Page 14 of Gone Before Goodbye

Maggie puts away her phone and enters the house, nearly tripping over a pair of Cole’s sneakers the size of small canoes. “Hello?”

“In the kitchen,” Sharon calls back.

The house is stuck somewhere in the… Maggie wasn’t even sure of the era. Seventies? Eighties? When you grow up in it, you don’t get how dated your own home is, and of course there is nothing wrong with that. The green-beige curtains are too heavy with tassels. The Persian carpets are pattern-complicated and threadbare. The antique “knickknack cabinet”—that’s what Mom had called it—has dozens of small, silver-framed photographs, most of them black-and-white, along with various cheesy figurines like Hummel children—boy in apple tree, girl with umbrella, that kind of thing. They had always been there, as far as Maggie knew. She didn’t remember her parents ever buying or putting one up or moving one or changing any. None of the knickknacks seemed to hold any particular significance to her parents. They never talked about where the Hummels came from, but Maggie assumes, knowing her parents, that someone had gifted them or they’d inherited them and their fate was either storage in the basement or placement on the knickknack cabinet.

It wasn’t that her parents were cash-strapped or, to be more blunt, tacky, but it was more that the “Doctors McCabe” couldn’t be bothered. Mom and Dad didn’t care about the dated wallpaper or the worn shag carpeting. Her parents were wonderful and kind and distracted; they were readers and healers and academics. They spent their money on books and experiences, not upholstery or décor. She could still see them in this living room with their friends, maybe fueled by a little too much alcohol, the debates lasting into the wee hours of the morning in the days when disagreeing was considered a good thing, when differing viewpoints were welcomed because they challenged and honed your thinking rather than producing anger and scorn.

But Maggie isn’t in the mood right now for that kind of… Was it nostalgia? What do you call a longing for critical thinking and common sense and decency?

Maggie’s family history is still told via framed photos on thefireplace mantel—she and Sharon at their dance recital when Maggie was eight and Sharon was six, various graduations, weddings, births, you know the deal. We have all seen it before. Maggie stops at the largest photograph—a horizontal group shot from her and Marc’s wedding. She and Marc are beaming in the center. Next to Maggie is Sharon, her obvious maid of honor. Next to Marc is his best man, Trace Packer. Trace could have been on either side of them, really. Trace had met Maggie first, serving with her as a Field Surgeon 62B in combat for two tour duties.

When she introduced Trace and Marc, the two men hit it off immediately. Eventually the three of them—Marc, Trace, Maggie—would create WorldCures Alliance, one of the world’s most dynamic charities, specializing in providing medical services for the most impoverished.

In the photo, Maggie’s parents are on the far right, looking heartbreakingly alive and healthy. Now that she looks again, does Maggie see hesitancy in her mother’s body language? Or is that “had I but known” projection on her part? Porkchop, Marc’s father, is on the far left. All the men wear matching tuxedos, except for Porkchop, who did don the bow tie and piqué bib white shirt but kept on the leather biker jacket and the smile-skull jewelry, and Maggie would have wanted it no other way.

As though on cue, her phone rings. The incoming call simply saysPAYPHONE.

“Hello?”

Porkchop’s gruff voice barks. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Maggie says, still looking at Porkchop’s image in the old wedding photograph. “Well, except that whoever answered your phone is referring to fellow women as your ‘old ladies.’”

“What, you prefer my ‘girlfriends’?”

“Not really.”

“What then? My ‘hotties’? ‘Main squeezes’? ‘Love monkeys—’”

“Did you say ‘love monkeys’?”

“My bae, my boo, cuddle muffins—”

“Please stop.”

“Some of the youngins call them ‘shorties,’” Porkchop continues. “That better?”

“No,” Maggie says. “And never use the term ‘youngins’ again.”

“It’s cute when I say it.”

“Yeah, it’s really not.”

“Sooooo,” Porkchop says, dragging out the word, “this has been a fun icebreaker. What’s wrong, Maggie?”

“Can’t I call to say hello?”

“Sure.”

Silence.

“I’m coming up to Manhattan tomorrow,” Maggie says.

“Taking the Amtrak?”

“Yes.”

“Time?”