Windfall

  “What?” Leo stares at me. “No.”

  “I think you were so busy waiting for something bad to happen that instead of getting blindsided, you decided to just go ahead and do it yourself.”

  He shakes his head, refusing to look at me. But I can tell by the color in his cheeks that I’m right.

  “Listen,” I say, more gently now. “Most terrible things that happen are out of your control. So it makes no sense to add some of your own. Especially not because you’re scared, okay? You love Max. And he loves you.” When Leo opens his mouth to protest, I stop him. “He does. Believe me, he didn’t drive five hours just to see the puppy.”

  “Maybe not,” Leo admits, his eyes drifting out the window.

  “I don’t know if it’ll work out with you guys. Not everyone is that lucky,” I say, feeling a familiar ache in my chest as I think of Teddy. “But don’t screw it up for yourself. If it’s gonna happen, at least let the universe do it for you.”

  He allows a smile. “I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff.”

  “I don’t,” I say with a shrug. “But you do. So go out there and talk to him. Take a walk or get some coffee or something. I’ll keep an eye on the puppy.”

  Leo smiles. “Lucky.”

  “Well, maybe not as lucky as you, but…”

  “No,” he says, laughing. “That’s his name.”

  “What?”

  “The dog. I think we should call him Lucky.”

  I stare at him. “You’re joking.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a little…?” I don’t exactly know how to finish this sentence, but it doesn’t matter, because Leo isn’t listening anyway; he’s too busy watching Max roll around on the grass with the dog.

  Here’s what I know: it has nothing to do with luck, this moment, and everything to do with love.

  But it’s obvious Leo doesn’t realize that. At least not yet.

  “Okay,” I tell him. “Lucky it is.”

  When Uncle Jake gets home from work, he drops his briefcase onto the kitchen table, where I’m working on my final essay for U.S. history, a halfhearted defense of Aaron Burr.

  “Where is everyone?” he asks just as the puppy comes trotting over, all wrinkles and floppy ears. Uncle Jake peers down at him with an exaggerated look of menace. “Not you. I definitely wasn’t looking for you.”

  “Aunt Sofia has to work late,” I tell him, closing my laptop. “And Leo is with Max.”

  His eyes go comically big. “What?”

  I laugh. “Yeah.”

  “He’s here? In Chicago?”

  “He came to help with the puppy. Supposedly.”

  “Well,” he says, glancing down at the dog. “I guess you’re not totally useless.”

  “They went out for coffee a little while ago, and they haven’t come back yet. Which is either a really great sign or a really bad one.”

  “Let’s assume great for now,” Uncle Jake says, walking over to the refrigerator and opening the door. The dog trots after him, rising onto his hind legs to peruse the shelves, his nose quivering. “So it’s just the two of us for dinner, then?”

  “Three of us.”

  He grabs a beer, then closes the door and makes a face at the puppy. “Mongrel,” he says, and the dog wags its tail cheerfully.

  “Actually,” I say, “he has a name now.”

  “You do know it’s a lot harder to kick them out once you’ve named them, right?”

  “It’s Lucky.”

  “What’s lucky…?” he asks as he searches for the bottle opener; then he stops and looks over. “Oh, I get it. Cute. Sounds like Teddy’s handiwork.”

  “Nope,” I say, deciding not to tell him that the dog itself is Teddy’s handiwork, since Uncle Jake might never forgive him. “Leo picked it.”

  “Well, I guess we’re stuck with him, then.”

  “You’ll get used to him.”

  “Yeah?” he says as he sits down across from me. “How do you figure?”

  “You got used to me,” I say with a shrug, and Uncle Jake’s eyes snap up to meet mine. He looks surprised, and I am too. I hadn’t planned to say that. I hadn’t even known I was thinking it.

  “Alice,” he says, his face very serious. “You were hardly a stray dog.”

  I shake my head. “I know. I didn’t mean to…”

  “It’s okay. I just don’t ever want you to think…”

  “I wouldn’t ever…”

  He holds up a hand. “Stop. Pause.”

  “No—” I start to say, but it’s too late.

  “I think,” he’s saying as he stands up from the table again, “that we’re about to have a Conversation with a capital C, yes?”

  I groan. “No.”

  “And you know what the rule is for those, right?”

  “Chocolate,” I say reluctantly.

  “Right,” he says as he walks over to the pantry and pokes his head inside. He rummages around for a minute, then leans back to show me a half-empty bag of chocolate chips. “I’m guessing we’re not supposed to eat these.”

  “You guessed right.”

  “Well, this is an emergency,” he says, dumping them into a bowl as the puppy dances around at his feet. He sets it in the middle of the table, then stares at me until I take a chocolate chip.

  Uncle Jake is a firm believer that important discussions go better with a side of sugar.

  “So,” he says. “What’s on your mind?”

  I give him a look. “You’re the one who wanted to talk.”

  “You’re the one who compared yourself to the dog.”

  “That’s not exactly what I meant.”

  He takes a handful of chocolate. “So what did you mean?”

  “Nothing,” I say, aware of the stubbornness in my voice. But I’m too caught off guard by his persistence to string any of my thoughts together. This is usually Aunt Sofia’s territory. She’s always on the hunt for hidden meaning in anything I say and has an uncanny ability to take a comment on something as mundane as the weather and somehow relate it back to my past.

  But not Uncle Jake. He’s good for a talk about financial responsibility or the importance of college, the many joys of fishing or which screwdriver to use in a given situation. But when it comes to conversations about what happened to me—especially those conversations that begin with a capital C—he’s always been eager to avoid them.

  “Look,” he says now, pushing the bowl aside and leaning forward with his elbows on the table. His eyes—which look so much like my dad’s—are fixed on me. “I know what happened in San Francisco.”

  I blink at him. This is not what I was expecting.

  When I returned from the trip, my aunt and uncle peppered me with all the obvious questions: What did you think of Stanford? and Was it okay being back? and How did it go with Teddy? (Not to mention: There wasn’t any funny business, right? And: Right? And: But seriously, right?)

  I told them about the farmers market and the sound of the foghorns over the bay and how the city looked spread before us, all staggered buildings and steep inclines. About the beach and the bookstore and the Stanford campus, which had been even more beautiful than the pictures. But I didn’t tell them about the rush of memories that afternoon on the quad or the emptiness I’d felt standing in front of the house, how that piece of stained glass in my old window had just about broken my heart.

  “Nothing happened,” I say, but Uncle Jake just gives me an even look.

  “Teddy called us afterward.”

  I feel my face get warm for no particular reason. “He did?”

  “Don’t be mad at him,” he says when he sees my expression. “He knew you were upset and that you wouldn’t want to talk about it, and he was just trying to be a good friend.” He tilts his head to one side. “So what happened?”

  I’m about to say nothing again, but instead I try to think of what I can say, try to come up with some version of the truth that doesn’t hurt so mu
ch, some route back there that isn’t quite so treacherous.

  Beside me the puppy is batting at a loose string on the carpet like the world’s clumsiest cat, and I lean down to pick him up, pressing his warm body close to me.

  “We went to the house,” I say eventually, keeping my eyes on the scarred wooden table. “It was…hard. Seeing it again. You weren’t there at the end. When Aunt Sofia was packing everything up. It was just the two of us and it felt so different, even then. Mom had been gone awhile. But it was like Dad just…” I hold up my hands and flick them open, making fireworks of my fingers. “Poof. Just like that. There, and then not.”

  I lift my eyes to meet Uncle Jake’s, which are watery. He takes a swig of beer, then sets the bottle down a little too hard on the table.

  “Anyway, I remember Aunt Sofia put Post-it notes on all our stuff so she’d know where it was going: you know, like pink for the garbage and blue for charity and yellow for Chicago. Something like that. I came down one morning and the whole house was covered with them. They looked like decorations, like confetti. I haven’t used one since.”

  Uncle Jake clears his throat. “Alice…”

  “The house used to be blue. Remember?”

  He nods.

  “It’s yellow now.” The puppy begins to snore in my arms, a low rumble that vibrates through me. I watch his eyelids twitch in sleep, his paws moving in time with some unknown dream. “My dad was allergic to dogs.”

  “I know.”

  “For real,” I add, which makes us both smile.

  “I know,” he says again. “And cats too.”

  “My mom was always bringing home strays, which drove him nuts.”

  “Well, in fairness, he could sometimes drive her pretty nuts too.”

  “It’s funny,” I say, the smile slipping from my face. “I’d kind of forgotten that.”

  “What?”

  “That they used to fight a lot.” I shift the puppy in my arms. Out the window it’s nearly dark, and I can see our reflections in the glass. “That they weren’t perfect.”

  Uncle Jake gives me a funny look. “I don’t suppose it would help to tell you that nobody is.”

  “I know,” I tell him. “People are just people. And a house is just a house, right?”

  “Not always,” he says, spinning his beer in circles. “That was your home. And honestly I think it was pretty brave of you to go back. It couldn’t have been easy. I should’ve been the one to go with you. We probably should’ve done it a long time ago.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not, really. I’m sorry it’s so hard for me to talk to you about this stuff.”

  “You talk to Aunt Sofia about it,” I say, trying not to sound so wounded.

  He nods. “Yeah, I do.”

  “So why not me?”

  “Because,” he says, his voice cracking, “you remind me of him.”

  “I do?”

  “Of course you do,” he says. “You’re his kid through and through. The way you sneeze when you eat pepper. He used to do that too. And you make this face when you’re concentrating that knocks the air right out of me. You look just like him. And his eyes. You have his eyes.”

  I realize I’m smiling. “So do you.”

  “The thing is,” he says, “it doesn’t seem like nine years ago. I know that’s not an excuse, but it still seems like yesterday. And if it’s that way for me, I know it must be even worse for you.”

  For some reason I think about Sawyer then, and his obsession with history. Sometimes, it feels like time is malleable, like the past refuses to stay put and you end up dragging it around with you whether or you like it or not. Other times it feels about as ancient and far away as those castles. Maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

  There’s a space between forgetting and moving on, and it’s not easy to find. We’re still searching for it, Uncle Jake and I. And that’s okay.

  “He’d be so mad at me. If there was one thing he loved, your dad, it was talking things out.” He smiles, almost to himself, his eyes far away. “Man, that guy could talk.”

  I laugh, feeling something start to loosen inside me. “He once went out to get groceries and didn’t come back for four hours. When he finally showed up, he brought this group of tourists he’d met at the store and they ended up staying for dinner.”

  “That’s nothing,” Uncle Jake says, grinning now. “This one time we were camping in the backyard, and our neighbors called the cops because of the noise. But when they showed up, your dad ended up talking their ears off, of course, and the neighbors came over to see what was going on.”

  “And?”

  “And they ended up staying for s’mores.”

  I shake my head. “Sounds just like him.”

  “He could be kind of annoying that way,” Uncle Jake says. “But it’s why everyone loved him. Especially your mom.”

  We’re both quiet for a moment, lost in our own separate memories. Sitting here in the darkening kitchen, I’m struck by how different this feels. There’s something blunt about the pain right now, something almost toothless. Maybe it’s the fading light, or maybe it’s the puppy in my lap. Maybe it’s just temporary, or maybe this is what happens when you talk through something so that it starts to lose its knife-sharp edge, so that the corners get sanded down into something duller, something slightly less acute.

  Maybe this is what it means to let time work its magic. Or maybe there’s no magic to it at all. Maybe tomorrow it will all go back to normal.

  Poof. Just like that.

  But not now. Not yet.

  “Hey,” I say, and Lucky lifts his head. “I know it’s really hard for you—”

  “Yes,” Uncle Jake says before I can finish.

  “And it’s not always easy for me either—”

  “Yes,” he says again.

  “And honestly I’m not even sure I want to—”

  “Yes.”

  “But I think maybe it could help. To talk about them more with you. So if it’s okay—”

  “Yes,” he says, nodding. His eyes are rimmed with red, and he looks very tired, but he’s smiling now. “You’re right. I know you’re right.”

  “And maybe it won’t seem so hard if we stop thinking of them as Conversations with a capital C,” I continue, watching him carefully. “Maybe it’d be easier if we just kept it all kind of lowercase for now. At least to start.”

  Uncle Jake looks thoughtful. “That could probably work.”

  “But?”

  He points at the bowl in the middle of the table. “Do we still get to keep the chocolate?”

  “I think I can live with that,” I tell him.

  I’m eating breakfast the next morning when Leo walks in with two cream-colored envelopes. The one on top has my name written in cursive across the front.

  “Are you and Max getting married already?” I joke, dropping my spoon into the cereal bowl. “So nice of you guys to invite me.”

  Leo isn’t really listening; he just walked Max out to his car—so that he can get back to Michigan in time for finals—and he still seems a little dazed. He sends one of the envelopes spinning across the table in my direction, but it skids onto the floor, startling Lucky, who has been dozing at my feet.

  “What is it?” I ask, leaning to pick it up, then tearing it open. The paper is thick and expensive, and it has a pearly shine to it.

  “No idea. Someone slipped them under the door.”

  His eyes are bloodshot this morning, either from too much caffeine or lack of sleep or just Max’s sudden absence in the wake of his sudden appearance. Last night the two of them returned home hours after they left with matching smiles and a giddy, nervous energy about them. Uncle Jake paused the movie we were watching as they stood in the doorway of the living room, both bouncing on their toes.

  “How much coffee did you guys have?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

  “Five cups!” Leo said, and Max gave us a manic grin.

&nbsp
; “Seven for me.”

  Aunt Sofia had raised her eyebrows. “And?”

  “And we talked,” Leo said, looking at me as if this explained everything. Which it sort of did.

  When they headed to the kitchen to get some leftover pizza, I saw Max reach for Leo’s hand. They paused, their eyes locked and their hands knotted between them. They were just beyond the doorway, but from where I was sitting I could still see the look they exchanged, full of such obvious love that I actually let out a sigh.

  But this morning Max is gone again, and even though he’ll be back soon Leo is clearly in no mood for whatever is in these envelopes.

  I open mine, then stare at the piece of paper in my hand, surprised to find a bizarrely formal request for us to appear at Teddy’s apartment today at four o’ clock sharp for a presentation. It’s signed Theodore J. McAvoy with a funny-looking flourish.

  “This can’t be from Teddy,” Leo says flatly, puzzling over his own invitation. “The guy barely owns a pen. There’s no way he went to a stationery store.”

  “What are the odds this is a prank?”

  Leo doesn’t answer. He just shakes his head, turning the paper over in his hand. “What kind of presentation could it be anyway? ‘How to Fritter Away Your Lottery Money on Needlessly Expensive Card Stock’?”

  On the way to school we continue to speculate.

  “Maybe it’s more of an announcement,” Leo says, walking with his fingers hooked into the straps of his backpack. “Maybe he’s buying an island. Or investing in space travel. Or maybe he’s gonna tell us he’s off to explore the world.”

  A shiver runs through me at the thought of this last one.

  When school is over I meet Leo near the bike racks, and together we start the walk to Teddy’s. It’s the kind of spring afternoon that makes you forget about the winters here, the sky so blue it looks almost fake and the trees crowded with brand-new leaves.

  “So you and Max,” I say, and he smiles involuntarily. “You’re good?”

  He nods. “Getting there.”

  “What happens next?”

  “I don’t know. He’ll be home for the summer, so that’s all I’m thinking about for now. After that I guess we’ll have to see.”