Chapter 17
“What the hell is a Chihuly?” Lowell, a contractor I hire for client jobs, shouts in my ear.
There’s a power tool humming in the background on his end of the line—jackhammer, chain saw?
It’s hard to tell. I plug my other ear to drown out the wind.
The seal on Beau’s windows is busted, and there’s a constant hum.
Virtual assisting from the car takes creativity.
Lowell sighs and moves me to the speakerphone. The roar of the power tool grows louder, and I pull the phone away from my ear. There’s a pause on his end. I assume he’s scrolling through the diagrams and photos I’d texted him a moment ago. “How much did your boss pay for this thing?”
“One million dollars.” Juniper was sure to tell me how much it was worth when she’d called this morning with the latest impossible task. Meanwhile, she’s paying me less to transport the precious artwork than Beau paid for our fancy meal last night.
“Rich people are stark raving mad,” Lowell gripes. I’ve never sent a job his way without listening to him bitch about it for an hour or so. But he does good work.
“But they write our paychecks,” I remind him.
Beau and I approach a toll booth. We’re heading north out of the East Bay on one of the not-famous bridges of the region. Beau slows through the booth and then accelerates.
“Ms. Dahl, I don’t know how I let you talk me into these crazy jobs,” Lowell says.
And I’ve got him. “Because I keep your life interesting.”
“‘Interesting’ isn’t the word I’d use. But I’m not one to swear in front of a lady.”
I give Lowell the rest of the details before hanging up and checking the item off my list.
“You found someone to do it?” Beau gawks at me from the driver’s side as he turns on a podcast. He’d laughed when I read Juniper’s email aloud an hour ago. To think he doubted me.
“Lowell. He will do anything—for the right price.”
“You’re good at what you do, Phe.”
I snort. “Anyone could do my job.”
“Not true,” he says. “You convinced someone to move a million-dollar glass sculpture on a twenty-four-hour deadline while working from your car. I wouldn’t know where to begin with that.”
“That’s because you are a genius, and geniuses are supposed to leave the peasant work to people like me.”
He turns to look at me, but I can’t read his expression behind his sunglasses. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Undervalue yourself.”
It seems obvious, but I don’t want to have that conversation with him. I am good at my job—but most people don’t respect what I do. And if I poke fun at myself, others won’t feel the need to knock me down. I shift to look out the window as we pass over San Francisco Bay and don’t respond.
“How’d you get into that work?” he asks, and I eye him cautiously, waiting for the derision, but his face is guileless.
“I worked as an executive assistant at a commercial real estate company in LA after college. And I didn’t mind the work but felt like a caged animal working in a cube all day.”
Beau laughs. “Dramatic, but okay.”
I fiddle with my seat belt, running my hand over the satiny shoulder harness. “I was pretty efficient, so I sat in the cube for eight hours a day but had finished my work in five.”
“I believe it.”
I study him again, searching for sarcasm, but don’t see any. “I started collecting virtual-assisting clients and worked in the evenings. Once I had five clients, I quit the corporate gig and have been working in my sweatpants ever since.”
“Do you like it?” he asks. “You work for yourself. It’s flexible. You’re good at it.”
“I’ve had some fun projects. I once furnished a client’s vacation home with every fancy kitchen apparatus on the market. I have a regular client who has me meal plan, shop for groceries, and create recipes for her family of six.”
“So you like food-related jobs.” He chuckles.
“Yes, actually. And I like complex projects. I like solving problems, I suppose. And I like the clients who aren’t assholes.”
He laughs. “Fair.”
After a few moments, I turn my attention to my laptop, where my notes are scattered across the page. We were able to do one interview before heading out of town this morning. “Was it me, or was Chester’s story even creepier than normal?”
Beau taps on the steering wheel with his index fingers. “I’m trying not to—”
“Judge, I know. But seriously, Beau.” I twist in my seat.
“The dude and his twin swapped identities. They traded wives without telling them.” I do a full-body shudder.
Chester’s twin, Charles, died two years ago.
Both of their spouses are gone as well. There are five children between the two couples, and their paternity is a confusing mess.
According to Chester, they never worried about it since the DNA was the same.
I can’t wrap my mind around it. “It’s so Days of Our Lives . ”
“But in Days , one of the twins would be locked in the basement while the other stole his life,” Beau says, deadpan.
“See, this is why I missed you,” I say. Beau feigned irritation when I’d watch the soap after school, but I’d catch him engrossed instead of doing his math homework.
“Have you?” There it is again, a sliver of vulnerability.
“I have.” And I understand how true it is the moment the confession leaves my lips. “But you don’t even need to tell me you missed me. I know you did.”
“Oh, really?”
“I’m the only person who doesn’t let you take yourself too seriously.”
“Hmm,” he says, and his lips quirk in a smile before he sobers. “And as the friend who forces you to take yourself more seriously, I’m going to need a decision soon. You have thirty miles before I turn one way or the other.”
We either head straight to the next interview or take a detour to Fort Bragg to search for my mom.
Another city blurs by the car window. Our tires eat up a new freeway. I know what I’m running from. Now it’s clear that Beau is escaping as well. At some point, I need to figure out if I’m ready to run toward some answers.
“Rarely are forks in the road actual forks in the road, huh?”
Beau has been so patient, but I’m no closer to a decision. He relinquishes the reins on the radio—a treat he offers only when I’m at my lowest. I put on Noah Kahan to keep Beau on my good side. Melancholy makes him happy.
“Five minutes,” he says a bit later.
“Let’s do it,” I say on an exhale. “If nothing else, we can visit Glass Beach and get fish tacos in Fort Bragg.”
“You sure?”
“No. But not being sure is my natural state.”
Beau taps in a new address and takes the exit to a winding two-lane highway through the dense coastal redwoods—trees towering above all others, proud, unapologetic in their beauty.
We roll down the windows and let the fog-drenched air crawl in.
Light streams in through the trees at odd intervals, ephemeral spotlights that cut through the canopy to blind me.
I close my eyes, tilt the seat back, and pretend I’m not barreling toward a truth that might unravel the thread holding my tenuous memories together.
I startle awake when Beau pulls to a stop.
“Where are we?” I sit up and stretch the kink in my neck. We’re parked along a small-town Main Street, sprinkled with restaurants and boutiques—most closed for the day.
He gestures to a side street up ahead to our right. “Your mom’s last known address is on that street.”
I lean forward as if I might spot her if I squint, and then peer away as my heart takes off on a gallop.
“You know, this was a bad idea. Ghosts are better left alone. Right? And one parent breaking my heart is enough for one lifetime. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe we should leave—head straight to Chico.”
Beau interrupts my ramble with a hand on my forearm, which stills me immediately. “Phe.” His voice comes out soft, as if soothing a toddler in a tantrum.
“What?” I hear the mania in my voice, but I can’t stop it.
“I’ll do whatever you need here.” He nods to our right.
“But I got us reservations at a beachfront motel. It has firepits and access to a trail along the ocean.” He points to a storefront a few yards away.
“And there’s a dive bar where you can drink too much, and I’ll nurse your wounds until you have enough liquid courage to do what we came here for.
Or until you’re sure you want to leave.”
I slump against the seat and throw my arms across my eyes. “If she wanted me, she would have found me. How desperate am I to chase her across the state and show up on her doorstep?”
He’s quiet for a moment before he says, “There’s nothing desperate about wanting answers from someone who hurt you.”
I peek out from behind my forearms to see Beau twisted in his seat, inspecting me with a deep frown. “You’re very wise, Professor.”
My phone cuts through the silence, the ringer peeling out an old-school analog ringtone at high volume. Beau fishes it from the console and hands it over.
“It’s my real estate agent.” I slip out of the car to take the call while pacing on the sidewalk. They probably found a roof leak, or asbestos. Ronald has called almost daily with more requests to mine my bank account.
“Hi, Ronald.”
“Ms. Dahl, good news. We have a buyer.”
My stomach does a little flip as he fills in the details. The offer is a bit south of the list price, but there’s no guarantee there’ll be another. Ronald tells me about the conditions, escrow timeline, and that he’ll forward the offer as soon as he hangs up.
Beau climbs out of the car as I shove my phone in my pocket.
“Someone’s made an offer on the house.” I pace beside a closed gift shop.
“That’s good, right?”
“Yeah. Totally. It’s fast. Which is good. It’s just, fast, you know?”
Beau steps onto the sidewalk in two strides, his hands deep in his pockets. “I think so?”
“I have to respond by tomorrow. And then, I don’t know. The house isn’t mine anymore?”
“That’s usually how it works.”