For years, we’d had Thanksgiving at our house with Mom, me, and Livvie’s little family, plus Fee and Vee, Bard and Kyle Ramsey, and Jamie and his parents. Jamie’s three older siblings were so much older, his mother called him the period at the end of the sentence. “More like an exclamation mark,” his father joked. “Surprise!”
Jamie’s older brother and two sisters had gone off to college and then moved out of state, establishing careers and raising families of their own. Jamie had stayed in town, coping with much older parents who depended on him. This year, they’d gone to Florida to spend the winter with one of his sisters. As far as I knew, Jamie was still rattling around their empty house next door.
“I thought he was spending Thanksgiving with that Gina,” Livvie said, stepping away from the sink, the last of the dishes done.
“He told me that’s not happening anymore.”
Livvie sighed. “Too bad.”
“He didn’t want to talk about it,” I added.
“I’m sure.”
Mom hung her dishtowel on the stove handle. “We can’t let him spend the winter mooning around in that big house. Julia, you need to talk to him.”
Livvie crinkled her eyes at me to show she understood it wouldn’t be that easy. Jamie and I hadn’t been capable of resuming our easy friendship since I got back to town. Partially, that was my fault. I’d been so crazed trying to get the Snowden Family Clambake back on its feet when I first got home, I hadn’t even called him. Then things just got weird between Jamie and me after that kiss.
“I guess I should,” I responded to my mother, making no promises. I didn’t know how to recapture the easy comfort Jamie and I had as kids.
*
When I got back to my apartment, I went to my refrigerator, thinking I’d help Gus out and, oh-by-the-way, keep him from stomping through my apartment in the early morning hours by moving his remaining food back down to the walk-in. But when I opened the door, the fridge was empty. Gus must have been by to drop off food downstairs and cleared it out himself.
Chris arrived soon after me, and we had a chance to catch up with each other. We snuggled while he talked about his projects at the cabin. As I listened to his description of the work he’d done, the problems he encountered, and the solutions he found, I reveled in the easy domesticity of our conversation. Even though I was thirty, I hadn’t ever had a relationship like this.
After five months, my heart still pounded and my knees turned to jelly whenever Chris walked into a room. My favorite thing was to catch a glimpse of him while he did something mundane—buttoning a shirt, chopping vegetables in the restaurant, or getting out of his truck—and had no idea I was watching. When that happened, my need to touch him was so great that sometimes I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out to feel his forearm or his stubbly cheek. I knew this desperate, physical yearning couldn’t last forever, or so I’d been told, but it hadn’t quieted yet, or even diminished.
As a couple, we still had a lot to work out. We had problems with possessive pronouns. Was it my apartment or ours? Though he stayed almost every night, most of Chris’s stuff remained at the cabin, so it was “my” apartment. But Gus’s Too was definitely “our” restaurant. We were both all in.
When I talked about my day, Chris listened carefully, without interruption. Despite his statement about letting the professionals handle it, he’d never been one to tell me what to do or to caution me not to get involved.
“I think the four couples in the restaurant that night are somehow connected, and someone—maybe one of them, maybe someone else—wanted them there.”
“I think you’re right,” Chris agreed. “Remember I told you when Barry fell, Phil said, ‘Buddy, are you all right?’ All day today, that phrase circled in my brain. It wasn’t what Phil said, it was the way he said it. Like ‘buddy’ wasn’t an expression, but was Barry’s name.”
“So you think that in the moment, when it looked like Barry might be hurt, Phil forgot himself and called Barry by an old nickname?”
“Exactly.”
Phil had said he’d been in Barry’s store “a couple of times.” Hardly the type of relationship that led to intimacy and nicknames.
“They have a connection,” Chris said. “You’re right about that.”
I said, tentatively, “I think the gift certificates were stolen.”
“What? Out of this apartment?”
“I can’t figure out how else they disappeared.”
Chris took my hand. “Think about what you’re saying, Julia. Someone came in, while you and I were both asleep, and took one very specific item, nothing else, out of a very specific place, the cigar box.”