Chapter Six
“I’m the world’s worst sister.”
The one person I would ever confide something like that to puts his Clive Cussler novel upside down on his lap, readjusts
the pillow propped up behind him, and lets out a long, patient breath through his nose.
“You? Saint Big? What did you do this time?”
I understand the sarcasm coming from my husband. When he married me, he didn’t bargain on a bonded pair—like those shelter
dogs you have to adopt together. Still, he could handle her. He was patient during extended therapy sessions about the last
boyfriend or the last job or the last existential crisis, even when he was tired after a long day at work. He never complained
about her camping out at our house when she and Ruth were at each other’s throats. And, of course, he agreed to invest in
the store when small businesses were failing all around us.
Tim has a distance from my sister that I’ll never have. He sometimes uses it to declare things are, as he calls it, unbalanced.
I don’t see it that way. Me and Lily are, well, me and Lily. That’s not changing anytime soon.
“I’m letting her down,” I answer, not acknowledging the raised eyebrow and the Saint Big nickname I’ve heard before.
Tim takes off his readers and folds down the corner of his page to mark it. Reading time is over. “I don’t think you are the one who is letting Lily down.”
“My point exactly. First that shit abandons her, and then I do it? She’s threatening to become a polar bear conservationist
on an iceberg! And in her state of mind, she may go through with it. Can you imagine? She’ll be pretty far from a Target and the nail place
on an iceberg. She’ll never survive.”
“She is a grown—” Tim stops himself. He knows better than to finish that thought. Being a forty-one-year-old grown-ass woman
has nothing to do with what Lily needs from me right now. He holds up his hands in surrender. “Okay,” he says instead. “If
you want to follow your sister to Alaska, no one is stopping you. It’s just that the Last Frontier stuff doesn’t really seem
like your thing.”
“You don’t know that.”
He does know that. Wilderness for me means the paved walking path behind the library. “I could if I wanted to,” I huff.
Tim knows he’s touched a nerve. Not the Eldest Daughter Syndrome nerve. That’s old news to me. Lately I’ve had a new nerve
zap me over and over again. I mean, here I am, almost fifty, my kids are grown, my job here is done. I should be on to my
second (or is it third?) act. But what the hell is that? What is my thing? Taking calligraphy and French lessons and Thai cooking classes at the Community Education Society isn’t it. The search continues.
The longer it goes on, the less confidence I have that I’ll find a thing. Motherhood was my thing. Making a home was my thing. Being the eye of the hurricane that is my nuclear family was (okay,
still is) my thing. Maybe that’s all there is.
One thing’s for sure, traipsing around in the wild isn’t exactly at the top of my bucket list. Of course, Lily did promise this guided tour would be one step away from a cruise.
Isn’t a cruise all comfy staterooms, and beautiful scenery, and copious amounts of food?
That, I can manage. And while I never like to admit that Lily might be right (I’m the one who’s always right, damn it), an adventure could be exactly what I need too.
“If it’s what you want to do, if you want to take a spur-of-the-moment trip to keep an eye on your sister, no one here is
going to stop you, Bridget. We’ll be perfectly fine without you.”
That hurts. Even if Tim is trying to make things easier for me to give myself permission to go. No one, especially no one
who has spent every waking minute at this job, wants to be told she isn’t needed. Which is what I heard.
“Just promise me you aren’t going be a full-time babysitter. Promise me you’ll have some fun. There’s got to be some joy to
be had hacking through the jungle with a machete while you’re eaten by frog-size bugs.”
“It’s Alaska, not the , Tim. Consult your atlas.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m kidding. Seriously, hon, good for you. Spontaneity plus adventure isn’t normally in your dictionary.”
Maybe I do need to leave and let everyone fend for themselves for a minute. Let them get a taste of their own medicine, which
I’ve been mixing in pudding to make it all more palatable for them. Screw it. Why shouldn’t I have some of that freedom Lily’s
so used to? See what it’s like to feel untethered? To rip up my to-do list. To run free, not run errands. If only for a week.
Yes, yes, my grieving sister will be there. I’ll have to save her from running off with a fur trapper or being caught in an
avalanche. There’s no saying this can’t be one of those two-birds-with-one-stone situations.