Laura Dave - The Last Thing He Told Me

“Maybe it was my wife, Andrea,” he says. “That you met, I mean. She worked here for years. When I was in school, she put in more shifts than I did.”

He hands me the picture frame. I look closely at the photograph, at this nice family staring back at me, at his now ex-wife, shining a lovely smile at the camera.

“It probably was her,” I say. “It’s weird, isn’t it? I don’t know where I put the room key for my hotel, but her face, I think I remember.”

I hold on to the photograph.

“Your boys are adorable.”

“Thank you. They’re great kids. But I need some new photographs in here. They were five in this photo,” he says. “And now they’re eleven, which, as they would be quick to tell you, is essentially voting age.”

Eleven. That stops me. Eleven would line up, almost precisely, with when he and Andrea got married. Andrea getting pregnant shortly before or shortly after the wedding.

“They play me a bit now though, since the divorce. Think I’ll cave to all their demands just so I get to be the cool dad…” He laughs. “They win more often than they should.”

“Probably okay,” I say.

“Yeah.” He shrugs. “You got kids?”

“Not yet,” I say. “Still looking for the guy.”

This is truer than I want it to be. And Charlie smiles at me, perhaps wondering if I mean it as an invitation. I know this is the moment, the moment to ask the question I need an answer to most.

I stall as I think of how to get there.

“I should probably get going, but maybe I’ll head back if I get done early enough.”

“Definitely,” he says. “Come back, we’ll celebrate.”

“Or commiserate.”

He smiles. “Or that.”

I stand up, as if I’m about to leave, my heart threatening to beat out of my chest.

“You know… this is a bizarre question. Is it okay if I ask you? Before I head out? I figure you know a lot of locals.”

“Far too many,” he says. “What do you need to know?”

“I’m trying to find this guy. My girlfriend and I met him when we were here that time… a lifetime ago. He lived in Austin, probably still does. And my friend had this huge crush on him.”

He looks at me, intrigued. “Okay…”

“Anyway, she’s going through a crappy divorce and he’s stuck in her head. That sounds ridiculous, but since I’m back in town, I thought I’d try to find him. It would be a nice thing to be able to do for her. They had a connection. A million years ago, but connections are hard to find so…”

“Do you have a name?” he says. “Not that I’m great with names.”

“How about faces?” I say.

“I’m pretty good with faces,” he says.

I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone, click through to the photograph of Owen. It’s the photograph that we showed Professor Cookman—the one on Bailey’s phone, the one I asked her to text me. Bailey’s face covered with flowers, Owen smiling, happy.

Charlie looks down at the photograph.

And it happens so quickly. He throws my phone down, cracking it against the countertop. He is over the bar and in my face. He isn’t touching me, but he is so close that he could.

“Do you think this is funny?” he says. “Who are you?”

I shake my head, frightened.

“Who sent you?” he says.

“No one.”

I back up against the wall, and he moves closer to me—his face in my face, his shoulder almost touching my shoulder.

“This is my family you’re messing with,” he says. “Who sent you here?”

“Get away from her!”

I look in the doorway to see Bailey standing there. She is holding the class roster in one of her hands, a cup of coffee in the other.

She looks scared. But more than that, she looks angry, like she is going to hurl a barstool at him, if she needs to.

Charlie looks like he has seen a ghost.

“Holy shit,” he says.

He moves away from me slowly. I take in a deep breath and then another, my heartbeat slowing down.

We are in a weird standstill. Bailey and Charlie stare at each other as I pull myself off the wall. There are no more than two feet between any of us, but no one is moving. Not toward each other or away. Charlie, all of a sudden, in tears.

“Kristin?” he says.

At the sound of him calling her by a name, even a name I don’t recognize, I stop breathing.

“I’m not Kristin,” she says.

Bailey shakes her head, her voice catching.

I reach down and pick my cell phone up from the floor, the screen cracked. But it’s working. It’s still working. I could dial 911. I could get help. I inch backward, toward Bailey.

Protect her.

Charlie puts his hands up in surrender as I reach Bailey, the blue door right behind us. The stairs and the outside world just beyond that.

“Look, I’m sorry about that. I can explain. If you just sit down,” he says. “Take a minute. Can you both do that? Have a seat. I’d like to talk, if you’ll let me.”

He motions toward a table where we can all sit. And he steps away from us, as if giving us a choice. And I can see he means it—in his eyes. He looks more sorrowful than mad.

But his skin is still bright red, and I don’t trust the anger I saw, the fear. Wherever it came from, I can’t have Bailey around it, not until I know what his stake in this is. What I suspect his stake in Bailey is.

So I turn to Bailey. I turn to Bailey and grab her shirt at the small of her back, roughly, pulling her toward the door.

“Go!” I say. “Now!”

And, as though it is something we know how to do, we run down the stairs, together, then outside into Austin’s streets and away from Charlie Smith.

Careful What You Wish For

We move quickly down Congress Avenue.

I’m trying to get back to our hotel room on the other side of the bridge. I need to get us somewhere private where we can collect our things and I can figure out the fastest way out of Austin.

“What happened in there?” Bailey says. “Was he going to hurt you?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t think so.”

I put my hand on the small of her back, steering her in and out of the after-work crowd—couples, groups of college kids, a dogwalker handling a dozen dogs. I move sideways, hoping to make it harder for Charlie to follow us—in case he is trying to follow us—this man who was so angry at seeing a photograph of Owen that he exploded.

“Faster, Bailey.”

“I’m going as fast as I can,” she says. “What do you want me to do? It’s a clusterfuck.”

She isn’t wrong. Instead of the crowds letting up as we get closer to the bridge, there are more people, all clamoring to get onto the bridge’s narrow walkway.

I turn back to make sure Charlie isn’t following us. Which is when I see him—several blocks behind. Charlie. He is moving at a fast clip but he hasn’t spotted us yet. He looks to the left and to the right.

The Congress Avenue Bridge is straight ahead. I grab onto Bailey’s elbow and we head onto the bridge’s walkway. But the foot traffic is moving slowly, if at all, the entire walkway jammed up with people. It’s good in the sense that it is easier to blend in, but everyone seems to have stopped moving.

Mostly everyone on the bridge is at a standstill, many of them looking down at the lake below.

“Did these people forget how to move?” Bailey says.

A guy in a Hawaiian shirt, carrying a large camera—a tourist, if I were guessing—turns back and smiles at us. Apparently, he thinks Bailey’s question is directed at him.

“We’re waiting on the bats,” he says.

“The bats?” Bailey says.

“Yeah. The bats. They feed every night right around now.”

This is when we hear, “HERE THEY COME!”