“Bowen,” I turn the key fob over in my hands, “do you still want me to live with you?”
He reaches over from the passenger seat and slowly plucks the carabiner from my hands.
He flips through the keys and lifts a silver one with a hexagonal head between his thumb and index finger, “You already do.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Brett
One Year Ago
I’ve never been good at packing. I waver between a capsule wardrobe that can fit in a weekender and a full-size suitcase filled with 30 pairs of underwear and a pair of cowboy boots, just in case. This time is no different.
I commit to a carry-on, which is more than enough space for a four-day trip to Toronto. Except that right now, it looks like my red suitcase is vomiting the contents of my dresser drawers across the bed. Waylon lays sprawled across the grey carpet, in the middle of the room, snoring. He’s adorable, but no help. I turn back to the bed, realizing that, in addition the packing, I should’ve gone through my clothes after the move and donated about a third of them. So, that’s what I do on a Sunday afternoon, the day before Bowen and I are supposed to fly to Toronto to spend Christmas with my sister, Jo, and my brother-in-law, Omar. Instead of packing, I go through all my clothes and decide what to donate and what to pack into totes to store until summer.
I should’ve done this when I moved in. The market was still hot when my condo sold a month ago and even though I hadn’t lived there that long, it still sold for over asking price. I’m still riding that high, ecstatic to put some money in the bank and not have to turn around and throw it on another down payment. When it was all said and done, I filled the entire bed of Bowen’s truck with boxes of books and he built two brand new bookshelves to hold the ones that wouldn’t fit on his existing shelves.
Once my warm-weather clothes are packed up, I begin carting them down to the lower level of the house. Currently, it’s a sparse second living room, lined with floor to ceiling windows and a sliding glass door leading out back. There’s an extra bedroom that serves as an extra storage space filled with shelving, boxes, and random furniture that doesn’t go anywhere else. The totes full of warm weather clothes will go here, too.
I find a space next to a metal shelving unit and sit the tote down next to it. Bowen doesn’t do clutter, which is fortunate because neither do I. Maybe that’s why I decided to move in with him. He’s organized. Very…organized.
Everything has a place, and this room where all the extras go to live is no different. I stroll over to the metal shelves, examining the boxes and containers and extra books stacked neatly. At the far end of the shelf, I come to a maroon binder and two brown leather photo albums leaning against a cardboard box with another shoebox sitting on top of it. I lift the maroon binder off the shelf and open it. It’s filled with an array of colorful, themed scrapbook pages. The title page is labeled with, Bowen Garrison, Social Studies, clearly a middle school project. The first brown leather album is filled with random family photos that span Bowen and Hildy’s entire childhood. The second one includes photos from high school; a mixture of parties, vacations, and sporting events.
For a moment, I wonder if I should be looking through Bowen’s stuff like this, but I brush it off—it’s only old photos and memorabilia. I replace the albums and reach for the shoebox. Inside is a pile of loose photos and papers. The first is a high school soccer team photo with Bowen standing in the back row. His black hair is longer and tied back at the crown of his head. The second is a high school softball team photo with Hildy kneeling in the front row, her black hair much longer and flipped up at the ends.
I flip through the rest of the photos and papers, examining each one: Hildy and the redheaded girl from the photos upstairs, both in softball uniforms, a page torn from a yearbook with the senior photo of the same girl, and a printed news article, the headline reading, Canaan Senior Vanishes, with a photo of the redheaded girl below it. I scan the article from years ago, reading about how Evie Maguire disappeared from a gas station one night, a month before graduation. She was a star softball player bound for UCLA on scholarship.
This must be who Bowen was talking about, his friend who died back in high school, for whom he got Amy Lee’s lyrics tattooed on his ribs. My muscles tense and I feel a chill creep over my skin. I quickly fold up the article and tuck it back into the pile, flipping to the next photo.
The next few are of Bowen and a girl I don’t recognize from any of the pictures upstairs. She has long, thick, auburn hair and green eyes that pop when she smiles. In most of the photos, she has her arms around Bowen, obviously his girlfriend at some point. There’s nothing that says her name, only pictures.
I replace the photos and fold the top of the shoebox down. As I tuck Bowen’s past back onto the shelf, I remember I’m supposed to be packing. I wonder if the girl with the auburn hair is the one who ghosted him. Logic would say so, but I suppose it doesn’t matter now. We all hang on to random memories from the past, myself included. Who knows what I have saved in middle school photo albums and journals from long ago. So, for now, the nameless girl will stay a mystery in Bowen’s miniature sarcophagus of memories.
●●●
Unlike me, Bowen is much more concise when it comes to packing for a trip. It takes him five minutes to pack a duffel bag with everything he needs for a week. It takes him even less time to realize why I’m staring at him like a lunatic as I watch him do it. By Monday afternoon, his five-minute bag is sitting on the floor of Jo and Omar’s guest room next to mine, which looks like it’s been detonated by the bomb squad. Again, I’m organized in every other aspect, but packing is still a struggle.
“I don’t know what I’m doing with you,” Omar mutters to Jo as he takes another biscuit from the cast iron pan in the middle of the table, “this guy should just move in.” Then he nods at me and Jo, “You two, return to the States, I’ll be up here eating butter and lard like a king.”
Jo tosses a crumpled-up paper towel across the table. It bounces off Omar’s chest and falls to the floor.
“Or,” Jo glares at him, “you could just have him teach you how to make them and you could be the biscuit king, too.”
“I think that would make you the biscuit prince,” I smirk while slathering my own biscuit in butter.
Omar scrunches up his face and waves me off, “Small detail.”
“Where’d you learn to make these?” I turn to Bowen, “The last time I tried to make biscuits, they turned out flat.”
Bowen takes a swig of coffee, “Nanna Ginny, my dad’s mom. Six years old and she had me cutting lard into the flour.”
“Oh, I thought you were going to say your mom.”
“Nanna never gave mom the recipe,” he snickers.
“Why not?”
“No one knows,” he replies, leaning back in his chair. “She kind of did before she died, but they turned out awful, so everyone thought she gave mom the wrong directions on purpose. Like, on her deathbed.”
Jo explodes in laughter, nearly spewing coffee across the table, “I’m sorry,” she takes a breath, brushing her sandy hair away from her face, “that is next-level petty, and I love it.”
I can’t help myself, I have to laugh too, as I envision Leona glowering at a pan of ruined biscuits, cursing her dead mother-in-law for sabotaging her attempt to carry on the coveted family recipe.
Bowen grins and looks over his shoulder at me, “It’s kind of like your book—bad blood over the family secrets.”
“Plot twist—” I take a bite of my biscuit, “the big secret is Crisco. Voila! This book just wrote itself.”
“Speaking of which,” Jo stands up and takes her plate over to the sink, “have you finished the book?”
“Not yet,” I shake my head and stand up to follow her, “but I will. It goes a lot slower when I can only write for a couple of hours at a time.”
Omar sits back in his chair and throws his hand in the air, “Quit your job!” Then he motions to Bowen, “He makes money. Family business, right? He’s the American Dream. What’s the problem?”
Now it’s my turn to choke on my coffee. “No,” I cough, “I’m not going to quit my job.”
Bowen shrugs, “Why not?” he cracks a smile, “I mean, if you’re serious about being a writer…”
“See?” Omar brushes the crumbs off his hands and onto his plate, “What are you complaining about? Done!” he declares, considering the matter resolved.
