There are things, that without meaning to, Owen has told only me.
So I make another list. A list of everything I know about Owen’s past. Not the false facts—Newton, Princeton, Seattle. The other facts—the nonfacts: things I learned accidentally during our time together, things that in retrospect seem like strange encounters. Like the guy from Roosevelt High School. I look Roosevelt up, and find eighty-six of them spread across the United States. None of them are anywhere near Massachusetts. But eight of them—in places like San Antonio and Dallas—are spread out across Texas.
I put a pin in that and keep thinking, landing on the night with Owen at the hotel, the piggy bank on the bar. Which is when I realize something about that piggy bank—something I’ve been struggling to remember. Am I remembering it correctly now, or am I conjuring up the memory out of something like desperation? I shoot Jules a text to check it out for me and keep thinking.
I keep working my way through things only I know: the anecdotes and stories that Owen has told me late at night. Just the two of us. The way you only do with the person you’ve chosen, the witness to your life.
Those stories, the stories he shared when he didn’t even realize he was sharing, can’t all be false too. I refuse to believe it. I will refuse to believe it until I’m proven wrong.
I start rolling through them, Owen’s greatest hits: the time he took a boat trip down the Eastern Seaboard with his father, barely sixteen years old, the only time he ever spent several days alone with his father. The time during his senior year of high school that he let his girlfriend’s dog out to play and the dog ran away, Owen getting fired from his first job for spending that afternoon searching for the dog instead of returning to work. The time he snuck into the midnight screening of Star Wars with his pals, his parents awake at 2:45 A.M. when he finally walked in.
And a story he told me about college, about why he started to love engineering and technology so much. Owen’s freshman
year of college, barely nineteen years old, he took a mathematics course with a professor he adored, someone he credited with his current career. Even though the professor told Owen he was the worst student he’d ever had. Had he told me what the professor’s name was? Tobias something. Was it Newton? Or was it Professor Newhouse? And didn’t he have a nickname he went by?
I race upstairs and back into the hotel room to wake Bailey—the one person who maybe has heard the story about this professor more times than I have.
I pull the comforter off and sit down on the edge of her bed.
“I’m sleeping,” she says.
“Not anymore,” I say.
She reluctantly props herself up against the headboard. “What is it?”
“Do you remember the name of your father’s professor? The one he loved so much, who taught him freshman year?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says.
I fight my impatience, thinking of all the times Bailey has rolled her eyes at this story—at how Owen has used it as a teaching opportunity. He’s used it to convince Bailey to stick with something that matters to her, to commit to her plan. He’s used it when he was trying to convince her of the opposite.
“You know this story, Bailey. The professor taught that impossible course in gauge theory and global analysis. Your father loves talking about him. The professor who told him that he was the worst student he’d ever had. And how that actually made Owen want to do better. How it focused him?”
Bailey starts nodding, a slow recognition. “You mean the guy who put my father’s midterm on the bulletin board, right…?” she says. “So he wouldn’t forget all the ways he could improve.”
“Exactly, yes!”
“Sometimes your passion takes work and you shouldn’t give up on it just because it isn’t easy…” She takes on Owen’s voice, imitating him. “Sometimes, kid, you need to work harder to get to a better place.”
“That’s it. Yes. That’s him. I think his first name was Tobias but I need to know his full name. Please tell me you remember it.”
“Why?” she says.
“Just, can you remember it, Bailey?”
“He called him by his last name sometimes. A nickname for his last name. But it started with a J… didn’t it?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“No, I don’t think that was it… It was Cook… He called him Cook. So maybe it was Cooker?” she says. “Or was it Cookman?”
I smile, almost laughing out loud. She’s right. I know it as soon as I hear it. It’s good to know I wasn’t even close.
“What’s so funny?” she says. “You’re freaking me out.”
“Nothing, that’s great. That’s what I needed to know,” I say. “Go back to sleep.”
“I don’t want to,” she says. “Tell me what you figured out.”