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Fine. Stay. I’ll send you a postcard.
The cooler door opens, and Travis is standing there in his yellow fire shirt. His face is filthy. His hair is damp with sweat. He’s holding two coffees from Marlene’s and a bag of food.
I know why he called me now. He knew and he wanted me to know he was coming.
“Got here as soon as I could,” he says.
“I don’t know how long it’s been,” I say honestly as I drag my sleeve over my face. It’s numb, but there are probably tears all over the place.
He holds coffee out. “You need this.”
The heavy door swings shut and the gigantic firefighter sits down on the floor across from me with his back against the carnations and his long legs stretched out next to mine.
I’m reminded how big Travis is because he takes up half my cooler.
He doesn’t ask if I’m okay or tell me he’s sorry. He sits there in the cold and drinks his coffee and waits.
“You found it,” I say finally.
“Rob and me.”
“Was it bad?”
“It was empty.” His eyes don’t leave mine. “I looked. Front, back, everywhere. Nobody was in that car, Lindsey.”
My breath comes out of me in one long shudder. “When I’m upset, I talk. I can’t stop. Ask anybody,” I say.
“Understandable.”
“So why can’t I think of one single thing to say?”
“Maybe there isn’t anything yet.” He turns his cup in his scarred hands. “You can talk tomorrow. I’ll listen.”
I dab my leaky eyes. “You hate talking.”
“I don’t hate listening to you,” he says. “Even at five-fifteen.”
I’m an emotional mess and his words hit like an unexpected wave. My breath catches, and I look away.
“Can you eat?” he asks.
“Not yet.”
I take a drink of coffee though. And then my mouth seems to remember how to talk.
“We bought the necklaces at the mall in Ogden,” I tell him, touching my half of the heart. “We were fourteen. They cost seven dollars each. They turned our necks green for a month. She wore hers every day for three years. Even to prom. Her mom made her take it off for pictures, and she put it right back on in the car.”
“It was on the mirror,” he says in a gentle tone.
The pain in my throat makes me swallow a few times. Finally, I say, “She’d never have left it. They said she ran off to Portland because she talked about it all the time. And she did talk about it. But she would never have gone without saying goodbye to me.”
“Then she didn’t.”
I look up and his serious eyes are steady and confident. “She didn’t leave without saying goodbye to you,” Travis says. “Not on purpose. Something stopped her. Or somebody.”
In seventeen years, nobody has said that to me. They said you need to let it go, honey. They said some girls just leave. Something stopped her.
I put my coffee down on the concrete, and before I can think about it, before I can be embarrassed, I crawl across the cooler floor and put my arms around his neck.
