By seven-thirty Thursday morning, eleven pieces of my life had been cut off my backpack, and the man sleeping in my bed acted as if he’d handed out leftover pizza.
Chapter 2
The first patch came home that evening in a sandwich bag.
Chris stood outside my apartment looking so ashamed that I almost felt sorry for him. He was one of the few people Jake and I both knew well, and I’d seen him at cookouts, football parties, and birthdays. He held out the plastic bag with both hands.
Inside were two patches, their edges surrounded by loose black thread.
“I’m really sorry,” he said. “I should’ve known better.”
One was from a concert in Chicago. The other had been a gift from my sister after she moved to Arizona.
Neither was one of Dad’s.
I swallowed my disappointment and let Chris inside.
“Tell me what happened.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “After you went to sleep, more people came over. Somebody noticed the bag by the couch. Nolan said he’d never seen one like it. Jake told us you collected patches and that you had tons.”
“Then what?”
“He said people could take some if they wanted.”
“Did anyone ask where I was?”
Chris looked down.
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“Jake said you wouldn’t care.”
I closed my eyes.
Chris continued quietly. “Ben had a pocketknife. He used that. I thought it was strange because…I mean, they were sewn on. Obviously.”
That detail hurt more than I expected.
Nobody had simply picked up loose patches from a table. They had to hold my backpack still, slide a blade beneath the stitches, and cut each piece away. The violation required effort. It required time.
And my boyfriend had watched.
Chris gave me Nolan’s number and promised to contact another man whose last name I didn’t know. Before leaving, he apologized again.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” he said.
“I appreciate you bringing them back.”
“I feel like an idiot.”
“You should.”
He nodded. “Fair.”
After he left, I called my sister, Rachel.
By the time I finished telling her what happened, she was crying almost as hard as I was.
“Dad’s mountain patch?” she whispered.
“Gone.”
“Oh, Em.”
Rachel remembered that patch. We both did. Dad had kept it on an old canvas hiking bag for decades. When I was fourteen, I’d admired it, and he’d promised I could have it someday. On my sixteenth birthday, he cut it off himself, carefully, then handed it to me.
“Your story now,” he’d said.
I could still hear his voice.
Rachel wanted to drive over immediately, but she lived ninety minutes away and had two grandchildren staying with her for the week. I told her I was all right.
That was a lie, but sometimes love means giving people one less emergency.
Later, I texted Jake.
I need the four patches Dad gave me back. Please contact everyone tonight.
His answer arrived eleven minutes later.
I said I’d handle it this weekend.
No apology.
No “I’m sorry you’re hurting.”
No “I screwed up.”
Just irritation that I was requesting urgency.
I called two close friends, hoping somebody would tell me I wasn’t losing my mind. Instead, I got versions of the same response.
“You’ve only been dating six months,” one said. “Maybe don’t blow everything up over a backpack.”
“It’s sentimental, I get that,” the other told me. “But they’re patches. Can’t you replace them?”
Replace them.
People use that word easily when the thing being replaced isn’t theirs.
You can buy another plate after your grandmother’s china breaks. You can print another photograph after the original burns. You can purchase another copy of the book your husband wrote a note inside before he died.
The replacement might look the same.
It isn’t the same.
By Friday afternoon, Nolan called me.
“I have two,” he said. “Chris told me you’re really upset.”
“I am.”
“One might be from your dad.”
I stood up so quickly my chair scraped across the floor.
“What does it look like?”
“Blue background. Kind of a white building?”
One of the museum patches.
My hand flew to my mouth.
“Please don’t lose it.”
“I won’t. I’ll bring it Saturday.”
“Why did you take it?”
Silence.
Finally, he said, “Jake made it sound like they weren’t important.”
“But you cut it off my bag.”
“I know.”
“Did that not seem strange?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why did you do it?”
Another silence.
“Honestly? We’d been drinking. Everybody was laughing. Jake said it was fine.”
There it was again.
Jake said it was fine.
By Saturday morning, I’d found the names of the remaining men through social media. One answered quickly and apologized. Another ignored me for hours, then finally replied after Chris contacted him. The last one wrote back:
Jake gave it to me. Talk to him.
I stared at that sentence until anger replaced grief.
No.
I had spent too much of my life avoiding confrontation. I apologized when people bumped into me at grocery stores. I let coworkers interrupt me during meetings, then told myself it wasn’t worth making an issue of it. When somebody hurt my feelings, I usually waited until I was alone before admitting I’d been hurt.
Dad had teased me about it.
“You don’t have to earn the right to take up space, kiddo,” he’d said once.
I remembered those words while staring at the message.
Then I typed:
Jake did not own the backpack or anything attached to it. You have property taken from my home without my permission. One of those patches may have belonged to my late father. I am asking you directly to return it.
The man answered twenty minutes later.
Fine.
Something changed inside me then.
Not dramatically. There was no sudden burst of courage, no movie-moment transformation.
I simply stopped worrying about whether the people who had wronged me were comfortable.
By Sunday night, six patches were back.
Three of Dad’s four had returned.
The mountain patch was still missing.
And Jake had still not apologized.
Instead, he sent:
Are you seriously messaging everybody I know?
I called him.
“Yes.”
“You’re embarrassing me.”
“You invited people into my home after I went to sleep and gave away my belongings.”
“I said I’d fix it.”
“You didn’t. I’m fixing it.”
“You’re making me look like some kind of monster.”
“No, Jake. I’m telling people what you did.”
“Same thing.”
That answer told me more than any apology could have.
I sat at my kitchen table looking at the recovered patches lined up in front of me. Some had frayed edges. One had a small nick from the knife. They looked wounded.
So did the backpack.
So did I.
But for the first time since Thursday morning, my thoughts felt clear.
“I don’t want to see you anymore,” I said.
There was a pause.
“You’re breaking up with me over a backpack.”
“No.”
I looked at the empty place where Dad’s old mountain patch had been.
“I’m breaking up with you because you think that’s what this is about.”
