5. Five
I almost pace the skin off my feet in the living room while waiting for the kids to get home from school. My latest display puts the morning of t-shirts to shame.
Finn’s Jeep tires crunch over the gravel driveway followed by the sounds of doors opening and closing along with Marin’s muffled, cheery voice. My throat is bone dry, but there’s no time for water. I only have seconds.
I eye the wall—the whole scene looks like something from a suspense movie where the lead investigator gets so obsessed with finding a killer that he destroys his house with pinned-up pictures of the victims and crime scenes. Instead of crime scenes, I have landscape photos, and instead of victim statistics, there are distance calculations.
The door opens.
Here they are.
Speechless.
I swear five whole years pass in the silence that follows.
Marin drops her backpack instantly, walking to the wall. Finn looks at me hesitantly, eyebrows pinched, then wanders over behind her.
Marin’s eyes are wide as they bounce between me and the highlighted map that takes up most of the wall. “Mom? What is all this?”
I drink the entire glass of water I forgot I was holding as moisture puddles in my armpits.
“I went in the old camper,” I say, like that explains everything.
They blink, confused.
I shake my head and try again. “I went in the camper, the one Dad bought before… before. I don’t know if you knew, but he started doing work on it. He never really talked to me about it, probably because I told him over my dead body would I ever sleep in it because it was so creepy. But he made it... better. It’s not finished, of course, but it’s close. Then I found this map.” I point to the wall. “And those notes,” I nod toward the small scraps of notebook paper pinned next to it. “Your dad was planning a trip. For us.” I fumble with my braid in my fingers. “I thought maybe we should take it. We could spend the summer going to these ridiculous places he picked out for us. I just thought we had so much fun talking about him last night and looking at his shirts today, and Marin, you did suggest a vacation…”
The silence is heavy as I spin my wedding band around my finger.
“I scheduled it out. We could take ten weeks to see it all and still get back in time for you to have a week here before school starts. And I know that’s a whole summer away from your friends. I know what I’m asking.” I pin my eyes to Finn. “Finn, you’re going into your senior year next year, and this is our last big shot to do something like this. And I know that might sound awful, being trapped in an old camper with your sad mom and little sister for ten weeks, but I think I might need you to do this for me. I think my heart won’t survive if we don’t try. He wanted this, and I don’t know how to be anything right now without him guiding me. I don’t want to be the mom that freaked out at her husband’s funeral and never recovered.”
There’s a desperation I feel at the tip of every nerve ending in my pause.
They eye the wall again.
“And we don’t have to only go to the places he wanted. We can choose our own adventures, too. God knows ten weeks of his kind of weird might drive us all insane.” I laugh under my breath with the final words.
“Ten weeks, Mom?” Finn rubs his finger down the bridge of his nose. “I have baseball!”
“All summer? Who needs that much practice?” I laugh, he doesn’t. “I mean, I can call the coach and see what he says…”
He ignores me, arguing further, “And I wanted to get scuba certified!”
“That one’s easy. Someone has that course offered almost every weekend. We can sign you up for one in August.”
I smile, hopeful.
With his hands held out, frustration fills his voice. “What will I even tell Abby?”
Marin groans and drops her head back. “Oh my God, Finn. Abby?”
Who the hell is Abby?
“I don’t know what you see in her besides her boobs. Which, big deal,” Marin says, rolling her eyes.
I scrunch my nose. “What are we talking about here?”
“My girlfriend? Abby?” He says it like I’m an idiot, but I’m too consumed with the fact my son has a girlfriend that I didn’t know about to care about his shitty attitude.
“Abby…” My voice trails off, wondering what advice I can give about a girlfriend I found out about three seconds ago. “I’m sure she will understand.”
I am actually not sure she will understand because I have no clue who she is.
How long have they been together?
What does she look like?
Is she nice?
Oh. My. God.
Are they having sex?
My stomach drops to where my bare feet meet the cool tile floor beneath me. For the life of me, I cannot remember if Travis talked to him about how to be safe when it came time. The thoughts spiraling inside of me have the force of a hurricane and threaten to wipe me out in the middle of the living room.
Finn points a frustrated hand toward the map. “Marin, you seriously want to do this?”
“A ten-week road trip, and we can go anywhere we want? Are you kidding me? Of course, I do, Finny! This is something people talk about doing when they retire. We are just teenagers, and mom’s paying. It will make us cool and worldly.”
Her vintage skirt floats through the air as she twirls theatrically.
Finn rubs a finger on the bridge of his nose again, squeezing his eyes shut before blowing out a long breath.
“Can’t you go without me? I can stay with Grandpa and Poppy. Or Uncle Gabe!”
The words hit like a wrecking ball. Not only does he not want to go, he wants us to go and him to stay. Ten weeks away from each other? I’m not sure if I want to cry or scream.
The entire island of Key Largo might pity me, but my son does not. If anything, he has taken whatever the opposite sentiment is and then gone a step further.
My jaw clenches. “No.”
I barely recognize the hard edge in my own voice.
Marin sucks in a breath, and there’s turmoil in Finn’s eyes. A thick quiet hangs in the air between us, but I refuse to look away first.
His shoulders sag as he shakes his head, muttering, “If you don’t care if we want to do this or not, why are you even asking?”
I almost choke on the frustrating anger that burns through me.
“Ignore him, Mom. This is going to be great!” Marin says.
Then, like her brother and I aren’t one breath away from triggering the start of World War III, she pokes him in the ribs and makes him chuckle through a groan in a way that defuses the situation just enough.
We stare at the map, and I let out a long exhale.
“We have three months to plan. I thought we could start by writing down places we want to go and see how they align with what your dad already wrote.”
Marin sits cross-legged and eager on the floor by a whiteboard with the marker as Finn flops heavily on the couch.
I raise a suspicious eyebrow at him.
“I can’t let Marin come up with every stop, or it’ll be ten weeks of vintage stores and weird art galleries. If you’re forcing me to do this, I’m making sure it isn’t a total waste.”
He rolls his eyes in annoyance but props his feet up on the coffee table.
I bite back a smile. Because, dammit, if this doesn’t feel like the slightest bit of a win.
By dinner, there is an explosion of lists over every flat surface and sticky notes all over the map.
“What about the bar, Mom? Does Grandpa know about this idea?” Marin asks between bites of pizza.
“Funny story,” I say, not thinking it’s funny at all. “Grandpa told me yesterday he wasn’t letting me work this summer because I needed to fix myself.” With my confession, I pivot. “I’m going to ask Gabe to teach Finn and me to drive the camper. Your dad’s life insurance paid off the rest of the mortgage. The money also let me set aside accounts to pay for your college, and the rest I put in savings for… whatever.” I pull stretchy cheese strings off my pizza. “Ten weeks of seeing things we’ve never seen before seems like a pretty good reason to spend it.”
Marin and I study the wall of chaos in front of us as Finn hammers out a text on his phone.
“So, Finn.” I wipe my mouth. “I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.”
“Yep,” he says, popping the p without looking at me.
“Are you guys—you know—serious? Or doing serious things?” I ask as nonchalantly as possible.
Marin snorts into her cup.
“Yeah, we aren’t having this conversation.” He stands up without looking at me. “I have homework.”
“Right. Of course. Goodnight. Thanks for doing this.”
I smile but know it does nothing to hide my disappointment.
He’s already down the hall, the too-familiar sound of his door closing landing heavy on my chest.
“He’ll come around, Mom,” Marin says softly.
My eyes burn as my stomach sinks. The boy I had put Band-Aids on and read picture books to looks at me like a stranger. Hell, maybe I am. It’s a reality I’m not prepared for.
Travis died and time kept going, but I had stood still. For the first time in a year, I feel an emotion I hadn’t before.
Ashamed.
Ashamed, I’ve been so lost in my own grief I didn’t pay close enough attention to these two amazing creatures that live right under the same roof as me.
I look back at the map. This will either be the thing that breaks us for good or the one that stitches us back together.