The Geography of You and Me

“He’d probably prefer not to,” Owen pointed out, and Dad gave a solemn nod. They were quiet for a little while. The wind rustled the trees, bringing with it the scent of pine, and a flock of birds wheeled overhead. Owen watched as they pumped their wings, moving as one, a constellation of black dots in an otherwise uninterrupted sky. As they shifted direction, he saw that one had fallen behind, and he tracked it with his eyes for a long time. He didn’t realize he was holding his breath until Dad spoke again.

“You know it’ll be okay, right?” he said, and Owen nodded, still watching the bird.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”





23


In London, Lucy cried.

There was absolutely nothing to cry about—at least not yet. They’d only just arrived. She hadn’t seen the neighborhood or her school. She hadn’t even seen the inside of the house. But still, the moment the cab had pulled up to the bright yellow door of the little brick building, which was tucked away on a nearly hidden lane, she found herself blinking back tears.

“What’s wrong?” Dad asked once the cab had pulled away, as the three of them stood on the doorstep with their suitcases. The rest of their things had been shipped down while they were in Italy and would be waiting for them inside.

“She misses Scotland,” Mom said, throwing him a look.

“We were barely there,” he said, fumbling with the keys. “If anything, she probably misses New York.”

“You can be homesick for two places at once,” Mom said, sounding exasperated, but then the key finally turned, and Dad shouldered open the yellow door, and the two of them hurried inside, half-giddy with the excitement of another new home and another new start in another new place. And not just any place, but London: which, to them, had always been home.

Lucy, however, lingered on the stoop for another minute, her eyes still damp, wondering which one was true. Maybe she was homesick for New York, or maybe it was Edinburgh. Possibly it was even both.

Or maybe—maybe—it wasn’t a place at all.





24


In Seattle, Owen laughed.

When he saw the place they’d soon be living, he couldn’t help it. It was a little house on the edge of the city, but it looked more like a garden shed or a small barn, with weathered red wood and sagging windows.

“It’s a fixer-upper,” Dad said, beaming at it. There was no way to tamp down his enthusiasm. He’d gotten the job he’d come here for; he’d be part of a crew that was renovating an enormous old warehouse building downtown, turning it into hundreds of apartments at affordable prices. After using the last of their cash to fix the car, they’d spent two nights using it as a bed, sleeping in the parking lot of a Starbucks with the seats reclined. But now he’d gotten an advance on his first paycheck, and it turned out one of the guys on the crew was looking to rent this place out, which meant they’d finally have a house again. Or at least something resembling one.

“It’ll be fun,” Dad said, thumping Owen on the back. “We’ll make it our own.”

There was a small patch of lawn and a few scattered trees, a back garden and a narrow front porch, all of it huddled around the tiny box of a house. As he stood gazing up at it, Owen had the distinct feeling that whether he realized it or not, this was exactly what his father had been looking for all this time. After so many months of flight, it felt like they’d finally landed.

“It’s better than the car, huh?” Dad said, looking at the house with unmistakable pride. “And a pretty far cry from that basement apartment.”

Owen nodded, wondering what the stars would be like out here, remembering the way they’d burned over the darkened city that night, when they’d stood high above the basement, away from everyone and everything.

He’d been holding the shoebox under his arm like a football since they’d gotten out of the car, but now he bent to set it on the ground, letting Bartleby skitter out onto the grass. They watched together as the little turtle made his way over to the porch steps. He had a tendency to bump into things, and sure enough, as soon as he came into contact with the wood, he set his little home down right there on the flagstone and everything disappeared, his head and all four little legs zipping inside his shell. Owen had watched him do this a thousand times, but it still struck him as amazing, to be protected like that, to always be able to escape into your own small pocket of the world.

“Must be kind of nice,” Dad said. “Always having your house handy like that.”

“Not so different from us, really,” Owen said, pointing at the car. “We’ve had our home with us this whole time, too.”

They were both quiet for a moment, and then Dad smiled a slow smile. “Not anymore,” he said, and with that, they headed inside.





25


In the house with the yellow door, Lucy opened a newspaper.

Her eyes went right to an article about San Francisco.

“Did you know there are eleven species of sharks in the San Francisco Bay?” she asked her mother, who raised her eyebrows.

“Fascinating,” she said.





26


In the little red house with the peeling paint, Owen flipped through a magazine.

His eyes got caught on the word Scotland, and he paused.

“Did you know that the river leading out of Edinburgh is called the Firth of Forth?” he asked his dad, who gave him an odd look.

“Interesting,” he said.





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