“Calm down. I’m kidding. I told them you were out of town and that I’d get the info together and call them tomorrow.”
“Don’t do that to me! E-mail me all the information. I can put together a proposal tonight—oh, no I can’t. I have plans.”
“That sounds promising.”
“It’s a local, um, art show.”
“Oh, now they produce art in Mayberry!”
“It did produce me, you know.”
“Touché!”
“Someone very important to me is one of the artists, so I have to go. I mean, I want to go. I’m excited to go.”
Annie and I were coworkers, and buddies based on work. I didn’t lie to her. I never lied. I just left things out—like my entire personal life before I’d arrived in San Francisco. All she knew—all anyone knew—was that I grew up in a tiny Ohio town and that my parents traveled around the country in a Winnebago, the latter being a distracting bit of family trivia that had nothing to do with me. As far as I could tell, no one who met me in Chicago (my first stop after leaving Chance) or San Francisco or any city I’d worked in was interested in my past. They were only interested in my present. And in my pictures. Simon had met my parents during their swing through Petaluma, but that was the only time.
“When you get back we need to talk. I have a proposition for you that will change your life,” he’d said, as he handed me a bowl of steel-cut oats with organic dried cherries and maple syrup he’d brought back from Vermont and now had on a regular monthly shipment. “Just don’t get too distracted while you’re gone. Keep your eye on the prize.”
“More weddings.”
“You never know where you’ll meet our next happy couple.”
When I’d opened my mouth to reply he just kissed me, essence of oatmeal and all.
Annie’s voice faded as I noticed a basket in the corner of the room by the door, looking as if Little Red Riding Hood had skipped through.
“Did you send me something?”
“No, I don’t even know where you’re staying, remember? You wouldn’t tell me.”
“Right.” I knelt by the basket and opened the lid to find a bottle wrapped in a blue cotton kitchen towel. Pinot Noir from a local winery.
“I’ve got to go. I’ll call you tomorrow. I mean, I’ll call Mr. Thomas tomorrow.”
“He wants you to call him Henry. Don’t forget.”
“Right. E-mail me everything. And, Annie?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks.”
I yanked the Bluetooth and held the bottle against my warm cheek, the smooth, cool glass as soothing as finding the cold spot on my favorite pillow. Only one person knew my penchant for this particular red. And only one person knew what I did after drinking too much of it the night Celia was diagnosed.
Three months, the doctors had said.
For as much as they knew, they’d known nothing.
Celia had stayed with us for six. Fighting, laughing, dying.
I opened the wine with the waiting corkscrew. I filled a glass. This was just a bottle of wine, which happened to be from an Ohio winery. Nothing more than a nice gesture. A welcome gift. It had to be, because I was not ready to think it was a reminder, an ultimatum, or even a long-distance peace offering.
I opened a drawer where somehow I knew I’d find snacks, and pulled out a sleeve of Ritz crackers. I opened the mini fridge and saw the block of cream cheese. Someone had told the new owner about this classic Chance hors d’oeuvre. I lifted the basket to the table and something rattled. I reached inside and pulled out a small, unwrapped box and removed the lid. It didn’t occur to me that I might not like what was inside until the lid was off. I shut my eyes. Celia had always loved my enthusiasm, so I opened one eye. Then the other.
A wispy silver chain lay on a pillow of cotton. A brightly polished charm. Half a heart. A zigzag edge. The word “Best.”
Celia and I had exchanged necklaces like this for Hanukkah when we were in sixth grade, except we’d had ours engraved at a mall kiosk. I looked at the heart, remembering my first “real” jewelry.
We hadn’t wasted a moment that day. We tried on the necklaces right there and admired each other, and ourselves, in the mall’s mirrored columns, before we set our necklaces back into their boxes so they could be properly wrapped and exchanged.
This necklace. The one in the basket. It couldn’t be the necklace. Could it?
One. Two. Three.
I flipped over the charm and stared at the engraved letter T.
For Teddi.
My fingers trembled. Before now I’d chosen my reminders. I wasn’t used to having them presented to me, in a picnic basket no less.
Obviously that was changing.
This was Celia’s necklace. I shut my eyes and traced the engraving with my finger, then peered inside the basket, ran my hand along the lining. No note. No clue. Nothing. Celia and I hadn’t worn those necklaces since eighth grade, but it didn’t surprise me that she would have kept hers. It had to be Miles who left it. An unsung good deed, or something to exacerbate the guilt he believed I should feel for staying away.
I dug into the front pocket of my camera bag and pulled out a small black pouch I always carried but hadn’t opened in years. I poured out my necklace, which had tarnished.
Friends. I flipped it over. C.
I clasped both chains around my neck and the halves fell together, a heart complete, though the necklaces were never meant to be worn by one person. The charms overlapped and the delicate chains tangled. I looked into the mirror over the dresser. I closed my eyes and the necklaces felt just right. Their temperature on my décolletage, cool and soothing; their weight, light but present.
I poured more wine and stood to the side of the window in case the neighbors could see in, which I knew they could. I had looked in these windows many times, although never as a half-dressed traveler.
Townie.
The garden on the east side of the house, like the one at the house I grew up in, was filled this time of year with hundreds of black-eyed Susans and petunias. My mother hadn’t been an inventive gardener, but she was always passionate, except when she wasn’t. But in this garden were lilac bushes and zinnias, delphiniums, lilies, and rosebushes—so many rosebushes—all of them more lush than when I’d been in my teens and twenties and had looked out this window, counting the minutes until Celia and I would grab our pay (cash, under the table) and decide what to do next.
The stepping-stones placed through the garden led nowhere except back to one another. That had always frustrated me, but it had never seemed to bother Celia. She’d been happy to walk the stones and turn around and walk back. I was the one who had wanted to keep going.
I could see the corner of the inn’s garage to the west, its side covered with purple clematis. I looked at the rooftops nearby, now knowing what stretched beyond the garden, beyond Chance, beyond Ohio. That was where my adventures were born, the ones I hadn’t imagined existed for me.