Out of the Woods

Chapter Nineteen Day Four of Reignite

Nineteen

Day Four of Reignite

It’s been a much more relaxing hike today than the rest of the week so far. We’re walking downhill with lower temperatures and under overcast skies, keeping most of the bugs at bay—and the sweat too. Before we set off this morning, Caleb had asked if I’d mind him ditching me to walk with Kieran and Henry since he wanted to pick their brains about their business some more. Since I’m totally in favor of Caleb making some changes at Focal, I agreed. I’d walk with Nina, but she is with Helen for a one-on-one session. Jai is talking sports with Phil while Maggie and Yvonne chat up ahead, their expressions concentrated and somber. So, that leaves me in the company of my favorite ten-year-old.

“Are you excited to go home soon, or will you miss it out here?” I ask Libby, sidestepping some particularly dense moss that looks as if it could be supporting an entire fairy colony.

She levels me with a scowl-like stare but there’s a hint of an almost smile. “You’ve got to be joking…”

“C’mon, it’s not that bad.”

“Well, I’m not going to miss the bugs,” she answers, swatting away a blackfly with a disgusted frown. “But it’s been better than I thought it would be…I guess. I miss my friends though.”

“I’ve missed my bed,” I say longingly. “It is pretty much my favorite place on earth.”

Her laugh is bittersweet. “My mom used to say that all the time.”

I instinctively turn toward her, wanting to read her expression. This is the first time Libby’s brought up her mother in the past week and I’d begun to wonder if she ever would. I do my best to not fumble my words or act overly interested, but I’ve never been known to play it cool. “Yeah?”

“She had this humongous bed. Like I could lay sideways on it and stretch out my hands above my head and not even touch the sides. She named her bed Clive and said he was the only man she’d ever truly loved.”

I immediately decide that I would have gotten along with Libby’s mom. “Humongous…that’s a great word. And your mom sounds very funny.”

“I miss her bed,” she says, shortly followed by a rueful sigh.

A memory of one Christmas morning plays in my mind as Libby’s words settle in the warm morning air between us. I was probably six or maybe seven. I’d woken up, unsure of the time but knowing it was too early for presents and drifted toward my mom’s bedroom. The hallway was dimly lit by the light of the Christmas tree and the moon coming through broken kitchen blinds. My mom was half-awake when she smiled toward me and lifted her blankets so I could slot myself under them to cuddle in next to her.

Without a word spoken between us, we ended up wrapped around one another, our matching fuzzy-pajamaed limbs all tangled together. I remember thinking that she was so warm and comforting, like a towel fresh from the dryer after a bath. I burrowed into her chest and breathed in the familiar lavender scent that she’d always spray on her pillows before going to bed. We slept like that, completely intertwined, until Win eventually woke up and came to jump on us both, yelling that she couldn’t wait another minute to open gifts. I hopped out of bed to help her wake up Aunt June, bursting with my own excitement and leaving my mom’s embrace without a second thought.

I wish I could tell that little girl that there was not a single gift under any tree that would ever be as good as lying next to her mom that morning.

“I miss my mom’s bed too,” I say, my words coming in slow.

“Grandma told me that your mom died,” Libby says matter-of-factly, catching me off guard. “She said maybe I could talk to you about it…if I wanted to.”

“Do you want to?” I ask.

“I don’t know anyone else with a dead mom.”

“Okay, well, we can talk about it if you’d like…but I can sometimes get emotional about it. As long as that’s okay with you.”

Libby nods. “Were you a kid when she died?”

Yes, is my gut reaction, though it’s not entirely accurate. Or, at all accurate. “I was nineteen but she had been sick for a while before then.”

“My mom wasn’t sick.”

“No?” I ask. “It must have been pretty sudden, then.”

“She had an accident at work.”

“That’s so hard,” I say, coming to the disheartening realization that, despite my desperation to help somehow, there isn’t much else I can say. You’d think I’d have some sort of comforting words of wisdom to share after all these years, but is there anything you could say to a young girl who lost their mother that would truly help? “I imagine it would feel very scary that way…to lose someone without warning like that.”

“Grandma H told me that when people die unexpectedly, we have a hard time believing it happened. Like, our brains tell us that they’ll come back or something.”

“Is that how you feel?” I ask.

“Not really…” she says, her eyebrows twisting together. “I know she’s not coming back because everything changed so fast. I came home from school the day she died, and it was like my whole life was different. I moved in with my grandmas and had to change schools and switched dance teams and…I don’t know. I just know she’s not here. But sometimes, when I first wake up in the morning, I’ll forget that she’s not—” Her voice breaks the tiniest amount before it drifts off entirely.

“I love when I dream about my mom, but it hurts waking up and realizing she’s still gone,” I say, hoping that she hears my meaning. I understand, I know how hard it is to lose her over and over again.

“Does it hurt less? After time?” Libby asks, her normally cynical eyes searching mine with a youthfulness I’d yet to see from her. I slow my steps, looking down at her with a wistful smile as I pull together my best answer. I don’t want to lie to her, but I don’t want to scare her either.

“Yeah, I think so. Not because the pain changes. We just get stronger, I think. We have to keep trying to get stronger, at least.” That last part is an in-the-moment realization. In the same way I’d not properly prepared my body for this hike, I’d also not been giving my brain what it needed to strengthen over the past decade. That is what I’m going to do differently from now on.

“But it still hurts?” Libby asks, her lips twitching into a frown. “Even though you’re old?”

Well, first of all, I’m young according to your grandmother and when measured against Vera Wang or Julia Child or… I scrunch up my nose and nod, my crooked smile acting as an unspoken apology.

“That sucks.”

It most certainly does. “You’re already very, very strong, Libby.”

“I know,” she says quietly, stepping over a fallen branch.

I smile to myself, happy to hear her confidence, even if it’s softly spoken. I’m glad to know that the two women charged with raising her from now on will stoke that strength and confidence as she continues to grow. That, perhaps, she won’t find herself at thirty-one filled with regrets and missed opportunities because of a festering, internal wound she never found the strength to face.

But, a kinder, newer part of my psyche whispers, it would be okay if she did…Because she doesn’t have to be all right. She just has to try again tomorrow.

And the new, kind voice soothes me some. I invite it to stay a while.

“What do you miss most about her?” I ask, stepping onto a footbridge over a gently flowing creek.

“I don’t know….” Libby says, a touch sassy as if she’d intended to throw the word duh in there but forgot at the last possible second. “She was my mom.”

Those four simple words from a child’s point of view encapsulate perfectly the feelings I’ve spent most of my adult life wrestling with. “So…everything?” I ask, smiling softly.

“Yeah,” Libby says, or, rather, she sighs. “She was my best friend. I didn’t really know that before.”

My heart squeezes as if there’s a fist tightening around it and threatening to tug it out. She is too young— far too young—to know this kind of loss. Ten-year-olds shouldn’t have any regrets other than accidentally calling their principal Dad or sitting on someone’s lap on the bus by accident…not that I did either of those things…. “What was your mom’s name?” I ask.

“Everyone called her Gin…but her real name was Virginia.”

“Gin is a pretty badass name,” I say, smirking in the way my aunt used to after swearing or telling me something she really shouldn’t have when I was a kid. The smirk that made me feel so special, and cool, and adult-like. “Would you want to tell me about her?”

Libby smiles shyly, but without any hesitation, begins talking a mile a minute, as if she’s been not-so-patiently waiting for the chance to answer that exact question.

For the next hour of our hike, Libby tells me about her mom, and, when she asks, I tell her about mine too. I share a story about my mom accidentally cutting three eyes into a sheet for a last-minute ghost costume for Win. How I adopted my mom’s love for Halloween and how throwing a party every year has become a way for me to feel close to her. Libby tells me she and her mother loved going to the movies together. That they’d always race to finish their popcorn before the movie started in order to get a free refill without missing any of the show.

I suggested that maybe her special way of remembering her mom could be going to the movies and stuffing her face with popcorn. She liked that idea.

Our conversation came to a natural end as we reached the campsite. Libby hugged me before running off in search of her grandmother to tell her about the popcorn and movie idea. Despite the hug being one of the shortest I’ve ever received, it was also one of the best I’ve ever gotten.

We hugged without resolution. There was no bow tied neatly around our conversation. No clean-cut answers. Just a mutual understanding that the pain would always exist but that we’d be a little stronger tomorrow. That, maybe, I’d helped her some.

—

“Okay, let’s go around the circle and share what we wrote down,” Helen says, smiling as she sits cross-legged in the crotch of a giant maple tree with the rest of us in a U formation around her.

This afternoon’s journal prompt was “What is the hill you will die on?” Meaning, what are we unwilling to compromise on in our relationship moving forward.

Caleb is to my left with his hand resting on my thigh. He’s not been able to keep his eyes or hands off of me since last night and I feel lit up from the inside out, basking in the warmth of his attention.

One by one, we go around the circle. With every answer, I notice Caleb becoming more and more agitated. Just at the point where I’m starting to get concerned enough to check in with him, I notice that he’s dropped his hand and is tapping the pen against his journal page. A fresh journal page. Is he changing his answer? Had he not written anything down?

“Are you okay?” I whisper.

“Sarah,” Helen says, nodding at me with a warm smile. “Would you like to share next?”

I glance between Helen and Caleb, both to my left. Caleb is blushing and I’m not sure how to help, other than take the attention off him.

“Yeah, sure, yes…” I look down at my journal. “I think, for me, the only thing I’d ever be unwilling to compromise on moving forward is kids. I don’t want to have children…and that would be an automatic end for me, if my partner felt otherwise. Anything else…I think I’d be willing to have a conversation about.”

“Okay, thank you,” Helen says, then turns her face to Caleb, studying his nervous expression. “As a reminder, we can keep our answers private….” My husband would perhaps keep his answer private if someone else had also asked but since he is last to go and every other person took their turn—he’ll feel obligated to as well. “Caleb?”

“Sorry, right, uh…” Caleb laughs disjointedly, his thumb scratching at his hairline. “I think I maybe…Well, actually, I definitely misunderstood the assignment,” he says, his eyes flicking to mine with a weary, self-deprecating glance.

I reach over into his lap, curiosity getting the better of me, and turn the page back one to find his list. His long list. But thankfully for my nerves, it isn’t much to do with our relationship at all.

What I find instead is…well, it’s very Caleb. I cannot help but laugh, though I attempt to stifle it with my forearm, faking a cough.

“Some help you are,” Caleb whispers out of the side of his mouth.

My quiet giggling turns to breathless laughter. “I can’t—” I reply, struggling. “You’re on your own with this….”

Helen, visibly confused, leans toward Caleb’s journal and takes a peek for herself at the very full page. “Oh,” she says, pushing her lips together to prevent a smile from growing. “That’s all right, Caleb.” She croons his name sweetly.

“I’m sorry, I was a little”—Caleb’s heated gaze lands on my thighs as his cheeks continue to redden—“distracted.”

Despite my bubbling laughter, my chin lifts with pride from being a distraction. This is just like chemistry class and the Bunsen burner all over again. Except this time, no one will leave with a scar…I hope.

“Put us out of our misery, mate,” Jai says, grinning.

“All right,” Caleb answers, then clears his throat. “For the record, I agree with my wife. On the kids thing…But I thought this was more of a general prompt. More like—”

“What hill would you die on?” I interrupt, reading the heading from the top of Caleb’s page. “Number one,” I read.

“Number one,” Caleb repeats, loudly, tilting his journal away from my view. “ Deep Space Nine is the superior Star Trek series.”

“Oh, honey…” Maggie says softly, bringing a hand to her face to cover her laugh.

“Number two. If you put Kelly Clarkson on any season of American Idol, she’d still have won.” That one gets Phil going. He buries his face in his hands as his shoulders start shaking with laughter.

“Number three—”

“I don’t think you need to—” Helen interrupts.

“Please, Helen, he’s doing the work, ” Jai says in fake earnest, a hand splayed across his chest.

“Number three,” Caleb repeats, beginning to smile. “There are so many things we could have gotten rid of to help the environment before ousting plastic straws. Paper straws are a sensory nightmare.”

“That was a passionate one,” Phil says between boisterous chuckles, nodding. “Really getting fired up now,” he adds.

Caleb shakes his head with a dry laugh and closes the journal. “Uh-uh! Not so fast! Number four,” I say, taking his journal, forcing a steady breath as I fight off another wave of laughter. “It’s fucked up that people keep birds as pets.”

“So true,” Nina says, snapping her fingers. Jai, however, somberly whispers, “My nan kept birds…I loved them.”

“Okay, okay,” Caleb says, snatching his journal back. “That’s enough.”

I bite my lip as he glares at me playfully, chewing his tongue as it presses against the inside of his cheek. It’s a look that, if I’m not mistaken, says You’re gonna get it. And god I hope that’s true.

“Now that we’ve had our fun…” Helen says, looking our way with a warm smile, “I think we should end our morning with some breathing exercises before we go spend quality time with our partners.”

After Helen guides us through a few quick meditations we all go our separate ways. I slip my hand into Caleb’s as we head toward our tent. “Let’s ditch these and go for a walk?” I ask, holding my journal out in front of us. “Or should we keep reading about these hills of yours?”

Caleb’s jaw ticks, a wicked smirk appearing. “If you think for a second that you’re getting away with that…”

I melt at the sternness in his tone, my thighs going wobbly for a split second. “Oh, are we fighting again?” I feign disappointment as we reach the tent’s entrance. “Such a shame. We were doing so well…” Caleb bends forward to unzip it, snatches my journal from my hand, and carelessly tosses both of our books inside without a second glance. “It’s not my fault you couldn’t—”

“Couldn’t focus?” he says, cutting me off as he stands far too close and far too tall over me. Caleb moves his hand to my wrist, tightening his hold before tugging me closer. He keeps his face straight, as if he’s looking over my shoulder. His chin next to the space above my ear, he whispers, “It is precisely your fault that I couldn’t focus, and you know it. You put on those shorts to torture me, so don’t pretend otherwise.”

“And?” I whisper. “What are you going to do about it?”

He steps away, shrugging a shoulder and smiling coolly as if he didn’t just whisper me to half an orgasm. “Let’s go for a walk,” he says, innocently enough, as he lowers his hand to mine and begins pulling me away from camp.