my feet. It was a half-hour walk from DUMBO to my apartment, one I desperately needed.
There was an air of ceremony to it, a farewell cruise, as I stood at the ship’s stern, wind whipping in and out of my lungs so fast I couldn’t control it. I stepped onto Brooklyn’s soil and headed east along the cobblestone streets. I thought of Josh as I passed the old pizza place, praying I wouldn’t actually see him.
A few blocks inland, I waited at a light with strangers, watching the stream of cars and waiting for my chance to jaywalk, to charge out into oncoming traffic and prove I wasn’t afraid. My eyes fell on the man next to me, tall and blondish with a messenger bag strapped across a burgeoning gut.
“Greg?”
It popped out of me before I could think. I didn’t feel surprised; I knew it was New York showing off again. So tiny and tightly folded, an M.C. Escher city.
He blinked at me. “Excuse me?”
“You’re Greg Bentley, right?”
“Yeah…do I know you?”
We were missing the WALK sign; people streamed around us.
“This is weird! I was trying to find you a few weeks ago, and here you are.”
“Trying to find me?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, how do we know each other?”
“I’m a friend of Edie Iredale’s. We met a few times when you guys were dating.”
“Edie!” He smiled and his shoulders relaxed. “I haven’t heard that name in so long. Sorry, what’s your name?”
“Lindsay,” I said, offering him my hand. He shook it eagerly. Despite Josh’s insistence that his boss was an upstanding citizen, I hadn’t expected Greg to be this warm. The whole situation felt peculiar, dreamlike.
“I was just thinking how it’s been ten years,” he said. “Were you working on a memorial or something?”
I blinked at him, processing. Finally I swallowed. “Yeah, for the anniversary. I was just tracking down some people who were important to her back then. And that was definitely you.”
His green eyes twinkled. “She was really a great girl. Are you doing a digital scrapbook or something? Or a memorial site?”
I nodded again, slowly. What had I told Mrs. Iredale? “I wanted to see if there was enough material to make a memorial video. Or just compile some photos.”
“Oh, well, I might be able to help, because I’m a photographer! An amateur one, but I’m sure I have some photos of her on my old laptop.” He looked around happily. “Man, so funny bumping into someone from my former life. I just stopped into the office to pick up a couple things—I’m on paternity leave right now, actually.”
“Congratulations,” I said, and he thanked me.
Suddenly he unzipped his bag and dug around. “I have a better idea. I had a Flickr account back then, which all my photos went into. I’ll write it down for you.” He drew out a notepad, leather-bound and filled with graph paper. I peered at the pages as he flipped forward, noticing that he didn’t have architect handwriting at all: It was impressively girly, a beautiful sweeping cursive, like the nineteenth-century letters you find in archives. I thought of Tessa’s cool, pointy script, which would’ve looked more at home here. He jotted down a URL and a password and handed the ripped sheet to me.
I folded it up and slid it into my purse. “Thanks so much, Greg,” I said, still stunned. “Really funny running into you.”
“You, too! You’ll have to send me the video or site or whatever you end up putting together.” He produced a business card for me. “Have you talked to other people for it?”
I nodded. “Her…her mom, and her old roommate Sarah, just some old friends.” Bringing up Alex, whom she’d dumped Greg for, seemed unwise.
He hooked his thumbs around the strap of his bag. “If you haven’t yet, you should talk to her best friend. Jenny…Jenna, I think.”
“Jenna,” I repeated. “Do you remember her last name?”
“God, not anymore. But you remember her—Edie’s roommate in Calhoun. The one she was really close with.” He shrugged. “Although, come to think of it, they weren’t talking much by the time we broke up. But you know what Edie was like. Anyway, great running into you!” He gave me another cheerful handshake and jogged across the intersection, never looking back.
I stood there for a while, the wind rustling my hair and dress. Jenna. Sarah and Kevin had gossiped about her as they played Jenga in one of my Flip cam videos, but I couldn’t remember much