The Last Thing He Told Me

He smiled. “I should be able to duck out of work early tomorrow. If you’re in the market for a sous chef?”

“I am,” I said.

“Count me in then,” he said. “I’m yours.”

I put my head on his shoulder. “Thank you,” I said. “Okay. Now you.”

“Favorite part of my day?” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “And don’t cop out and say right now.”

He laughed. “Shows how well you know me,” he said. “I wasn’t going to say right now.”

“Really?”

“Really,” he said.

“What were you going to say?”

“Sixty seconds ago,” he said. “It was cold outside the blanket.”

Follow the Money

Jules doesn’t leave until after 2 A.M.

She offers to stay over, and maybe I should have let her because I barely get any sleep.

I lay awake most of the night on the living room couch, unable to face my bedroom without Owen. I wrap myself up in an old blanket and wait out the dark, playing it over and over in my head—the last thing Jules said before she left.

We stood at the front door and she leaned in to give me a hug. “One thing,” she said. “Did you keep your own checking account?”

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s good,” she said. “That’s important.”

She smiled approvingly, so I didn’t add that I’d done so at Owen’s insistence. Owen was the one who wanted to keep some of our money separate for a reason he never fully explained. I assumed it had something to do with Bailey. But maybe I was wrong about that. Maybe it had to do with leaving what was mine untouched.

“I ask because they’re probably going to freeze all his assets,” Jules said. “That’s the first thing they’ll do while they’re trying to figure out where he went. What he knew. They always follow the money.”

Follow the money.

I feel a little bit queasy, even now, as I think about the duffel bag shoved under the kitchen sink, a bag full of money that Owen probably knows they can’t follow. I didn’t tell Jules about the duffel because I know what it looks like to any reasonable person. I know what it should look like to me too. It looks like Owen is guilty. Jules had already decided as much, and a mysterious bag of money would only convince her further. Why wouldn’t it? She loves Owen like a brother, but it isn’t about love. It’s about what points toward Owen’s involvement in this mess: that he’s running, that he acted suspiciously with Jules on the phone. Every single thing.

Except this. Except what I know.

Owen wouldn’t run because he is guilty. He wouldn’t leave to save himself. He wouldn’t leave to avoid prison or to avoid looking me in the eye and admitting what he’s done. He wouldn’t leave Bailey. He would never leave Bailey unless he absolutely had to. How can I be so sure of this? How can I trust myself to be sure of anything when I’m obviously biased in what I’m willing to see?

Partially it’s because I’ve spent my life needing to see. I’ve spent my life paying incredibly close attention. When my mother left for good, I didn’t see it coming. I missed it. I missed the finality of that departure. I shouldn’t have. There were so many hasty exits before that, so many nights she slipped out and left me with my grandfather without so much as a goodbye. There were so many times she didn’t come back for days, or weeks, only offering up an occasional phone call, an occasional check-in.

When she finally left for good, she didn’t say she wasn’t coming back. She sat down on the edge of my bed and brushed my hair off my face and said she had to go to Europe—that my father needed her with him. But she said she’d see me soon. I assumed that meant she’d be back soon—she was always coming and going. But I missed it. The language of it. “Seeing me soon” meant she was never coming back, not in a substantial way. It meant I’d spend an afternoon or an evening with her twice a year (never overnight).

It meant she was lost to me.

That’s the part that I missed: My mother didn’t care enough not to be lost to me.

That’s the part I’ve sworn to myself I would never miss again.

I don’t know if Owen is guilty. And I’m furious he left me to deal with this alone. But I know he cares. I know he loves me. And, more than that, I know he loves Bailey.