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“Still, it’s nice to be home,” he adds. “Good to be around family again, you know? Don’t know if you’ve ever spent much time away from yours, but it sucks to only see them once in a blue moon, just talking over video calls. Don’t care what anyone says, it’s not the same.”
I look off toward the house, where the glowing lights spill from the French doors onto the terrace: welcoming beacons to lost souls like me. How do I tell this stranger that his sister and his niecearemy family, now? I would feel like I’d hijacked his for myself.
“Shit, sorry.” He rests the damp beer bottle against his brow. “It’s not just my eyesight that’s patchy. My memory is like a… reverse sieve, where things sort of filter back through in dribs and drabs. Lyndsey told me about… uh… about your…that you were…” He trails off. I wonder if it might be the end of our conversation but I’m not quite ready to sit in silence again.
“My ‘colorful’ family history,” I fill in the blanks for him, forcing a laugh so he won’t feel awkward. “If my grandma had still had her wits about her, in the last few years she was here, it would’ve sucked to only be able to call. So, I sort of know what you mean.”
Rowan exhales slowly, sinking further back into his chair. “I’m awful at this.”
“At what? Talking?” I chuckle, but there’s a stone in my chest where my heart should be, and it’s growing bigger with every moment I sit outside with Rowan.
I shouldn’t be doing this. Sure, I can appreciate when someone is attractive, but sitting out in a garden beneath a romantic sunset with them is beyond innocent appreciation. At least, that’s what my guilt gauge seems to believe, as sirens start wailing in my head, warning of a complete system meltdown.
“Making new… acquaintances.” The way Rowan pauses between those two words makes the stone in my chest sink down into my stomach. The beauty of the evening fades, the twilight casting eerie shadows that claw toward me from the willow and the magnolias and the hedges, as though I should be dragged down to some hellish landscape for the terrible sin of speaking easily with another man. An attractive man, who also happens to be Lyndsey’s brother.
He's part of the family,I insist, like I’m my own defense attorney at a trial.He’s just being friendly because his sister invited the widow of Grace’s dad to a birthday party. Everyone is nice to widows. You’d be pretty twisted if you weren’t.
“So, Malaysia?” I choke out. “What’s it like there?”
Rowan laughs, like he’s also relieved for a change of subject. “If you think Louisiana is humid, you’ve never experienced summer in Kuala Lumpur. I thought I was made of tough stuff, but I sweated through every shirt I had, at least once a day. Sometimes twice.” He pulls a face. “Sorry. Don’t want to turn you off your strawberries.”
“Nothing could turn me off strawberries,” I assure. “What is it you do?”
“Design for tech companies.” He waves a dismissive hand. “It’s a whole complicated thing. What about you? Last I heard, you run the gallery? Any big career changes since the last time I saw you?”
I shake my head. “Still running the gallery, but thinking about exploring new pastures.”
“Really?” He leans over the side of the chair, turning his body to face me. “What are you thinking?”
It’s me who waves a dismissive hand, this time. “It’s silly. Everyone I tell thinks it’s a terrible idea.”
“Try me. I’ve dabbled in start-ups, and I can usually sniff out a bad one,” he urges, ‘Live’ still bouncing up and down on his knee.
I focus on the lettering and its fraternal twin. ‘Live Big.’ When you’re a kid, most people think that’s how they’ll live. No one envisions a small, peaceful life. Kids want to be astronauts and movie stars and singers and firefighters and archaeologists who’ll find the next big dinosaur. They dream big because everything is possible when you’re small. Reality hasn’t bitten yet.
“I want to open a coffee shop,” I tell him tentatively, realizing it probably goes against everything he believes in, since he’s wearing his mantra on his sneakers. “Nothing fancy, but the coffee has to be good. There’s a place near my apartment, where I go practically every day, called the ‘Brass Whistle.’ It’s hard to describe, but it’s got that… vibe, you know? A home away from home, where you can lose hours and not consider one of them wasted. That’s what I would do, if I could.”
Rowan taps his forefinger against the side of his beer, his head tilted to one side in thought. “What’s stopping you?”
“Good question.” I laugh, but it echoes hollow.
He shrugs. “Sounds like a decent idea to me. I mean, coffee is a safe bet. Everyone likes coffee. Everyone has a routine around coffee—everyone I know, anyway, but they’re all burnt out corporate folk who’d literally collapse if they weren’t jacked on caffeine.” He grins, and his eyes seem to light up from within. “And everyone needs a place to go when they don’t want to go home. Doesn’t always have to be a bar. It’s probably healthier if it’s not.”
“You don’t think it’s a stupid idea?” I frown, puzzled by the generosity of his answer.
When I told Lyndsey, she’d been fairly supportive, but with a stake in the gallery, I could understand why she’d want to keep me at the helm. The Chevalet has never been more successful, though I can’t take all the credit. My team are the real geniuses. Ms. T was the same—she said, “You do what you got to do, honey, and I’ll be right here with my pompoms out, cheerin’ you on,” probably thinking it was some cathartic grief strategy, to help me come to terms with Ben’s loss. Then again, Ms. T doesn’t think running his gallery is healthy for me, so she likelywouldbe rooting for me to do something else.
“What’s stupid about it? It makes as much sense as running a gallery, and Lyndsey tells me you’ve been acing that,” Rowan replies, shrinking the stone in my stomach.
I scuff my toe on the grass. “Well, for now, it’s still just a pipe dream. Could just be itchy feet.” I lick my dry lips, wishing Grace would hurry back with that drink. “Before… um… everything, I never stayed in one place for long, so I guess there’s a part of me that’s still getting used to that.”
“I know how that is.” He sighs, and I watch a thousand memories pass behind his eyes as he gazes off into the distance. “Something of a nomad myself, once upon a time. A year here, two years there, a year someplace else. But there comes a day when you’ve got to stop wandering, you know—when you’ve got to put down roots.”
I stare down into my lap, fighting the familiar sting of salty tears. My roots are entangled in the garden by the Gulf, weaving among the roots that Ben’s life wound deep beneath the soil of that little town. He was uprooted before his time, with Grace his sole sapling, to carry on his legacy. As for me, I’m just clippings of a twisted tree that shriveled in the Wisconsin frost, leaving parts of myself in every city and town I breezed through. Being with Ben was the first time I flourished and blossomed in nurturing soil, but that frost caught up with me there, too. Now, I fear there isn’t enough of me left to try and put down roots again. All I can do is pretend and hope that, one day, a shoot of happiness might sprout once more.
“I cleaned up!” Grace’s voice lifts my head and dries the tears that never had the chance to fall. She has a cup in her hands, which she’s carrying very carefully across the grass toward me. “Oscar is blowing up two mattresses, so we can both sleep on the floor!”
Oscar…I often wonder if he has it worse than me, competing with a ghost. But that’s the most beautiful thing about Oscar: he’s never tried to compete or asked anything of his stepdaughter. If he’s just “Oscar” for the rest of his life, I know he’ll be happy with that.
