The Epilogue
I’m all grown up when he leaves the next time. And walking right by his side.
With Daniel’s hand clasped in my left and the tickets in my right, we excitedly bid our familias farewell at the airport gate with long hugs and tearful promises to call and to write whenever we could.
And we do. We both do. For all the time we spend traveling, we send postcards full of details from every destination, call whenever we land somewhere new, pack stamp-laden envelopes full of photos so they can see for themselves that the two of us really are doing just fine. Better than fine.
In the pictures, Daniel is always smiling as if he never knew a time when he didn’t. His dimpled grin is wide, his eyes crinkling at the edges, his head tilted in my direction. He keeps an arm around my shoulders as I wrap my own around his waist and grin, try to remember to look at the camera instead of at him. But seeing him increasingly happy and at ease is forever my favorite sight of all the ones we see.
Where once I used to only catch glimpses of that part of him, I now find it all the time. Someone who is quick to laugh and to gently tease. Who is increasingly less wary to be caught in conversation with strangers now that he has things he wants to talk about. Who sits and plans a future with me instead of trying to outrun a past on his own.
Before the two of us packed our bags at the end of the summer of ‘95, Daniel and I had decided on eighteen months. Eighteen months of traveling down a list built from all the places we both marked out with thumbtacks on his maps, carefully calculating a route that would be funded by some of Daniel’s savings as well as a portion of my own.
Strange how by the time I finally had the means to leave on my own terms, I was as worried over what I was missing at home as I was over what I was missing away from it. No longer so sure that everything would be the same as I left it when I return.
A good thing. Because neither am I.
With each new place I come to know, I get to know myself better, too. With each part of the world I see, I see the place I want to occupy in it more clearly. And so does he.
Eventually, more and more conversations turn from where we will go next to what we want when we get there, to the life we will build when we do. Until the moment comes when we both decide once again that we have already waited long enough…only to have to wait a bit longer.
Almost two years to the day after Daniel came home, we sit side by side on the edge of the small tub in our hotel bathroom. Two pairs of eyes trained on his watch as we both will the seconds to tick by faster, my fingers playing anxiously with the gold wedding band on his left hand so that I won’t reach for the small plastic test on the counter too soon.
“You ready, Isabel?” he asks me the moment three minutes have passed, the excitement visibly thrumming off him at the idea of confirming what we both already suspect.
I nod, tears already brimming even before I shakily stand and reveal to him the two pink lines that will cross through more than a few of the remaining places on our list. Although judging by the beaming smiles on both of our faces right before he scoops me up, neither of us have any regrets.
And we never do.