Page 16 of Find My Way Down to You

Mom

Cooper, it’s too early for that.

We both love you, son. Come visit soon.

She always knows what to say. And when to say nothing at all. I wish I was more like her. Or that I had my dad’s impenetrable resolve to never get stuck in a moment for too long. Life as a nurse gave him that.

Suddenly, a harsh image blurs my vision.

Empty blue eyes. Hal’s crumpled body against the brick wall.

My pulse leaps. I stare at my phone, waiting for one of my parents to comment about what happened yesterday. The message never comes.

I search through the local news headlines. A single article about an incident around State Street Promenade pops up. No mention of Hal specifically, or even Viva Catalina’s. Santa Barbara is more concerned about a festival happening near West Beach this weekend than a dead man found in an alley.

It’s as if it never happened. But itdid. I was there.

So was…

I change my search topic. The results populate with hundreds of different Carys, but none of them are a boy with hair dark as wet earth, a face made of stone. I switch over to social media. It’s a place I rarely go anymore. I don’t want to accidentally stumble upon an old photo of London on one of my former classmates’ profiles.

Again, I find nothing about Cary.

Defeat sits like an anchor on my chest. “Isawhim,” I whisper to myself.

It wasn’t a dream. Or a hallucination. He was there. Then gone before I could blink, like…magic?

Beyond my cracked bedroom door, I hear cabinets being aggressively shut. Max swears. It’s the one thing that finally yanks me from the murky depths of my thoughts and out of bed.

When I walk into the kitchen, Max announces, “It’s trying to kill me!”

I smile at the offending object. “It’s an espresso machine.” Vivienne left it for us.

“That refuses to make my coffee right,” Max snarls.

“Are you pressing the right button?”

“Of course I am.”

“And the coffee button is…?”

Max’s hand winds in an exaggerated circle around the compact and gleaming machine. “One of those,” she huffs.

With practiced ease, I swap her mug filled with watery brown sludge for a clean one. I slip a new coffee pod into the brewing chamber. Max squints as I press the button she clearly missed.

The machine hums quietly before a slow, steady brown stream fills Max’s cup.

“I hate you,” Max whispers, snatching up her mug.

We settle in the living room.

Our apartment is modestly decorated. Vivienne lived here throughout college, then for her graduate program too. You can’t tell because of how new everything looks, from the clean, geometric-patterned area rug to the spotless kitchen appliances. We sit on the unblemished cream sofa.

Max claims her sister was like that growing up as well.Viviennestaysin places,but she neverlivesthere, she told me.

Now Vivienne’s in Seoul. She works in advertising, a profession her parents approve of. Max hasn’t said it, but I’m convinced the Chos are paying half our rent to bribe her into pursuing a career oftheirchoosing.

Diana leaps onto the coffee table. She sniffs around. The moment Max reaches out to pet her, she springs away.