“Not exactly,” she says.
“So… what are you doing here?”
She doesn’t answer. She opens the window in an attempt to discourage further questions. I don’t blame her for that. I don’t blame her for not being particularly anxious to explain to a stranger why she is here—in a city she is trying to remember whether she’s been to before, searching for information about her missing father.
“Just fans of Austin,” I say.
“Right on,” he says. “A little vacay. I can get behind that.”
He pulls up to the hotel and Bailey is opening the door before the car even stops moving.
“Wait, wait! Let me give you my number. In case there is anything I can show you guys while you’re in town.”
“There isn’t,” Bailey says.
Then she shifts her bag higher on her shoulder. And starts walking toward the hotel’s entrance.
I grab the suitcases from the trunk, hurry to keep up. I catch up to her by the revolving doors.
“That guy was so annoying,” she says.
I start to say he was just trying to be friendly, but she isn’t interested in friendly. And since I have to pick my battles, I decide this isn’t going to be the one I choose.
We head into the hotel and I look around the lobby: high atrium, the bar, a Starbucks off to the side. Hundreds of rooms. Just the type of nondescript hotel I was hoping for, an easy place to get lost in. Except maybe I’m looking around a moment too long because a hotel employee catches my eyes.
She has a name tag on, AMY, her hair in a short bob.
We get in line at reception, but it’s too late. She walks over, a smile plastered to her face.
“Hi there,” she says. “I’m Amy, the hotel concierge. Welcome to Austin! Is there anything I can help you with while you’re waiting to check in?”
“We’re good. Unless you happen to have a map of the campus?” I say.
“Of UT-Austin?” she says. “Absolutely. I also could help set you up on a campus tour. And there is some outstanding coffee that you won’t want to miss when you head to that part of town. Are you coffee drinkers?”
Bailey eyes me as though it’s my fault Amy is hovering and jabbering on—and maybe she isn’t wrong. I did ask for a map as opposed to just telling chatty Amy to move along. But I want a map. I want to hold something in my hands that makes it seem a little more like I know what I’m doing.
“Can I set up a shuttle service to take you there?”
We get to the front of the line, where a desk clerk named Steve is holding out two glasses of lemonade.
“Hiya, Amy.”
“Steve! I was just about to set these two ladies up with some college maps and good flat whites.”
“Excellent,” Steve says. “I’ll get you settled into your digs. What brings you to our little corner of the world? And how can I go about making it your favorite corner?”
That’s it for Bailey. She gives up and starts to walk away—Steve the final nail in the aggressively friendly coffin. She heads toward the elevator bank, drilling me with a final look as she goes. A look of blame for these conversations she can’t handle, for being far from home, for being in Austin at all. Any goodwill I managed to accrue on the plane is apparently gone.
“So, Ms. Nichols, you’ll be staying on the eighth floor with a great view of the Lady Bird Lake,” he says. “We have a pretty great spa in the hotel if you’re looking to refresh from your flight before heading up to the room. Or I can set you up with a late lunch?”
I put up my hands in surrender.
“A room key, Steve,” I say. “Just a room key. As quick as you can hand it over.”
We drop our suitcases upstairs. We don’t stop to eat anything.
At two thirty, we leave the hotel and head back toward the Congress Avenue Bridge. I decide we should walk. I figure a long walk may help jog a memory in Bailey, assuming there is a memory to jog. And this walk will lead us through the heart of downtown Austin and up toward the campus and the Darrell K Royal Stadium, the only football stadium in the city.
As soon as we make it over the bridge, the downtown splays out before us—vibrant and spinning, even in the early afternoon. It somehow feels more like it’s nighttime: music playing, bars open, garden restaurants packed with people.
Bailey keeps her head down, eyes on her phone. How is she going to recognize anything if she isn’t paying attention? But when we stop at a traffic light on Fifth Street, the DON’T WALK sign flashing before us, she does look up.
She looks up and I catch her do a double take.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing.”
She shakes her head. But she keeps staring.
I follow her eyes to a sign for Antone’s, written in blue script. HOME OF THE BLUES written below it. A couple cuddles by the front door, taking a selfie.
She points at the club. “I’m pretty sure that my father has a John Lee Hooker record from there,” she says.
I know she’s correct as soon as she says it. I can picture the album cover: Antone’s logo on the front of it—the sleek lettering in script. And Hooker singing into a microphone, hat and sunglasses on, guitar in hand. I remember a night last week—how could it possibly have been last week?—when Bailey was at play practice, and the two of us were in the house alone. Owen strummed on his guitar. I can’t remember the words of the song now, but Owen’s face while he sang—that I remember.
“He does,” I say. “You’re right.”
“Not that it matters,” she says.
“I don’t think we know what matters yet,” I say.
“Is that supposed to be uplifting or something?” she says.
Uplifting? Three days ago, we were all together in
