The clasp was gold and there was a heavy inlay of filigree along the sides and at the corners. Fleur de leis from the look of them, all faint with age. Opening it, I felt the soft fabric that lined the box, the silk pattern and heavy threads and wondered where my granddad had found it and what had made him keep it.
There were dozens of pictures, some I’d flipped through the first night I got it, smiling at all those images of great-grandpa and great-grandma Nicola when they were young. He was so handsome, his eyes bright even in the dull black and white photo. She’d never smiled as widely as him or laughed as much, but then her childhood and what her family had endured during the war was something not easily forgotten.
Among those pictures were others I hadn’t had a chance to go through and letters, mostly from my great-grandmother's cousins in Poland after the war. There were pieces of jewelry, some that Gramps had made, others that looked store-bought. At the bottom of the box was a small journal. Flipping through the pages, I caught sight of the dates, some going back as early as the late thirties, all in my great-grandfather’s tight, precise handwriting.
I debated looking through it, despite all the noise around me and the activity of moving. The movers were nearly done and another small voice in my head told me to toss the box in the van, send it and the memories away to storage while I tried to run from them, from the dreams and from Nash. I stood up and a rush of emotion came over me, as I caught a glimpse of another picture, this one clear, the faces in it laughing. I knew one face. Had seen it before, months before when I moved to Brooklyn. He’d given me the key to the apartment. He’d sworn I looked just like my mother—
“What are you doing?”
Nash’s voice pulled me out of my shock and I blinked, squeezed my eyes tight to refocus as he moved closer. A swift breeze picked up and the smell of Nash’s cologne whipped around me like a snake, firing up sensation and heat and all the things I was trying to avoid with this move.
“What do you want?” I asked him, closing Gramp’s box and shoving it under the passenger seat of my car. I would shoot for aloof, impassive, I told myself. I would pretend that I wasn’t affected by the heat from his body as he came up next to me or how the low, deep lull of his voice when he whispered my name didn’t make my heart skip a beat or my palms sweaty.
“Willow.” It was a low, sweet sound, like music. It reminded me of the piercing moment in a chord change, when the saxophone player took a breath, the way your body goes still, how anticipation keys up your senses until you aren't’ sure how wise it would be to wait for the next note.
“Nash, I need you to—”
“What do you need? Tell me. I’m... I’m sorry for leaving.”
“Leaving?” I asked, stepping out from the car to slam the door shut. I fished my keys from my pocket and turned on him, not caring that the sidewalk was thick with people moving by us, that the movers had slowed to watch the exchange. There was a construction crew a few feet behind my car and the heavy scent of tar grew thicker. “That’s why you’re sorry? Because you got freaked out and left me out on the roof?”
“No. I don’t mean…”
I hadn’t realized just how much anger I was holding inside, but now that I let some of it loose, the rest couldn’t be held back. “Not that you made me feel like I was insane for…” One of the movers took out a cigarette and lit it, his attention on us and not his co-workers who awkwardly moved a large chest of drawers toward the van. “You made me think I was insane for… thinking what I think. For believing what I believe in. You called me insane, you called me a witch, you pretty much told me I was fucked any way you look at it.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, holding up his hands. For a second I thought he might reach out, try to touch me and I prepared myself for it, ready to push him back. “I don’t think you’re insane. I don’t. I just think there is a lot of…” Nash looked around the sidewalk, nodding me away from the car to get us out of earshot of the nosey mover. “There’s a lot of things that can’t be explained.”
“They can,” I said, a little louder, my temper returning with the frown he gave me and the stubborn way he looked away. “You just happen to call the explanations crap.” A few small, indiscernible words came out of his mouth, but Nash didn’t repeat them loud enough for me to hear.
“Can we go upstairs?” He nodded toward the building, even took a step toward it before I shook my head. “Why not?”
“I don’t live here anymore.” It was true. I’d sent Mom’s university friend, Mr. Lewis my key that morning. The Super would find another tenant and I’d be gone soon, gone for good.
“Willow. Please. I don’t like this…” He waved between us, finally scrubbing his face when I folded my arms over my chest. “Where are you going? How long—”
“That’s not important. It’s not… don’t worry about it.”
This time when Nash looked at me, his large hands moved to the back of his neck, rubbing hard, as though he needed to release the tension that had grown there. “It’s damn well important to me, Will.”
I wanted to smile at him then. I wanted Nash to open his arms and tell me he loved me. I wanted him to admit he believed me… that he simply believed in things he couldn’t see, things that didn’t make sense to the logical mind at all. But he had let me just walk away. He didn't try to fight, he didn't try to think outside the box he’d put himself in. He’d turned his back when coincidences couldn’t be explained. Worse yet, he’d accused me of trying to trick him, even though he had felt the very same things I had. Those dreams were memories—we shared them. Even if we didn’t understand how, they meant something, and rather than being amazed, he’d run from them. From the truth. He’d run from me.
I tried one last time.
“Why, Nash? Why is it important to you?”
Say it, I thought. Please. Tell me you love me. Say, ‘Because of everything’ and mean it.
“I’d… damn…” Nash shrugged, looking uncomfortable, looking a lot like a kid standing in front of a grown-up being asked to explain why he'd misbehaved. But Nash wasn’t a kid. No matter if he'd acted like one often enough. He took to rubbing his neck again before he dropped his hand, smiling, but with no conviction. “I’d hate to see you go. The place would be too quiet without the noise you make and then there’s the cupcakes…”
He stopped joking when I lowered my shoulders, gripping my keys in my hand as I stepped back into the street, meaning to yank the door of my car open to show just how angry I was. I heard the first syllables of my name come from his mouth, then screams to my left, the screech of tires and the blast of a horn. The stench of street tar was all around me, thick and metallic, heavy and cloying. The smell, it was awful and still it enveloped me, poured up into my sinuses and wound its way inside my head, and for a second, I let the smell take me…
Twenty-Four
Sookie gripped the chain tight and I wanted to stop her. I wanted to kill my father, kill them all, all the damn fools that had started this. They screamed about the rain, the flood that came out in the river. They cursed Sookie, they cursed her mama like it had been their fault for running from the threat when it came. Fools, fucking fools, all of them.