“I don’t care about the wine.”

“So then why are you looking at me like that?” she says.

“You should go and pack a bag,” I say.

“Why?” she says.

“I was thinking about what you said, about the wedding. About Austin. And I think we should go,” I say.

“To Austin?”

I nod.

She looks at me, confused. “That’s crazy. How is going to Austin going to help anything?” she says.

I want to give her an honest answer. If I try to quote my grandfather and tell her this could be the peeling back, will she be able to hear that? I doubt it. And if I tell her what I’ve put together so far—a wobbly formulation at best—she will rebel and refuse to go.

So I tell her something that she can hear, something that is also the truth. Something that sounds like what her father would say.

“It’s better than sitting here,” I say.

“What about school?” she says. “I’m just going to miss school?”

“You said you weren’t going tomorrow anyway,” I say. “Didn’t you just finish saying that?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I guess.”

I’m already heading into the house. I’m already on the way.

“So pack.”

— Part 2 —

Each species of wood has its own distinctive patterns and colors, which are revealed when the bowl is turned.

—Philip Moulthrop

Keep Austin Weird

We get on a 6:55 A.M. flight out of San Jose.

It’s been forty-six hours since Owen left for work, forty-six hours since I’ve heard a word from him.

I give Bailey the window seat and take the aisle, passengers knocking into me as they make their way to the one bathroom in the back of the plane.

Bailey leans against the window as far away from me as she can get, her arms folded tightly against her chest. She is wearing a Fleetwood Mac tank top, no sweatshirt, goose bumps running up her arms.

I don’t know if she is cold or upset. Or both. We have never flown together before, so I didn’t think to remind her to put a sweatshirt in her carry-on. Not like she would have heeded my advice anyway.

Still, suddenly, this feels like Owen’s greatest crime. How did he not provide me with a point of reference before he disappeared? How did he not leave behind a set of rules on how to take care of her? The first rule: Tell her to pack a sweatshirt when she gets on a plane. Tell her to cover her arms.

Bailey keeps her eyes glued to the window, avoids eye contact. It’s just as well that she has no desire to talk. I start taking notes in my notebook instead. I work on making a game plan. We land at twelve thirty local time, which means it will probably be close to two before we make it to downtown Austin and check into the hotel.

I wish I knew the city better, but I’ve been to Austin only once before, during my senior year of college. It was Jules’s first professional assignment (she was paid to the tune of $85 and a hotel room) and she invited me to tag along. She was photographing the Austin Chronicle’s Annual Hot Sauce Festival for a Boston food blog. We spent most of our time in Austin at that festival, burning our mouths off on a hundred different kinds of spiced ribs and fried potatoes and smoked veggies and jalape?o sauces. Jules took six hundred photographs.

It wasn’t until shortly before we were heading out of town that we wandered outside of the gardens in East Austin where the festival was being held. We found a hilltop that gave us the most incredible view of the downtown skyline. There were as many trees as skyscrapers, more clear sky than clouds. And the coziness of the lake somehow made Austin feel less like a city and more like a small town.

Jules and I decided then and there that we were going to move to Austin after graduation. It was far less expensive than New York, far easier than Los Angeles. We didn’t really consider it when the time came, but in that moment, that’s what it felt like, looking down over the city. It felt like looking at our future.

This certainly isn’t the future I’d imagined.

I close my eyes, trying to not let it subsume me, the questions that keep rolling through my head on a terrible loop, the questions I need answers to: Where is Owen? Why did he need to run? And what did I miss about him that he was too afraid to tell me himself?

That’s part of the reason I’m sitting on this plane. I have this fantasy that by leaving the house, it will trigger something in the universe that makes Owen come home home again and offer up the answers himself. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work, the kettle boils once you stop watching? As soon as we land in Austin, there will be a message from Owen asking where we are, telling me that he is sitting in our empty kitchen waiting on us, as opposed to the other way around.

“What can I get you ladies?”

I look up to see the flight attendant standing by our aisle, her silver drink cart in front of her.

Bailey doesn’t turn her head from the window, her purple ponytail the only thing facing out.

“Regular Coke,” she says. “Lots of ice.”

I shrug, a peace offering for Bailey’s shortness. “Diet, please,” I say.

The flight attendant just laughs, unoffended. “Sixteen?” she whispers.

I nod.

“I have a sixteen-year-old myself,” she says. “Twins actually. Believe me, I get it.”

This is when Bailey turns around.

“I’m not hers,” she says.

It’s true. It’s also something Bailey may have said on another day, eager to correct the record. But just now it sounds different and it stings in a way I have trouble hiding on my face. It isn’t just about how it makes me feel. It’s also about the reckoning that’s coming for her on the heels of her comment—the impossible realization that hating or disavowing me is a whole lot less fun when, at the moment, I’m the only person that she has.

Her face tightens as it hits her. I stay quiet, staring at the television screen on the seat in front of me, an episode of Friends playing silently, Rachel and Joey kissing in a hotel room.

I pretend not to notice Bailey’s despair, but I don’t put on my headphones either. It’s the best I can come up with for giving her some breathing room while trying to let her know I’m there if she wants me.

Bailey rubs at the goose bumps on her arms, not saying anything, not for a while. Finally, she takes a sip of her soda. Then she makes a face.

“I think she switched our drinks,” she says.

I turn and look at her. “What’s that?”

She holds out her ice-filled cup, her soda brimming to the top. “This is diet,” she says. “The flight attendant must have given me yours…”

I try not to look too surprised as she hands her drink over. And I don’t argue. I hand Bailey my drink and wait for her to take a sip.

Bailey nods, like she is relieved to have her correct drink. Except we both know the flight attendant delivered us the correct drinks in the first place. And only now—only since Bailey’s gesture, her attempt to relieve the tension—are the drinks mixed up.

If this is Bailey’s way of reaching toward me, I’m going to meet her there.

I take a sip of the Coke. “Thank you,” I say. “I thought mine tasted weird.”

“No worries…” she says. Then she returns to looking out the window. “No big deal.”

* * *

We get into an Uber at the airport and I scroll through the news reports on my phone.

Stories about The Shop plaster CNN’s home page, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal. Many of the recent headlines focus on a press conference held by the head of the SEC, offering up such clickbait as THE SHOP IS CLOSED FOR GOOD.

I click on the most recent article in the New York Times, which covers the SEC announcement that they’re filing civil fraud charges against Avett Thompson. And which quotes a source in the FBI about how senior staff and top executives will most certainly be named as people of interest.

Owen isn’t mentioned by name. At least not yet.

The Uber pulls onto Presidential Boulevard and heads toward the hotel, which is on Lady Bird Lake near the Congress Avenue Bridge. It’s away from the hubbub of the busiest part of the city, across the bridge from the heart of downtown Austin.

I reach into my bag and pull out a printout of our hotel reservation, sweeping over the details. Jules’s full name, Julia Alexandra Nichols, stares back at me. Jules suggested reserving the room on her credit card as a safety measure. I have her credit card and her ID in my wallet, further safety measures, in case anyone is tracking us.

Of course, there is a record of our flight to Austin. Jules put the flights on her credit card, but our real names are on the plane tickets. There’s a clear way to track us here, if anyone is inclined to do so. But even if they track that we’re in Austin, they don’t need to know exactly where in Austin. I’m not helping the next Grady or Naomi to show up at my door, unannounced.

The driver—a young guy in a bandanna—looks at Bailey in the rearview mirror. He isn’t much older than she is and he keeps trying to make eye contact with her. He keeps trying to get her attention.