The Geography of You and Me

Lucy groaned. “Please stop.”


But it was true. There were never any e-mails from him. No letters, either. It was always, always the postcards—several a week, when he was still on the road, places she could track on a map as he’d moved steadily west—but lately there’d hardly even been any of those. Now that Owen and his father were planning to stay in Lake Tahoe—as he’d written to tell her two weeks ago—Lucy understood that the postcard gimmick had probably run its course. She also realized that any mail from him might be slower in coming now that she was all the way in Scotland, almost five thousand miles from the little lake town that straddled the border between California and Nevada. But she’d hoped they’d at least move the conversation over to e-mail. She never imagined the whole thing might just taper off entirely.

This was the first she’d heard from him in more than a week, in spite of the three e-mails she’d sent, filled with questions about his new home in Tahoe and updates about their move to Edinburgh. She realized he was probably busy with a new school and a new house and a new life, but she was surprised by how fiercely she wanted to know about it all, and how difficult it was to wait and wait amid such crashing silence.

Maybe, she told herself, he just wasn’t much of a correspondent. After all, her brothers were in California, too, and though they had a pretty questionable grasp of the time difference—especially Charlie, who’d called more than once in the middle of the night—even they managed to e-mail every couple of days. She supposed it was possible that Owen still didn’t have wireless access, but that seemed like a thin excuse, even to her. Maybe he just wasn’t a big fan of e-mail. It made sense; even his postcards were never very long. Or maybe he was simply a guy who was at his best in person. (That she suspected she was at her best from a distance was something she was trying not to think too hard about.)

While her parents finished their breakfast, Lucy flipped over the long-awaited card, which said simply:

Loch Ness = 745 feet deep

Lake Tahoe = 1,644 feet deep

Your new monster pal would love it here. I bet you would, too.



Before leaving for school, she slipped the note into the pocket of her blazer. When she stepped outside the bright red door of the town house, she was met by a wind far too cold and damp for any October she knew, and she felt a small shiver go through her. She shoved her hands deep in her pockets and ran her thumb along the rough edges of the postcard, which was somehow reassuring.

It was nearly eight by now, but all along the crescent of stone buildings that neighbored theirs, the street lamps were still on, burning little pockets of light into the morning haze. When they first found out they’d be moving to Edinburgh, this was just one of the many things her parents had seemed to find discouraging.

“I heard there are only five or six hours of daylight in the winter,” Mom said, looking miserable. “They might as well be sending us to Siberia.”

“It won’t be as bad as all that,” Dad had told her, but Lucy could tell from the set of his mouth that he was only trying to make the best of it. She’d overheard them arguing after he lost out on the position in London. As a consolation prize, they’d offered him some big job in the Edinburgh office, and he’d accepted out of an odd sense of duty, as well as the hope that it might soon lead to better things.

“Scotland?” Mom kept repeating as if she couldn’t quite believe it, and Lucy tried hard not to laugh at her accent, which had grown softer after all these years in New York, but which was now suddenly as crisp and precise as if she were speaking to the Queen.

“I’ve heard it’s nice,” Dad said weakly, and Mom wrinkled her nose.

“I went once when I was Lucy’s age.”

“And?” he asked, looking hopeful.

“And the whole city smelled like stew.”

“Stew?”

“Stew,” Mom confirmed.