Eleven days after, I got a call from him.
So she pulled it off, somehow.
It looked like there might be a chance for me after all.
I picked up the phone, "Josh?"
"How are your parents?" he asked me.
"They're doing all right. Look, I know you're busy. But they talk about you all the time. If it's possible, you should come over and hang out with them and Margaret."
"I'll send you the address." He ignored me. "I have the translation."
"You've translated all of it?"
"You can come in the evening. Will the—girl be okay by herself?"
So he knew about Liz and our general situation. Not sure why he was pausing for a second there. Maybe he was going to call her a lady or young lady, but thought it was too formal so he went for that instead.
"She can take care of herself for a few hours without me."
"Cool." He said before he hung up. Then I received a text message.
The address was in a different state—it would take a whole day just to get there.
I didn't even get a chance to say anything so I called him.
"Can't you just tell me over the phone?"
"I don't discuss important business over the phone."
This was important to him?
Why did I need to go all the way there?
"I can't go that far. It's just some texts. Just tell me, it's fine."
"Either you come over or you get nothing at all."
The phone beeped as the call disconnected.
He obviously didn't hold me in the highest regard. If only he would tell me why. There was also no telling as for the reason he refused to talk it over on the phone. It was most likely another one of his dozen idiosyncrasies.
Whatever the case, I had to talk to Liz and let her know that I'd go see him then come back the day after. Considering how she'd been the past few days I knew I had to tread carefully. Lately, it'd been difficult to leave the house. The last time she found out she blew her lid, saying it was dangerous to leave home for too long. She said we needed to stay close, and keep our ears to the ground.
"He cracked the message?" She asked, chopping carrots on the cutting board as I leaned over the fridge next to her.
"I don't know. He wouldn't tell me on the phone so I've no other choice. I promise I'll be back soon."
The knife on the cutting board stopped midway.
"That's not possible," she stood motionless like she was deep in thought. "Tell him it's dangerous to leave the house."
"He knew about my circumstances."
"And he still asked you to go there? That's all the more reason not to."
"I know, I know. But he's Josh. I've known him since he was in high school."
"You're the one who said he hated your guts."
"I did. But it's fine, okay? It's gonna be okay, he's not going to kill me. If he was, he should've done it long ago."
Liz turned in my direction with a doubtful expression for a split second then back to the cutting board, as if she didn't want to look at me.
"Sometimes you don't need a reason to have it against someone," she said.
"How do you know that?" I realized I had been folding my arms so I put my hands in my pockets.
"The guy who said he'd die before he'd actually lift a finger to help you suddenly had a change of heart over the span of a couple of days. Something just doesn't add up."
"It's Margaret. He's her brother. I'm sure she'd said something to change his mind."
"That's unlikely. Besides," Liz put the carrot pieces into the bubbling stew pot. "The address is conveniently 1200 kilometers away from here. There's no way you'll make it back on time. Then you'll be on your own. He knew about the spiders—he knew about all of it and still asked you to come over. This is just my two cents but I think your brother-in-law is not trying to help you. I think he lied when he said he translated it."
"Liz..."
I noticed she'd become so much thinner lately. Her cheekbones were sticking out just a little. The collarbone ridges that had always been there were now even more prominent as they extended to her shoulders.
"Don't go. Look, I've spent the last hour making this for us," she said with her palm upturned toward the cutting board.
I stayed home for dinner.
But a small part of me still wanted to trust him. He's Josh. Of course I knew him.
At the same time, compromises were out of the question—I was in no position to ask for such things. The message could hold the answer to lifting the curse. We were tired of the constant fighting and running, being kept on our toes day and night. Liz wasn't having any of that either, but she doubted that anyone could decipher the code considering how she'd tried solving it for years.
Josh was the only person who had claimed to have solved it. I just had to take my chances.
Maybe I was wrong. He was a lot sharper than I thought, and I hadn't given him enough credit.
It was hard to believe that this was the same kid who, on the day we'd first met, tried to give me a handshake when we were still locked in a bear hug.
A terrible memory to bring up again. It was my second visit at Margaret's parents' house. When I first saw her brother, I immediately took a liking to him, though I'd admit it wasn't for the best reason.
Josh was also the kind of guy who would make a person on the street look twice because there was something unique about his appearance. He was pretty good-looking—I was a gremlin in comparison (I remembered it was my wife who'd said it first)—but there was still something off about him. I couldn't pin down exactly what gave me such an impression.
There wasn't any specific part on his face or body that was "bad". It wasn't the eyes, the nose, the long arms, the skinny legs. But when all the elements came together in one cohesive unit, the image of Josh was just—unique.
The Josh I saw the first time I met him—his face turned down and buried in a book, sitting in his chair; his face when he looked up at me; and his profile from the side——they looked like they belonged to three different people. His facial proportions were an enigma, like a grand optical illusion, except there were no smoke and mirrors; it was just his face.
Then he tried to shake my hand while I was hugging him. That kid was something else. But we all had social slip-ups every now and again so who could blame him.
That evening, two minutes into dinner, he stood and left for his room. Margaret told me at the time that he was doing math—solving equations, when most of them weren't even part of his homework.
He was always doing math. If he wasn't working part-time at some restaurant, he was probably off somewhere staring at quadratics and vertices—and no one in the family knew why he was doing it.
He never shared his plans or ambitions with his family, or with his sister.
He told them he had no reason for doing math—he just wanted to. He didn't say he liked math, only that he wanted to do it. I assumed if he didn't enjoy the process then there had to be something else he was after.
And I'd always looked up to him because of that. I wish I could ever have the courage to just sit down and design a house from start to finish just for myself, without actually building it and without having anyone to pay for it. There was beauty in the craft, regardless of whichever field you happened to be in. Sometimes we got carried away so much by the process of earning money in our profession that we forgot why we even worked in the first place.
Josh was so further ahead of me in this respect and I always thought I could learn a thing or two from him. If only there was a way I could get closer to him—I genuinely thought he was pretty cool.
But maybe for someone like Josh, the only way to become closer to him was to respect his boundaries and personal space, which was fine; it was perfectly reasonable.
I couldn't remember the last time I went over to my cousins. My cousins. I called them that because I'd seriously forgotten their names.
One day, when all of this was over, I should really try to make up with him. Now, I needed to know what was written on that piece of paper.