11

For Thanksgiving, they bought a chicken instead of a turkey.

“There’s no way we could eat that much,” Dad said as he wheeled their cart through the freezing cold aisles of the grocery store. And then, as if they needed reminding, he added: “There are only two of us.”

Owen gave in to this, and to store-bought stuffing, too, but he insisted they make all the sides, even turnips.

“I hate turnips,” Dad said with a groan.

“So do I,” Owen said, dropping them into the cart. “But they were her favorite.”

“Maybe we should start some new traditions of our own.”

“Fine with me,” said Owen, “as long as chicken isn’t one of them.”

Dad sighed as he steered the cart toward the checkout. “Next year will be better.”

Owen said nothing; he couldn’t think of a response.

They spent the morning preparing mashed potatoes and turnips and cranberry sauce in the cramped kitchen of their rental apartment, a small two-bedroom place with thin walls and a hissing radiator. The scent of the chicken in the oven was overpowered by the scent of salsa from the Mexican restaurant downstairs. They’d been here almost two months now, and Owen had grown used to the way everything from the carpets to the couches always smelled a little spicy. Even his clothes had a kick to them that deodorant couldn’t quite mask.

“If all else fails,” he joked as he stirred one of the pots, “we can always grab some tacos.”

“Come on now,” Dad said. “I used to do a lot of the cooking, too.”

Owen snorted, and Dad couldn’t help laughing.

“Fine,” he said. “But I microwaved with the best of them.”

“You still do,” Owen conceded. “It’s quite a skill.”

When they sat down to dinner, there was an awkward pause. Mom had always been the one to say grace, and now, in the guttering light of a single candle, the two of them looked at each other over bowls of steaming food and a chicken that was slightly too brown. And for the first time all day—the first time in weeks, really—Dad’s face sagged and his eyes went murky.

Finally, Owen cleared his throat. They’d never been much of a prayers-before-dinner family, but this day was a special one, a time for reflection, and Owen had always loved the simple act of holding his mother’s hand while he listened to her count the reasons she was happy. Now he reached over and laid his palm over his father’s.

“I’m thankful that we’re here together,” he said, his voice gruff. He wanted to say more, but most of what was in his heart were things that he wished, rather than things he was thankful for: that Dad would find a job that lasted more than a week, that someone would buy the house in Pennsylvania, that their apartment wasn’t so cold, and mostly, mostly, that his mom was here with them, too.

After a moment, he glanced up at Dad, whose eyes were closed.

“And I’m thankful for this chicken,” he concluded, “who sacrificed his life to save a turkey.”

Dad shook his head long and slow, but Owen could see that he was smiling, too.

“Amen to that,” he said, picking up a fork.

After dinner, Dad offered to do the dishes, and Owen didn’t argue.

“I’m gonna head out for a little bit,” he said, pulling on a coat, and Dad nodded.

“Don’t stay out too late,” he said. “I want to get an early start tomorrow.” Then, just before the door fell shut, he added: “Tell Paisley I say hello.”

Outside, it had started to snow, the flakes slow and heavy. Before coming here, Owen had never experienced this kind of weather. Back in Pennsylvania, the snow came in patches, icy and slick, and had hardly settled on the ground before turning gray and slushy. But out here, on the edge of this great blue lake, it fell thickly and steadily, blanketing the world in white and muffling everything it touched.

The streets were quiet tonight. Everyone was bundled into their homes, the lights on in the windows as they finished off the last of the turkey. Owen’s boots made deep footprints as he trudged through the town, which looked like the set of an old western, full of saloon-like bars and art galleries with elaborate wood-paneled doors. This was a ski town in the winter and a vacation spot in the summer, a place so filled with tourists that it never felt quite real. Everything was seasonal and everyone was just passing through. It was a place of transition, and at the moment, that suited Owen just fine.

When he reached the old diner that was shaped like a train car, he wandered around to the side, waiting beneath the towering pines, which formed a kind of umbrella against the snow. Most evenings, he’d be back there in the narrow kitchen, elbow-deep in dirty dishes, his eyes burning from the soap and grease, his fingers clammy inside the damp rubber gloves. But he was off tonight for the holiday.

Through the windows, he could see that a surprising number of people had taken advantage of the turkey special tonight. He sat down on the wooden steps, but they were too cold, and so he stood again, pacing out front until he heard the door creak open behind him.

“Hey, you,” Paisley said from where she stood a few steps above him. She’d thrown her coat over her shoulders without zipping it, and her cheeks were rosy from the heat of the kitchen. Owen felt his heart quicken at the sight of her. She was probably the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, and certainly the most beautiful he’d ever kissed. She had pale blue eyes and impossibly long blond hair, and when she got worked up about something—the amount of pollution in Lake Tahoe or the plight of the red wolf or the various problems in Africa (anywhere in Africa)—she would absentmindedly braid it, never failing to look surprised later when she discovered what she’d done.

She didn’t go to his school. Paisley’s mother and her long-time boyfriend—a guy named Rick who owned the diner and always smelled faintly of pot—had chosen to homeschool her, which tended to happen around which shifts were quietest. But Paisley didn’t seem to mind. Owen had met her there during his first week in town, when he’d taken his dad for a milk shake to cheer him up after another luckless day of job searches. There’d been a notice for a dishwasher on the bulletin board near the door, and while Dad was paying the bill, Owen stood with his hands in his pockets, reading the description.

“It’s not particularly glamorous,” Paisley had said over his shoulder, and when he whipped around, he was momentarily lost for words. She flashed him a dazzling smile. “But it comes with a lot of free burgers. If you’re into that sort of thing.”

They only needed someone a few days a week, and Owen had applied without telling Dad. At that point, they were both still holding out hope that he’d find a job on a construction site, but in the meantime, Owen knew he would take anything, and the thought of his father wearing those rubber gloves and scouring pans at a sink for minimum wage made something go sour in the back of his throat.

When he finally got around to telling him, after a full week of work, Dad had only sighed, looking resigned. “That’s great,” he said. “But the money is yours, okay?”

Owen had agreed, but he always snuck most of it into his father’s wallet anyway. If he noticed, Dad didn’t say anything, and that was just fine with Owen. It wasn’t really about the money, anyway. He liked the distraction of the job, having something to do after school. He liked getting a paycheck, and he liked the free food. He even liked humming along to the radio in the steamy kitchen as he scrubbed at the flakes of dry ketchup that covered the plates like ink blots.

But mostly, he liked seeing Paisley.

She would flit in and out of the kitchen, teasing him for trying to do his homework while he worked, his textbook propped up near the sink, dotted with flecks of water so that after a while the pages became stiff and wrinkled.

“Always science,” she noted one day, her legs dangling from the counter where she sat eating an apple and watching him.

Owen had shrugged. “It’s interesting.”

“Which part?”

He used his forearm to wipe some soap from his cheek. “I like astronomy best.”

“Like horoscopes and stuff?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

“No, that’s astrology.”

“So what’s your sign?”

“I have no idea,” he said. “That’s not—”

She grinned. “We should find out.”

“Astrology is totally different,” he said, glancing up to see if she was embarrassed by the mistake, but that was something he hadn’t known about her yet: There was nothing in the world that embarrassed Paisley.

“I have a book about this stuff,” she said. “You should come over tonight and we’ll look you up.”

“I have one, too,” he teased, pointing a soapy glove at his textbook. “And mine has actual facts.”

“Facts are so much less interesting,” she said as she slid off the counter. He was about to ask “than what?” when she turned around and winked at him. “I’ll see you tonight.”

Now she stood on the top step with the light from the diner windows forming a kind of halo behind her, and he waited while she zipped her coat. When she was finished, she hopped down the steps and into the powdery snow.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” he said, and she rolled her eyes.

“Happy Day the Pilgrims Screwed Over the Indians.”

“I’m pretty sure it was the day they all came together and had a nice meal.”

“Oh right,” she said, leaning in to give him a quick kiss. “They screwed them over later.”

“They’re all set in there?” he asked, as she pulled on her mittens. “Did you get some turkey?”

“Tofurkey,” she corrected, but when she realized he was kidding, she took his hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

They walked through the hushed streets in the direction of the lake. The beaches were mostly closed this time of year, but they often snuck out behind the private homes to sit on the piers and look out over the frozen water. Tonight, they found a darkened house and made their way around the back, watching the snow settle and disappear on the icy surface. The lake was so deep that it never fully froze, only turned cold and still, while the snow-capped mountains stood guard all around it.

“So how’d it go?” Paisley asked as they sat huddled together.

“It was okay, actually. He’s in pretty good spirits, considering.”

“Still no luck on the job front?”

Owen shook his head. “And now we’re in the off-season.”

“For construction maybe. But there’s plenty of other work during ski season around here.”

“Apparently not,” Owen said, reaching up to brush the snow out of his hair. His fingers were going numb and his face was stiff with cold, but there was something about being out in the arctic mountain air that made his heart swell and his lungs expand. He thought of the way New York City had been the opposite, how it had made him feel claustrophobic with its leaning buildings and swampy temperatures. How it had felt like the whole world was shrinking all around him.

Except on the roof.

Except when he was with Lucy.

For a moment, he allowed himself to think of her. It had been five weeks since her last e-mail. It hadn’t been a good-bye, exactly—nothing as dramatic as that. There was no signing off, no grand farewell, no bitter questions about why he’d stopped writing. One day there was an e-mail from her, completely and utterly normal, and then, just like that, they stopped, their correspondence ending the same way this whole thing had started: all at once.

But it wasn’t her fault. One day, not long after he’d mailed his second postcard from Tahoe, she’d sent him an e-mail about how much she was loving Edinburgh, how she’d visited the castle and seen the city from the top of a mountain called Arthur’s Seat. After reading it, he walked down to one of the many gift shops in town and flipped through the various postcard options. He’d already sent her two: the first, a photo of the lake at sunset with news that they would be staying here; the second, the same lake in shades of green and blue, with a joke about the Loch Ness Monster. But now, as he looked through the rest, he realized they were all the same: the lake under a pink sky, under an orange sky, under a sky so clear that the water was like glass. After a while, the repetition of the display started to hurt his eyes as he flipped through the many options, and he realized there was nothing new here to show Lucy, and that maybe the sending of postcards had come to an end.

But back at the apartment, he couldn’t bring himself to respond to her e-mail. A rhythm had been established where a postcard from him sparked an e-mail from her and vice versa. His were always lighthearted notes from the places they’d visited, scrawled in the limited space on the back of the cards, whereas hers tended to be longer and slightly rambling, unrestricted by the confines of paper. But sitting there with the cursor blinking at him, he wasn’t sure what to say. There was something too immediate about an e-mail, the idea that she might get it in mere moments, that just one click of the mouse would make it appear on her screen in an instant, like magic. He realized how much he preferred the safety of a letter, the physicality of it, the distance it had to cross on its way from here to there, which felt honest and somehow more real.

That week, he sat down at his computer every single morning, fully intending to e-mail her. But the days passed without him producing so much as a draft. He kept half-expecting her to write again, something new that might inspire a response from him, but nothing ever came, and he started to worry that maybe she’d moved on. After all, here in Tahoe, he had a new school and a new life, and he knew that five thousand miles away, she must be busy with her own version of these things, too.

Then, a week after her last e-mail, he met Paisley.

She sat beside him now, rubbing her mittened hands together. The moon hovered low over the lake, and when Owen blew out, his breath hung in the air.

“So he’s still talking about moving on then?” she asked, and he nodded, feeling guilty, though he knew she was used to this: Tahoe was a revolving door of a town, and for someone like Paisley, who had lived here forever, this was simply a way of life: the coming and the going, the hellos and good-byes. Still, he knew it couldn’t be easy for her.

“Unless he miraculously gets a job in the next couple weeks,” he said. “Or unless the house sells.”

“Any bites?” she asked hopefully, but he shook his head. This was the worst part of it, knowing that the house—their house—was just sitting out there, completely empty, the answer to all their problems, if only someone would buy it. But it wasn’t just about the money. To the Buckleys, it was so much more than just a house; it was a dream home, a monument, a shrine. And they couldn’t understand why nobody else could see that, too. It was hard not to take it personally.

“We just decided to go down to San Francisco for the weekend, actually,” he told Paisley. “To see if we like it.”

She raised her eyebrows. “And if you do?”

“I think,” he said with a little shrug, “there’s a decent chance we’ll be down there for good pretty soon. Probably by Christmas, so I can pick up at a new school right after the break.”

She nodded, her expression hard to read. “You’ve never been before, right?”

Owen shook his head.

“You know my dad lives around there,” she said. “So I usually go down in the summers. A few random weekends, too. It’s one of my favorite places in the world.” She fixed her pale eyes on his, studying him for a moment. “I bet you’ll love it, too.”

She sounded so resigned that Owen put a mittened hand over hers. “It’s not for sure,” he said, but she only shrugged.

“You’ll love it,” she repeated, blinking away the thick flakes of snow. “Everyone leaves their heart in San Francisco.”

Owen was fairly certain that he and his dad had both left their hearts back in Pennsylvania, but he didn’t say this. He and Paisley had spent long stretches of time discussing things like oil spills and wars in the Middle East, but he always found himself stumbling over all those things that were closer to home: My mother is dead, my father is sad, I once met this girl…

He lifted his shoulders. “We’ll see what happens.”

“I guess it would probably be easier for your dad to find a job in a city,” she said, and he could almost feel her floundering under the weight of the conversation. They didn’t ever really do this sort of thing, he and Paisley. They went skiing and snowshoeing; they snuck into movies and drank frozen cans of beer behind the diner; they hiked the trails and went fishing on the Truckee River, and at night they borrowed people’s piers to laugh and joke and talk about issues that didn’t matter to either one of them in any sort of immediate way.

Being with her always made him feel light as air, which was exactly what he’d needed these past weeks. But this—this was heavy.

“It feels like you only just got here,” she continued, her gaze fixed on the lake. “There’s still so much we haven’t done.” She paused for a second, but when she turned back to him, he was relieved to see the hint of a smile. “I mean, look at all those piers out there. We’ve probably only checked off, like, three percent of them. Which means there are still thousands waiting for us to leave our mark.”

“Oh yeah?” he said. “What’s that?”

She hopped to her feet, stepping carefully away, then gestured with a little flourish at the heart-shaped patch of wood where she’d been sitting.

“Way more incriminating than fingerprints,” she said, and he couldn’t help laughing. When he stood up to join her, she doubled over in a fit of giggles at the narrow outline he’d left on the dock, and he circled his arms around her waist and pretended to throw her into the icy lake until they both lost their balance, skidding into a graceless, sprawling heap. Only after their laughter had finally subsided did he lean forward, touching his cold nose to hers, and kiss her.

“There’s a lot I’ll miss about this place,” he said later, as he helped her up, “if we end up going.”

“The lake?” she asked, brushing the snow off her jacket.

He shook his head. “You.”

Together, they left the water behind, walking back toward town on stiff legs and frozen feet. The snow had mostly stopped, but the path back up to the road was covered in at least a foot of powder, and they clasped their mittened hands together as they stumbled through it.

“So what should we see this weekend?” he asked. “Alcatraz? Pier Thirty-Nine?”

She rolled her eyes, as he’d known she would. “You can’t just go to all the tourist traps. There’s this great vintage place in the Haight.…”

When they reached the diner, Owen leaned in to kiss her again. “Happy Thanksgiving,” he said, but she pulled away with a dizzying smile.

“Can we please stop celebrating a day where we slaughter innocent turkeys?”

“If it makes you feel any better, my dad and I had a chicken instead.”

She shook her head. “Still awful.”

“Still delicious,” Owen said, kissing her for real this time.

When they broke apart, she turned and headed up to the back door of the diner. “Have a good trip,” she called out, her voice trailing behind her, and Owen waved, though she couldn’t see him. “But not too good…”

“I’ll bring you back an Alcatraz snow globe.”

“Very funny,” she said, just before the door slammed shut behind her.

As he walked home, the snow crunching beneath his boots, Owen tried to imagine San Francisco. But the only thing he knew, the only thing he managed to call to mind, was the Golden Gate Bridge, the familiar red arches surrounded by fog. It was hard to know where the image came from, but even now, in the darkness of the mountains—the air so cold it stung his face, the snow so white it practically glowed—that was all he could see: the great red bridge against a square patch of bluish sky.

It wasn’t until he was home in bed, halfway to sleep, that he realized why he couldn’t see anything beyond the edges.

He was imagining a postcard.