I hear the rest of her question. San Francisco is close to Sausalito. San Francisco is too close to where she came from. Isn’t that another place the organization would think to look for us? Another place that is categorically unsafe?
I turn and look at her. I don’t want to scare her by saying the whole truth. Because even if a part of her knows it, it’s scarier to hear the words coming from me. That, at the moment, nowhere is safe.
“Bails, we’re not going home,” I say. “We’re not going near there.”
She nods, relieved. Then she gets quiet. She gets quiet before she asks what she asks next.
“How did he look?” she asks.
“Your dad?”
She nods. “I mean… did he look like himself?”
I shake my head, thinking of how to answer her about Owen—the buzz cut hair, the sleeve of tattoos, the shape of his nose. All that wasn’t familiar. But his eyes—what was behind those eyes—staring back me, entirely familiar. How do I answer most honestly? Owen looked exactly like himself. And also entirely different.
“It was all pretty quick…” I say.
She puts the potato chips down, wiping the grease on the side of her jeans.
“Can I tell you something crazy?” she says.
“Of course.”
“I keep thinking that Dad walked past me. I swear to you, Ithought I saw him at the design center, you know? I turned and did a double take when I saw this guy. There was something about him. Like… the way he carried himself. It was like instinct, you know? How quickly I turned to see if it was him. I don’t know if I’m just making that up now. I don’t know, but it’s like I felt him there, if that makes sense…”
“It does.”
“But maybe it wasn’t him. I mean, I feel like I see him all the time. So that’s not new…” She pauses. “I just feel so upset about Grandpa, you know? Every time I think about him, I feel more upset.”
I feel that in my chest, a rising up of everything Bailey has endured. That she continues to endure: the disappearance of her father, now her grandfather taken from her too.
“Me too, Bails…”
“And I can only say this to you, but… I also feel a little relieved, if that makes any sense. I feel relieved that it’s not Dad. Because when I walked into Jake’s house and first saw your face…”
“You thought something happened to your father?”
“Yeah.”
I get that part also, probably better than anyone else could. The devastation and the sadness at the loss of Nicholas cuts through me. It cuts through me at the same time something else lives just beneath it. A relief. Is it fair to call it relief? Because my greatest fear when I heard Grady’s voice was that he was going to tell me that something terrible had happened to Owen. Owen who reappeared out of nowhere last night. His text this morning, the flash drive still heavy in my pocket.
My first terrible fear was that someone had gotten to Owen. Shortly after Owen had gotten to me.
“You weren’t ready for that…” I say. “Neither of us was.”
“Yeah.”
She looks back toward the passenger-side window. And I can see her trying to process it. The death that had been hovering over us since Nicholas became unwell. The death we have been trying to ready ourselves for—as if you can ever ready yourself for that kind of leveling, for that kind of grief.
Bailey rolls down the window, letting in the air and the ocean and the noise of all the passing cars. It’s so loud that I almost don’t hear her. I almost don’t hear the question she doesn’t want to ask next.
“Do we run now? Like forever?”
I think of where we were twenty-four hours ago: before Owen showed up at the design center, before the loss of Nicholas. I’d spent the afternoon participating in the First Look exhibition—making reservations to take my favorite girl (and her new friend Shep) out to get her favorite dim sum.
I think of how twenty-four hours ago this would have been the last place either of us thought we’d be.
“I think if we are learning anything,” I say, “it’s that nothing is forever.”
