The Cocktail Napkin

Chapter 1: The Napkin

The cocktail napkin arrived in a manila envelope, which arrived inside a FedEx package, which arrived at Greg Hollister's office at 4:47 on a Tuesday afternoon — thirteen minutes before he was scheduled to finalize his own divorce.

His secretary, Pam, who had worked for him for eleven years and who had seen him through three promotions, one kidney stone, and the slow-motion demolition of his marriage, placed the FedEx package on his desk with the careful neutrality of a bomb disposal technician.

"This came from your mother's attorney," she said.

"Which one?" Greg asked, not looking up from the Kowalczyk settlement he was reviewing. "She's had four this year."

"Gerald Fitzsimmons. The one who smells like pipe tobacco and calls everyone 'counselor.'"

"Ah. Fitz." Greg set down his pen. "What does he want?"

"I didn't open it. It's marked personal."

Greg looked at the package the way a man looks at a check engine light — with the full knowledge that ignoring it would only make things worse, and the full intention of ignoring it anyway. He had exactly thirteen minutes to review the final terms of his dissolution of marriage to Jennifer Hollister, née Kowalczyk — a woman he had loved for fourteen years, liked for maybe nine of them, and was now paying a considerable sum to never have to argue with about thermostat settings again.

"I'll open it after," he said.

"After what?"

"After everything."

Pam gave him the look. The one that said she'd raised three sons and buried a husband and she could see right through whatever nonsense he was constructing.

"Your father just died, Greg."

"I'm aware."

"Three days ago."

"Also aware."

"And you haven't taken a single day off."

Greg straightened his tie, which didn't need straightening. "Pam, I appreciate the concern. I do. But my father and I had a complicated relationship, and the best way I can honor his memory right now is by being productive. He would have wanted that."

"Would he?"

"No. He would have wanted me to drink bourbon and watch the Cubs lose. But I don't have that luxury. I have the Kowalczyk settlement."

Pam retreated. Greg opened the FedEx package.

Inside the manila envelope was a single sheet of Fitzsimmons & Associates letterhead, a brief note in Fitz's baroque cursive, and a cocktail napkin sealed inside a plastic sandwich bag like evidence from a crime scene. Which, in a way, it was — evidence from the long, slow crime of being Frank Hollister's son.

The note read:

*Counselor — Your father left this with me eighteen months ago with instructions to deliver it to his children upon his passing. He was quite specific. I have honored his wishes. My condolences. — GF*

Greg pulled the sandwich bag closer and examined the napkin. It was from a place called The Loon's Nest — a bar Greg had never heard of — and on it, in his father's unmistakable handwriting (the handwriting of a man who'd spent forty years as a plumbing supply salesman and had never once written a legible invoice), was the following:

*Kids —*
*Scatter me at Little Moosehead Lake. Northern MN. Where I scattered Grandma Bea. Your mother knows. Take the fire tower road.*
*Don't screw this up.*
*— Dad*

Below the text was a drawing. Greg squinted at it. It appeared to be a map, though it could also have been a diagram of a diseased lung or possibly a rendering of Italy drawn from memory by someone who had never been to Italy.

Greg set the napkin down and stared at it for a long time.

He had not known that his father scattered Grandma Bea's ashes anywhere. He had not known there was a Little Moosehead Lake. He had not known his father was the kind of man who made plans — Frank Hollister had been, for the entirety of Greg's memory, the kind of man who sat in a recliner and offered unsolicited commentary on other people's plans.

And yet here it was. A plan. A final wish. Scrawled on a cocktail napkin from a bar that probably didn't exist anymore, sealed in a sandwich bag by a seventy-eight-year-old attorney who still used a rotary phone.

Greg's phone buzzed. Jennifer's attorney.

He looked at the napkin. He looked at the phone. He picked up the phone.

"Hollister."

"Greg, it's Stan. We're ready when you are. Jennifer's in the conference room."

"I'll be right there."

He put the napkin in his briefcase. He straightened his tie again. He walked down the hall to Conference Room B, where his wife of fourteen years was waiting with her attorney and a stack of documents that would divide their life into his and hers columns, and he signed every page without reading the fine print, because he was a divorce lawyer and he already knew what it said.

It said: *This is over.*

Forty-five minutes later, Greg sat in his car in the parking garage and called his mother.

Marjorie Hollister answered on the first ring, which meant she'd been waiting by the phone, which meant she already knew about the napkin, which meant this was all going to be much worse than he thought.

"Gregory."

"Mom."

"Did you get it?"

"I got it."

"Good. What are you going to do about it?"

Greg rubbed his eyes. Through the windshield, he could see the concrete wall of the parking garage, which he found oddly comforting. No ambiguity in a concrete wall. No subtext. Just wall.

"I'm going to need some context, Mom. Dad scattered Grandma Bea's ashes at a lake in Minnesota? When? Why didn't any of us know about this?"

"Your father had his reasons."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the answer you're getting. Now, are you going to do this or not?"

"Do what, exactly? Drive to northern Minnesota with an urn and a napkin that looks like it was drawn by a man having a stroke?"

"That's your father you're talking about."

"I'm aware. I'm also aware that I just signed my divorce papers and I have the Pendergrass custody hearing on Friday and I haven't slept more than four hours a night since Dad died, so forgive me if I'm not leaping at the chance to go on a treasure hunt."

There was a pause. The kind of pause that, if you'd grown up in the Hollister household, you recognized as the calm before something terrible.

"Gregory, listen to me carefully. Your father's last wish is on that napkin. His only wish. He didn't ask for a fancy funeral. He didn't ask for a headstone. He asked for one thing: to be scattered at that lake. And he asked his children to do it. All three of you."

"All three of us."

"All three."

"You want me to get in a car with Lucy and Charlie."

"I want you to get in a car with your sister and your brother, yes."

"Mom, the last time the three of us were in a car together, Charlie set off a Roman candle in the back seat."

"That was six years ago."

"The upholstery never recovered."

"Neither did Thanksgiving, but here we are." Another pause. "Greg, I'm going to tell you something, and I want you to hear me. If you three don't do this — if you don't scatter your father's ashes at that lake within one week — I'm selling the house."

Greg sat up straight. "You're what?"

"Selling the house. The whole thing. I've already talked to a realtor. Linda Buckholz. She says I can get four-fifty in this market."

"Mom, you've lived in that house for forty-two years."

"I'm aware of how long I've lived in my own house, Gregory."

"You can't just — that's our childhood home. Charlie's height marks are on the kitchen doorframe. Lucy's ballet trophies are in the attic. My — I mean, there are things in that house."

"Then I suggest you go scatter your father's ashes."

Greg opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"Are you coming with us?"

"Absolutely not. I've driven to Minnesota with your father once. That was enough for one lifetime."

"So you do know where the lake is."

"I know it exists. I don't know how to find it. That's what the napkin is for." She paused. "One week, Greg. Call your brother and sister."

She hung up.

Greg sat in the parking garage for another ten minutes, staring at the concrete wall. Then he pulled out the napkin and studied it again. The map — if it was a map — showed what appeared to be a road, a body of water shaped like a kidney bean, and a small triangle with a line through it that might have been a fire tower or might have been a Christmas tree or might have been Frank Hollister's way of saying *I have no idea how to draw.*

*Don't screw this up.*

Greg sighed. He pulled up his contacts and scrolled to a name he hadn't called in eight months.

Lucy.

She answered on the fourth ring, sounding exactly like she always sounded — like someone who was doing three things at once and none of them were talking to you.

"Greg. I'm between patients. What is it?"

"Dad left a napkin."

"A what?"

"A cocktail napkin. With instructions. He wants us to scatter his ashes at a lake in Minnesota."

Silence.

"All of us?" Lucy asked.

"All of us. You, me, and Charlie."

"I'm not getting in a car with Charlie."

"Mom's selling the house if we don't."

More silence. Then: "She wouldn't."

"She's already called Linda Buckholz."

"Linda Buckholz is a vulture."

"Be that as it may."

Lucy exhaled. It was the exhale of a woman who had performed over two thousand surgeries, who had held human hearts in her hands, who had told families their loved ones were gone — and who still found her own family to be the most exhausting thing in her life.

"When?" she asked.

"This weekend. We leave Friday morning."

"I have a conference in Boston on Monday."

"Then we'll be back by Sunday night."

"And Charlie?"

"I'll call Charlie."

"Good luck with that. He changed his number again."

"I have his new one. Mom gave it to me at the funeral."

"Of course she did." A pause. "Greg?"

"Yeah?"

"How are you doing? With the divorce and everything?"

The question caught him off guard. Lucy didn't ask how people were doing. Lucy fixed things. She identified problems and she solved them with scalpels and sutures and an efficiency that bordered on mechanical. Asking how someone was doing was, for Lucy, the equivalent of a normal person performing open-heart surgery.

"I'm fine," he said.

"Okay. Friday morning. Don't be late."

She hung up.

Greg scrolled to Charlie's number. He stared at it. He thought about the last time he'd talked to Charlie — really talked, not just exchanged pleasantries at the funeral while standing over their father's casket like two strangers waiting for the same bus.

It had been Thanksgiving, six years ago. The Roman candle incident. Charlie had brought fireworks to dinner because he'd gotten them from "a guy" — Charlie always had a guy — and after three bottles of wine and an argument about whether Greg was "emotionally constipated" (Charlie's words) or whether Charlie was "professionally and personally adrift" (Greg's words), Charlie had lit a Roman candle in the driveway, which had ricocheted off the mailbox and into the open window of the minivan where Lucy was on a work call, which had set fire to the passenger seat and ended Thanksgiving.

Greg had not spoken to Charlie for two years after that. Then they'd settled into a pattern of occasional texts — birthday wishes, holiday greetings, the odd link to an article one of them thought the other might find interesting. Surface-level stuff. The kind of communication that allowed you to technically have a brother without actually having to deal with having a brother.

He pressed call.

Charlie answered immediately, which was unusual. Charlie usually let calls go to voicemail and then texted back three days later with something like "saw you called, what's up" as if time were a suggestion.

"Greggo!"

No one called him Greggo. No one except Charlie.

"Charlie. Did you get the napkin?"

"The napkin! Yes! Dude, this is wild, right? Dad had a whole secret lake? A secret grandma-scattering lake? That's like a movie. That's like a bad movie."

"It's not a movie, Charlie. It's a napkin from a bar, and we need to go to Minnesota this weekend."

"This weekend? I'm kind of in the middle of something."

"What are you in the middle of?"

"I'd rather not say."

"Charlie."

"It's not illegal."

"The fact that you feel the need to specify that concerns me."

"I'm helping a friend move. That's it. That's the whole thing. A friend is moving and I'm helping."

"Can your friend move without you?"

"Probably. He's mostly just got bean bag chairs and aquariums. The guy loves aquariums."

Greg pinched the bridge of his nose. "Mom's selling the house if we don't do this."

"She is not."

"Linda Buckholz."

"Oh, no. Not Buckholz. That woman sold the Petersons' house in three days. Three days, Greg. They didn't even have time to get their cat out."

"I don't think that's true."

"The cat was living in the new people's basement for a month. The Petersons had to negotiate visitation rights. For a cat."

"Charlie. Focus. Friday morning. Mom's house. We're renting a van."

"A van? Like a cool van?"

"Like a rental van. From the airport."

"Can I drive?"

"No."

"Come on."

"You don't have a valid license."

"I have a license. It's just expired. Slightly."

"How slightly?"

"Four years."

"No."

"Fine. But I call shotgun."

"You can't call shotgun three days in advance."

"I just did. It's called. It's done. Shotgun is mine."

Greg closed his eyes. "Friday. Seven a.m. Don't be late."

"Greggo, have I ever let you down?"

"Yes. Constantly. In ways both large and small."

"That's fair. See you Friday."

Charlie hung up.

Greg sat in the parking garage for another five minutes. Then he drove to his apartment — the one-bedroom in Schaumburg that he'd rented after Jennifer asked him to leave, the one with the IKEA furniture and the bare walls and the persistent smell of the previous tenant's cat — and he microwaved a frozen burrito and he sat at his kitchen table and he looked at the cocktail napkin.

*Don't screw this up.*

"Thanks, Dad," he said to the empty apartment. "Very helpful."

The apartment, as usual, did not respond.