Page 90 of Goodbye Days

“Too bad I don’t write sci-fi.”

“What do you write?”

“Dark Southern stuff mostly.”

“Nice. I’m into dark.”

“Who’d have guessed?”

He laughs. “Maybe we should collaborate someday. You write lyrics and I’ll do the music.”

“I’m down.”

“Okay. So. In the future. My mom was telling me the other day about how scientists grew a human ear on a mouse’s back. It was in one of her medical journals.”

“What? Creepy.”

“Yeah, but cool.”

“What if someday they grew, like, a full-sized human dick on a mouse?”

And that was that. The next day Eli ate lunch with Blake and me instead of Adair. And every day after that.

Melissa answers the door. She’s dressed for a day outside. Hiking pants, trail-running shoes, a fleece vest. Her curly, dark hair is in a ponytail. I remember Eli telling me she was an avid runner. She has much the same look Nana Betsy had—distant; haunted. “Come in. Good to see you.”

“Hi, Melissa,” I say. It seems wrong to call a neurosurgeon by her first name, but Eli and Adair always called their parents Melissa and Pierce, so…

The house is mostly as I remember. It even smells the same—Eli’s mom loves these candles that smell like a mixture of black tea, tobacco leaves, and leather—opening even more doors of memory.

I see a familiar ache on Jesmyn’s face. “Hey,” I whisper.

“Hey,” she whispers back.

We follow Melissa into the kitchen. An assortment of pastries and croissants towers on a plate. She motions for us to help ourselves. “These are some of Eli’s favorite things from Provence bakery. We used to walk there every Saturday morning that I wasn’t working and if the weather was good. We still go with Adair. Jesmyn, you joined us once, didn’t you?”

She nods. “I had a chocolate croissant.”

“We got some of those,” Melissa says.

Jesmyn and I each take a chocolate croissant and start eating while Melissa wordlessly makes some fresh orange juice and sets a couple of glasses in front of us.

“Is Pierce coming?” Jesmyn asks.

“Oh…yeah. He was out running some errands. He should be here in a few minutes.”

“What about Adair?” I ask tentatively. “Is she coming?”

Melissa sighs and pauses. “Adair is…tricky.”

Gee, you think?

“We invited her. She declined. She spent the night at a friend’s house,” Melissa continues. “That’s where she is now. She’s not ready for any of this. It’s different with twins. Pierce and I never completely understood the bond they had. How could we?”

“Will today make things tough with her?” Jesmyn asks.

Melissa turns away from us and wipes the already-pristine mottled granite countertop. “It’s funny, actually. She was adamant that we go, even though she didn’t want to. But we decided not to scatter Eli’s ashes like we were planning on doing. Not without Adair. We’ll do that another time.”

Why did Adair want her parents to do this? This should make me feel better, but it doesn’t. “We can call this off if you want,” I say.