What took you so long?”
The beautiful girl slammed her car door and slowly walked toward the curb where I stood. She offered her infectious smirk and we embraced.
“There was trouble on the flight. Trouble with a boy.” I pulled free and shook my head. “But you, Kira, you haven’t changed a bit.”
Again, she smirked.
It was that knowing look that first intrigued me years ago. Her father had moved their family into a neighbouring flat for a six-month stint in London. He was a traveling contractor, and Kira’s mum an excessive shopper, which left the two of us with time to make plans in secret. Our most ambitious scheme: One day I would visit America.
“Looks are deceiving.” Kira unlatched her car’s boot and hoisted my bag inside. She pounded the lid down with a flourish and threw back her hair. “For me, there is no more mom, no more dad. I haven’t seen them in a year. Oh . . . I’m really sorry about your mom. She didn’t look too bad when we were there. What was it?”
“Cirrhosis.”
“What is that?”
“Drink ate her insides.”
Kira nodded. “Wow. Well, like I was saying, I live with three roommates on the university campus.” She paused. “You’ve been all over the world, but I bet you’ve never experienced the kind of craziness I’m about to show you.”
From anyone else, an insensitive ignorance of Mum’s fate. But Kira’s shallowness was more than her greatest weakness, it was an enviable strength.
She never had to feel.
“Not so fast,” I said. “I need to collect an item first. Can you take me to this addy?”
I handed her the slip.
“Who do you know in Loring Park?”
“Elias.”
“You two hooked up on the plane?”
“He lifted my bag from the plane.”
Again, the smirk. “Sounds promising. Hop in.”
I suppose it might have been the evening’s flight, or a fret about my bag, but listening to Kira spout on about her exploits, both wild and domestic, held no fascination. Her excitable voice faded into white noise, and I rested my head against the window, forcing smiles and nods but hearing little.
No, I decided, Kira had not changed. But I had. In London, I was her little disciple, following the whims of an older, bellicose American. She had been my first exposure to an untamed world beyond Marbury Street, and what a thrilling picture she’d painted.
Now my eyes had seen that world. They’d seen brilliant northern lights over Iceland, washing the night sky in pinks and greens. They’d seen those same colours alive and vibrant in the fish and corral of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
But they’d also seen death, from dysentery and dengue fever. Dad’s journal had taken me on lonely dirt paths in West Africa and through jungles of Nicaragua, where I’d wished like anything that I could hear my sibs argue again.
Family. You should not so flippantly toss them aside. Like Kira had.
I pinched my forehead between thumb and forefinger.
Like I had.
“. . . the partying each night is insane, and my parents would never forgive me if they knew . . .”
But I had no choice. The shame of our family’s Greatest Undoing was mine alone to bear. For years, the event’s bubbling panic would not ease. I had needed to stay in London, to give up my childhood and become parent. I owed Dad that much. But just as I’d needed to stay, I’d also needed to flee, to keep moving, to keep traveling. I could not face him upon his release.
I balled my fists. Little Thomas, he hadn’t needed to die. These hands could have prevented it. My capable hands. My competent hands. Dad and Mum trusted me, and I failed and fled and watched my precious brother bleed. I bowed my head.
There was no forgiveness for that.
“. . . Elias.”
The name jarred me aright.
“I’m sorry, it’s late and I drifted. What did you say?”
Kira eased onto a windy lane and pointed toward a sign.
Phinn’s Bed and Breakfast
Est. 1914
“We’re at the address. Let’s see this, Elias!”
“No, Kira, let me sort it on my own. Wait here.”
Kira accelerated, her tires squealing around each corner. “I did not drive this far only to be denied a peek at your criminal. It’s important to know what type you like.”
“We aren’t a pair. The bloke’s a most unsettling thief. I simply need my bag.”
“And you and your proper English shall get it.”
Kira’s Fiat screeched into the roundabout and came to a halt in front of the porch. From somewhere in the night, a siren blared, and several upstairs windows filled with light.
“Oh, well done.” I pushed out of the car. “Open the latch.”
I retrieved the bag and paused. It was a beautiful B & B. Several stories high, and constructed from white clapboard, it looked a place that belonged in a quaint coastal town. The inn stood unique among neighbouring apartment buildings, with its lawns that stretched out in manicured green, and two fountains that graced the yard.
The dog stopped barking.
“Onward,” I said.
I approached the door, and raised my hand to knock.
Kira honked her horn, and I startled, spun, and frowned. She smiled and waved, and when next I turned toward the inn, the door stood open, and Elias stood in it.
His blond hair was disheveled, which was irritatingly pleasant, but otherwise he seemed the same lad I’d met on the plane. Save for the eyes. They were calmer, a cool brown peering out in place of his earlier paranoid gaze. His hands were busy clicking a pen, a pen that looked suspiciously like mine.
Neither of us spoke for several moments.
Another honk.
Elias glanced over my shoulder, and then quickly back to me.
“You took my bag.” I slipped out of the shoulder strap and let his thud to the ground.
“When did I take your bag?” He appeared genuinely befuddled.
“On the flight.” I eyed my pen. “Have you not noticed the contents are not your own?”
He licked his lips, stepped out, and stroked the returned. “We have the same pack.”
“Yes, and I came to recover mine.”
Elias stood, and backed into the inn. “Don’t worry. I won’t take it.”
“You already took it!” I pushed my hand through my hair. “Elias Phinn, do you recall nothing of the flight? You accused me of secrets. You spoke of my fath — You drew me. I’m on page seven. You took the wrong bag when you left the plane, which I will not hold against you, as long as you return mine to me . . .” I snatched the pen from his hands and raised it in front of his nose. “With all contents intact.” I grabbed a quick breath. “And kindly explain those sketches. If you think I’m leaving before you clear up how you were able to draw certain . . . elements of my past, you’re mistaken. Was that just a series of fortunate guesses or . . .”
He stared at the pen. “I’m sorry, but the B & B is full.”
The door slammed in my face.
I did not travel this far for a pen!
I pounded with both fists, and again the door swung open. This time, the tired body of a woman filled its frame. Elias’s mum, I was certain of it.
I opened my mouth and waited for words to spill out, angry words. I expected to spew a list of ways that Elias had slowed my progress. The entire Minneapolis trip was already a personal detour from Dad’s path.
But angry words did not come. This woman reminded me too much of Mum.
She smiled and stepped out, slowly unzipping the bag and offering a long sigh. “My name is Guinevere Phinn, and my guess is that my son took the wrong bag off the plane and you, being very kind, came to return it.”
“Yes, to the botched bag deduction. Perhaps not so much to the kindness.”
“Come in.”
I grabbed Elias’s bag and stepped into the foyer, a beautiful space lit by a dim chandelier. I was surrounded by framed drawings I recognized immediately to be Elias’s handiwork. I peeked to make certain neither I nor any other member of my family hung on the walls, and quickly relaxed. The majority were landscapes. Mountains and seas, seagulls and ships, harbours and islands. Hanging between were sketches of Orion, its position tilted and stretched in twenty different angles.
Spiral stairs with ornate handrails rose on either side of the foyer. I turned from them in time to see Elias disappear into a room down the hall.
“I don’t mean to trouble you further,” I said. “I just want what’s mine.”
“Yes, I imagine you do.” Guinevere glanced toward the closed door and winced. “Here is my dilemma. Not knowing that Elias had your backpack, I allowed him to bring it into his room.”
I nodded. “Understandable.”
Guinevere forced a smile. “Yes, well, not ten minutes ago, Elias woke me to say that he had finished cataloging his new belongings. I was so tired, I thought little of it —”
“His new belongings? My belongings? He’s been cataloging my belongings? What does that even mean?”
“Don’t worry, everything is fine. It’s just —”
“Just . . .”
“Elias will have placed everything in your pack in order. Usually from lightest weight to heaviest. They will be spread out in his room.”
I raised my arms and let them flop. “So we enter and gather and all will be spot on —”
“And if we do, there may be a whirlwind. He will not sleep. I will not sleep. My guests will not sleep. He doesn’t do well with late-evening changes.”
“I don’t do well without my diary!”
There was a heavy silence, and Guinevere placed her hand on my shoulder. “An idea. In the morning, we will get your things. I promise. But tonight, please, you and your friend stay in the guest room. Would you do that for me?”
No. The word sounded in my mind. This was a deviation. And while I’d welcomed many deviations, this deviation need not be. My bag and my diary and my computer were twenty feet away. Kira waited outside.
No. I will not do this for you.
“What’s wrong with him?” I quietly asked.
She didn’t answer.
“But there is something? Something in the mind?”
Again, no reply.
I peeked back toward the door. “Fine, then.”
I spun around and exited the inn. Kira’s fingers worked an anxious rap on the wheel.
“Well, that took long enough.” She craned her neck. “Your bag?”
“It’s inside. I can’t collect it until tomorrow.”
“They’re holding your backpack hostage? They can’t do that.” She grabbed her mobile. “We can call someone.”
“No. I’ll get it tomorrow. I’m going to stay here tonight. There’s room for you too, so I suggest we catch up inside.”
“Right.” Kira turned the key and the Fiat roared to life. “I have places to be. No, not true. I had places for us to be. You know, I — I was really looking forward to you being here. There are things to talk about. But I get it. Guys and backpacks over friends, right?”
I straightened and spoke to the sky, “Something’s odd about him. I mean, he reminds me of . . . I don’t have a choice.”
“You once told me there’s always a choice.”
Kira’s car jerked forward and she sped away into the night. I listened until I could hear her car no longer, until the sounds of crickets and horns and shouts from surrounding flats took its place.
I slowly climbed the porch steps while wondering, what exactly did Elias know about my life in London; what precisely was wrong with his mind . . .
And what was the heaviest item in my bag?