I let out a strained honk of a laugh that makes me think of the goose, and how I never even got a chance to tell Annie what happened on my way to return it. Out of all the moments we didn’t get to share, somehow that, at this very second at least, feels like the most crushing.
My eyes drift over the living room, taking in the empty beer bottles, crumpled tissues, and a half-eaten banana that’s gone all gross and brown. Then they catch on the small pile of books that Francis brought with him the day Annie left. I’d carried them upstairs and dropped them unceremoniously on the floor beside the bookshelves, unable to find it in me to care enough to even look at what all was there. But now I spot a thick green cloth spine with simple gold lettering readingWar and Peaceamong the other titles. It feels like a sign, a message. It’s enough to get me off the couch.
I extract the tome and take a closer look. “Dent’s Three Volumes,” it says at the bottom. Nice. Not one I already have.
I first read the notoriously long book over the summer when I was seventeen, hoping to impress Graham. To show him I was serious about my education and he hadn’t made a mistake spending his own savings to send me to private school and off to Brown in the fall. That I “knew my stuff,” despite still having quite a lot to learn. That I wouldn’t squander the opportunity he’d given me to be more like him. To live a good life full of beautiful things and other people who could appreciate them.
He was definitely impressed, but more by the edition I’d gotten my hands on at the used bookstore down the street. “You’ve got yourself the beginning of a fine collection, Dodger,” he said. One that he added to on my birthday each year for over a decade, gifting me rare versions and translations. Each new volume felt like a reward, as if he was signaling that I was still on the right track to making him proud.
I return to the couch and gently rest the green book atop the coffee table, then open it to inspect the copyright and learn the publication year. But tucked into the pages is a folded piece of paper—from the same variety of yellow legal pad we still keep on the counter at all times, as if Graham might return any minute and need to write himself a reminder. I unfold it and find his simple slightly smeared cursive—“left-handed problems,” he used to joke—filling the page.
“Happy birthday, Dodger!” it starts, and it hits me like a sack full of iron door porters directly to the gut. Graham’s heart attack happened two weeks before I turned thirty-one. This book was intended to be his gift to me. I’m both desperate to keep reading and afraid that, once I do, there will be nothing left behind to discover anymore. Not that I knew this existed, but now that I do, it feels too rare. Too precious.
But I’ve learned my lesson about not making room toembrace rare and precious things when they fall into my lap. So I read on.
Happy birthday, Dodger!
Did you know that when you came into Virtu that day, over half your life ago now, I was about to tell Harold I wanted out of the business? But meeting you changed things for me. I started to see the store as a place that could be your home as you grew and found your sense of purpose. And soon, you became mine.
I once overheard you joke with a customer that you arrived on our doorstep as a piece of bric-a-brac, and that I gilded you and made you worth something. But, my boy, you have always been golden, through and through. I tried to provide a bit of polish, sure, but that was mostly just an excuse to have a front-row seat to watch you shine.
That’s about as much mawkishness as either of us can stand, I think, so I’ll stop now.
Just know I’m so proud of you, Callahan. Always have been, and I always will be.
Graham
I don’t know how long I sit there, stock-still, as my heart and my head toss the words between them. I’ve spent the years since his death obsessed with the idea that Virtu was Graham’s legacy, that it was my duty to care for it exactly how he did. And yet here, in this note that he wrote and never got a chance to give to me, he says that it wasn’t the store that he considered his life’s purpose at all.
It was me.
The next time I’m aware of my surroundings, it’s dark outside. Also, darkinside, since I haven’t turned on any lights. I tuck the paper back into the book and close it softly, then stretch out as far as I possibly can, just barely reaching the floor lamp in the corner. I manage to flick it on without having to actually move off the couch, and am somewhat pleased with myself for only a second before there’s a loud knock at the door. My annoyance at being forced to stand up again is quickly replaced by the thought that it could be Annie.
I’m already turning the knob by the time I realize it can’t be, since she left the key behind when she went. Which means…
Yep. Two of the only other people who have access to my front door outside of business hours.
“You’re not supposed to be back yet,” I say.
“Nice to see you too, Callahan,” Harold responds, stepping into the apartment without waiting for an invitation. Inés follows behind him, kissing me on the cheek with a warm “Happy Thanksgiving, Cal.”
My colleagues march into my messy living room, settling side by side on the couch as I stand, slack-jawed, hands on my hips. Finally I manage to ask, “Either of you want to tell me what the hell is going on?”
“This is an intervention,” Harold says.
“A—an—what?” I stammer.
“An intervention,” he repeats. “When people who care about someone who is struggling go to that person and—”
“I know what the word means! Why are you feeling the need to intervene?”
Inés reaches out and pulls me down by the shoulder to sit on the couch’s arm beside her. “Francis told us what happened with Annie,” she says. “And that you haven’t been handling it well.”
“I’ve been handling itfine,” I insist. “And did you seriously fly back from your honeymoon a week and a half early just to come yell at me for moping too much?”
“There were other circumstances,” Inés says cryptically at the same time as Harold grumbles, “Pretty much, yes.”
“What were the other circumstances?”
