Chapter Thirty-Four
THIRTY-FOUR
Callahan
It’s almost noon the next day when I make it back to Baltimore.
Meanwhile, I was able to win over the county police officer Vincenti handed me off to by giving him some information on the origins and value of his great-grandfather’s pocket watch while we waited for the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife people to get there. He was kind enough to give me back my phone after it became apparent I likely wasn’t going to be charged with anything.
That initially helped me feel a bit calmer about my predicament, until I couldn’t get ahold of Annie despite multiple, increasingly frantic calls and texts over the next several hours.
So then I sat there, in the middle of a police station in New Castle, Delaware, worried about her, about the store, and about what would happen if Jeff at the American Museum of Natural History for some inexplicable reason decided to pretend he’d never heard of me or the goose in his life.
The only good thing to come out of it all was that the authorities decided to take custody of the goose and arrange its return to the museum themselves, freeing me at last from the mental—and physical—weight of being responsible for it.
As I pass by Virtu on my way to the alley to park, I’m slightly heartened by the Open sign on the door until I realize it could still be that way from yesterday, if something happened to Annie that prevented her from closing up.
Despite my exhaustion and an incessant twinge in my lower back from the combination of long-distance driving and the night spent on a too-firm motel mattress, I move with a haste that comes from deep inside me, where my heart calls out for her: Annie. Annie. Annie.
I need her.
I need to hold her, and kiss her, and tell her that I love her.
That I think I asked her to stay hoping it would restore my life to what it used to be, but that I understand now that what I truly need—and want—is to build something new and beautiful out of all our broken parts.
Even if it means change. Even if it means continuing to run headfirst into the unknown, as long as she’s holding my hand.
But standing behind the counter when I enter through the back hallway isn’t Annie, but Francis. My stomach drops like one of those amusement park rides called something like A Thousand Feet of Panic. “Fran?”
He looks up from the book of sudoku puzzles he always keeps in his jacket pocket. “Oh, Dodger. Welcome back. How was the trip?”
“Eventful. But that’s not important right now. What are you doing here? Where’s Annie?”
He glances at his watch. “Home by now, I would imagine.”
“She’s at Harold’s? Okay. I need to—”
“No, no. Her home. Back in New Jersey. She left last night. You didn’t know?”
I drove all this way to see her and she was actually closer to where I started from this morning? Goddammit. I stop taking off my coat, sliding it back onto my shoulders in preparation to leave again. “No, I didn’t know. What happened? Why did she leave?”
He shrugs with one shoulder, clearly not understanding how big a deal this is.
“Some sort of personal matter, I believe. I was going through Graham’s books, finally, and found a few things that I knew you’d want, so I came here to give them to you.
But you were heading up to New York, and Annie—what a lovely young lady, by the way!
—she seemed quite distressed. Said she needed to get back home as soon as possible, so I offered to look after the shop so she could go and attend to matters.
I couldn’t recall when—or if—she’d said you’d return, so I went ahead and came back today to open up. ”
“She just left?” My stomach sinks as I remember her telling me that her sister is expecting. I hope it wasn’t anything related to that. I start calculating how long it will take me to drive north again, to get to Asbury Park and try to make myself useful to her and her family.
“Oh. She did ask me to give you this,” he says and pulls an envelope out of the drawer beside the register.
I snatch it from his hand and tear it open, nearly ripping the folded-up piece of lined paper inside in my haste. It was torn off of my legal pad, and Annie’s handwriting is messier than usual, as if she wrote in a hurry.
Cal,
I’ve thought about it, and I’m sorry, but my answer has to be no.
It’s not that I don’t want to be with you. It’s that I want it too much. I’m falling in love with you, Callahan, but I’m not convinced the feeling is as mutual as you believe it is.
There are a lot of side tables out there, you know, and in so many styles.
I’m just the first piece you came across that had the approximately correct dimensions for the space.
Maybe you’ll find something that works even better if you keep looking.
I can’t encourage you to stop shopping now and get stuck with something you won’t still love in a year or five years or fifteen or twenty, because I suspect you’d rather keep it around after it no longer suits rather than let it go.
After all, we both know how stubborn you can be about change.
I care for your heart too much to let it settle for me. And I care about my own too much for it to be something you settle for.
Be well.
Annie
P.S. Nicole stopped by about the goose. She wants you to call her.
P.P.S. Please water Harold’s plants until he gets back. I left his house key on the desk in the office, and the care instructions are in a binder beside his fridge.
“I don’t understand,” I say aloud, rereading the letter for a second time. “I thought she understood how much I…” I trail off as I hit the postscript again. Nicole stopped by about the goose. She wants you to call her.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I should have told her. I should have told Annie as soon as we started getting closer that my ex was the one for whom I was doing this massive, potentially reputation-ruining favor.
I was so concerned about keeping Nicole’s name out of it and reviving my lost friendship with her that I lied by omission to the woman I claimed to love, and shit, how must that look?
Not great! It does not look great.
Of course Annie is second-guessing everything.
Of course she thinks that I’m still hung up on my ex-girlfriend, because why else wouldn’t I tell her the goose was Nicole’s?
I can’t blame her for getting in her head about it, especially knowing her history with past lovers wanting her because of how well she could mold herself into whoever they wanted her to be.
She just always seemed so confident, so strongly herself with me that I took for granted how fragile and hard-earned those parts of her were.
I see now that keeping this secret must’ve only added to any concerns Annie had that I was using her as a good-enough fill-in for the Nicole-shaped gap in my life.
And, shit, maybe that is what I was doing, albeit inadvertently.
When I asked her to stay with me in Baltimore, I now see what I was really asking was that Annie contort herself to keep fitting where I wanted her instead of shaping space for herself.
I told Annie we’d take good care of each other, and then I failed to uphold my end of that promise.
I’m such an idiot. And I’m no better than the assholes who came before me, making their continued affection feel conditional on how well she could keep playing the part of the woman they needed her to be.
I pull out my phone and call Nicole, who answers at the last second before it goes to voicemail.
“Cal. Hey. I’ve been waiting to hear back from you.”
“You came in yesterday?” I snap. Nicole isn’t the one who screwed up here, but emotion makes it impossible to moderate the sharpness in my voice.
“Yes…” she replies. “Is that a problem?” She pauses. “Oh. Is this about your new girlfriend? Annie, right? Did I…I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything to her about us. I was just happy you’d found someone who seemed so nice and—”
“She’s gone.”
“What?”
“Annie is gone. She’s left. She’s skedaddled. Vamoosed.”
“Wait. She left? Because of me?”
“No, because of me.” I rake my free hand harshly through my hair, leaving it sticking up in all directions.
“I fucked this up so bad, Nic. She knew all about the goose. She was helping with it, but I didn’t tell her I was looking into it for you.
So when you came by and she put it all together…
she felt like I was hiding something important from her. ”
“You…were, though.”
“I know!” I whine angrily, then add, “Also, your goose was stolen.”
“What?”
“I mean, back in the sixties. From the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Also more recently, but I’ll tell you about that another time. The good news is that I am no longer being detained by the police and your bird has been returned to its rightful owners.”
“Hold up. You were detained by the police?”
“It’s fine. And the other good news is that I don’t think they have any interest in questioning you about it or anything.
” It had been so long since the goose had gone missing from the museum that no one with either the New Castle, Delaware, county police or U.S.
Fish and Wildlife seemed to think it was worth trying to retrace its (metaphorical) steps.
Especially when no one currently working at the museum was even aware it was missing.
Nicole lets out a sigh. “I’m sorry it was such a hassle. But thank you, Cal, for handling that. Really.”
“Yeah. You’re welcome.”
“Can I do anything to repay you? Maybe help with the Annie situation?”
“Do you happen to have a time machine and a few extra brain cells I could borrow?” I ask.
She ignores this, instead saying, “You could come over, talk it through some more, if you want. Isaiah’s making ribs tonight, and he only knows how to make enough to feed a whole firehouse. You’re very welcome to join us for dinner.”
Despite how touched I am by the offer, and how much it’s the exact kind of invitation I hoped we might work our way back to with the passage of time, the idea of sitting at a table with my ex-girlfriend and her husband while feeling somehow infinitely worse after losing someone I’ve known for only a couple weeks than I did after losing someone I was with for almost half my life sounds like an actual nightmare.
Doubly so, when I imagine doing it covered in barbecue sauce.
“I appreciate it, Nic,” I say. “But I think I need some time to myself. Still trying to wrap my head around all of this.”
“Okay. Well. I know we aren’t together anymore, Cal. But I do still care about you. We’ve always been friends. And that hasn’t changed, at least not for me.”
“Not for me either,” I say. In fact, I think friends is what we’ve always been best at being. I’m so glad we get to do that again.
“You’ll reach out if you need anything? Or, you know where we live. Just come over if you change your mind, or need company, or—”
“I will. Thanks.”
I hang up the call, not completely sure if I returned Nicole’s goodbye before pressing the button, and stand there for a while, staring at myself in the gilded-framed mirror hanging on the wall.
It’s probably just the wavy effect of the aged glass, but a few times I’ve thought I could see a faint outline of Graham’s silhouette standing beside me.
It isn’t there now, though. I’m quite alone.
Left behind, the way I was always destined to be, unable to keep up with everything moving around me.
Except there’s still one person here, isn’t there? Francis comes to stand behind me. “Did you mean what you told her, Dodger? About needing time to yourself?” he asks quietly.
“No,” I say, already choking on the word as I turn and let him wrap his arms around me as I start to sob.