Page 47 of Everything We Give

I’m about to leave a message—Is this you?—when I remember what I’d committed to before I left for Spain.

I disconnect the call. I’ve waited half a lifetime of days. I can wait five more.

It’s late in the evening when I arrive at the inn, a converted farmhouse made from stonework. A yellow Lab runs over to me as I pop the trunk and remove my bags. He barks a greeting, his tail thumping the rental car’s bumper. He nudges at my legs and sniffs my hand.

“Hey, boy.” I scratch under his chin. He follows me to the entrance until he catches a whiff of a chicken clucking in the grass. He lets out a loud bark. Valet responsibilities forgotten, he chases the hen around the building.

Set among a picturesque countryside in Galicia, a region in northwestern Spain, I notice right away the inn, La casa de campo, is an ideal vacation spot for honeymooners. A young couple lounges on the front patio admiring the dusky sky darkening above forests of pine and eucalyptus. While sampling cheeses and drinking white wine, they wave at me.“Buenas noches,”they greet in unison.

“Evening,” I reply.

The man briefly smiles and turns back to his wife. He leans toward her and nuzzles her neck. She giggles, then moans softly, languidly, tilting her head aside to give him more room. His eyes lift to mine over her shoulder when he notices I’m still standing there, watching them. Shaking my head, I sling a bag over my shoulder and enter the front office, longing for my own wife.

In the dining room off to the side, guests eat dinner. Scents of roasted chicken and warmed bread make me think of home and Aimee. I miss her. We played phone tag during my layover, and other than texting her when I landed in Santiago de Compostela, at a small airport an hour from here, I haven’t spoken with her since I’d left her at the hospital. I owed her a call and an explanation. It wasn’t solely her closure with James that prompted my own need for closure.

A fire blazes in the lobby lounge and a woman seated with her back to the room chats on her cell in French. I make my way to the registration counter and drop my bags at my feet. I’m hungry and exhausted. I want to check in, order in, and crash.

A short man with round wire-rim glasses smiles from behind the counter. He introduces himself as Oliver Perez, the owner. “Buenas noches. Do you have a reservation?”

“Sí.Ian Collins.”

Oliver brings up my information on his computer. “There you are. You’re with us for three nights.” He takes my credit card and dives into a spiel about how he and his wife of thirty years own the inn and that dinner is now being served in the dining room. An oven-baked chicken roasted in Spanish sherry and red wine vinegar. “The chicken was raised here on the property.”

“And butchered by your dog?”

Oliver’s eyes go wide behind his glasses. “Excuse me?”

“The yellow Lab out front I saw chasing the chicken.”

He presses his lips into a flat line and mumbles something in Spanish. “He’s not supposed to be chasing the chickens,” he says, switching back to English.

My mouth twitches. “Sorry. Bad joke.” Awful joke. God, I’m tired. I rake back my hair. “You were saying?”

He slaps my card on the counter. “We don’t have room service. I suggest you eat now if you’re hungry and before we run out of food.” He gestures toward the dining room. “My dog won’t slaughter any more chickens until tomorrow.”

“What?” I look up from where I was slipping my credit card back into my wallet. Oliver holds my gaze, his expression serious. Then he grins, showing me a full set of cigarette-stained teeth.

I wag a finger at him. “Touché, Oliver.”

He gives me a real key—no plastic cards at this place. “I trust you’ll find your room comfortable with all the necessities.”

Except a complimentary fridge.“Gracias.”I pocket the key and bend to pick up my bags.

“Ian. Collins.”

My name comes from behind me, spoken as two distinct sentences.

That voice.

An onslaught of memories from my late teens and early twenties download. Corona-soaked spring breaks in Ensenada. Adrenaline-fueled winter weekends shredding snow-packed Colorado mountainsides. Sleep-deprived finals weeks punctuated with heated interludes among the book stacks at the university library. Long coffee-filled afternoons working side by side at a sidewalk café in the South of France. Her cold bed and chilled shoulder when she left. She’d had her fun. She’d had her fill of me.

Everything in me tenses as I straighten to my full height, bags left on the floor. I don’t have to turn around to know who’s behind me, but turn around I do. The woman yammering on the phone a moment ago stands before me, one arm crossed as she taps her phone against her chin. Her eyes hold mine, looking left and right as if she can’t believe she’s seeing me either. With her long dusty-blonde hair, hollowed-out cheeks, almond eyes, and rail-thin physique, she hasn’t changed in thirteen years yet looks older all the same. A shot of disgust dives straight into my gut. Clear as a high-resolution image, I plainly see what I denied back then, what she’d thrown in my face. She has the look of my mother.

I’m speechless even though I shouldn’t be surprised she’s here. It was bound to happen at some point. We’ve been running in the same circles since my work has taken a more human, journalistic approach.

She cocks her head. “It’s good to see you.”

Too bad I can’t say the same about her.

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