Chapter 31 Opening
“I can’t do it,” I whisper. “Just—delete it.”
“Like hell you can’t,” Maisie says. She’s sitting on the kitchen counter, my beat-up laptop balancing on her legs.
This really isn’t the time for my own mental breakdown, seeing as her restaurant’s soft opening is tonight—but I’d gone tomato red when I saw the Parsons email address pop up on my phone, and here we are.
My mistake, for bumping myself to three phone peeks per day.
How nice, to let her do this for me.
“Samantha, keep whisking. Bailey, you need to cut the carrots sideways. With that one knife, you can’t use the mandoline.
” Rubbing off a perfectly placed puff of flour from her nose, Maisie glances at me, smiles sweetly, then clicks.
I’m standing in front of her, so I watch her eyes dart back and forth as she reads, her face controlled.
“Well?”
She shuts the laptop. “You got in.”
I scream. “I am using a knife, people,” Bailey huffs, and Samantha drops her whisk in the frosting, and then there are arms wrapped around me. A bunch. I can’t tell who’s who, just that these are my sisters, sweaty and happy, covered in lemon sugar.
“Okay, you need to email them back,” Maisie says as we pack the prepped food into her car. “So don’t come until later. Like, five?”
“Perfect.”
She closes her trunk. “And you’re sure you can do—you know—on your own?”
“Super sure.”
While the rest of May had lurched by, June has been slow, like only early summer in Waterfield can be.
The pool opened up, school let out. The fireflies appeared one night on my evening run and haven’t gone away, swarms of them, gold fairies in the dark blue.
I’d forgotten how, when you stay in the same place for a month and a half, you see how time gathers itself in little changes.
The sunset coming later in the afternoon, your sister’s haircut that’s a bit shorter than she wanted.
Chicago is still herself, too. Loud, gray and blue, busy, kind. The high-risk cancer research department is located inside a university hospital, and I head into the sterile gray building after I’ve had my fill of Lake Michigan, reminding myself that I can do this. I should.
The clinic is beautiful. Clearly very well funded, which makes me sad to think about.
There’s a trickling fountain in the waiting room, and mostly women in the chairs.
We smile at each other, an offbeat camaraderie.
So many of them have to be going through experiences that are so much harder than mine.
“Cat?”
The same soft-spoken nurse is here from last time, and she leads me back to Doctor Lucille’s room. “Just pop your head out if you need anything before she comes in,” she says, leaving me on a plastic chair and closing the door. No MRIs today, so I get to keep my clothes on. A silver lining.
Today, I’m learning my odds. Less silver.
When Doctor Lucille arrives, in a flurry of white lab coat swishes and Dansko heel clicks, she reminds me that this isn’t set in stone.
It’s their job to evaluate my family history and genetics to help reduce my cancer risk through preventative care and counseling.
“It’s just a number. And you have to remember that your tests look great at this moment, and genetics isn’t a destiny.
This number can get lower or higher depending on your lifestyle factors, such as smoking. Don’t smoke.”
“I know,” I tell her. “It’s okay. I’m ready.”
She pulls up the number on her computer. I look at it, weirdly peaceful. It’s higher than I want it to be. It’s much lower than it could be.
It just… is. There, on the screen.
It isn’t hanging over me anymore, invisible.
On my way out, I schedule my follow-up exams. I get to come in multiple times per year.
Mammograms, MRIs, possible ultrasounds, in-office visits like today where nothing particularly happens besides an infodump and therapy.
“We’ll see you in six months,” the receptionist says, then hands me a pamphlet on Understanding My Risks and a lollipop.
I yank the wrapper off. “See you then.”
I stop by the house after, per Maisie’s orders.
Everyone’s at the restaurant, so I take a shower that lasts way too long, change into my very Bear-esque white shirt and blue jeans and lucky red shoes, then pull out Faust’s journal from under my bed.
I’d been sleeping with it under my pillow for a few days, but that had felt creepy.
When you’re ready, he’d said.
I am now.
Flipping carefully to the first page, I blink at the date.
January 1. He must keep one journal per year.
So Kafka of him—so Faust. And most of the entries are on the shorter side.
For the first day of the year, when the rest of us are panicking over New Year’s resolutions and sweating out hangovers, all he wrote was, I hope I make the most out of this year.
He still hasn’t announced that he’s retiring. Picking at my necklace, I flip to February 14, the day of Bernard’s wedding. This entry is short, too.
Insufferably, I met someone today.
My fingers slip over my mouth, pressing against my smile.
But I bite my lip and keep flipping, through February—when he’d said he’d searched for me.
There are entries for that, too, little notes about not wanting to ask Bernard about the woman in a black dress who’d attended the ceremony, better not to let him know that she exists.
When I get to the first entry after I started working at Stark-Benzin, I’m swallowing back tears.
I’d never forgive myself for ruining these pages by crying on them, his lists, his clues.
I don’t know what’s going on with this woman.
But I’m not going to let her out of my sight.
Seven years ago, she didn’t exist.
I’m worried that I hurt her.
Reminds me of the poppies back home.
I think I am obsessed with her.
And on April 28, his birthday, the Day Gala, he’d only written three words—
I love her.
My head swims, a tingly lightness wrapping around my wrists, spreading through my fingers.
I imagine him getting out of bed after I’d fallen asleep, writing that.
Not telling me, because—because I had told him not to, in so many words.
Hadn’t I? I’d said I wouldn’t date him, and he’s so self-sacrificing that he’d taken me at my word.
He’d always waited for me to speak first, to follow my lead.
Like he’d helped Maisie without telling me because she’d asked him not to, I’d said that he couldn’t be with me and he’d listened.
Intensely devoted.
But he’d still written his feelings, right here. This was his secret. Faust, letting himself have what he wants.
I close the journal. I don’t need to read the rest.
Tonight is going to be for my family. But tomorrow, I’ll find him. I want to know what else he wants, everything he wants, from the world and, hopefully, from me.
Samantha picks me up in her Hyundai, and I marvel at her playlist on the ride to Maisie’s place: Queen, David Bowie, PinkPantheress, Bad Bunny, Mitski. “What? I’m not just volleyball,” she says with a grin. “I’ll make you a playlist. You need more than seventies stuff, dude.”
She parks around back, waving me toward the restaurant while she grabs another box of glasses from her trunk. I wait a moment, biting my lip. “Are you sure you don’t need help?”
“I’m like ten times stronger than you. Go.”
But this—this is hard. This, I might not be ready for.
I have to be, though. The past few weeks, I’ve gotten to taste test the final versions of Maisie’s recipes, watch her bloom into a chef and a business owner.
Half of Waterfield will be here later tonight, and the other half will be vague-posting about it online, passive-aggressively mad that they weren’t invited to a “family-only soft launch.”
Now is when I can feel this stuff, before the cavalry.
And my heart does thump at the first sight of the restaurant.
It’s squat, blue, with big windows at the front and candy-striped letters painted on the door: Arcadia.
The bell jingles as I step inside, and my fingers nearly slip from the handle.
It’s the same exact bell as Grandma’s restaurant—how did Maisie get the same bell?
I hold my breath, taking it in. The red vinyl booths.
The cozy coffee counter with whirly barstools overlooking the kitchen window.
Already, you can imagine life happening in here.
Breakfasts, family meals, late-night dates.
Tourists will eat here and leave feeling like they know Waterfield a little bit better. Our food. Our little life.
And…
I wish he were here, too.
The thought sneaks up on me, and by the time I realize it’s here, pressed against the back of my ribs, I feel like the tiles sway beneath my feet.
Because my first wish shouldn’t be for Faust to be here, at Maisie’s restaurant.
Tonight is about my family. I should’ve thought about Grandma first, or Mom.
But I didn’t.
I think… I think I’m moving on.
I’ll never be over their deaths, but I’m starting to grow past how death cut into my life. Their absence can be part of me like roots on a tree, their memory no longer keeping me from seeking out the sun. I don’t need to stay awake forever, staring at the past.
I miss him. Faust. And maybe that’s enough.
Phone. I have to get my bag. Then I could call him or—or find out where Formula 1 is this weekend, at least. Pulse racing, I turn toward the door again, only to stop dead in my tracks. Somehow, I missed Maisie sneaking in; she gives me an ever-so-slightly guilty smile. “Hi, hi.”
“How did you silence the doorbell?”
She wiggles her fingers. “Gotta grab it right when you come in. Grandma taught me that trick.”
“She did?” I bite my lip. “Sorry. Sometimes I still get surprised to learn things about her. But she was yours, too.”