Say Uncle

The distance between us

Eight weeks felt different once he was actually gone.

The first week I was fine. I went to work, I went to the gym twice, I had dinner with my friend Jade on Thursday and talked about everything except the thing I was actually thinking about. I was completely fine. I was handling it.

The second week I stopped pretending I wasn't checking my phone.

Not in an obsessively or sad, desperate way. Just that I was aware of it. The way you're aware of a bruise. You don't poke it constantly but you know it's there and every now and then you press it just to see if it still hurts.

It still hurt.

He didn't text. I didn't expect him to. That wasn't what we were , we weren't people who texted each other regularly, who had that kind of casual back and forth. Before all of this, before the party and the three seconds and the four words at two in the morning, we were family. We saw each other at dinners. We talked when we were in the same room. That was the whole of it.

So the silence wasn't strange. It was just what it had always been.

Except now it felt like something.

My mom called on a Wednesday to say that Caden had checked in, that he sounded good, that London was treating him well. She said it the way she said everything about Caden , with that particular warmth she had for him, the warm she reserved for people she'd known and loved for a long time. My mom adored Caden. My dad adored Caden. My whole family adored him.

That was the part I never let myself sit with for too long.

I said that's good, that's great, I'm glad he's doing well. And I meant it. I genuinely meant it. Whatever I felt about the man it had nothing to do with not wanting good things for him.

I just also wanted him to text me.

He didn't. Not for five weeks. Five weeks of family dinners where his name came up the way it always did, five weeks of my grandmother asking if anyone had heard from him lately, five weeks of me being the person in the room who knew the most about where he was and saying the least.

On the thirty-fourth day , I told you I wasn't counting and I told you that was a lie , I gave up trying not to and sent him a message.

Not a lengthy message, and also nothing that meant anything on the surface. I just sent him a link to an article about a restaurant in London that had just gotten a good review, the kind of place I thought he'd like, with a single line: thought you might want to try this.

Casual. Easy. Friendly-niece energy.

I put my phone face down and went to make coffee.

By the time I got back he'd already replied.

"Been here twice. Second time was better. You'd love the bread."

I stood in my kitchen holding my mug and read it four times. He'd been there twice. He'd thought about whether I'd love the bread. He'd answered inside of four minutes.

I typed back: "How's London?"

He replied: "Cold. Efficient. Smells like rain."

Me: "That sounds like something you'd like."

Him: "It does suit me." Then,: "How are you?"

Two words. The most ordinary question. The way anyone asks anyone. But I sat down at my kitchen table and the pressure in my chest eased, just a little because it had been thirty-four days and he'd asked and he'd used my name in the next message: "Seriously, Mara. How are you doing?"

I typed back honestly, which was maybe stupid but I was tired of being careful. I said: I'm okay. Work is good. I've been thinking too much.

Three dots. Then:

"About what?"

I looked at that question for a long time. My coffee went cold while I sat there looking at it.

I didn't answer that one. I just said: nothing important. Sleep well.

He replied one minute later.

"Mara."

Just my name. The same way he'd said it in my aunt's living room the night of the party. Like the beginning of something he hadn't decided to finish yet.

I put my phone down.

I went to bed.

I lay in the dark and thought about a man in London who had asked what I was thinking about and then said my name when I didn't answer.

Three more weeks passed.

He was due to come back on a Thursday. My mom mentioned it at Sunday dinner, Caden's home this week, she said, we should have everyone over Saturday. My dad said good, tell him to bring wine. My aunt said finally, that man works too hard.

I said nothing.

I ate my food and I said nothing and on the inside I was counting the days to Thursday the way I used to count down to Christmas when I was eight years old.

Wednesday night, the night before he was due to come back, my phone buzzed.

A photo.

The inside of a plane. His window seat, the dark outside, the tiny light above him. Just that. The inside of a plane at night, going somewhere.

Coming home.

Underneath the photo, one line: "Back tomorrow. Don't make plans Thursday evening."