“What is going on with you two?” Everett asked last nightwhen Charlie walked by Gretchen folding laundry in the living room without acknowledging her.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s tension again, but it’s definitely no longer bomb-dot-com tasty.”
She shrugged. Years of keeping her problems to herself, recycling her emotions into cantrips she could use in her work, made it too difficult to articulate the intense feeling of loss nestled close to her heart. She knew, of course, that the whole point of this plan was that Charlie would leave. But she never expected to lose him before he even stepped off the property.
They’ve been silent inside the truck for so long that Gretchen startles when Charlie speaks at last. “So, uh, we should probably discuss the plan,” he says.
Gretchen looks out the passenger-side window, pretending to check the side mirror. “What do you mean?”
“Like, when do you want me to go? Right after the ceremony, or...”
What about never?“Probably wait until the name change officially goes through, I guess. To be safe.” She takes her hair out of its ponytail and redoes it as she talks. “I filled out all of the paperwork already, just have to submit it along with the license. I asked about processing time when I called yesterday, and they said it should be done within three days given the current queue.”
“So we’re looking at end of next week, then.”
“Most likely.” Gretchen wants to ask what he’ll do after he leaves—if he’ll go back to working on the tall ships for a short while or look into a library science degree or maybe pursue something else altogether. But it will be easier if she doesn’t know. Then she won’t be able to definitively picture where he is or whohe’s with or what he might be doing. She won’t be able to misshimso much as the idea of him.
The way she misses everyone else she’s ever cared about who left.
As he parks the truck in the space behind the duplex that holds Gretchen’s spirit medium shop and apartment, she wonders what he’ll think of her after seeing the behind-the-scenes of her life. Unless he’s done thinking about her at all.
Without discussion, they agree to start with the apartment. Gretchen pulls out her keys, unfamiliar in her hands after nearly a month of never needing them, and unlocks the front door. Charlie, holding a bunch of flat boxes under his arm, follows her up the stairs to the two units on the second floor. She opens 1A and gestures for him to go on inside.
Since Yolanda agreed to handle selling off the furniture in both the shop and the apartment, Gretchen assumes this won’t take all that long. Moving around a lot as a kid taught her not to accumulate too many belongings, and she’s thankful now that she never broke that habit even after staying here for a few years. She supposes she no longer has to embrace minimalism now that she’ll be living at Gilded Creek for the rest of her life. Maybe she should start collecting something as a way to celebrate her newfound permanence. Something extremely inconvenient to move, like geodes or antique doorstops.
“This should be quick,” she says, looking around the sparse space. “Yolanda’s already taken her stuff, so anything left that isn’t furniture can go in a box. Can you cover the kitchen and living room? I’ll work on my bedroom. Oh, and we should take the TV. I’ll put it in the guest room for Everett.”
The evidence that Gretchen ever lived here at all takes less than twenty minutes to collect into three large boxes.
After stacking the contents of her apartment in the truck’s back seat, they head downstairs to the small basement space from which she ran her spirit medium business. The lingering scent of incense makes Charlie sneeze as soon as he walks inside, and he almost drops the next batch of flat boxes he’s carrying.
“I’ll take care of the back room,” she says.
Charlie gestures to a bunch of crystals laid out on a side table. “Do I need to do anything special with those? Wrap them up or...?”
She can’t help but smile at how seriously he’s taking something she told him she doesn’t actually believe in. “They’re just rocks I bought in bulk on Amazon, babe. Throw ’em in a box.”
As she parts the curtain to the tiny back room, there’s a loudkathunkfollowed by several smallerkathunks, which she assumes is Charlie sweeping the entire contents of the table into a box in one go.
In this closet where she ate so many Cup Noodles over the years, Gretchen makes for the plastic case that holds her important documents (she might be a bullshit artist, but her business’s official recordkeeping has always beenmeticulous), then works her way through the assortment of cleaning supplies, papers, and bric-a-brac on the shelves. She saves the part that holds the unopened envelope she left behind for last. But she won’t be able to avoid it forever.
Just like she won’t be able to avoid her father. Moving to Gilded Creek will give her time—he’ll have to track her down all over again. But he will. She knows he will.
Except now, when he shows up, he can’t take anything away from her. She’s giving it all up on her own.
Gretchen retrieves the letter from the pile, slips a finger under the edge of the seal, ready to tear—
“Almost done in here.” Charlie’s voice startles her into tossing the envelope Frisbee-style into the nearest box.Another time, she tells herself, flexing her fingers in an attempt to calm her nerves. In all honesty, she’s glad for an excuse to further delay opening it.
They finish packing, the shop transformed from velvet enrobed and dimly lit to ivory walled and sparse. Maybe the next renter will be a lawyer or a one-person nonprofit. Or one of those optometrists who rent out office space in residential buildings, making your visit feel somewhat like going to a random elderly man’s run-down house to try on glasses.
“I think that’s everything,” Charlie says, coming back in from his latest trip to the truck. “You ready to head out?”
Gretchen glances around the space one more time, both feeling her connection to it and barely recognizing it.I grew a lot here. But now I’ve outgrown it.
“Yeah. I’m ready.”
