Come on. Let’s get some clarity here. Who are you talking about?”
“It’s the woman who I’m connected to.”
She turned and looked down the road. “She’s gone.”
“Yeah, I think she would have jumped tonight.”
“Well, it sounds like you got her to stop.”
“No, all I got was more confusion and no answers. I need to know who she is, although I do know something.”
“What’s that?”
“I know her first name—or at least a nickname.Mali. When I called out, ‘Mali, don’t,’ she asked how I knew her name.”
“Mali,” Kate said, as if turning the name over and over again in her mind. “Yeah, do you know her?”
“I don’t know her.”
But, at that, Kate stopped, frowned, and pulled out her phone. When somebody answered on the other end, she spoke quickly. “Check that email address list we were talking about, will you? See if a Mali is on it.”
“Can you spell that?”
“No, I have no idea how to spell it. Just run through whatever options there are.”
“Yeah, yeah, give me ten minutes.”
She put her phone back in her pocket and said, “I feel like there was an email address with a Mali in it.”