Laura Dave: The Last Thing He Told Me

Bailey twirls some pasta onto her fork, studying it. “This looks different than Poggio.”

“Well, it’s not. I convinced the sous chef to give me the recipe. He even sent me to the Ferry Building to pick up the garlic bread he serves with it.”

“You drove into San Francisco to get a loaf of bread?” she says.

It’s possible that I try too hard with her. There is that.

She leans in and puts the whole bite in her month. I bite my lip, anticipating her approval—a small yum escaping her lips, in spite of herself.

Which is when she gags on it. She actually gags, reaching for a glass of water.

“What did you put in that?” she says. “It tastes like… charcoal.”

“But I tasted it,” I say. “It’s perfect.”

I take another bite myself. She’s not wrong. In my confusion over my twelve-year-old visitor and Owen’s note, the butter sauce had transformed from its slightly malted, foamy richness into actually just being burnt. And bitter. Not unlike eating a campfire.

“I gotta go anyway,” she says. “Especially if I want to get a ride from Suz.”

Bailey stands up. And I picture Owen standing behind me, leaning down to whisper in my ear, Wait it out. That’s what he says when Bailey is dismissive of me. Wait it out. Meaning—she’ll come around one day. Also meaning—she’s leaving for college in two and a half short years. But Owen doesn’t understand that this doesn’t comfort me. To me, this just means I’m running out of time to make her want to move toward me.

And I do want her to move toward me. I want us to have a relationship, and not just because of Owen. It’s more than that—what draws me toward Bailey even as she pushes me away. Part of it is that I recognize in her that thing that happens when you lose your mother. My mother left by choice, Bailey’s by tragedy, but it leaves a similar imprint on you either way. It leaves you in the same strange place, trying to figure out how to navigate the world without the most important person watching.

“I’ll walk over to Suz’s,” she says. “She’ll drive me.”

Suz, her friend Suz, who is also in the play. Suz who lives on the docks too. Suz who is safe, isn’t she?

Protect her.

“Let me take you,” I say.

“ No .” She pulls her purple hair behind her ears, checks her tone. “That’s okay. Suz is going anyway…”

“If your father isn’t back yet,” I say, “I’ll come and pick you up. One of us will be waiting for you out front.”

She drills me with a look. “Why wouldn’t he be back?” she says.

“He will. I’m sure he will. I just meant… if I come get you, then you can drive home.”

Bailey just got her learner’s permit. It’ll be a year of her driving with an adult until she can drive alone. And Owen doesn’t like her driving at night, even when she’s with him, which I try to utilize as an opportunity.

“Sure,” Bailey says. “Thanks.”

She walks toward the door. She wants out of the conversation and into the Sausalito air. She would say anything to get there, but I take it as a date.

“So I’ll see you in a few hours?”

“See ya,” she says.

And I feel happy, for a just a second. Then the front door is slamming behind her. And I’m alone again with Owen’s note, the inimitable silence of the kitchen, and enough burnt pasta to feed a family of ten.

Don’t Ask a Question You Don’t Want the Answer To

At 8 P.M., Owen still hasn’t called.

I take a left into the parking lot at Bailey’s school and pull into a spot by the front exit.

I turn down the radio and try him again. My heartbeat picks up when his phone goes straight to voice mail. It’s been twelve hours since he left for work, two hours since the visit from the soccer star, eighteen messages to my husband that have gone unreturned.

“Hey,” I say after the beep. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you need to call me as soon as you get this. Owen? I love you. But I’m going to kill you if I don’t hear from you soon.”

I end the call and look down at my phone, willing it to buzz immediately. Owen, calling back, with a good explanation. It’s one of the reasons I love him. He always has a good explanation. He always brings calmness and reason to whatever is going on. I want to believe that will be true even now. Even if I can’t see it.

I slide over so Bailey can jump into the driver’s seat. And I close my eyes, running through different scenarios as to what could possibly be going on. Innocuous, reasonable scenarios. He is stuck in an epic work meeting. He lost his phone. He is surprising Bailey with a crazy present. He is surprising me with some sort of trip. He thinks this is funny. He isn’t thinking, at all.

This is when I hear the name of Owen’s tech firm—The Shop—coming from my car radio.

I turn the radio up, thinking I imagined it. Maybe I was the one who said it in my message to Owen. Are you stuck at The Shop? It’s possible. But then I hear the rest of the report, coming from the NPR host’s slick, grippy voice.

“Today’s raid was the culmination of a fourteen-month investigation by the SEC and the FBI into the software start-up’s business practices. We can confirm that The Shop’s CEO, Avett Thompson, is in custody. Expected charges include embezzlement and fraud. Sources close to the investigation have told NPR that, quote, there is evidence Thompson planned to flee the country and had set up a residence in Dubai. Other indictments of senior staff are expected to be handed down shortly.”

The Shop. She is talking about The Shop.

How is this possible? Owen is honored to work there. Owen has used that word. Honored . He told me that he took a salary cut to join them early on. Nearly everyone there had taken a salary cut, leaving bigger companies behind—Google, Facebook, Twitter—leaving big money behind, agreeing to stock options in lieu of traditional compensation.

Didn’t Owen tell me they did this because they believed in the technology The Shop was developing? They aren’t Enron. Theranos. They are a software company. They were building software tools set to privatize online life—helping people control what was made available about them, providing child-easy ways to erase an embarrassing image, make a website all but disappear. They wanted to be a part of revolutionizing online privacy. They wanted to make a positive difference.

How could there be fraud in that?

The host goes to commercial and I reach for my phone, flipping to Apple News.

But just as I’m pulling up CNN’s business page, Bailey comes out of the school. She has a bag swung over her shoulder and a needy look on her face that I don’t recognize, especially directed at me.

Instinctively, I turn the radio off, put my phone down.

Protect her.

Bailey gets in the car quickly. She drops into the driver’s seat and buckles herself in. She doesn’t say hello to me. She doesn’t even turn her head to look in my direction.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She shakes her head, her purple hair falling out from behind her ears. I expect her to make a snide remark— Do I look okay? But she stays quiet.

“Bailey?” I say.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know what’s going on…”

This is when I notice it. The bag she has with her isn’t her messenger bag. It is a duffel bag. It’s a large black duffel bag, which she cradles in her lap, gently, like it’s a baby.

“What is that?” I say.

“Take a look,” she says.

The way she says it makes me not want to look. But I don’t have much of a choice. Bailey hurls the duffel bag onto my lap.

“Go on. Look, Hannah.”