I eye her as she fights back tears again. She doesn’t look at Grady. She only looks at me.
“What did he say?” I ask gently.
I see it weigh on her. I see it weigh deeper than anything should weigh on such young shoulders.
“He said it’s going to be a long time before he can call again. He said…” She shakes her head.
“What, Bailey?” I say.
“He said… he can’t really come home.”
I watch her face as she tries to process that—this terrible, impossible thing. The terrible, impossible thing he never wanted to say to her. The terrible, impossible thing I’ve been suspecting myself. The terrible, impossible thing I’ve known.
He is gone. He isn’t coming back.
“Does he mean… ever?” she asks.
Before I even answer her, Bailey moans, quick and guttural, her voice catching against that knowledge. Against what she knows too.
I put my hand on her hand, her wrist, and hold her tight.
“I really don’t think that…” Grady jumps in. “I just… really don’t think you know that’s what he meant.”
I drill him with a look.
“And as upsetting as the phone call was,” he says, “what we need to be talking about right now is next steps.”
She keeps her eyes on me. “Next steps?” she says. “What does that mean?”
I hold her gaze so it’s just the two of us. I move in close so she’ll believe me when I tell her she is the one who gets to decide.
“Grady means where the two of us go now,” I say. “Whether we go home…”
“Or whether we help you create a new home,” Grady says. “Like I was talking to you about. I can find you and Hannah a good place to stay where you’ll get to start over fresh. And your father will join you when he thinks it’s safe to come back. Maybe he thinks that can’t happen tomorrow, maybe that’s what he was trying to say in the phone call, but—”
“Why not?” she interrupts him.
“Excuse me?”
She meets his eyes.
“Why not tomorrow?” she says. “Forget tomorrow. Why not today? If my father truly knows you’re the best option, then why isn’t he here with us now? Why’s he still running?”
Before he can stop himself, Grady lets out a small laugh, an angry laugh, as though I coached Bailey to ask that question—as though it isn’t the only question someone who knows and loves Owen would be asking. Owen avoided being fingerprinted. He avoided having his face plastered all over the news. He did what he needed to do to avoid outside forces blowing up Bailey’s life. Her true identity. So where is he? There’s nothing else to play out. There’s no other move to make. If he were going to be coming back, if he thought it was safe to start over together, he’d be here now. He’d be here beside us.
“Bailey, I don’t think I’m going to give you an answer right now that will satisfy you,” he says. “What I can do is tell you that you should let me help you anyway. That’s the best way to keep you safe. That’s the only way to keep you safe. You and Hannah.”
She looks down at her hand, my hand on top of it.
“So… that is what he meant then? My father?” she says. “He’s not coming back?”
She is asking me. She is asking me to confirm what she already knows. I don’t hesitate.
“No, I don’t think he can,” I say.
I see it in her eyes—her sadness moving into anger. It will move back again and from there into grief. A fierce, lonely, necessary circle as she starts to grapple with this. How do you begin to grapple with this? You just do. You surrender. You surrender to how you feel. To the unfairness. But not to despair. I won’t let her despair, if it’s the only thing I manage to do.
“Bailey…” Grady shakes his head. “We just don’t know that’s true. I know your father—”
She snaps her head up. “What did you say?”
“I said, I know your father—”
“No. I know my father,” she says.
Her skin is reddening, her eyes fierce and firm. And I see it—her decision forming, her need cementing, into something no one can take from her.
Grady keeps talking but she is done trying to hear him. She is looking at me when she says the thing I thought she would say—the thing I thought she would come to all along. The reason I went to Nicholas, the reason I did what I did. She says it to me alone. She has given up on the rest of it. With time, I’m going to have to build that back. I’m going to have to do whatever I can to help her build that back.
“I just want to go home,” she says.
I look at Grady, as if to say, you heard her. Then I wait for the thing he has no choice but to do.
To let us go.
Two Years and Four Months Ago
“Show me how to do it,” he said.
We turned on the lights in my workshop. We had just left the theater, after our non-date, and Owen asked if he could come back to the workshop with me. No funny business, he said. He just wanted to learn how to use a lathe. He just wanted to learn how I do what I do.
He looked around and rubbed his hands together. “So… where do we start?” he said.
“Gotta pick a piece of wood,” I said. “It all starts with picking a good piece of wood. If that’s no good, you have nowhere good to go.”
“How do you woodturners pick?” he said.
“We woodturners go about it in different ways,” I said. “My grandfather worked
