I TUGGED MY ROLLING SUITCASE THROUGH THE SAN Francisco International Airport, a place I’d never been before, and now here I was, completely on my own.
Back at home, everyone knew me and knew what had happened to me. Here, no one knew anything. And I knew nothing about them. I could make up stories about them, but I’d never get to know their true stories. It’s amazing when you think about it—we pass by so many people in our lives, and they all have stories we never get to know.
I looked for signs leading me to the Caltrain. Juno had told me to take cabs and put them all on her credit card. But when I’d studied Bay Area maps, it looked like the Caltrain stopped near almost every place I needed to go—and it was much less expensive.
I couldn’t find signs for it, though, and I ended up at the airport transportation help desk. A woman behind the counter pointed me to a bus stop. I needed to take a bus to the Caltrain, and then on to Menlo Park. “Have a good trip,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said. “And . . . can I ask you one more thing?”
“Sure.”
“Have you seen this girl—the one in the background photo?” I held my cell phone out toward her. Talley was the girl in the picture, of course. Maybe she’d needed airport help and spoken to this same woman when she’d come to California, whenever that might have been.
It sounds too coincidental to be true. But Talley, lover of puzzles and statistics, had once told me that people underestimate the probability of coincidences. They think connections are unexplained miracles, when really they’re just about math. “You think it’s so cool when you meet someone who has your same birthday,” Talley said. “What were the chances of that happening? But consider how many people you actually encounter, like thousands of people in your lifetime, and there are only three hundred and sixty-five days in a year—”
“Three hundred and sixty-six in a leap year,” I’d interrupted.
“Right, and of course you’re going to run into someone with the same birthday. We always overestimate the probability of winning the lottery, and underestimate that we’ll have the same birthday as someone else we know.”
But the woman behind the help desk counter shook her head. “Sorry, I haven’t,” she said. “Can I help you with anything else?”
“No, thanks,” I said.
A bus to the train . . . I knew I could just take a cab, as Juno had suggested. It’d certainly be easier, and if Juno were here, that’s what she’d tell me to do, and she’d tell me to charge it to her credit card.
But what would Talley do?
She would’ve taken the bus and train combo. It was probably what she had done, whenever she was here. It’s not like she’d had access to Juno’s credit card.
Oh, c’mon, Sloaners, I could hear Talley say. You can do this. You can do hard things. This isn’t even that hard. Great-grandma Nellie came all the way to the United States from Poland. Everyone else she’d ever known ended up dying in the Holocaust. She was all by herself. She didn’t speak the language when the ship arrived in New York Harbor. But somehow she got to her uncle’s house in Detroit. She learned English. She got married. She raised a family. Imagine that. Imagine if you were her.
I could barely imagine it. It was nearly unimaginable that I was even related to someone who’d done all that. Somewhere, running through my veins, was the blood of someone brave beyond measure. I speed walked to the bus stop and boarded the bus to Millbrae, which was the bus the woman at the help desk had told me to take. From there, I transferred to the southbound Caltrain. The Menlo Park stop was walking distance to the hotel, and also to El Camino Real.
I’d texted Adam a few days before to let him know that I’d be in the area, making sure to sound like I wasn’t suspicious of him at all. I was simply visiting to see the things on Talley’s list. It had nothing to do with the fact that I also hoped that when he met me in person, he’d finally spill whatever other information he might have about Talley.
If he’d said he didn’t think it was a good idea to meet, or made up some other excuse about being too busy, I was fully prepared to show up at his doorstep. He’d told me his last name, and (thanks to Google) I had his address, too. But he’d said yes, and suggested meeting at the El Camino Real diner for lunch on Sunday. You can meet me and taste those eggs from the list at the same time, he’d written.
I wrote back: Noon?
You’re on, he replied.
As the train rolled closer to Menlo Park, I decided not to wait till tomorrow to check out the diner. I’d go by myself, today, and go back again for lunch on Sunday.
It was just half a block from the Menlo Park Caltrain station to El Camino Real. I made a left and rolled my suitcase another block and a half to the diner, a square silver building in between a Target and a place called Down Dog. A little bell jangled when I walked inside, and a woman’s voice called out, “Sit anywhere you like!”
I looked around. Was there a clue hidden in here somewhere that would lead me to the next clue, like a note in a mailbox? But where would it be? The diner had a few other customers—three people at the counter, where a woman (the one who’d shouted out to me) was pouring coffee, an older gray-haired man reading a newspaper at a half booth, and a couple of women who were maybe in their thirties, trying to get their kids not to eat off the floor. I decided to sit in the booth in the far corner, because it was the best place from which to see everyone else. For all I knew, it was the very same booth that Talley herself had sat in. Maybe my butt was making an imprint on the same red pleather cushion where Talley’s butt had once made an imprint of its own.
Now I was obsessing about butt imprints.
I checked under the table, just in case Talley’d left a clue taped to the underside. But nothing was there. It was possible Talley’d never sat at this table; or, if she had, she might have picked the other side. I switched sides, and the gray-haired man looked up from his newspaper to watch me. The other side didn’t have as good a vantage point, and maybe Talley hadn’t sat there anyway, so I switched back again.
The woman who’d been pouring coffee came by. “Hiya. What can I get you today?”
Her name tag read Anna. Her shirt was red like the booth cushions, and she had a long, blond braid that went all the way down her back.
The place mats doubled as menus, just like at the Good Day Café back home in Golden Valley. I hadn’t even had a chance to look at all the selections yet, but that didn’t matter. “Sunny’s eggs, please,” I said.
“Did you say you want runny eggs, dear?” Anna asked.
I glanced down at the place mat, then back at her. “You don’t have something called Sunny’s eggs?”
“We have eggs sunny-side up. Is that what you want?”
“Um . . . ,” I said. Could Talley have written it down wrong? Or maybe I had the wrong diner. There could be a Royal Road Diner somewhere else, and it wasn’t a play on words. But where? After the conversation with Adam, I’d been so convinced that Talley had been to the Bay Area. But what if Adam had made connections that had nothing to with what Talley’d meant, and now I’d traveled two thousand miles to a place she had never been? Juno would be out all that money—all for nothing—and I’d be stuck here.
I didn’t have to be stuck. Juno could switch my ticket.
But then, my dad thought I was going to Stanford, so how would I explain that? That I’d been kicked out? The daughter of Garrett J. Weber, expelled? Yeah, right.
Anna was staring at me. “The eggs?” she asked. “Sunny-side?”
“Yes, sure,” I said. And then, because one of Dad’s pet peeves was when people said sure, when the right phrase was actually thank you, I added: “Thank you.”
“Anything to drink?”
“Water would be great,” I said.
“Coming right up.”
“May I ask you something first?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
My phone was in my hand. When I’d called the diner a week ago to ask about Talley, the man who’d answered hadn’t known Talley, but it was entirely possible that Anna did. I pressed a button to illuminate the screen. “Have you ever seen this girl? My sister? Her name was Talley.”
I wondered if I’d ever get used to saying that my sister’s name was Talley. I hoped not.
Anna shook her head. “I haven’t,” she said.
“Are you sure? She died, and if she . . .”
I didn’t finish my sentence, but I was thinking, If she asked you to keep a secret, you don’t have to anymore.
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Anna said. “What a terrible thing. I’ll tell you something, though—you look a little familiar. You been in here before?”
“No,” I said. “I’m from Minnesota. It’s my first time here.”
“I figured you were traveling, with all those bags.”
“I just landed a little while ago. I came straight here from the airport because my sister—I think she knew this place. People used to say Talley and I looked alike, so maybe . . . I mean, you’re sure you haven’t seen her? That’s maybe why I look familiar?”
“Nah,” Anna said. “I can’t put my finger on it, but I know I’ve seen a face like your face before. Let me think on it, and in the meantime, I’ll get those eggs. White or wheat toast?”
“White,” I said. I felt deflated as she walked away. It was stupid and unrealistic, but I’d honestly thought I’d walk into this diner, show off Talley’s picture, and the person would say, “Of course! I’m so glad you’re here, because I have a lot to tell you!”
Dr. Lee had once told our class that most worthwhile endeavors are harder than you expect them to be. She’d meant it about writing, but apparently it was also true about tracking down the meaning of the items on my sister’s list. I crossed the aisle to the gray-haired man. He reluctantly lowered his paper to glance at my phone when I asked. “No, don’t know her,” he said.
There were a few other people in the restaurant, but I knew in my heart that they wouldn’t know who Talley was, either, and I wasn’t ready for additional disappointment. Plus, Anna was already back with my eggs. How come diner food always comes out so much faster than food anywhere else?
“Here you go, dear. Sunny-side eggs,” she said brightly. “One might say they look like the sunshine with the bright-yellow circle in the center. Perhaps that’s what your sister meant.”
I knew it wasn’t. Talley and I had long ago agreed that sunny-side-up eggs looked like breasts, but obviously I kept that to myself. “Thanks,” I told Anna.
“Oh, dear. I still need to get you some water.”
“And I need a refill on my coffee,” the gray-haired man said.
“Actually, may I have a Coke with no ice?” I asked.
“Yes, ma—” she started, but then she stopped and slapped her palms together. “I knew you reminded me of someone! I have another customer who orders her Coke with no ice, too.”
“You mean my sister?” I asked Anna hopefully. Talley was a no-ice-in-her-soda person as well.
“No. As I said, I don’t remember ever seeing her. Unless that was an old picture that you showed me. The woman I’m thinking of is a bit older.”
I shook my head; it was a recent photo of Talley—the most recent one I had of her, taken in early December. Talley wasn’t looking directly at the camera, and she was laughing at something. I couldn’t remember what.
But had she really been happy in that photo? Now every good memory I had of Talley was tinged with suspicion: Was it real? Had I missed that she’d been in despair all along?
“Of course I think she’s still a young woman,” Anna went on about her customer. “She’s forty-ish, maybe a year or two older. I’m sure that seems old to you, but I must have twenty-five years on Elise.”
“Elise?” I said. “Her name is Elise?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What’s her last name?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. We’re more of a first-name-basis kind of place. I’m Anna.” She tapped her name tag. “And you are?”
“Sloane,” I said. “Can you tell me anything else about Elise?”
“Well, you already know her preferred drink,” Anna said. “She works next door at the yoga studio.”
“Downward Dog?”
“Down Dog,” she said. “Comes in most every day for lunch and a Coke—no ice. But I haven’t seen her in a bit. I wonder what happened to her—”
“Maybe she thought it took too long to get a cup of coffee,” the gray-haired man said.
“Oh, right,” Anna said. “Sorry. I’ll be right back. I’ll get your Coke, too. And try those eggs. If they’re too cold now, I’ll bring you some new ones. Okay, Sloane?”
“Mm-hmm,” I said.
But I didn’t want eggs—not the ones on my plate or any others. My mind was racing. My stomach was doing somersaults. I only knew one Elise, and I didn’t even know her. I just knew of her.
I didn’t want to get my hopes up and think that it was the same Elise, my mother’s sister, my aunt, because I knew it probably wasn’t. A woman named Elise who happened to look a bit like me, who was around the right age. Chalk it up to Talley’s birthday example: coincidence is much more likely than you’d think. It probably wasn’t her. . . .
I pulled Google up on my phone. She could’ve gotten married and changed her last name by now, caving to our patriarchal society. Or she could’ve moved away, and then whatever her last name was, it wouldn’t matter.
I typed in her name and pressed search. A few seconds later, there she was. Elise Bellstein, in Redwood City, California.
124 Crescent Street. Redwood City, California.
CRESCENT STREET.
Oh. My. God.
Please, oh please. Let her still live here. Don’t let her have moved away.
Her home number was listed, and I clicked the number and pressed my phone to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Elise Bellstein?” I asked.
“Yes?” a woman replied.
“Sorry,” I said. “Wrong number.”
I don’t know why I did that. My hands were shaking as I lowered the phone from my ear. Anna arrived with my Coke. “You all right, dear?”
“I’m fine,” I said.
I didn’t feel fine at all. I felt . . . How did I feel? I didn’t know. There were so many feelings swirling inside me, I couldn’t even begin to name them.
My phone started to ring, and the number that popped up on the screen was the number I’d just dialed.
Elise Bellstein was calling me back.
“Hello?” I said.
“Sloane,” came the voice. “Sloane, is that you?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s me.”