You Have to Do Some Things on Your Own

We walk down the long hallway lined with those art photographs, passing by one of the California Coast. The gorgeous coast near Big Sur. The photograph is at least seven feet long, a bird’s-eye view of that almost impossible stretch of road carved into the divide of steep mountain, rock, and ocean. I’m so focused on it, taking some comfort in the familiar landscape, that I almost miss it when we pass the dining room. I almost miss the dining room table inside. My dining room table—the one that was featured in Architectural Digest. The table that helped launch my career.

It’s my most reproduced piece. A big box store even started replicating the table after the AD feature came out.

It stops me. Nicholas said his wife carefully picked every piece of furniture in this house. What if she came across the feature in Architectural Digest? What if that was what led her to the table? It was possible. The feature was still on their website. Enough clicks in recent years could have led her to her lost granddaughter, if she had been searching closely enough, if she had only known what to be searching for.

Enough moves, after all, led me here, to this house I don’t want to be in—a piece of my past finding me here, as if I need another reminder that everything that matters in my life is at the mercy of what happens now.

Nicholas pulls open a thick, oak door and holds it for me.

I avoid looking back at Ned, who is a couple of feet behind us. I avoid looking at the drooling dogs, who stroll by his side.

I follow Nicholas into his home office and take it in—the dark leather chairs and reading lamps, the mahogany bookshelves. Encyclopedias and classic books line the shelves. Nicholas Bell’s diplomas and accolades hang on the walls. Summa cum laude. Phi Beta Kappa. Law Review. They are framed, proudly.

His office feels different from the rest of the house. It feels more personal. The room is filled with photographs of his family—on the walls, on the credenza, on the bookshelves. The desk is devoted entirely to photographs of Bailey, though. Photographs that are framed in sterling silver, photographs that are blown up into twice their normal sizes. They are all of small Bailey with her dark eyes, wide like saucers. And her tender curls—none of them yet purple.