Finally, after what felt like a very long time, a new e-mail arrived.
How about the Statue of Liberty at midnight? it read, and she laughed, picturing him at his computer, leaning back in his chair with a crooked grin as he waited for her reply. She propped a few pillows behind her, sitting up again.
Or better yet, she wrote, a rowboat in Central Park at dusk.
A taxi on Broadway at sunrise.
A horse-drawn carriage at the Plaza at high noon.
Colonel Mustard with the rope in the study, he wrote, and she laughed again, the sound loud in the quiet house.
After that, it was easy again. For hours, they wrote back and forth, a conversation punctuated by short periods of waiting, where Lucy held her breath and kept watch over her phone, resenting the constraints of technology, the limits of distance.
All night, they wrote to each other, an endless volley of thoughts and worries and memories, the information pinging this way and that across the globe. She told him about breaking up with Liam, and he told her more about what had happened with Paisley. He apologized again for what happened in San Francisco, and she apologized right back. As the night crept toward morning, Lucy’s fingers flew across the screen, and she had to reach for the tangled wire of her charger to keep the light from going out, to keep the flame of conversation from dying as they joked and teased and reassured each other, as they talked all night from opposite ends of the world.
Why did we never do this before? she typed eventually, as her eyelids grew heavy and the screen started to swim in front of her.
We wanted to support the local postal service? he replied. We’re old-fashioned? We couldn’t ever figure out the time difference?
Or we’re just idiots.
Or that, he wrote. But at least we’re idiots together.
Later, when they’d said almost everything else, the only thing left was good-bye.
See you soon, Bartleby, she wrote.
Can’t wait, Colonel Mustard.
As she set her phone on the bedside table, she realized there was only one thing she hadn’t told him: that she didn’t actually have any plans to be in New York.
But it didn’t matter. As she drifted off to sleep, fuzzy-headed and heavy-limbed and unreasonably happy, she knew that she’d find a way to get there.
41
Until the Day of a Hundred E-mails, Owen wasn’t completely sure he’d follow through with it. There was still time to back out, to say that his trip was canceled or that his plans had changed. But last night, after so many hours and e-mails had flown by, the rain stopped and a gray dusk settled over Seattle and he finally came up for air, blinking and disoriented and grinning like an idiot, and he’d known for sure then that he would be going to New York.
He wanted to see her.
It was as simple and as complicated as that.
The next morning was Sunday, which meant that Dad was off work, and Owen woke to the smell of pancakes. It had been a long time since his father had cooked anything for breakfast, but ever since they returned from Pennsylvania, they’d resumed the Sunday-morning tradition. When he was little, Owen remembered getting his pancakes in the shape of a mouse, while Mom’s were always slightly crooked hearts. These days, they were mostly just circles, but it wasn’t the shape that mattered; it was that they were there at all. Owen knew it was a small thing, but it felt big; it felt like they’d traveled a very long way just to make it here, to this kitchen with the bubbling batter and the smell of syrup.
As he slid into his seat, Dad waved the spatula in greeting.
“Sleep well?” he asked, and Owen nodded distractedly. He had a question to ask, and he was busy trying to figure out the best way to do that. But Dad was in too good a mood to notice. He slid a plate of warm pancakes in front of Owen with a grin. “For my favorite son.”
“Your only son appreciates it,” Owen said, reaching for the syrup. As Dad moved around the tiny kitchen—turning off the griddle and putting the butter back in the fridge, all while humming a little tune under his breath—Owen chewed slowly, still making calculations.
He didn’t have any savings—not anymore. There wasn’t exactly a lot to begin with, but when money was tight on the drive, Owen had started paying for things himself. Not anything big, just the odd tank of gas or some groceries when it was his turn to run into the store. And then in Tahoe, he’d done the same with his dishwashing money, and anything he’d managed to scrape together since. He’d never mentioned it to his dad, who had still been too distraught at that point to notice much of anything, but it felt good to help, especially as the expenses stacked up and the weeks stretched on.
But now, suddenly, this had become a problem. Owen had looked up flights online, and they weren’t as bad as he thought, a few hundred dollars maybe, but that was still a few hundred dollars more than he had. Upstairs, tucked in one of his drawers, was the key to the roof of their old building, which meant he didn’t need a place to stay. If worse came to worse, he could easily sleep up there for a couple of nights; it was warm enough, and he was pretty sure nobody would notice. So it was really just the plane ticket and a few other essentials, but he had a plan that would cover those, and he had two whole weeks to do it. He just needed to work up the nerve to ask.
“So,” he said as his father finally took a seat across from him. “The site’s coming along?”
“Yeah,” he said, beaming. “It’s coming up fast. And the foreman told me yesterday that they’ve got another job lined up right after, and he wants me on the crew.”
“That’s great,” Owen said, watching him take a long swig of orange juice. “So do they… have enough help?”
“Help?” Dad asked, without looking up from his breakfast.
“Yeah, you know… workers.”
“Plenty,” he said with a nod, then frowned, his fork left hanging a few inches from his mouth. “How come?”
“I just thought, if they ever needed an extra pair of hands or anything, maybe I could—”
Dad laughed a short bark of a laugh. “You?”
“Yeah,” said Owen, feeling his face go warm. “I mean, I’ve been helping around the house, and I really like it.…”
This was only half-true, and they both knew it. In the six weeks that they’d been here, the house had come a long way, but it was mostly due to Dad’s work. He’d put in new windows and repaired the front steps, painted the porch and the wood trim around the door, installed a new sink, and refinished the hardwood floors. Owen always trailed along after him, handing over tools and completing small tasks when instructed, but he lacked the skill for this kind of work. More often than not, he spilled the paint or missed the nail. He just wasn’t very comfortable with a hammer or a drill—unlike Dad, who should have come home from the construction site exhausted every day but instead returned with a brand of energy Owen hadn’t seen in him since before the accident, switching out his tool belt with genuine enthusiasm.