Knox
“What are you thinking about?” Sylvie asks as we walk toward the post office.
“Who says I’m thinking about anything?”
“I mean, sure, that’s always a possibility with any male under the age of twenty—”
“Or over.”
“Yes, thank you, or over the age of twenty, that you’re literally envisioning a blank sheet of white printer paper at any given time.”
“You’re giving us entirely too much credit with the blank piece of paper.”
“Oh God. I don’t even wanna know. Anyway, you seemed deep in thought.” Sylvie pats at her pockets and rolls her eyes. “Forgot my PO box key.” We turn and start walking back to the van.
“It’s fun seeing you here,” I say.
“The post office?”
“Springfield.”
“Really?” In the van, Sylvie starts rummaging through the center console.
“Sure.”
“Why?”
“I dunno. Feels like you’ve invited me into your house.”
“I already invited you into my van house.”
“I know. But like your house house.”
“I promise you I am not some great daughter of Springfield.”
“No, I don’t mean that I think this specific Jimmy John’s or Starbucks somehow shaped you and made you who you are. But they’re part of the story of you. You have a history. And I’m getting to see it.”
“Aha!” Sylvie comes up with the key. She turns to me. “You say that like you don’t have a history.”
“I do, but it’s much less tangible. We moved around so much that I couldn’t show you the mundane places that were important to me.”
“You wish you had that?”
“I do. Human beings are creatures of memory. I think we’re made to fall in love with places and form emotional bonds to even pretty ordinary parts of those places. Like maybe you got a really great piece of news and then went to that Jimmy John’s to celebrate.”
“If it helps mitigate your jealousy, let me assure you that I never chose that Jimmy John’s or any other to celebrate anything.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“Swear I’m not. I think it’s adorable how in wonder of pedestrian stuff you are. You’re like a thawed-out caveman or something.”
“Best compliment one could hope for.”
“I mean that in the nicest possible way. Like one of the cavemen who made cool paintings.”
“Well, in that case. Anyway, to answer your original question before we started discussing printer paper and cavemen—”
“And celebrating life’s great victories at Jimmy John’s.”
“Yes, that too. I was wondering what you were thinking about because you got quiet.”
We enter the post office and make our way to the PO boxes.
“It’s just weird being back home,” Sylvie says, unlocking her box.
“I don’t know. There’s baggage. Put it this way: I’d have much preferred not losing my card and skipping this step.
” She comes up with the envelope containing the card and pumps her fist. “Nice! The only thing that would have been worse is not getting to skip this step and not finding the card here.”
“Sylvie Blake?” A glammed-out, red-haired woman dressed head to toe in expensive athleisure approaches, her head cocked. (I can recognize expensive clothes because we’d thrift and resell them at a markup at flea markets.)
The sound of someone else calling Sylvie’s name makes us both startle.
Sylvie snaps to look. She curses under her breath. “Helena!” she says brightly with what I already recognize to be a pained and false smile.
Helena grabs Sylvie’s forearm. “I thought that was you! I was like ‘Is that Sylvie?’ and I thought ‘it can’t be’ because your mom said you were out on the road! What are the odds?”
Sylvie laughs nervously. “Yeah, what are the odds, huh? I had to stop back in to grab something.”
Helena’s brow furrows with concern and her clutch on Sylvie’s forearm tightens. “Hey. How are you holding up? With everything?” Her tone is suddenly somber.
“Oh yeah, fine,” Sylvie says breezily. “All good.”
“Yeah?” Helena draws back skeptically. “You’re doing all right?”
“For sure, no, yeah.”
“You have my number? Did your mom give you my number? Any time you want to talk?”
“I think so?”
“Make sure.”
Sylvie pulls out her phone, swipes a few times. “Yep, I have you on a group text with my mom.”
I’m starting to feel weird just standing here, but I figure if Sylvie wanted to introduce me, she’d have done so by now.
“Okay. Hey, I gotta buy some stamps and go to Costco to grab a rotisserie chicken and a Caesar salad for dinner before Brian gets home. You’ll text me?”
“Absolutely.”
She bustles off, waving back over her shoulder. “Text me!”
“I definitely will.” Sylvie closes her eyes and mouths, no.
I wait until Helena is well and gone. “Good times, huh?”
“Yeah, good times.”
“What was that all about?”
Sylvie sighs loudly. “That, Knox, is basically the worst-case scenario of stopping off in Springfield. Helena is one of my mom’s best friends and, like, the biggest busybody on the planet.
I wouldn’t be shocked if—” Sylvie’s phone buzzes.
She closes her eyes and slowly turns her face up to the ceiling.
She brings herself to look at her phone.
“Well . . . like I was saying, I wouldn’t be shocked if she’s already texted my mom to tell her she ran into me and yep, there’s the text from my mom.
‘Sylvie, are you in town’ with, let’s count . . . seven question marks.”
“Oops.”
“Yeah, oops.”
“Is that why you didn’t introduce me?”
“Helena is one of those people with whom you want to share as little information as you can get away with.”
“What do you want to do about your mom?”
“I gotta go see her. I mean, I don’t want to. At all. But I have to. I can’t not now that she knows I’m here.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Be sorry for yourself. You’re getting dragged along. Kicking and screaming.”
“I’m cool with whatever.” I still hadn’t gotten an answer to my real question, though. I remembered Sylvie mentioning a funeral in passing earlier. And now there was what Helena said. “So when Helena asked how you were holding up, what was she talking about?”