Page 13 of Travis
Another pause, longer this time. “Sera, honey. I thought we’d talked about this. Your father and I worry that you’re?—”
“I’m not spiraling, Mom. It’s a work question. I need to talk to Travis about operational details from when he was at the agency, and I can’t reach him by phone.”
“Well, he’s not exactly the sociable type, is he. Not since...” She didn’t finish. She never finished that sentence. Naomi’s death existed in my mother’s vocabulary as a trailing silence, a sentence that dissolved before it reached the part that hurt. “I think I have it somewhere. He sent it when I offered to mail that box of his things that got mixed in with Naomi’s.”
The sound of a drawer opening. Papers shifting. My mother’s house was full of drawers where the artifacts of Naomi’s life accumulated and were preserved like relics.
“Here. Garnet Bend, Montana.” She read me the address. I wrote it down. “I don’t know what you think he’s going to tell you that?—”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Are you eating? You sound tired.”
“I’m fine. I have to go.”
“Your father says hello. We’re having the Petersons over Saturday if you want to?—”
“Tell Dad I said hi. Thanks for the address.”
I hung up and sat with the paper in my hand and the broken tape on my closet door and the sure knowledge that I wasn’t sleeping here tonight.
Packing took ten minutes. A bag with two days of clothes, toiletries, my inhaler, the thumb drive with the full Kindt model, and the hard copies from the lockbox. I wasn’t fleeing. I was driving to Montana to have a conversation that couldn’t happen over a phone he wouldn’t answer. I’d be back by Thursday.
I locked the apartment behind me. Checked the door twice. Got in my car and pulled out of the lot and pointed myself east toward a man I hadn’t seen since I stood at my sister’s funeral and couldn’t look at him because looking at him would have told everyone in that room exactly how much of a monster I was.
I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind and drove.
