Hauntings
Luckily, I am very good at the art of traveling, and although perhaps a bit out of practice, I know how to get on the move quickly. I drop everything and focus on getting us out the door.
But add in two very excited children and a distracted husband, all three buzzing around and being totally useless—the kids wanting to take items that are entirely impossible to lug around Europe, the last-minute changes to their schedules—as well as submitting the article for my deadline and arranging for my sister to stay with the dog, doing laundry, packing, clearing my schedule, watering the plants, resetting Margot’s guest room, and it nearly does me in.
Once the kids are in bed and Trey is snoring, I finish the trip preparations in peace. Our cocker spaniel, Bohdi, keeps me company, silently padding from room to room as I fold, pack, straighten, list, and fret.
Despite the annoyances of last-minute travel, I am genuinely excited to go on this trip. Trey wasn’t wrong when he poked fun at me for not being adventurous. That’s not me at all.
I was not always a staid, steady food blogger, suburban wife and mother, homemaker, and dreamer. I was once one of the most sought-after travel food photographers in the industry. Which meant I was on the go for years, and last minute was my middle name.
My photos have appeared in magazines and cookbooks, and have been featured on television shows worldwide.
I’m not famous, but I spent plenty of time being famous adjacent.
And then I got the gig with Bandolier’s show, traveling the world looking over the great man’s shoulder with a macro prime lens.
That was chaos, but in a good way. Roger Bandolier was a brilliant, brash showman of a chef who loved his drugs almost as much as he loved food. He left a mark on me. For many reasons.
Some memories you cherish and keep close to your heart. Some, you cringe in embarrassment. And others, you run away from, at all costs.
Bandolier is one of those. A ghost from the past that I do everything in my power to avoid thinking about.
His death changed me. There is a Before Roger, and an After.
Because of him, my portfolio is diverse and extensive, encompassing a wide range of the most esoteric and common aspects of the food world.
Because of him, I left my nomadic life behind in favor of family and stability.
“Kind of rude to ignore me, too.”
Go away, I plead as another ghost from my past appears. Please, just go away.
Alex. My ex of all exes. Of course he would rear his head tonight. He’s been gone since Bandolier, and good riddance to them both. Did they play a role in where I am now? Absolutely. Do I want to remember them? Not at all.
But because of Roger, my professional bio is rather ridiculous; recently updated by the magazine’s publicist, it romanticizes the hell out of my actual skill set:
IPA winner Brooklyn Thomas has photographed gauchos grilling asado over open fires in the Argentine grasslands and documented the volcanic soils of Tolima during the coffee harvest, climbing steep mountainsides with farmers to hand strip cherries off the trees.
She’s captured the vibrant colors of Vietnamese floating markets, shadowed New Zealand’s fair trade cacao production from bean to conching to tempering, and learned traditional grappa methods from grandmothers in small Italian villages.
Serving as staff photographer for the international cooking show Sargasso Sea, she spent two years traveling the world with Roger Bandolier.
Her favorite adventure, though, might be the moment she learned the secret behind the perfect baguette in a Michelin-starred kitchen in Paris.
Blah, blah, blah. And that last bit is a lie.
Granted, the whole baguettes-in-Paris thing wasn’t terrible.
But my actual favorite moment was when I took a wrong turn in the Umbrian countryside trying to find a remote Etruscan village, only to stumble upon a small family-run vineyard with the most luscious Sagrantino DOCG I’ve ever had.
I used their bathroom, and when I came out, they’d arranged a full display of their wares for an impromptu tasting.
They wanted to grow and export to the US but didn’t have the connections.
I got them the connections. Now they’re sought after all over the world, and they still send us a case of my favorites every Christmas, just in time for the party we throw.
The party we held this past weekend. There are still open bottles on the counter—one more thing on my mental to-do list to clean up before we leave.
And another: We should plan an afternoon to drop by, say thank you.
Yeah. It’s pretty easy to be jealous of my past. Winning the IPA was definitely a high point, as was working on Sargasso Sea.
But there were not-so-great moments, too.
Being harassed on a bus by a gang of Indian teenagers in New Delhi.
The run-in with a handsome Albanian in the hotel bar in New York, who decided he was going to take me home with him, permanently, whether I wanted to go or not.
That night in Thiviers with Roger and Alex that I never, ever discuss.
I used to run marathons, used to dance all night, used to be opinionated and fearless.
I used to live on planes with nothing but a backpack and my Nikons.
I loved and was loved in return. I’ve lived.
I know what it’s like to be truly free. And I know what it’s like to be truly scared.
But as with all darkness, there was always enough light to chase it away.
Another sunrise to cleanse the soul and spirit.
After Roger’s death, the show fell apart. Alex and I parted ways. I started over.
As luck would have it, soon after, I met a whiskey-eyed man under a starlit sky in a haunted Mexican city called San Miguel de Allende, where I’d gone to photograph a story on the generational power of the humble tamale, and was lost. He kissed me on the trendy Luna Rooftop of the Rosewood Hotel, and I loved him immediately.
Loved him before the lines turned pink, and happily married him a few weeks later.
Four’s birth seven months after the wedding was met with raucous joy from us both.
Domesticity. I had been domesticated.
Not that I’d change anything. It was meant to be, me and Trey.
I chose this life, happily. Chose to stop jetting all over the world, to move into lifestyle instead of travel, to settle down, to have a family.
The one concession: I still use my maiden name for bylines. It keeps a foot in my old life.
If I hadn’t met Trey, would I have ever settled down?
It wasn’t something I was striving toward, but it wasn’t something I was against. I knew these life events would eventually find me like a healthy lion finds a meal in the savannas.
I was being hunted; being caught was inevitable.
I wasn’t exactly expecting it when it happened, though.
The bottles dealt with, I wipe down the counters, then fold one last small load of laundry and tuck fresh underthings into my bag.
It’s nearly two now, the house silent and dark, and I am so jazzed I know I won’t sleep.
Bohdi whines, so I let him out back. The yard is fenced, and he prances around for a bit in the cold air, snapping at imaginary things.
He turns toward the woods and freezes, on alert, his whole body shivering.
I listen. The night is deep here, with no lights from the neighbors.
The way our house sits on the lot, we’re back from the street, and the yard is very private.
The only thing between us and the woods is the storm shelter, accessible only through the small chute in the eastern gate.
It feels vast, though it’s only a couple of acres of land.
There is crackling, an animal of some sort stepping through the winter forest. I shift, and it stops.
I can feel it staring. Can it jump the fence?
There are coyotes around here, and bobcats.
We are so vulnerable. We sail through our lives not thinking of the way death lingers, waiting.
Perhaps you need to see death to understand how quickly it comes.
Fleet footed, self-assured, impossible to avoid. It takes us whether we’re ready or not.
The cold is seeping into my bones now. The beast begins to move again, crashing away. The moment has ended, but I am left unsettled. A premonition of sorts, perhaps, that needs to be dispelled. I am traveling tomorrow—no, today. I don’t need the ghosts of my past along for the ride.
I am being morbid, I know. Thinking about Roger always makes me sad.
He died in vain, a drug overdose, cocaine laced with fentanyl.
We’d fought that afternoon, and he was partying that night with a vengeance that stunned the entire crew, who knew how volatile his moods were and how he liked to blow off steam.
It was a raging blaze of a night, blurry for us all.
It wasn’t a total shock that he did too much; that was par for the course.
He had his own demons, and they caught him on occasion.
The surprise was when he didn’t wake up.
So many things said in anger, and unsaid in mercy, and then he was gone. A life unfinished. A complete and total waste of an incredible talent.
Bohdi whimpers, and I call him quietly. He comes to me, making soft noises of concern.
I snuggle him, warming him up in my arms, and take him to my office.
There is a single lamp burning, and I put him in his bed, where he cuddles down and drifts off.
Lucky dog. I’m going to miss him. He’s a sweetie.
I need to set an away message on my email, and then I will lie down for a couple of hours before I get the family up to head off on our adventure.
I open my laptop, making sure I don’t jostle the battery charger; I’m taking it along so I can work on the plane, and who knows if the chargers will work on board that long flight.
I log in and set up the message on each account, then do one last sweep.
In my personal email, there is a new message from an address I don’t recognize, with a blank header, and I debate not bothering.
Spam, probably. If it’s important, they’ll write back.
But something compels me to open it. It is two sentences that make every hair on my body rise in fright.
We know what you did. Get us the money, or we will end this.
But what happens next is utterly baffling. The message disappears.
It’s not in my inbox; it’s not in my trash. I search for the phrase, and there’s nothing. I check my other accounts, and there’s not a hint of the message. I don’t even know what address it came from; I don’t remember anything outside of it being unfamiliar.
It’s too weird. Maybe someone unsent the message? Maybe it wasn’t meant for me at all.
That has to be it. I haven’t done anything wrong. It’s a fluke. Or maybe I’m just exhausted and seeing things. Maybe I drifted off to sleep and dreamed it? I am exhausted; it’s not impossible. I pinch myself to make sure I’m awake, and it hurts.
Okay. That was bizarre.
I pack my laptop in my bag, stow the cords in their leather wrap, and zip it all closed carefully. Then I shut off the light and leave my sweet dog twitching in his dreams.
I don’t fall asleep for a very long time.