The Long Walk

by Jill Cox

  “Um, sorry… what is Hearth?”

  “Pete didn’t tell you?” Her eyes widened for the briefest second before she recomposed herself. “It’s a property rental service, but for a certain crowd – Hollywood directors looking for location shoots or celebrities looking for a place to hide out. Anyway, that’s why I’m here. To give the representative the keys.”

  I seated myself across from Brooks at the kitchen table. “If he told me, it’s disappeared from my brain. Sorry.”

  “Please don’t apologize.” She gave me a warm smile. “My dad set up this contract with Hearth a year ago. Margaret had this big plan – while Pete was busy studying in Paris, she’d check some places off her bucket list, you know? Machu Picchu, maybe, or watch the great migration in Kenya. Just Margaret and a rollie bag.”

  Tears suddenly lined Brooks’ lashes, and then her face went bright pink. “Ugh, sorry,” she grimaced. “Here you are, all stoic and ready for battle, and I’m just… I mean, Margaret wasn’t even my grandmother. She was just my neighbor.”

  “I think the word you’re looking for is friend,” I smiled. “I’m pretty sure that was Margaret’s best quality.”

  “She was the best. I don’t know if Pete’s told you this, but I was a hot mess a few years back. Bad breakup, which is just… ugh, so clichéd that it makes me want to vomit now.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, Margaret just called me up one day and invited me here for lunch. She told me the Paris apartment would be empty all spring. ‘It needs redecorating,” she told me. ‘But if you’re up for the challenge, I’ll let you stay there through the summer if you’d like.’”

  “For free?”

  “Yeah.” She pushed out a tiny chuckle, like she still couldn’t believe it. “I asked her what I would do in Paris. I don’t even speak French! She insisted I could do anything I like – art class, culinary school, write novels – anything at all. Except I don’t have an artistic bone in my body, and I can’t write a proper text message without a mistake. But I do like to bake.”

  “Yeah? Did you go to pastry chef school?”

  She snorted. “Hardly. I took some private lessons from an American blogger I found on Instagram. I can make a mean macaron, but that’s about it.”

  I thought back to my birthday in Paris last year, when Pete casually mentioned prepping the Guénégaud apartment for Brooks with just enough ambiguity about their few days together to tie my stomach in a knot. Even now, seven months later, my imagination whirred into high gear, sitting here with the lady in question, who had yet to mention Pete’s involvement whatsoever.

  “Macarons are all the rage right now,” I answered, willing my lips into a smile. “You could probably make six figures a year if you wanted to start your own business.”

  “Maybe,” she shrugged, a wry smile dancing at her lips. “Anyway, back to the original story. Last spring, when Pete was home, he decided to honor the Hearth contract, at least for the next year or so. It makes sense, you know? Pete and his friends have already signed up to live in some rent house near campus this year, and he was supposed to spend all summer with you.”

  Supposed to. I took a slow sip of my coffee, then passed the other cup across the table. “This coffee’s getting cold. Would you like it?”

  “Oh. Yes, please.” She smiled almost greedily. “I haven’t had any yet today and my dad gave me strict instructions not to use any appliances in the house while I waited.”

  “I’m sorry. Remind me again why your dad cares about Margaret’s appliances?”

  Brooks tilted her head to the side. “He’s counsel for the Beckett Family Trust. Pete and my dad talk every single day. I just assumed you knew.”

  Vick. All this time, in my mind, Pete’s lawyer was a short, balding, thirtysomething shyster who wore polyester pants and needed a life. Instead, he was Mr. Victor Darby, Esquire. Father of Brooks. The elegant silver fox of a man I’d seen at Gigi’s wake.

  Brooks surveyed the room for a moment, then allowed herself a tiny smile. “Pete and I sorted and purged every room in this house last March that week before you guys flew back to school. I told him I’d handle the details so he could focus on studying. I even dusted the baseboards.”

  She could have told me she was next in line for the British monarchy, and I would have been less shocked. They’d done this together?

  This was Brooks. The girl he’d joined the Ducky Shincrackers to impress. The neighbor Gigi had let live in the Paris apartment for free. And, I suspected, the reason he’d spent one miserable summer – er, winter – in New Zealand. Yet in the two months we’d been together, Pete had never given me a single reason to think he and Brooks Darby were still friends.

  At least, not this close of friends.

  I shook my head as if I could shake away my thoughts. “So, is Pete with your dad or something? I don’t mind waiting around, but I do need to talk to him, so…”

  Brooks eyed me strangely for a moment. “No, Meredith. He’s not with my dad. He’s gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone? Where?”

  “Good question.” She tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “I’m sure you’ve already noticed this, but whenever he needs to blow off a little steam, Pete disappears off the grid. As far as I know, he’s run away every few months since his parents died.”

  The second those words passed over her lips, we both winced. Today was the fourth anniversary of the accident that had destroyed Pete’s family (and nearly destroyed him). She knew it, I knew it, and as Brooks’ hazel eyes flamed bright, a streak of envy flared inside me that the person sitting across from me had known Liz and Jim Russell well enough to miss them too.

  “Hey, listen, I know this must look bad. But your brother’s accident really shook Pete up. He was barely coherent when I got here yesterday morning to help him set up for the Hearth people. Every single thing about Oregon reminds Pete of something he’ll never have again. Surely you of all people can understand that, right?”

  Tears pricked at my eyes. I’d sent him back here. Alone. How could I be so thoughtless? And why was I so insensitive when I’d just lost my own brother? Of all the times to lose my mind. No wonder Pete had run away.

  I stood to my feet, gripping my coffee cup in my hand like a baby bottle. “I, um… I think I’d better head home. I don’t want to be in your way when –”

  “Oh, right.” Brooks stood up as well. “The Hearth rep. She should be here any second. Come on, I’ll walk you out.”

  I followed her back to the foyer, glancing around the house one last time as Brooks trailed close behind. “He’ll come back, Meredith,” she said, opening the front door. “Trust me, I’ve known him since his voice was an octave higher than it is now. He’ll be back in no time.”

  I stepped past her onto the front steps. “Thanks again for everything. If you hear from Pete, please let him know I stopped by.”

  She nodded, and as I crossed the cobblestone driveway, I could feel her eyes trailing me as she leaned against the front door like she owned the place. But just as I opened my car door, I looked up to find Brooks on my heels.

  “Meredith, wait. I lied earlier.” She reached past me to push my car door shut. “I do know where Pete is. I just promised him I wouldn’t tell anyone. He drove down to Palo Alto this morning. I was on the phone with him earlier when you showed up.”

  “Palo Alto?” I repeated, blinking. “Why would he go to California?”

  “To see Scott and Becky.”

  “Who?”

  “Scott and Becky Logan. Pete hasn’t told you about them?”

  My mind was a whir. “James’ parents?”

  “Well, yeah. The Logans are like family to him. He didn’t want to be alone today, and he told me he’d promised you he would come back to your house, but the truth is, Meredith, I don’t think he’s quite ready for that yet. Not to mention the fact that he wouldn’t want to burden his brand-new girlfriend when she’s already going through so much on her own.”

  “Burden
me?” I blinked away the tears pooling in my eyes. “Did he actually say that?”

  Her eyes softened. “Just have some patience, okay? Pete’s number one skill is keeping his feelings compartmentalized. Except you can’t live your life ignoring pain. At some point, the collateral damage will knock down even the strongest wall.”

  I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell her all the million ways she was wrong about Pete. But suddenly, all my logic had disappeared. Because no matter how well I knew my boyfriend, the woman standing before me had known him at least three times as long.

  “He’ll come around, Meredith,” Brooks finally said, laying a sisterly hand on my shoulder. “Just give him a little space, and I predict he’ll be rolling down your driveway in ten days or less.”

  I didn’t have the heart to point out that not everyone in the world has a driveway. Or, you know, a historical marker on their house. Or a bottomless bank account for those days when they just need to run away from the pain.

  ELEVEN

  You know those random calls you get from some area code that starts with all the wrong numbers, and you wonder if someone in Antarctica has tracked you down? Except they never leave a message, because spam calls are the new black?

  Sometime before the end of my shift at Sullivan’s on Bastille Day, I felt my phone buzz in my back pocket. My screen displayed a weird strand of numbers, so I pushed the call through to voicemail and went on about my business. And okay, I might have noticed the slight buzz notifying me that I had a voicemail, but the tourists at Table Nine kept complaining that our ketchup wasn’t organic, and let’s be honest: I’ve never had patience for first-world problems or fake callers even before my life took a sharp exit toward Bizarroworld.

  But something kept me from automatically deleting the message when I remembered it the next day. And once I listened to it, I couldn’t stop listening, because it was Pete.

  “Hey, Sully, it’s… uh… hold on a sec.”

  I heard two short bursts of Mandarin, followed by staccato responses. Then five seconds’ worth of static, like the microphone was rubbing against fabric. And then Pete’s voice again.

  “Sorry about that.” He paused, and I imagined him running his fingers through his curls. “So, hey, I’m calling because… oh, man. I don’t even want to say this out loud. As soon as I do, you’ll realize you’ve fallen in love with two flaky frat boys this year.”

  There was another long pause. No second person interrupting this time – just breathing. Deep, long steady breaths of air. And when Pete began to speak again, his voice wobbled on every single word.

  “I’m in Shanghai, Meredith. At the Restoration Initiative.” I hit pause and replayed it again, because what? Pete was in China? How did that even happen in six days? Didn’t you have to have a visa just to enter the country?

  “I’m calling from James’ office,” Pete explained. “Well, not actually his office. His closet. Today is laundry day and the guys keep… you know what? Rewind. You don’t care about that. Actually, if you’re still listening to this message, it will be a minor miracle. I already know you must hate me for ghosting you after all the crap I gave you when Sutton did the same thing last spring. But he didn’t disappear to Asia, which makes me one hundred times worse.”

  I pressed pause again and considered deleting the rest of the message. Just delete it, get it over with, and block the number. Who was this guy, and what had he done with my perfect, sweet, loyal boyfriend? I don’t even know you right now, I thought, staring down at my phone screen.

  Maybe I never had.

  I pressed play again and Pete continued. “I’m uh, calling you from James’ line so you’ll have the number. I don’t expect you to call me back because I haven’t called you in a week. Brooks told me you came to my house last Wednesday. Actually, what she said was that I suck for adding more stress to your plate, and you know what? She’s right. I just…”

  Another long pause. And the longer he was silent, the more I knew what it meant. Brooks had hit the nail on the head with that compartment theory. So when I heard the change of timbre in his voice when he finally spoke again, my treacherous tear ducts flooded my eyes for the millionth time lately.

  “I can’t be home right now, Sully,” he said, his voice so wobbly that he sounded like a child. “Not in Portland. Not in Lincoln City. I don’t even think I could handle Paris. I just can’t. I hope you understand why. I imagine you probably do, even though I completely suck and you probably hate me anyway. I don’t blame you.”

  His voice cracked on hate and for a long moment, he didn’t say anything. But then he cleared his throat a few times and resumed. “Listen, I don’t want to fill up your voice mail with excuses, so here’s why I really called. I love you, Meredith. I love you so much that it actually hurts, and I wish I deserved you. I wish I were the strong, capable person you believe I am, but… I guess that’s why I’m here. I figured if I could help other people for a while, maybe I’d become the person you fell in love with. At the very least, maybe I’ll snap out of this ridiculous headspace.”

  I pressed pause again and dropped onto a nearby chair, lowering my head to my hands. Pete was in China. Not Mexico, or Canada, or the Bahamas. CHINA. You didn’t just jet off to Shanghai on a whim. Pete would’ve needed an emergency visa, which means he would have spent hours and hours working with the embassy in San Francisco, filling out forms and paying fees and who knows what else.

  Hours and hours during which he could have told himself to suck it up and drive north to Lincoln City. He could have stopped himself. He could have called me from this side of the ocean.

  But he didn’t. So I clicked delete. I didn’t need to hear the rest of the message.

  I couldn’t take another goodbye.

  TWELVE

  I always knew your life changed when you lost someone you loved. What I didn’t know was how fast it happened.

  At some point, the final casserole made its way into the oven. The mailbox once again held more bills than bereavement cards. The constant pinging of cell phones dwindled to several times a day. And then stopped.

  Jamie Sullivan’s heart rehab continued right on schedule. Molly Sullivan enlisted the help of their restaurant manager, Tony, to keep the business afloat while she made cardiac-friendly cooking her new life’s mission. Meredith Sullivan spent her summer the way she’d spent every summer since the year she turned thirteen – serving as hostess to the most popular Irish restaurant on the central Oregon coast.

  Every member of Ian Sullivan’s family cried themselves to sleep each night.

  Sometime in late July, I found a pack of those metallic star stickers in the back of my desk drawer and decided to create my own reward system in my old-school paper planner. Because the truth is that even on our very worst days, human beings need affirmation.

  I gave myself a blue star every time I went a day without crying. Red if Pete never crossed my mind. Silver for a day when I laughed. Gold for a full night’s sleep. And green for having enough energy to tackle an extra shift at Sullivan’s.

  By the time school started in August, my planner looked like the Emerald City.

  On the first day of senior year, Dr. Sweeney burst through the doorway, a stack of syllabi balanced on one hand and his decades-old French Is My Love Language coffee mug in the other. And as he rambled on about La Belle Époque, I couldn’t even bring myself to uncap my pen.

  Why? Because every time someone walked into class, that person was not Pete Russell.

  Oh, yeah. I had officially become that girl. The one who’s more concerned about some dude she dated for a hot minute than she is about grieving her one and only brother.

  The instant Dr. Sweeney finished his lecture, I escaped down the hallway, scurrying out of a side doorway to a small, ivy-enclosed alcove. And maybe my legs had carried me faster than I realized because no matter how hard I tried, I could not draw a full breath.

  I threw my planner on a nearby bench. Then I yanked the strap of my
book bag over my head and tossed it to the bench as well. When that didn’t work, I ripped my favorite cardigan off and threw it on the ground, buttons bouncing off rocks and landing in the shrubbery.

  Thank goodness I’d worn a t-shirt instead of a flimsy camisole. Because no one needed a peep show on the first day of school.

  I was still gasping for breath when two hands grabbed my shoulders. A second later, I was facing Dan Thomas, his eyes so wide they appeared cartoonish behind his glasses.

  “Look at me,” he commanded, his hands cupping both sides of my head to force my gaze. “Look at me, Meredith, and breathe. Slowly. In through your nose, and out through your mouth.”

  Dan’s eyes held mine, the panic on his face subsiding more with each gasp of air I inhaled. “That’s good.” He squeezed my shoulders gently. “Breathe as deeply as you can manage.”

  He searched my eyes again, then lowered one hand to his school bag and pulled out a brand new, baby blue t-shirt. “Here,” he smiled, handing it to me. “You can wipe your face with this. I haven’t even worn it yet.”

  I looked down at the front. Sigma Phi Beta Back-To-School Crawfish Boil. Then I turned it over and read the back. “Pinch My Tail? Is this for real?”

  Dan rolled his eyes. “You can thank President Andrew Sutton for that. We haven’t even had our first chapter meeting and he’s already got his minions distributing party swag.”

  A pitiful laugh escaped me. “I can’t wipe my snotty face on your shirt. Drew will kill me.”

  “I know how to do laundry, Meredith. Besides, if you ruin it, Mister President won’t give me any crap when I accidentally never wear it one single time.”

  I laughed again, only this time it was normal, with plenty of oxygen. I turned Dan’s t-shirt inside out, dabbing it against my cheeks. “Good,” I sniffled. “Happy to know my mental breakdown will improve someone’s well-being.”