Page 95 of Never Forget
I reached over and squeezed his hand.
He squeezed back.
Sam drove us to the airport the next morning.
He parked instead of dropping us at the curb. Rolled the suitcase in for us. At the doors, he crouched down and pulled Rosie into a hug.
"Take care of Auntie Jamie for me, okay? I'm gonna miss you."
Rosie nodded against his shoulder, serious as a promise.
Then he stood and pulled me into a kiss.
"Call me when you land," he said when he pulled away.
"I will."
I took Rosie's hand and walked through the doors.
I hadn't been back to New York since Jack died. I'd been telling myself for weeks that it was just logistics—pack the apartment, clear the desk, say the goodbyes I hadn't said on the phone. But the closer the flight got, the more it felt like I was about to walk back into a life I'd already left. A life that was stillwaiting there, with my clothes in the closet and my name on the lease, like nothing had changed.
I looked back once. He was still there with his hands in his pockets, watching us go. I knew without turning again that he'd stay there until we were out of sight.
New York was loud in a way I didn't remember.
We stepped out of the terminal into the horns, the crowds, and the pace of people who all had somewhere to be five minutes ago. Rosie pressed against my side with Biscuit clutched under her arm, her eyes wide, and whispered that the city was so big. I shifted the suitcase and waved down a cab.
It used to feel like freedom. Like the place I'd escaped to when Havensworth became too small. Now it just felt loud.
At the apartment Rosie walked around slowly, taking in the bookshelves, the windows, the framed photos I'd hung on the walls years ago.
"This is where you lived?"
"Yeah," I said. "This is where I lived."
I didn't notice I'd said it that way until later.
The office took just one morning. I'd thought it would take longer. I'd thought there would be more to say to the people I'd worked beside for eight years. But most of what needed saying had already been said on the phone weeks ago, and what was left was the kind of thing you handled with a box and a few hours of quiet.
My boss pulled me into her office while Rosie colored on the floor with the crayons someone had dug out of a supply closet. She told me what I already knew—that the door was open, that I was one of the best writers she'd had, that I should call her if Iever wanted to come back. Then she told me something I hadn't expected. That whatever I was putting together in Havensworth, she wanted to see it when it was ready. That it sounded like the kind of story they should be running. I nodded and thanked her. I didn't trust my voice to say more.
Rosie held up a drawing of the two of us on an airplane. Clouds everywhere. Two stick figures waving from above. My boss looked at it for a long moment. Then she looked at me and told me to go be with my family.
Lunch was at a place a few blocks away—we used to go there on Fridays, back when I had Fridays that looked the same every week. The whole team came. They ordered too much food and made me sit at the head of the table and told stories I half-remembered. Rosie sat beside me with a kids' menu and a small pencil, working her way through a maze on the back. Someone made a toast I couldn't remember now. I laughed at the right moments. I said thank you more times than I could count. When the plates were cleared and we stood to leave, one of the older editors hugged me and told me I was going to be fine, and I held on for a beat longer than I meant to.
I walked back to the apartment after. Took the long way. Rosie held my hand for the first few blocks, looking up at everything. Past the coffee shop where I'd written half my first piece for the paper. Past the bookstore I used to duck into on bad days. A few blocks later she tugged on my sleeve and asked to be carried, and I shifted her onto my hip, and she wrapped her arms around my neck and rested her head against my shoulder.
I kept walking. Past the corner where I'd stood in the rain one night a few years in, twenty-two years old and certain I'd figured something out. The city didn't look different. It was me who'd changed. I'd built a woman on these blocks—careful, private, sharp-edged, good at her work—and I'd loved her. I was going to miss her. But she'd been built alone, and I wasn't alone anymore,and the weight of the girl against my shoulder was the answer to a question I hadn't known I was asking.
Rosie fell asleep on my shoulder in the elevator. Inside the apartment I set her on the couch with Biscuit tucked against her chest. I stood in the middle of the living room for a long time without turning on the lights. The city hummed outside the window the way it always had. I was the one who had gone quiet.
The movers came on Thursday.
I'd booked them the week I landed, the same afternoon I'd started looking at what I actually owned and what I was willing to let go of. In the end I sent almost all of it to Havensworth. The fire had taken everything—our clothes, our photos, Jack's records, the kitchen we'd cooked in, the rooms my parents had lived in. Rosie and I were sleeping on donated sheets. I wasn't going to put eight years of my life into a storage unit in Queens when there was a new apartment in Havensworth with bare walls and nothing in the cabinets.
The lease was up at the end of the month. I'd given notice before I flew up, and the super was scheduled to do the walk-through on my last morning. The apartment had come furnished, which meant what I had to move was smaller than I'd feared—clothes, books, records, kitchen equipment, the framed photos I'd pulled off the walls the first night and wrapped in a towel. By Friday afternoon everything I owned was on a truck headed south.
In between the logistics, there were days I didn't know what to do with. Too many hours. Too much of the city I hadn't shown Rosie yet. So we went.
