When he steps off the jetway, it’s hot and muggy, the Texas air thick even this late at night. He takes off his leather jacket, slings it over his backpack. Then he heads toward ground transportation and the parking lot that houses the rental cars, his reservation paid for in advance, his membership to the rental car’s gold club helping him avoid talking with anyone in person. Hopefully.
It’s not easy renting a car with a New Zealand driver’s license. It sets off alarms. He’s prepared for this. He has prepared for all of this.
The computer sends him to spot 85, where a small SUV is waiting.He gets in, turns the key that is already in the ignition, and heads out of the airport parking lot and onto the familiar highway toward downtown.
Five years, ten months, and twenty-four days ago, time stopped.
He hadn’t called Bailey, even when he made it to Vancouver. Even though it nearly killed him not to.
He’d forced himself to put sixty-eight hours and eight thousand miles between them before he dared to call his daughter—even on an encrypted app—to even put into the world that amount of risk.
When Bailey picked up, Owen had told her that he didn’t have much time to explain. And she told him she knew about her mother, Kate. She knew about her mother and (more urgently) she knew about Kate’s father, Nicholas. Bailey’s grandfather, Nicholas.
Does she even remember telling Owen that? She was so upset, her tears coming through the phone, so he doesn’t know. But he’ll never forget.
Five years, ten months, and twenty-one days ago, Owen stood on a street corner in Wellington, New Zealand, and, from the other side of the world, he heard his daughter’s tears and he heard her say the name Nicholas Bell. And a new kind of clock started.
This was the moment he started to plan.
Through the car windows, downtown Austin comes into view.
South Congress Avenue is busy, even after midnight—a concert letting out at the Moody Theater, people waiting for their rideshares in front of the Paramount, the patio at Lamberts still overflowing with late-night barbecue.
Owen takes a left and drives up to the condominium on Second Street—the renovated firehouse, now coveted loft apartments.
He finds a parking spot and approaches the front doors. He doesn’t recognize the doorman standing there. He is new. Or, at least, newer than fifteen years.
“How can I help you?” the doorman asks him.
“Eight D.”
The doorman tilts his head, takes Owen in. “Pretty late for a visitor,” he says. “Is he expecting you?”
Owen hikes his backpack higher on his shoulder. He doesn’t answer.
“Who should I say is here?”
“Tell him it’s his son-in-law.”
Somewhere Along the Line, It Becomes About the Sunrise…
In the morning, I play it back in my head, like a mantra.
Like a magic trick.
Owen is standing in front of me, as though it has been five minutes as opposed to more than five years. His wedding ring is still on his finger, his eyes locking into mine. And he is whispering in my ear—his lips against my cheek, his arm near my arm. Like he belonged that close. Like any other day of him belonging that close.
My husband.
I’ve been up for hours, sitting on the balcony off my bedroom, the light coming in from the east, soft and comforting. The light is one of my favorite things about my house—a small Craftsman two blocks from Palisades Park and the Santa Monica beaches and the Pacific Ocean.
The balcony gets the best hit of that gentle morning light.Our favorite sunrise, as Bailey says, surrounded by the quiet enclave of my neighborhood: five one-way streets, only local foot traffic, families who all know each other and have lived here for generations. This morning, though, none of it is offering its usual solace.
I take a sip of my coffee and go over it again. Owen standing in front of me. I circle through every detail of the brief exchange. Owen in the showroom and then, just as quickly, gone.
What was he doing before I noticed him standing there? Which direction had he come from? I feel like I saw him walk in, but had I missed it? Had he come in earlier in the day and I missed him then?
It doesn’t seem possible. It doesn’t seem possible that I wouldn’t know that Owen was there.
