Page 32 of Haunted

That I’d marry a man partly because he reminded me of Parker. That the marriage would implode, and Nash would turn out to be the kind of man who throws phones and slams doors and calls you worthless when he’s drunk.

And that none of it—not the scars, not the fear, not one day of it—would ever eclipse Parker Bishop.

I close the sketchbook and hold it against my chest. Upstairs, I can hear Mom and Bree clearing the table, the clink of dishes, the murmur of their voices. My father sits across from me in the basement and says nothing, because he’s always known when to let a silence be.

An hour ago the most I wanted was an email address, and I hadn’t worked out what I’d put in it. Now I have a reason. Not a pretext. Three sketchbooks and a bag of his mother’s papers and every right in the world to knock on a door.

And it occurs to me, sitting in my father’s basement with the picture of a dead boy’s sleeping face on my knees, that a man can have the best reason there is and still be told no.

Chapter twelve

Jonny Bishop

It’s 2 AM in Fairhaven, Virginia, but my body still thinks it’s late morning. Back home in Goa it’s coming on to 12:30 in the afternoon. I’d be at my desk by now, with a chai and the window open, listening to the traffic on the Mandovi Bridge. Instead, I’m standing in my aunt’s spare bedroom, wide awake and jet-lagged into a different dimension.

The rest of the apartment has gone full bohemian maximalist since I left. Aunt Shelley has painted every wall a different color, accumulated end tables like they’re going out of style, and hung tapestries from places I’m fairly sure she’s never been. But the room I had for those last months of school is exactly the way I left it—bare walls, an empty desk, the same view of Flint Street.

I told myself at the time that I didn’t put anything up because I wasn’t staying. It’s taken me ten years and seventeen hours packed in economy to notice I’ve done the same thing in four countries.

I’m still stiff from the flight. The woman next to me, a matron from Chandigarh going to visit her son in Pittsburgh, complimented my Hindi, asked me point-blank why I wasn’t married, and then spent four hours trying to sell me on the charms of her two unmarried daughters. I didn’t have the heart to explain why that wasn’t going to work out. By the time I’d landed in Richmond, the tiny catnaps I’d managed along the way had convinced my brain that I was completely fine. I’m not fine. I’ve slept maybe forty minutes since Newark, and every time I go under I’m back on Denning Court.

Flint Street is empty at this hour, the pavement glistening under the streetlamps. Around the corner, the Bean Stop is closed, the campus sleeping. It’s too quiet. India is many things, but it is never quiet. Even in the depths of the night, there’s traffic, dogs, someone’s radio three streets away.

I look at the building across the street and see that there’s a light in a window on the fifth floor. Somebody else having a sleepless night. I wonder what’s keeping them up—a deadline, a breakup, a baby? I put my hands on the sill and look up at that distant yellow square and feel, unexpectedly, less alone.

I’m only here because Aunt Shelley needed me, although she’d rather chew glass than admit it. A lump. One lump, she said. And not even a very big one. And they had it right out. And there was absolutely no need for me to interrupt my plans. She said all of that in tones of great annoyance when I called her from the airport in New Delhi to say I was on my way, and repeated it at least twice between luggage claim in Richmond and this apartment. But you can’t open a phone call with “I’m all right” and not expect the person on the other end to hear everything that follows through a filter of panic.

So I gave her a face-saving excuse: my visa renewal was dragging on, and the same guy at Fairhaven University who’s been pestering me for five years to do a guest lecture on digital entrepreneurship had just emailed again, and the timing worked out. All of which is true, but it isn’t the reason I’m here. My aunt got to be annoyed instead of grateful, which is a Bishop family specialty, and I get to be here where I can keep an eye on her and see for myself that she really is as well as she claims.

If I’m honest with myself, part of me wanted to come back.

Three weeks. That’s the deal I made with myself somewhere over the Atlantic. The lecture and Aunt Shelley’s follow-up scan are the big priorities. Everything after that is negotiable. And then I fly home.

Or I would be flying home. Except my visa renewal has been sitting in an office in Delhi since March. It should have taken six weeks. Everybody I know got theirs in six weeks. Mine got referred up for clearance, because somebody in a records department finally noticed that the man who makes the videos and the man on the passport do not have the same name.

So I can go anywhere on earth I like. I just can’t go home.

I go to my desk and fire up the laptop. If I can’t sleep, I can at least work. I pull up the rough cut of my latest episode and adjust the saturation until my skin goes pink, then dial it back and press play.

“Today, I’m back in one of my favorite cities, Panjim!” I watch myself for at least the twentieth time. “This is Jonny on the Spot. Here we go.”

I pause the video and drop a cross-fade into the opening montage. I really need to swap out the clip with the snake handler—it’s gone stale.

My phone buzzes. It’s the group chat in Goa, half a day ahead of me and wanting to know whether I’m alive.

I type back that I landed and that my aunt is fine. She is also furious about being fine in a way that requires assistance. Then I put the phone face down.

I can’t sit still. There’s no yoga mat, but the hardwood is clean. I work through a sun salutation and a routine that at least loosens the muscles that have set into the shape of an airplane seat. Then I pull on a hoodie, slip out of the apartment, and let myself out into the night.

It’s been raining. The sidewalks are still wet and the streetlights are doubled in them. In Goa the monsoon comes down like it’s got somewhere to be. This is polite rain, and it stopped before I got outside.

I take a right and walk toward Chancellor Street. The campus is beautiful at night—they light the buildings well, and the old brick glows. When I first moved here, I used to wander these streets at two in the morning when I couldn’t sleep. I learned every path, every shortcut, every bench worth sitting on. The campus hasn’t changed much. They’ve made Ridge Road pedestrian-only and replaced the asphalt with brick. That looks nice.

I stop outside the Bean Stop and peer through the window. The chairs are piled on the tables, the way I used to stack them at closing. I can almost see myself behind the bar—not mopping floors but standing in the courtyard with the string lights, the last time I saw Lance, the October wind in my hair and the taste of him still on my lips. I told him the next day I was leaving. I didn’t say where. He asked me not to go. I said I had to. That was the last real conversation we had.

I wonder sometimes if Lance and I could have worked out. If the timing had been different. If we’d had more space, more years to grow up. If the fire hadn’t scorched the ground between us before anything had a chance to take root.

I’m getting maudlin. It’s way too late now. He’s in the Marines somewhere, living a life I can’t imagine. I’ve been wishing him happiness for years, and the ache of it has softened into something I can carry.