The Last Thing He Told Me

“A waiter named Benj helped me out. He said you and Owen get coffees from him on the weekend. Yours with cinnamon, Owen’s black.”

“This is bribery.”

“Only if it doesn’t work,” he says. “Otherwise it’s a cup of coffee.”

I look at him and take another sip.

“Sunny side of the street?” he says.

* * *

We leave the docks and walk toward the Path, heading toward downtown—Waldo Point Harbor peeking out at us in the distance.

“So I take it no word from Owen?” he says.

I think about our kiss goodbye by his car yesterday, slow and lingering. Owen wasn’t anxious at all, a smile on his face.

“No. I haven’t seen him since he left for work yesterday,” I say.

“And he hasn’t called?” he says.

I shake my head.

“Does he usually call from work?”

“Usually,” I say.

“But not yesterday?”

“He may have tried me, I don’t know. I went to the Ferry Building in San Francisco, and there are a bunch of dead zones between here and there, so…”

He nods, completely unsurprised, almost like he knows this already. Like he is playing way past it.

“What happened when you got back?” he says. “From the Ferry Building?”

I take a deep breath and think about it for a minute. I think about telling him the truth. But I don’t know what he will make of the information about the twelve-year-old girl and the note she gave to me, about the note Owen left for Bailey at the school. About the duffel bag of money. Until I figure it out for myself, I’m not including someone I just met.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” I say. “I made Bailey dinner, which she hated, and she went to play practice. I heard about The Shop on NPR while I was waiting for her in the school parking lot. We came home. Owen didn’t. No one slept.”

He tilts his head, takes me in, like he doesn’t believe me, entirely. I don’t judge him for that. He shouldn’t. But he seems to be willing to let it go.

“So… no call this morning, correct?” he says. “No email either?”

“No,” I say.

He pauses, as though something is just occurring to him.

“It’s a crazy thing when someone disappears, isn’t it? No explanation?” he says.

“Yes,” I say.

“And yet… you don’t seem all that mad.”

I stop walking, irritated that he thinks he knows enough about me to make a judgment call on how I feel.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize there was an appropriate way to respond when your husband’s company is raided and he disappears,” I say. “Am I doing anything else you deem inappropriate?”

He thinks about it. “Not really.”