Stephen does not tell his usual jokes at dinner, nor does he fill us in on his science experiments. He nibbles at his spaghetti until Dad asks me how my first day of school went.
“I survived,” I say.
“So you get to take the bus with me now, right?” Stephen asks.
I shrug and he looks back at me, confused. The poor kid is still reeling from the farm being up for sale. I don’t have the heart to tell him that we won’t be going to school together anytime soon either.
After loading the dishwasher, we all sit in the living room watching TV, but the mood is somber. I feel like I’m suffocating. “I need fresh air,” I say, and I march to the front closet and grab my coat. I open the door and step onto the front steps, letting the door swing shut behind me.
The air is slightly cool and filled with the musky smell of fresh-cut wood—Dad must have been cutting logs for the fireplace. I whistle, and Ginger comes scurrying to my side. She rubs against my leg and looks up at me with her soft brown eyes.
“Hey, girl,” I say.
A ding comes from my pocket, and I find a new text on my cell. Sorry about today. Please call me. It’s Megan. No way am I ready to forgive her yet.
I reach down and rub Ginger’s ears. “You love me, don’t you?”
Her tongue tickles when she licks my hand. Now this is a real best friend.
“All right, all right. Take it easy.” I step off the deck and she trots ahead of me, picking up a stick on the lawn and bringing it back to me. Squirrels chatter in the trees, and an airplane hums in the distance.
I’m probably overreacting with Megan. But I didn’t expect that she would actually defend Mr. Hot Shit Harrison. I am here now, though, and I’m not going to waste my time thinking about them. Mother and Dad have said that Jessica loved being outdoors, connecting with nature or whatever. And in that eulogy she wrote, she talked about being a country girl at heart. Maybe if I give it a chance it can put me in a happy place too.
I breathe deeply and look around at the trees and the endless sky, and at Ginger sitting at my feet. What made the Girl love this place so much? Was it the crazy squirrels diving from branch to branch, the wisps of cloud above the treetops, the smell of the air?
“It doesn’t matter,” I say out loud. “Live in the now.”
I’m starting to sound like a shrink.
An idea comes to me. Maybe I can take my own photos, add to the Girl’s albums or maybe even hang a few on the wall. Things seen through my eyes, not hers. I click on the camera icon on my phone and walk toward the pines, holding the phone in front of me to see the world on its screen. Every few steps I pause to admire the framed art I’ve created: branches jutting out into the sky, clumps of moss. Halfway into the strip of trees lining the backyard, something grabs my attention. A weathered picnic table, sitting forgotten among the pines, enters my little oblong world. Before I have a chance to think about it, my finger pushes the button and a soft click breaks the stillness.
I walk over to the table, brush aside the leaves on the seat and sit down. My photo of the picnic table is somehow better than the real thing—there’s nothing else to detract from it, no world to swallow it up and make it invisible.
It’s only a pathetic piece of yard furniture, I know, but my throat feels tight, like I might cry. A squirrel chatters above me, sending me leaping up from the table, and I laugh out loud.
“Lunatic,” I say—about myself, not the squirrel.
I turn my lens toward the tree branches, the sky, everything around me, and click away. I take photo after photo, of birds and squirrels and branches and clouds and Ginger, until my arms grow tired. I shut off my phone and breathe in the air. Maybe the Girl was on to something with that nature kick of hers.
Ginger puts her soft head in my lap, and a beautiful mellowness surrounds me. My head feels heavy, so I close my eyes and rest it on the tabletop. My breathing grows deep. In my mind I see birds swooping. And then a voice comes in my head.
“Isn’t it incredible?”
A scene tiptoes into my mind, like someone tapping me on the shoulder and gently turning me around to see.
I am in a long hall that opens up into high glass ceilings. At the end of the vast room is a stone building with ancient-looking columns rising at its sides. “Amazing,” a soft voice says, and I turn to see a man, camera hanging from his neck, standing beside me. He wears a red plaid shirt and jeans, and his face is flushed with excitement. He has a beard, but I know who it is: it’s Dad.
“Can we go in?” I say, and he smiles.
“Of course, of course,” he says. “It’s like taking a step back in time, thousands of years.” We stroll toward the building, and as we get closer I see that another building, also faded a dusty gray, lies on the other side. “The Temple of Dendur.” Dad’s voice echoes off the walls. “All the way from Egypt.”
“Wow,” I say and step through the columns.
A loud chatter makes my eyes pop open, and when I sit up there is a squirrel right there on the edge of the picnic table, looking at me. Ginger perks up too and growls, sending the squirrel scurrying off the table and up the trunk of a tree.
I wish I could go back to the memory, just close my eyes and transport myself to that room, that day with Dad. But the spell is broken.
“That was so real,” I say to Ginger. “And”—it sinks in as I’m saying it—“not very long ago, I think.” I rub her ears and she looks up at me, her eyes so expressive I could swear she understands.
This is a pretty big deal. A recent memory. Everything else up to now—what little there has been—has been childhood stuff.
“Jess?” Mother calls. “You okay out there?”
I shove the phone into my pocket and stroll back to the house. Mother holds the door open for me. “Megan called,” she says. “She’s been trying to reach you on your cell.” I nod and make my way up to my room, where I sit on the bed, unmoving. But I’m not thinking about Megan or Harrison. I play the scene in the temple over and over in my mind, letting the feeling of it wash over me. Was it an exhibit of some kind? A trip Dad and I took?
Tonight I need to talk to Dad, to keep my promise to Stephen and to tell him that I remember the temple. For now, I will go downstairs and act normal. When I put my phone on my desk, something long and brown in the pencil holder catches my eye. I grab it and laugh out loud: it’s the fudge-bar stick, with Tarin’s phone number on it.
I fiddle with the stick a minute, considering options. The old Jessie probably wouldn’t have liked Tarin, would have thought she was weird. But maybe the fresh air has gotten to my head, and I’m riding some kind of high from the temple memory and taking those photos. Because I don’t give a crap what the Girl would think.
I pick up my phone and punch in Tarin’s number.