On Monday, I gave up the pretense of sleep at four, switched on the light, and took inventory. This would be the last time I was ever in this bed, the last time I walked past Daniel’s bedroom door, stopping to peek inside in case...in case. My last shower in our quirky claw-footed tub with its complicated system of curtains; my last cup of coffee in the kitchen, sipped while staring out the window.
Olivia and I had each packed a single suitcase, but in the end we started tossing other things into the backseat. Pillows, winter coats, CDs, random snacks from the pantry.
“You want to check all the windows?” I asked. As soon as I heard Olivia’s feet on the stairs, I took the box from the top of the mantel and carried it to the car. Daniel’s cremains. It didn’t feel right to shove the box into my suitcase, where it bulged like a rectangular tumor, but it didn’t feel right to leave him behind, either.
Olivia was waiting on the porch, scribbling in her Fear Journal.
I could stop this right now, I thought. We could unpack the car and go back to our lives—a staycation in our own home. Or we could head south, find a sandy beach. Or north, to the sort of tall trees that made a person realize he was really nothing, just a speck in the world.
But I wouldn’t stop it now. I couldn’t. Robert Saenz was out there. He was a free man who didn’t deserve his freedom, and it was my duty—my right—to take that away from him.
Olivia stood, tucking a pen into her journal. “Let’s take a picture,” she said, pulling out her cell phone. “You know, photographic evidence of our journey.”
We leaned against the Explorer, and I rested my arm on Olivia’s bony shoulders. She angled her phone and tapped the screen. “You blinked,” she accused, snapping a second shot. I tried to smile, but I was remembering our other family pictures, back when there were four of us. Or the picture Daniel had been carrying in his wallet: The Fam.
It was hard to look at our house as we pulled out of the driveway. This was our life, I thought. Was.
Now I was eager to leave it behind.
Since the night Daniel died, it was as if I’d been in a fog, one of those thick Central Valley fogs that descended without warning, making it difficult to see the house across the street, or the stop sign on the corner. By the time we left the congestion of Sacramento, easing our way onto I-80, mountain-bound, I felt the fog lifting. I kept this thought to myself; Olivia loved to mock clichés, and surely she would have seen that statement as sentiment, as a maxim for something so conventional it might not even be true.
But that’s what I felt, giving the Explorer a bit more gas. In the foothills, the road opened up, the trees became taller and more closely, naturally spaced. With the fog lifted, I was Curtis Kaufman again.
There had been mistakes, but I had a chance to set things right.
That night, after we checked into the hotel in Winnemucca, I would be meeting Zach Gaffaney. In a few days, I would be leaving Olivia in Omaha. By next weekend, I would be in Oberlin.
And soon after that, Robert Saenz would be dead.