Chapter Two
Oliver
Bad things come in threes.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised when, after being let go from my job and dumped by my girlfriend, I come home to ankle-deep water flooding my apartment.
Mr. Williams, the manager of the swanky condominiums I live in, stands outside my door with the couple that lives next door, all of them with worried expressions on their faces. When he spots me rounding the corner from the elevators, he jumps into action.
“Oliver! Just the guy we were waiting for!” I like Mr. Williams; he’s been a great landlord. But after learning who my parents are, he’s been a bit of a brown-noser. Always a little too quick to jump to my aid or offer to fix a problem. Today, his forced enthusiasm, mixed with the worry in his eyes, pushes me closer to the edge I’ve been teetering on since leaving the offices of Woolsey-Marshall Architecture.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Williams?” I glance over his shoulder at the Steeles, the older couple who live next door. Mr. Steele has his arm wrapped protectively around Mrs. Steele, who is clutching her teacup yorkie like she just had a near-death experience. I’ve never had any sort of problem with my neighbors—they’re a lovely, albeit slightly dramatic, couple—so their presence at my door leaves me scratching my head.
Metaphorically.
“Would you mind letting me into your apartment? The Steeles called me about a leak in their bathroom, but we can’t find the source of it. While I’m not hoping it’s coming from your place, it’s the next place we need to check. And if there’s any damage to your unit, we need to get that documented and…” He trails off as I raise my eyebrows. He lifts his hands and waves them in front of me. “I’m sure it’s nothing serious.” His voice is placating, which I’m sure is for Mrs. Steele’s benefit, but after the day I’ve had, I wish he would have just texted instead of waiting here for me. “But the leak is along a shared wall, and I just want to make sure everything is okay.”
For the record, everything is not okay.
I flip on the light, prompting a collective groan from me and Mr. Williams. The carpet in the living room is dark with water, the tile in the kitchen is submerged in at least an inch of it, and the distinct sound of spraying water comes from the hallway bathroom. The bathroom that shares a wall with the Steeles’ place.
Mr. Williams mumbles a string of curses I can’t repeat as he leans into my apartment, attempting to assess the severity of the situation from around my body, which is still obscuring the majority of the doorway.
Looking down at the water that’s beginning to leak over the threshold onto the hallway carpet, I say screw it. I step into my apartment, my shoes sinking into the flooded carpet, and take squelching steps over to the coffee table and set my small box of belongings down.
I didn’t go to work this morning expecting to come home with the contents of my desk in a cardboard box someone scrounged up from the supply room. I didn’t make a lunch reservation at my girlfriend’s favorite restaurant expecting to eat by myself with that same box as my plus-one. And I didn’t wear my lucky shoes expecting them to be ruined by a burst pipe.
With today’s events, I can’t really call them my lucky shoes anymore.
I cross into the kitchen lake and crouch down to find the water shut-off underneath the sink. Slowly, the sound of rushing water quiets from the vicinity of the bathroom, and Mr. Williams heaves a huge sigh from the hallway.
By the time I make my way back to my open front door, he already has his cellphone out, frantically shooting off texts and flipping between messaging apps, all while trying to herd the Steeles back into their apartment.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Evans. I didn’t realize it would be this bad.” The sudden seriousness of the situation has him addressing me by my last name, a jarring switch from his casual hello only a few minutes ago. “ I need to check on the tenants downstairs, but do you have somewhere you can stay tonight?” He looks up from his phone, worry etched on his face. “I’m sure if you talked with your insurance, they would cover a hotel.”
His phone buzzes again, and his attention moves away from me. “It could be up to a few weeks to get everything cleaned up and fixed, depending on when I can get the plumbers and repairmen in here.”
I glance back at my ruined apartment, but somehow find a smile for Mr. Williams. The man looks stressed enough that his hair might spontaneously start falling out. “No worries, Mr. Williams. I can crash at my parents’ place until you get everything sorted here. Let me grab some of my things and then I’ll leave you with unrestricted access to the whole apartment. You have my number if anything else comes up.”
My landlord nods, already pressing his phone to his ear as I turn back to my water-logged space. I slosh my way to my bedroom, the water unavoidable and my shoes already soaked. The carpet in my room is slightly less damp, but it still squishes underfoot as I find a mostly dry duffle bag in my closet and fill it with clothes. Next is my hanging garment bag and a selection of my usual workwear. Not that I’ll be needing slacks and button-downs to wear to work in the immediate future, but I don’t know how long the repairs and restoration of my apartment will take, and I hope to have a new job before then.
Mr. Williams thanks me and apologizes again as I step back into the hallway. I don’t envy his job in the next few weeks, but I’m just grateful I have somewhere else to go. It’s already going to be enough of a hassle getting my insurance involved. This could have been way more of an inconvenience than it is.
I wait until I get to the parking garage before calling Mom. The door to my parents’ home is always open, as my mother likes to remind me every time we’re on the phone, but it never hurts to give them a little warning. When Mom’s phone goes to voicemail, I try Dad. When his phone also goes to voicemail, I start driving. I did my due diligence. They can be surprised, then.
In less than twenty minutes, I’m pulling onto the spare parking pad at my parents’ home. Even when my parents aren’t home, there’s usually someone at the house—the housekeeper or one of their personal assistants—but the house is completely dark aside from the timered exterior lights. When no one answers the door, I have to use my spare key to get in.
My hellos are met with nothing but an echo through the large house. The house feels cold and empty, void of its usual warmth and welcome, and I flip on lights as I go to help banish some of the creepy feeling of walking through such a large and obviously empty house.
I plop onto one of the couches in the formal living room—one I wouldn’t plop onto unless I was sure my mom wouldn’t find out—and finally reach down to peel off my soggy shoes. I switch on a small side table lamp and sigh as I lean back against the couch and close my eyes.
My phone buzzes with an incoming call, and I grunt as I shift enough to pull it out of my pocket. I don’t recognize the number or the area code, but my phone doesn’t automatically list it as a spam call. I hesitate for a few rings before answering.
“Hey sweetie, how’s it going?”
It’s my mom’s voice, but not her number.
“Mom?”
Her unmistakable laugh fills the speaker. “Yes, Oliver, it’s me. I just wanted to check on you. I haven’t talked to you in awhile.”
It’s like she knows I’m messing around on her fancy furniture when I shouldn’t. That’s the only explanation for this weirdly-timed call from my mom after the crap day I’ve had.
Actually, scratch that. She can probably sense that I need her with her weird mom magic or something.
“We talked last week.”
Mom laughs like oh how silly of me, of course we did, and I can perfectly picture her waving her hand in front of her face to brush my comment aside. “It’s no crime to check up on my only son, you know. I am your mother; I want to know how you’re doing. At least I’m not one of those moms who tracks your location.”
We both chuckle. If she were one of those moms, she would know that I’m at her house, and with those mom senses, she’d know that I’m contemplating putting my wet feet up on the coffee table. (Something I absolutely shouldn’t do, for the record.) But, speaking of location…
“What phone are you calling from?”
“The camp phone.”
“Camp phone?” I sit up, leaning my elbows on my knees, like that’s going to help me better understand the words coming out of her mouth.
“Yes. Remember that summer camp your dad and I bought this last winter?”
Vaguely. I have a fuzzy memory of Mom raving about the gorgeous scenery while Dad spoke about the numbers during one of our family dinners around the holidays. At the time, I was also swamped with my own projects at work. I spend a weekend every few months volunteering with the Evans Youth Foundation, but I don’t have the mental capacity to remember everything my mom and dad do with their philanthropic efforts.
“Well that’s where we are right now!” Mom’s obvious excitement is infectious, and I can’t help the small smile I give to the empty room. “The summer camp program starts in just a few days, so we flew out last week to get things set up.”
I glance around the dim and empty living room as my brain runs through the facts it digs up from the conversation I had with my parents last fall. Something about a small camp in the western US where Mom and Dad are hoping to expand their youth program that has been successful over the past several years here in Virginia.
“So you don’t mind if I crash at your place for the foreseeable future?”
“Why? What’s wrong?” Mom’s voice immediately fills with worry, and I can picture the wrinkle that’s probably forming right between her eyebrows.
“My apartment flooded.”
“Oh no!”
“And Reese broke up with me.”
“What?” Mom’s voice rises in pitch.
“And I was let go from Woolsey-Marshall.”
“WHAT!”
I have to pull my phone away from my ear so Mom doesn’t blow out my eardrum with all of her yelling. The reality of everything that happened today finally settles on my shoulders, and I slump back on the couch, running a hand over my face.
“Yeah, it’s been quite the day.”
Muffled sounds come through my phone’s speaker, indicating that Mom has likely pressed the phone against her stomach to talk to someone. I can only assume it’s Dad, and that she’s relaying all the information I just told her.
“Why don’t you come out here?” Mom’s voice reappears as suddenly as it vanished a moment ago. “If you need a place to get away for a bit, this camp is perfect. It’s away from the city, and the air is so fresh. It will help you get out of whatever funk you’re in.”
“I am not in a funk,” I protest, but Mom’s silence feels weighty, like she’s waiting for me to agree with her. Because she’s right, even though I don’t want to admit it. I already feel like my body is too heavy to pull off this couch.
“Oh, alright.” I pull my phone away from my ear and switch it to speaker so I can look up this camp. “What’s the name of the camp? Bartlett? Browning?” Both of those names pull up Boy Scout camps in the area, which are clearly not the one Mom and Dad bought.
“Brower,” Mom says. “Camp Brower. Are you looking it up? It should pop right up.”
“Got it.” I zoom in on the small camp located just north of the Utah-Idaho border. It hardly looks like much, but then again, satellite views never really do things justice. “Kinda small isn’t it?”
“It’ll look bigger once you get here.” Mom pauses again, and I sense an unspoken conversation on the other end of this call. “It has good bones,” she says after a minute of silence.
I groan.
Usually, someone says something has good bones when they’re grasping at straws for good things to say. It does not give me much hope for what I’ll find when I get there.
“Oliver,” Mom gently reprimands, and even though she’s two thousand miles away, I straighten. Mom and Dad wouldn’t have made the decision to buy a property all the way across the country lightly. They wouldn’t have signed the papers if they didn’t believe that this camp was going to work out for them. So I need to put a little more faith in their decision and wait to pass judgment until I see it with my own eyes.
I rub my free hand over my face. With everything that happened today, this feels like running away, and I’ve neer been one to run away from my problems. But it doesn’t have to be permanent. One week, maybe two, and then I’ll come back and hopefully have some leads for a new job. I can take some time to reset myself and then get back and hit the ground running.
“Alright. I’ll let you know when I’m on my way.”
“Remember to call us on this number. We don’t have cell service while we’re at the camp.”
Great. Another thing to add to the list of things I’ve lost.