That was three days ago. Now the two of us are in a new reality where Owen is missing, where we spend our time trying to figure out where he is. And why. A new reality where I’m constantly asking myself whether I’m wrong to hold on to the belief that the answers to those questions aren’t going to upend my most central ideas of who Owen is.
I’m not aiming for uplifting. I’m just trying to say something neutral so she doesn’t know how angry I am too.
When the light changes, I walk quickly across the street, turning onto Congress, picking up speed as I go.
“Try to keep up,” I say.
“Where are we going?” Bailey says.
“Somewhere better than here,” I say.
About an hour later, we round the capital and circle onto San Jacinto Boulevard. And the stadium comes into view. It is enormous, demanding—even from several blocks away.
As we walk toward it, we pass the Caven-Clark Sports Center. It seems to be the student rec center complete with a series of matching orange-laced buildings, Clark Field, and a large track. Students are playing tag football and doing sprints up the stairs and lounging on benches, making this part of campus feel at once completely separate and still a part of its city. Seamlessly integrated.
I look down at my campus map and start moving toward the closest stadium entrance.
But Bailey stops walking suddenly. “I don’t want to do this,” she says.
I meet her eyes.
“Even if I was at the stadium, then what? What’s that going to tell us about anything?”
“Bailey…” I say.
“Seriously, what are we doing here?”
She won’t respond well if I tell her that I stayed up last night reading about childhood memories—how we forget them. And how we get them back. They often come from returning to a place and then being allowed to experience it in the same way you experienced it the first time. That is what we are doing here. We are following her instinct. We are tapping into her memory that she’s been here before. And my instinct, from the minute I realized where Grady Bradford came from, that we should.
“There are things your father hasn’t told us beyond what’s going on at The Shop,” I say. “I’m trying to figure out what they are.”
“That sounds pretty general,” she says.
“It’ll get less general the more you remember,” I say.
“So… this is on me, then?”
“No, it’s on me. If I was wrong to take you here, I’ll be the first to say it.”
She gets quiet.
“Look, will you just come inside? Can you do that?” I say. “We’ve come this far.”
“Do I have a choice?” she says.
“Yes,” I say. “Always. With me you always do.”
I can see it flash across her face—her surprise that I mean it. And I do mean it. We are a hundred feet from the closest stadium entrance, GATE 2, but it is up to Bailey. If she wants to turn around, I won’t stop her. Maybe this frees her to keep going, because that’s what she does.
She walks up to the gate, which feels like a victory. A second victory: a stadium tour group seems to be congregating and we are able to latch on to them, walking past security without so much as a look from the distracted student manning the desk.
“Welcome to DKR,” the tour guide says. “I’m Elliot, I’ll be taking you around today. Follow me!”
He leads the group into the end zone and gives everyone a second to take in the stadium, which is epic. There is seating for more than a hundred thousand fans, TEXAS spelled out large on one end of the field, LONGHORNS on the other. It is so large—so imposing—that it feels like the kind of place you might remember, you might hold on to, especially at an early age.
Elliot starts walking the group through what happens on game night—how a cannon is fired after each touchdown, how Bevo, the mascot, is an actual steer bull and how there are a group of Texas cowboys who march him around the field, who tend to him.
As he finishes his spiel and starts to lead everyone up to the press box, I motion for Bailey to hang back, and we head to the bleachers.
I take a seat in the front row, Bailey following suit. I stare out at the field, watching her out of the corner of my eye as she settles in. And then she sits up taller.
“I can’t be sure if it was here,” she says. “I don’t know. But I remember my father talking to me about how one day I’d love football the way he did. I remember him telling me not to be scared of the mascot.”
That seems wrong—not the mascot part, which sounds exactly like Owen, but the loving football part. Owen doesn’t care at all about football. At least since we’ve been together, I’ve barely seen him watch a whole game. No long afternoon football games taking over our weekends. No Monday night recapping. One of many refreshing changes from Jake.
“But I must be remembering wrong,” she says. “My father doesn’t love football, right? I mean… we never even watch games.”
“That’s what I was thinking. But he may have loved it then. When he thought he would make a fan out of you.”
“When I was a
