I was about to drag my suitcase downstairs, but I stopped and looked down the hall to my parents’ bedroom. I hadn’t been in it since the morning of the funeral, when I’d stood in the doorway so my mother could see if the black dress I’d chosen was appropriate.
I walked down the hall, passing Charlie’s bedroom, which was adjacent to mine. The door to Charlie’s room had been closed ever since my mother slammed it behind her after she had literally yanked him out of it one month earlier. I opened the door to the master bedroom and stood on the threshold. Though tidier than it once had been, this room was at least still recognizable, with its neatly made king-size bed and stacks of books on each nightstand. I noticed that the books on my father’s side, thick historical biographies alternating with thin paperback mysteries, were beginning to gather dust. I looked away quickly, reminding myself to breathe. It felt like I was underwater and running out of oxygen, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stay there much longer. The door to my father’s closet was ajar, and I could see inside it the tie rack Charlie had made for him in fifth-grade woodshop with his ties still hanging on it, all preknotted to save him time in the morning.
Trying to quash the panicky feeling that was beginning to rise, I turned away from my father’s side of the room and crossed to my mother’s dresser. On an impulse, I pulled open her top drawer—socks and stockings—and reached into the very back, on the left side. The drawer was emptier than usual, but even so, it took me a second to find it. But when my fingers closed around something smooth and plastic, I knew that Charlie had been telling the truth. I pulled it out and saw that it was an ancient pantyhose egg, with L’EGGS printed on the side in gold script that was flaking off. I cracked the egg open and saw, as promised, that the egg was stuffed with cash.
Charlie had told me that he’d found it sometime last year—I hadn’t wanted to ask how or why. But there was a piece of me that registered how desperate he must have been to have found the money my mother kept hidden in her sock drawer. That was about the time I started noticing just how far gone he actually was. Charlie had told me that he only dipped into it in case of emergencies and was always careful to put the money back, since he was sure Mom would notice. It always had six hundred dollars in it, mostly hundreds and fifties. Maybe Charlie had been too out of it by the end to care, or maybe he hadn’t had time to replenish it before he found himself on a plane to North Carolina, but there was only four hundred dollars in it now.
I heard the front door slam downstairs and realized that Roger was probably wondering why it was taking me so long to get my suitcase. Not stopping to think about what I was doing, I pocketed the cash, snapped the egg shut, and put it back in its place. A piece of me was running through justifications—you couldn’t trust these house hunters and shady Realtors, really I was just helping my mother out—but I knew none of them were the real reason I’d taken the money. So then why had I?
I pushed the thought away and hurried out of the room, closing the door behind me and dragging my suitcase down the stairs. When I reached the kitchen, I saw Roger standing in front of the fridge, staring at it. He looked at me as I thumped my suitcase onto the landing.
“All set?” he asked.
“Yep,” I said, then immediately wondered why I’d just started talking like a cowboy. I pulled the suitcase toward the door and glanced back at Roger in the kitchen. He was back to looking at the refrigerator, which gave me a moment to study him undetected. He was tall, and the kitchen, which had been so quiet and still lately, seemed filled up with his presence. My mother had told me that he was nineteen and that he’d just finished his freshman year. But there was something about him that made him seem older than that—or at least made me feel young. Maybe it was the hand shaking.
“These are incredible,” Roger said, pointing at the refrigerator.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, crossing into the kitchen, knowing he was talking about the magnets. The fridge was covered with them, many more than were needed to hold up Classic Thai takeout menus and grocery lists. They were all from different places—cities, states, countries. My parents had started collecting them on their honeymoon, and they’d kept it up until a few months ago, when my mother spoke at a conference in Montana and came back with a magnet that was just a square of bright blue with BIG SKY COUNTRY printed on it.
“My parents—” I heard my voice catch a little on the word. Words I’d always taken for granted had turned into landmines, traps for me to stumble over and fall into. I saw that Roger had averted his eyes to the fridge, pretending he hadn’t noticed anything. “They, um,” I continued after a moment, “collected them. From all the places they’d been.”
“Wow,” he said, stepping back and taking in the whole fridge, as though it was a piece of art. “Well, it’s impressive. I’ve never been anywhere.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised.
“Really,” he said, eyes still on the fridge. “Only California and Colorado. Pretty lame, huh?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ve barely been out of California.” This was incredibly embarrassing, something I had told nobody except Julia. I’d been out of the country once—we’d all spent a very damp summer in the Cotswolds, in England, while my mother did research for a book. But California was the only state I’d ever been in. Whenever I had complained about this, my mother had told me that once we’d seen all there was to see in California, we could move on to the other states.
“You too?” Roger smiled at me, and as though it was an automatic reaction, I looked down at my feet. “Well, that makes me feel a little better. The way I justify it is that California’s a pretty big state, right? It’d be worse if I’d never been out of New Jersey or something.”
“I thought,” I started, then regretted saying anything. It wasn’t like I really wanted to know the answer, so why had I started to ask the question? But I couldn’t just leave that out there, so I cleared my throat and continued. “I mean, I thought my mother said your father lived in Philadelphia. And that’s why you’re, um, doing this.”
“He does,” said Roger. “I’ve just never been out there before. He comes out here a couple times a year, for business.”