Page 40 of This Is How It Started
After that, we would occasionally meet for drinks or he, Adam and I would go to dinner and catch a movie. There was always something a little off between us, though, like we knew there were things that had gone unsaid, but we’d been too young to know how to say them. And now we were old enough to know better than to dredge up things that were probably better left unsaid. But it made the air heavy around us. And we could never just be, if that makes any sense.
And then I met Josh. And eventually Campbell met Jess. And being in separate relationships seemed to smooth out the harsh edges between us. But I suppose those edges never really went away. We just became more adept at hiding them.
I think about this as we drive home. I think about fate and destiny and how everything that happened between Campbell and me was part of my journey to Josh, like I had to experience one to find the other.
“I just needed to fall off the map for a while,” I tell Campbell. “That’s all.”
“Are you back on it?”
It’s a good and fair question, so I answer it the best way I can. “I don’t know yet.”
Chapter 16
Love Letters
As I suspected, the listing agent on Campbell’s house (that’s what I’m calling it now) isn’t taking offers until the first week of February, which gives us ten days to get our ducks in a row. I’ve set up another showing for tomorrow morning and have nothing left to do.
Kyle and his men are making a racket, so I give up on an afternoon nap. Before Josh died, I never slept in the middle of the day, not even on weekends. It just seemed too frivolous.
Brooke is gone, and I find myself at loose ends. It’s too dismal of a day to go on a walk. So, I call Josie. Just when I think the call will go to voicemail, she picks up.
“Hey,” she says in a hushed voice.
“Why are you whispering?”
“We’re at the movies. It’s just about to start.”
I’ve never known Josie to go to a matinee, and I’m encouraged that things are heating up in the romance department. “Are you with tech guy?”
There’s a long pause—too long—and Josie finally says, “No, Hannah.”
“My sister?” I ask as if it’s possible that it’s another Hannah because I don’t want to believe they’ve left me out.
“Uh-huh. It was a last-minute thing,” she sputters, which tells me it wasn’t.
I want to say,When did you start choosing my sister over me?And since when does Hannah leave work early to catch a movie (never)? But I don’t say any of those things, afraid I’ll sound like a jealous ass. Instead, I tell them to have a good time in a feigned upbeat voice that sounds nothing like me.
Then I wander around the house aimlessly, suddenly remembering the email from Josh’s old boss.
Up in my room, I find Josh’s laptop in a box of his things I’ve brought with me and set it up on the white Pottery Barn desk of my youth. I used to spend hours here, doing homework, but now find it a bit cramped.
I flip up the lid of the computer and watch it come to life with sound effects. I know Josh’s password by heart—it’s our anniversary date.
His desktop is as neat and organized as was his side of the closet. Unlike mine—mostly an odd collection of memes and photographs downloaded from my phone—each folder is carefully labeled. There’s one that says “plans,” and I click on it because, duh, it’s a logical place to start.
I scan the contents, looking for anything called High Top, the two-story restaurant he was designing for a Marin County chef and Food Network personality. I remember Josh talking about it and how the funky space was causing him all kinds of challenges. It used to be a shoe factory that sat vacant for five years. But when the Chase Center sports arena went in on the adjacent street, the empty factory became a highly sought-after piece of real estate.
Two stories for a restaurant isn’t ideal, but Josh wanted to take advantage of the amazing bay views from the top floor. He was planning to cantilever a patio over the water to make diners feel like they were eating on a yacht. Those last few weeks of his life were consumed by the restaurant. I hope whoever takes over the project sticks with Josh’s blueprint. It really was going to be spectacular.
I don’t see anything labeled High Top and click on a few plans just to make sure I’m not missing it. The first is Rabbits, which makes my chest swell. It was Josh’s first project, and he was so proud of it. I think back to our rehearsal dinner there, and my eyes cloud up. He wore that blue suit, a combo of hipster and rat pack, that I loved.
After sorting through everything in the file, I click out of it and continue my hunt. There’s nothing promising on his desktop, so I move to his documents. There are so many that I’ll be here all day, scrolling. Rocket scientist that I am, it dawns on me to just punch in “High Top” in his computer’s search bar. Boom! Within seconds, I find what I hope I’m looking for, open it, and voila, I unlock pages of notes, elevations and three-dimensional drawings that to my untrained eye look like a two-story restaurant.
I switch over to Josh’s email, attach the file and shoot it over to Martin, Owens and Luckett, feeling rather proud of myself.
While I’m in his Gmail, I decide I may as well deal with that too. No one tells you when you lose a loved one whether you’re supposed to close his email accounts or how to answer correspondence from people who don’t know the person they’re writing to is dead. His parents and I bought obits in theSan Francisco Chronicleand theChicago Tribune,but people our age don’t read those pages.
Because you’re not supposed to die when you’re thirty-five.
