In San Francisco, Owen walked.
Day after day, he crisscrossed the sprawling city. Dad stayed behind, scouring the papers and mining the Internet in search of a job, while Owen continued his odd trek, witnessing the backdrops to a thousand postcards, real or imagined. Not just the great red bridge, but other things, too: cable cars and twisty streets, Fisherman’s Wharf and Chinatown, Golden Gate Park and the Haight.
The only place he didn’t go—the one place he worked hard to avoid—was the little strip of grass along the marina, where a wooden bench sat looking out over the water, contemplating the possibilities with a single word: maybe.
If someone had asked him why all the walking, Owen wouldn’t have been able to answer. The reasons were too hard to articulate, too personal to explain. He wasn’t walking because there were things to see or because he had places to go. It was far simpler than that. He was walking because it was better than staying still, and because it seemed the best possible way to escape his thoughts, which crowded his head like the fog over the bay, thick as fleece and impossible to see around.
Whenever his mind drifted in Paisley’s direction, he was quick to shake it clear again. But that only left room for Lucy, who was somehow much harder to cast aside. He always allowed himself to linger there for a moment, lost in that one unlikely New York night, until the memory of their recent fight startled him alert again, and he’d blink fast, then grit his teeth and hurry on.
One evening, he paused at the top of a street on his way home. The sun was already halfway gone, the light a soft winter orange. For six straight days, he’d come to this intersection and turned left, where at the top of a hill, in a tiny apartment, his father would be waiting with dinner on the table.
But tonight, on the seventh day, he found himself moving in the direction of the marina instead. For better or worse, it was the last place he’d seen her. And that was reason enough for him.