Page 15 of Everything We Left Behind

Los Gatos, California

James should have known returning to his childhood home would reward him with a restless night. He floats in and out of sleep. The cold, deathly quiet interior of a house that’s too large for the three of them keeps him awake. So does his overactive mind.

He tosses in the bed, the sheets tangling around his legs. He worries about his sons adjusting to their new country. He’s concerned they’ll never see him as the father they once had. He’s paranoid he’ll hear Phil walking down the hallway. And the person he wants to talk to the most, the one he used to talk to every day, is the one person he can’t call.

James groans, rolling to his feet. He pads barefoot through the house, triple-checking the locks, then flips the thermostat switch. The fan rumbles to life. Vents creak, stirring the air, erasing the oppressive stillness in the house. Maybe the white noise will help him rest. Remarkably, he misses the ocean outside his bedroom windows.

He misses Aimee.

A memory moves gracefully through his mind the way Aimee did while in his arms as they danced. And suddenly, she’s back there, in his arms, as he spins them around the crowded floor at Nick and Kristen’s wedding. Her smile is dazzling and meant just for him. “I love you,” she tells him.

He leans in to kiss her and the clock in the dining room chimes off the hour. James tenses, then sighs, a frustrated sound of longing. He punches the wall. Not hard enough to do any damage, but with enough strength to bring on the sharp sting of reminder that he is alone in this new life. He doesn’t have anyone he can rely upon, or lean on, not in the way it had been with Aimee for most of his life.

God, I miss her.

He rubs his sternum with the base of his palm to relieve the ache and returns to the guest bedroom where he’s been sleeping, or trying to sleep. He powers on his laptop and launches the browser. He should go to LoopNet and search for commercial properties. But what’s the point? He has no desire to paint, and without painting, he doesn’t have any art to show and sell, which means he must find a job. His interest in Donato Enterprises that Thomas sold on his behalf is enough for them to live off for now, but the money won’t last forever.

James brings up the career-search website Ladders and stares at the home page. He graduated from Stanford with a double major in finance and art history, and because of his father’s expectations of him in the family’s import-and-export business, he completed Stanford’s Spanish-language program. Thanks to his experience at Donato, he’s more than qualified to apply for upper managerial positions. He can also return to school and get credentialed to teach high school or college-level art courses.

Both ideas sound utterly unappealing.

James opens a new browser window and finds himself staring at the satellite view of Los Gatos. He has two sons to support, needs to find a job, wants a new house, and definitely needs to exchange his car. He really should get back into painting. But he doesn’t have any motivation to do anything other than look at the house he once owned with Aimee. This isn’t the first time he’s checked out the house, a three-bedroom, two-bath bungalow in the heart of downtown. He doubts it’ll be the last.

He zooms into the photo until the roofline fills his screen. He doesn’t recognize the car in the driveway. The sycamores in the backyard are overgrown and the grass left to brown. His index finger erratically taps the edge of the laptop. He doesn’t like how the yard has deteriorated and he wonders if the same has happened inside their house.

He and Aimee were supposed to raise their children in that house. They had grand plans to expand—add on a second story and push out the back. And they were supposed to fall more deeply in love as they grew old there together. Instead, she married another man and now has a daughter.

What did she name her little girl?

He swears at himself and slams shut the laptop.

Thank God she doesn’t live there anymore. He’s not sure how he’d react with her there with another man. But damn, he feels like a stalker every time he Googles her, or the house. Or her café. He can’t help it. The same craving that drove him to paint now drives him to learn everything he can about Aimee.

He doesn’t deserve her and deep down he knows he must stop obsessing over her, but he can’t help that either. He wants her back,needsher back, as much as his body needs air to breathe.

After an early-morning walk with the boys through the reserve behind the house, James finds himself on the sidewalk outside Aimee’s Café. He didn’t intend to stop here, but the nearest parking spot was three doors down and the boys are hungry. Starving, rather, as Marc pointed out during their excursion. It’s well past breakfast time.

A sign squeaks overhead and James looks up. He recognizes the logo instantly. A coffee mug under a tornado-swirl of steam. He’d scribbled the logo, a crude drawing nowhere near what he could have designed. he had wanted to spark Aimee’s interest to open a restaurant like he planned to open an art gallery. They’d both been working for their parents at the time. He never intended for her to use that rough sketch, but it touches him profoundly. It’s as though she wove pieces of him into her dream.

Dressed in a wrinkled DC ComicsSuicide Squadshirt, chino shorts, and Adidas slides, Julian cups a hand alongside his face and peers through the glass. “This looks good. Let’s eat here,” he says in Spanish, blatant defiance to James’s request they speak English. School starts in two months, so they’d better get used to speaking the language regularly.

“No,” James snaps. It’s late morning and he’s starving, too. But under no circumstance will he set foot inside the café.

Julian scowls and clamps his ever-present headphones over his ears.

“I’m hungry,” Marc whines in heavily accented English.

“Me too, bud.” James reaches for Marc’s hand and almost stumbles in amazement when his son’s smaller hand clutches his.

“I can’t see the menu from here.” Julian slips inside the café.

“Julian!”

Marc tugs his hand free and follows his brother.

James swears, glancing down the street toward the diner where he planned to take the boys.Now what?Does he wait here on the sidewalk like an idiot and hope the kids come back out when they realize he didn’t follow? Or does he suck it up and go inside?

Through the glass he sees Julian placing an order.

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