Laura Dave - The Last Thing He Told Me

She walks up to the gate, which feels like a victory. A second victory: a stadium tour group seems to be congregating and we are able to latch on to them, walking past security without so much as a look from the distracted student manning the desk.

“Welcome to DKR,” the tour guide says. “I’m Elliot, I’ll be taking you around today. Follow me!”

He leads the group into the end zone and gives everyone a second to take in the stadium, which is epic. There is seating for more than a hundred thousand fans, TEXAS spelled out large on one end of the field, LONGHORNS on the other. It is so large—so imposing—that it feels like the kind of place you might remember, you might hold on to, especially at an early age.

Elliot starts walking the group through what happens on game night—how a cannon is fired after each touchdown, how Bevo, the mascot, is an actual steer bull and how there are a group of Texas cowboys who march him around the field, who tend to him.

As he finishes his spiel and starts to lead everyone up to the press box, I motion for Bailey to hang back, and we head to the bleachers.

I take a seat in the front row, Bailey following suit. I stare out at the field, watching her out of the corner of my eye as she settles in. And then she sits up taller.

“I can’t be sure if it was here,” she says. “I don’t know. But I remember my father talking to me about how one day I’d love football the way he did. I remember him telling me not to be scared of the mascot.”

That seems wrong—not the mascot part, which sounds exactly like Owen, but the loving football part. Owen doesn’t care at all about football. At least since we’ve been together, I’ve barely seen him watch a whole game. No long afternoon football games taking over our weekends. No Monday night recapping. One of many refreshing changes from Jake.

“But I must be remembering wrong,” she says. “My father doesn’t love football, right? I mean… we never even watch games.”

“That’s what I was thinking. But he may have loved it then. When he thought he would make a fan out of you.”

“When I was a toddler?”

I shrug. “Maybe he thought he could mold you into a Longhorn?”

Bailey turns back toward the field. Nothing left, apparently, to add to her memory. “I do think that’s what it was. It wasn’t about football, in general. He loved this team.” She pauses. “Or whatever team it was, in their orange uniforms…”

“Just walk me through what you know, as if this were the place,” I say. “Did you come after the wedding? Was it night?”

“No, it was during the afternoon. And I was in my dress. The flower girl dress. I know that. Maybe we had come from the wedding. The ceremony part.”

She pauses.

“Unless I’m imagining all of this. Which feels equally possible.”

I feel her getting frustrated. More than likely, Bailey remembered what she could back in Sausalito, and that’s where we should’ve stayed. In our floating home, empty without Owen. The two of us existing in the terrible space he left there.

“I don’t know what to say,” she said. “Any stadium I might feel this way.”

“But it does look familiar?”

“Yeah, it kinda does.”

Then something occurs to me. It comes fast and I can see the rest, depending on what her answer is.

“So you walked here?”

She gives me a strange look. “Yes, with you.”

“No, I mean, didn’t you say you walked here from the wedding? That day with your father? Assuming it was here…”

She shakes her head, as if that was a crazy question, but then her eyes get wider. “Yeah, I think we did. If I was in the dress, we probably came right from the church.”

I don’t know if this conversation is creating the memory, or not, but she suddenly becomes more definitive.

“We definitely did,” she says. “I mean we only came to the game for a little while, after the ceremony. We walked over. I’m pretty sure of it…”

“So it has to be near here.”

“What does?” she says.

I look down at the map and see the options marked for us: a Catholic Church not too far from here; two Episcopal chapters, and a synagogue even closer than that. They are all within walking distance. They are all potentially the place Owen took Bailey before he took her here.

“You don’t remember by chance what kind of ceremony it was? Like denominationally?”

“You’re joking, right?”

I’m not. “Of course I am,” I say.

Who Needs a Tour Guide?

I circle the churches on the map and we head out of the stadium through a different exit. We head down the steps and past a statue honoring the Longhorn Band, UT’s Etter-Harbin Alumni Center just behind it.

“Wait,” Bailey says. “Slow down a sec…”

I turn around. “What?”

She looks up at the building, at the sign in front: THE HOME OF THE TEXAS-EXES.

Then she turns back to the stadium. “This looks familiar,” she says.

“Well, it looks a little like the other gate entrance—”

“No, it’s like it all looks familiar,” she says. “Like this part of the campus looks familiar. Like I was here more than once, or something. It feels familiar.”

She starts looking around.

“Let me get my bearings,” she says. “Let me figure out why this place looks familiar to me. Isn’t that the point of all this? That something here is supposed to look familiar?”

“Okay,” I say. “Take your time.”

I try to encourage her, even though I don’t want to stop here. I want to get to the churches before they close for the day. I want to find us someone to talk to.

I stay quiet and focus on my phone. I focus on figuring out the time line. If Bailey is onto something, if we aren’t walking completely down the wrong path, it has to have been in 2008 that Bailey was here—while Bailey and Owen were still living in Seattle, while Olivia was still alive. The next year, Bailey and Owen moved to Sausalito. And any time before that, she would have been too young to remember much of this, if any of it.

So 2008 was the sweet spot. If Bailey is right about any of it, that’s when she was here. I search for the football schedule. I search for the home game schedule, from twelve years ago.

But as I start to pull the past schedules up, my cell rings, BLOCKED coming up on the caller ID. I hold it in my hand, unsure what to do. It could be Owen. But I think of Jake telling me not to answer any unknown numbers, and it feels risky. Who else it may be, what other trouble that may cause.

Bailey motions to my phone. “Are you going to get that? Or just stare at it?”

“Haven’t decided yet.”

What if it’s Owen though? What if? I click accept. But I don’t say anything, waiting to hear what the caller has to say first.

“Hello? Hannah?”

The woman on the other end has a high-pitched voice, lispy, irritating. It’s a voice that I recognize.

“Belle,” I say.

“Oh what a mess this is,” she says. “What an outrage . Are you okay? And how is Owen’s daughter?”

It’s Belle’s attempt to be nice, but I note that she doesn’t say Bailey. She says Owen’s daughter because she can never remember Bailey’s name. It’s never been important to her to learn it.

“They didn’t do this thing, you know…” she says.

They.

“Belle, I’ve been trying to reach you,” I say.

“I know, I know, you must be beside yourself. I’m beside myself. I’m holed up in St. Helena like some kind of common criminal. Camera crews camped outside my door. I can’t even leave the house! I had to have my assistant drop off roasted chicken and chocolate soufflés from Bouchon so I’d have something to eat,” she says. “Where are you?”