As I climbed up the steps to the attic, I could still hear everyone talking and laughing, their voices rising up behind me. Once on the landing, though, it was quiet, almost peaceful, the model stretched out before me. In all the excitement earlier, I hadn’t been able to look as closely as I wanted to. I wanted to be alone, like now, when I had all the time in the world.
I bent down over my neighborhood, taking in the people there. At first, they’d just seemed arranged the same way they were everywhere else: in random formations, some in groups, some alone. Then, though, I saw the single figure at the back of my house, walking away from the back door. And another person, a girl, running through the side yard, where the hedge would have been, while someone else, with a badge and flashlight, followed. There were three people under the basketball goal, one lying prone on the ground.
I took a breath, then moved in closer. Two people were seated on the curb between Dave’s and my houses: a few inches away, two more walked up the narrow alley to Luna Blu’s back door. A couple stood in the driveway, facing each other. And in that empty building, the old hotel, a tiny set of cellar doors had been added, flung open, a figure standing before them. Whether they were about to go down, or just coming up, was unclear, and the cellar itself was a dark square. But I knew what was down below.
He’d put me everywhere. Every single place I’d been, with him or without, from the first time we’d met to the last conversation. It was all there, laid out as carefully, as real as the buildings and streets around it. I swallowed, hard, then reached forward, touching the girl running through the hedge. Not Liz Sweet. Not anyone, at that moment, not yet. But on her way to someone. To me.
I stood up, then turned and went back down the stairs, into the bar area. Everyone was talking, the noise deafening, the smell of fried pickles hanging in the air as I cut through toward the back door. I heard Riley call my name, but I didn’t turn around. Outside, I pulled my sweater more tightly around me and started to jog down the alley to my street.
The lights were on in Dave’s house as I came up the driveway, his Volvo parked where it had been for the full week, right under the basketball goal. I stood looking at it for a moment, remembering my dad and me pulling into the adjacent spot that first day. I looked up at the basket, its shadow an elongated circle, stretched across the windshield and driver’s seat. A Frazier Bakery cup, empty, sat in the holder, a couple of CD cases stacked on the seat. And on the center console, there was a Gert.
What? Impossible,I thought, moving closer and peering into the window. Same weird braiding, same dangling shells. Just to be sure, though, I opened the door, reaching in to grab it, and turned it over. A tinyGS, in Sharpie marker, was on the back.
“Freeze!”
A flashlight popped on, brightness filling my field of vision. I put up my hand, seeing stars as I heard footsteps, coming closer. A moment later, the light clicked off, and there was Dave. He looked at me, then at the Gert.
“You know,” he said, “if you’re looking for cars to break into, Ithinkyou can do better.”
“You came,” I said softly, looking at the Gert again. I turned, facing him. “Youwerethere, at the Poseidon, that night. All this time I thought ...”
He slid the flashlight into his back pocket, not saying anything.
“Why didn’t you let me know?” I asked him. “I don’t understand.”
He sighed, glancing at his housethen started walking down the driveway, toward the street. I fell in beside him, the Gert still in my hand. “I saw your dad when I was leaving. He was panicked ... so I told him what I knew. Then I went back inside. But I kept thinking about how you’d called me, how it was so unlike you, or the you I’d seen on the Ume.com page that day.”
I winced in the dark. We were coming up to the alley now.
“So I went anyway, to make sure you were okay. Drove down, found the hotel, parked. But when I went up to knock on the door, I saw you through the window. You were lying on the bed, with your mom and your dad, and it just ... You were with who you needed right then. Your family.”
My family. What a concept. “So you left,” I said.
“Only after I stopped for a souvenir at the only place open,” he said, nodding at my closed hand. “I couldn’t resist. I can’t believe you recognized it, though.”
I smiled. “It’s a Gert. My mom and I used to get them every time we were down there.”
“A Gert. I like that.” We turned the corner, to Luna Blu. “Anyway, so I drove back. And my parents were waiting for me. You know the rest of the story.”
I swallowed, feeling my throat get tight. As we walked down the hallway, I could hear the noise and laughter getting louder, the air warm as Dave pushed the door open and we went inside the restaurant proper.
“There he is!” Ellis called out. “How’d you get sprung?”
“Good behavior,” Dave told him. “What’d I miss?”
“Only the end of everything,” Tracey said, from the other side of the bar. I was surprised to see her, cynical as she was, dabbing at her red eyes with a bar towel, while Leo, true to form, chewed a mouthful of pickles beside her.
“It’s not just an end,” Opal told her. “It’s a beginning, too.”
“I hate beginnings,” Tracey replied, sniffling. “They’re too new.”
I looked at Dave, sitting beside Ellis at the end of the bar. Riley was next to him, then Heather and Deb, their chairs forming a triangle, heads together as they talked over the noise, while Opal hugged Tracey on the opposite side of the taps. I looked at all of them, then down at my dad, who was at the very end of the bar, taking it all in as well. When he saw me, he smiled, and I thought of all the places we’d been, how he was my only constant, my guiding star. I didn’t want to leave him, or here. But I had no other options.
I stepped away from the bar, quickly turning the corner and heading back upstairs to the model. I walked over and stood there, looking down at it, trying to center myself. After a moment, I heard footsteps behind me, and even before I turned I knew it was Dave. He was standing at the top of the stairs, looking at me, as the noise from the party downstairs drifted up behind him.
“This is amazing,” I said to him. “I can’t believe you did it.”
“We all did it,” he said.
