If you were looking up at the church, as most people were, you might have missed it. But Lucy had known exactly where it would be. When she got there, she hesitated, but only for a moment, and then she stepped onto it slowly, as if on the edge of something unknowable: one toe first, then the other.
She wasn’t sure if she’d ever stood in the exact center of anything before, but there she was, in the middle of Paris. Above her, an airplane whistled past, and in the eaves of the cathedral, a few pigeons were watching her along with the gargoyles. But they were the only ones. Nobody else was looking when she closed her eyes and made her wish.
When her mother found her, Lucy was still standing there on the star, and Mom only glanced at it and then looked away again, the significance of the spot clearly lost on her. Lucy took a small amount of pride in this, that she knew something about this city that her mother didn’t. She stared down at the lines that arced around her sneakers. It was a small circle, but it was all hers.
“Sure you don’t want to take a tour?” Mom asked, nodding at the line that stretched the whole length of the building, and Lucy shook her head, stepping carefully off the star. Instead, they walked around the back of the building, where the spindly columns faced out over the fork in the River Seine. They crossed bridges and passed through small islands in a slow pilgrimage, and when they reached the other side, they ducked into a little bookshop with sagging shelves that smelled of paper and leather and dust, where Lucy picked out a small volume of The Little Prince.
Outside, there was a man selling watercolors on the bank of the river, and Mom paused to flip through them. They were small and delicately made, showing Notre Dame from all different angles and in every possible type of weather: gray skies and blue, rain and snow and sun.
“This one is lovely,” Mom said to Lucy, who was standing nearby, already scanning the first page of her book. In the painting, the church glowed under a sun as powerful as the one that beat down on them now, which made everything a shade brighter than it had any right to be.
“We have that one in a magnet, too,” the man said, reaching for a crate underneath his little table. “And a postcard.”
Lucy froze, staring at her book.
“What do you think, Luce?” Mom asked, and there was a strained note to her voice. “Need a postcard for anyone?”
When she finally raised her eyes, Lucy was surprised to see a trace of hope in the way her mother was watching her, and all at once she understood.
She knew about Owen.
Not just the postcards but the rest of it, too. She must have known the real reason she was going out in San Francisco that night. She must have realized why she’d muddled through the week in Napa in such a fog. She must have listened from the kitchen as Lucy said good-bye to Liam that day, and she must have understood the real reason. She must have known it all; if not the specifics, then at least the general idea of it.
And for the first time in a long time, Lucy didn’t feel so alone.
The painter was still holding out a postcard, his hand wavering just slightly, and her eyes pricked with tears as she reached for it.
“You can’t know the answer until you ask the question,” Mom said with a smile, but Lucy was still looking at the man.
“Thank you,” she said to him as she took the card, though really, the words were meant for her mother; Lucy knew she’d figure that out, too.
All the next day, as they walked along the River Seine and explored the Left Bank, Lucy thought about the postcard that was pressed between the pages of The Little Prince. On the train ride home that evening, her mother slept in the seat beside her while Lucy chewed on her pen, staring at the blank space on the back. It wasn’t until she was home that night that she finally wrote something, the simplest and truest thing she could think to say: Wish you were here.
She didn’t have his address in San Francisco. For all she knew, he might not even be there anymore. They could have gone back to Tahoe or somewhere else entirely by now. The logical thing would be to e-mail him, but how could she ask for his address without saying all those things that had been building up since their fight: Hello and I’m sorry and I didn’t mean it and I miss you and Why couldn’t you just have kissed me? There was something far too instant about an e-mail, and the knowledge that he could be opening it only minutes after she hit Send and choose not to respond—or worse, choose to delete it—was almost too much to bear.
She’d rather send the postcard floating out into the world and hope for the best.
After school the next day, she sat at the kitchen counter and dialed the main number to their old building in New York. As she listened to it ring, she pictured the front desk in the lobby and felt a twinge of homesickness. She closed her eyes, waiting for someone to pick up, and when he did, she was quick to recognize the voice.
“George,” she cried out, and there was a brief silence on the other end.
“Uh…”
“It’s Lucy,” she explained quickly. “Lucy Patterson.”
“Lucy P,” he said in a booming voice. “How’s my girl?”
She smiled into the phone. “I’m good,” she told him. “We’re in London now. I miss you guys.”
“We miss you, too,” he said. “Not the same without you around here. Any chance you’ll be back for the summer? Or what about those brothers of yours?”
“I don’t think so,” she told him. “Looks like we’re all going to be over here, actually.”
“Well, that’ll be nice,” he said. “Not often all five of you are in the same place.”
Lucy smiled. “I know,” she said. “It’s crazy, right?”
“So, what,” George said, “are you just calling to catch up on some of the gossip around here? Because I’ve got some great stories.…”
“I’m sure you do,” she said, laughing. “But I think my dad would have a heart attack over the phone bill if you told me even half of them. I’m actually calling because I have a favor to ask. You don’t happen to have a forwarding address for the Buckleys, do you?”
There was a brief pause. “That super?”
She nodded, though he couldn’t see her. “Yup.”
“I’m not even going to ask,” he said. “Talk about gossip…”
“C’mon, George.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, and there was typing in the background. “It’s in Pennsylvania.”
Lucy blinked. “Really? I guess they haven’t sold the house yet.”
“I don’t know. But it’s all I’ve got. You want it?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Just let me grab a pen.”
As she searched through the drawer beneath the phone, she thought about the other possibility. That the house had been sold, and they just hadn’t updated the building with their new information. After all, it had been more than six months since they’d left, and it was doubtful they were getting much mail there anymore. She glanced at the postcard on the counter, suddenly deflated. Maybe it would never find its way to Owen, who could be anywhere by now. Maybe it wasn’t even worth trying.
But on the other end of the phone, George let out a short cough. “Ready?” he asked, just as Lucy’s fingers brushed against a pencil. She took a deep breath and positioned it above the paper.
“Ready,” she said.
36
No car ride is ever truly silent. There’s always something—the soft swish of the windshield wipers, the rumble of the tires, the hum of the engine—to break it up. But here now, somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania, with his dad at the wheel of a too-small rental car, there was a quiet between them that was as absolute as Owen had ever experienced.
On the trip out west, and then again on the way up the coast from San Francisco to Seattle, there’d been times when they’d switched off the radio, letting whoever wasn’t driving have a chance to sleep. Other times, they’d driven for long stretches without talking, simply watching the road disappear beneath the car. But those had been comfortable silences,
punctuated by stray thoughts and occasional laughter, easily set aside with the clearing of a throat.
This, however, was different. It was a brittle quiet, sharp around the edges, and the stiffness of it had settled into every corner of the tiny car, making Owen shift uncomfortably in his seat. Back at the rental place, he’d offered to drive. He knew Dad hadn’t slept on the plane—a crowded red-eye from Seattle to Philadelphia—and he was slumped against the counter, rubbing at his bleary eyes. But he’d shaken his head.
“It’s fine,” he said, his voice gruff. “I’ve got it.”
As they drove out of the airport, Owen was thinking about the oddness of this trip. It was meant to be a good thing. When they’d learned that the house had finally sold, they’d toasted with mugs of apple juice. Afterward, in the backyard of their new home in Seattle, they’d circled the yard together, making plans and pointing out all the things they’d do to the place once they had money again.
But there’s no such thing as a completely fresh start. Everything new arrives on the heels of something old, and every beginning comes at the cost of an ending. It wasn’t just that they’d have to close up the Pennsylvania house, to sign the papers and collect their things; they’d also have to face their ghosts and say their good-byes. They’d have to look the past—the one they’d been running from all these months—right in the eye.
And Owen wasn’t so sure they were ready for that.
“We should stop on the way,” Dad had announced on the plane, just after they’d landed. All around them, people had shot to their feet, gathering their bags from the overhead bins, but Owen and his father remained seated. “Before we go to the house.”
“Stop where?” Owen asked, but as soon as he said it, he knew. “Oh. Right. Yeah.”
They’d last visited his mother’s grave on their way out of New York, the two of them standing with bent heads and folded hands and blank eyes. There hadn’t been any tears. They were saving those, each of them, for the moments when it felt like she was truly with them, which wasn’t there on the windswept hill, on a chilly September day, where there was only the rough headstone and the clipped grass and the vast emptiness of a sprawling cemetery.
But today they would go back. It was supposed to be their first and only stop on the way to the house, but when a gas station loomed up ahead, hugging the highway on the right, Dad wrenched the wheel in its direction without explanation. Owen craned his neck to check the gauge, which of course showed that the tank was completely full; they couldn’t have been twelve miles out of the airport. Instead of pulling up to one of the pumps, Dad parked the car in front of the mini-mart, then stepped out without a word.
Owen sat up a bit straighter in his seat, watching his father disappear inside, and a few minutes later, Dad emerged with a bouquet of flowers wrapped in cellophane. He set them carefully in the backseat, the car door dinging, and then climbed back in and started the engine. Neither of them said a word as they eased back out onto the highway.
As they drew closer, the sights becoming familiar again, the car was still filled with a palpable dread, but it had at least started to feel as if they were in this together, which of course they were. At a stoplight, Dad even gave him a grim smile. It was part apology and part acknowledgment; it was all he had to offer at the moment, and Owen could tell it cost him a lot.
They turned in at the gated entrance to the cemetery, which stretched across a series of gentle hills, all of them dashed with gray headstones like an elaborate message in Morse code. It was 10:24 AM on a Wednesday, and the place was mostly empty. Owen was grateful for that. The first time they’d come, it had been for the funeral, and they’d both been raw with grief. The second time, just two months later, there was a numbness to the visit. Now there were months and months and miles and miles behind them, and Owen wasn’t sure how to feel. After parking the car, they followed a narrow path through some of the older gravestones, and while his mouth was dry and his hands were damp, his careful heart did nothing but beat in time with his careful footsteps.
When they arrived, they both stopped a few feet short of her headstone, which was simple, her name written in block letters across the top. Owen looked at it for a long time, waiting for his lump of a heart to do some sort of trick, something appropriate to the moment: He waited for it to leap or bound or skip or sink; he waited for it to be extraordinarily heavy or unexpectedly light; he waited for it to seize up or slow down. But it just kept ticking the way it always did, the way it was meant to, as well-behaved and predictable as its owner.
Dad was standing a few feet away, still gripping the bouquet. “Do you think she’d be okay with it?” he asked after some time had passed, and Owen looked over sharply. It had been nearly an hour since either of them had spoken. “We could have stayed, you know. We could have just gotten over ourselves and lived in the house. I’d have found a job eventually, I’m sure. But taking off like that…” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “I think she wouldn’t have minded the New York part, if that had worked, but I’m not sure about the rest of it.”
“She’d have been fine with it,” Owen said quietly. “She loved the years you were on the road.”
Dad’s frown deepened. “Yeah, but we were adults.”
“Barely.”
“We were having an adventure.”
“So are we,” Owen said with a little smile.
“I’ve had you in four different schools this year. She would’ve hated that. She would’ve wanted you to have a normal senior year.”
“None of this is normal,” Owen said, his eyes on the grave. “Or maybe all of it is. It’s kind of hard to tell anymore.”
They stood there for a long time. A couple of squirrels darted past, using the gravestones in their game of hide-and-seek, and when the wind picked up, rustling the cellophane on the bouquet, Dad glanced down, surprised to find it still in his arms. He took a step forward and laid it on the stone, then backpedaled until he was at Owen’s side.
“Let’s go,” he said, and though his voice was soft, Owen could still hear the unspoken word at the end of it: home.
It was a short drive, not nearly long enough to recover from their last stop and prepare themselves for the next. When they pulled onto their old street, Owen could see Dad’s fingers tense on the wheel, and as the house came into sight, he was overcome by a wave of sadness more powerful than anything he’d felt at the cemetery. Even from here, he could already tell: It was the same house; it just wasn’t their home anymore.
Maybe it had started the moment she died, or maybe it was when they left. But now, as they parked out front and Owen stepped out of the car, he could see that the transition was complete. This house that they’d all loved, the house his parents had always dreamed of—with its green siding and white trim and wraparound porch—had been left empty for too long. One of their neighbors had been checking in on it from time to time, and there had been a few scattered showings with the real estate agent, but for the most part, it had simply sat here through seven months without them, through a Halloween without trick-or-treaters, a Thanksgiving without the smell of turkey, a Christmas without the uneven lights Dad always put up around the windows.
When they opened the door, they were suddenly like strangers, like neighbors, like visitors. The house was cold, the air gone out of the place, and as they moved through it, Owen realized that in spite of all the stuff—the furniture and the utensils and the curtains, the picture frames and the bedding and the books—the real measures of their lives here were now well and truly gone.
On the kitchen table, there was a sloping pile of mail. It was a mess of catalogs and bills and envelopes, most of it probably junk, but Owen also knew that his college letters would be in there, too. If he’d wanted to, he could have checked online already; the schools had sent him long chains of user names and passwords, instructions with dates and times, but Owen hadn’t been in a rush. Soon enough, his shapeless future would start to mold itself into something more co
ncrete. In the meantime, he was in no hurry.
Over the past months, their neighbor—an elderly man who used to bring them fresh-cut flowers from his garden every spring—had been forwarding batches of mail each time they settled somewhere long enough to let him know. But when they found out the house had sold, Dad called and said he could stop. They’d be there soon to collect the rest themselves.
And now here they were.
Dad walked over to the pile, trailing his fingers across the top, and Owen could see that he was glad for the distraction, for something to focus on before the walls of the house could close in around them.
“Big moment,” he said quietly, and Owen felt a brief urge to laugh. Standing in their old house, just after a visit to his mother’s grave, he thought this seemed like the smallest moment possible.
“I guess,” he managed, and Dad nudged the pile.
“Should we go fishing?”
“Only if you think we’ll catch something.”
“I have a pretty good feeling,” he said, tossing a catalog aside as he started to go through the stack. The first envelope he pulled out was large and rectangular, and it had the UC Berkeley emblem in the corner. When Dad held it up in the square of light from the window, Owen could see the dust motes floating around it. “Looks promising,” Dad said, sliding it across the table. “Let’s see what else we’ve got.”
Before long, there were six envelopes stacked neatly between them, all of them roughly the same size and thickness. They stared at them for a few moments, and Owen blinked a few times.
“Well,” he said finally.
Dad grinned. “Well.”
For other kids his age, Owen knew this was a big deal. The arrival of a thick envelope, the unveiling of the acceptance letter, the jumping up and down, the anticipation about what the next year would bring. But though he tried to summon some kind of joy, that lightness you were supposed to feel at moments like these, his stubborn heart refused to budge.