8. Eight
“How are you so calm?!” Barely awake, I’m already stress sweating.
Finn strolls into the kitchen and leans on the counter coolly as Marin and I fly around the house like hummingbirds jacked up on too much caffeine.
“Mom, we’ve been planning this for three months, and I’ve watched you go through your crazy checklists five hundred times. What is there to do?”
He pours a cup of coffee, and I freeze mid-flip of the pages of my list-filled notebook.
“You drink coffee?” I ask, stunned as he grimaces with the first sip.
He shrugs.
“Yes, though typically not the kind that tastes like piss.”
“It does not,” I scoff defensively, too shocked to say anything else.
He raises his eyebrows as if saying, does too, and casually shakes his hair out of his face.
I don’t respond, only staring at him a beat longer. Finn drinks coffee; yet another thing I missed.
“Mom! Let’s go!”
Marin’s voice pulls me from my thoughts.
Through shaking hands, my heart pounding like a drumbeat, and multiple attempts at talking myself out of it, I get into the driver’s seat and point the Avion north.
“We’re doing it, guys!” I bounce on the bead-covered driver’s seat as we cross the bridge to the mainland. “We’re going on an adventure! Six hours to Tarpon Springs, where we can eat the best Greek food outside of Greece and see sponges straight out of the water.”
Marin and Finn are silent, staring out the windows from the dinette table in the back.
Six hours turn into eight when I realize we are driving through the Everglades and insist on stopping at the same ridiculous attraction we went to years before with Travis. To the surprise of no one, the prices are still too high, the mosquitoes are still hungry assholes, and a shirtless man feeding raw chicken to alligators still isn’t impressive.
The t-shirts we buy are just as absurd.
***
After five horrible attempts, I still can’t get the Avion backed straight in our spot at the campground.
Finn shakes his head, frustrated in the reflection of my side mirror.
“Mom, get out and let me do this. Didn’t Uncle Gabe show you how to back up?”
Annoyed, I do as he says, irritated as he backs in perfectly on his first try with a smug smile on his face.
Once we’re set up—attaching cords, hoses, and pulling out a few chairs—we only have a couple hours to explore the small town of Tarpon Springs. We walk by piles of sponges that line the docks fresh from the water and eat the best baklava I’ve ever had. A street performer plays lonely songs on a violin that Marin twirls to as we wander down the sidewalk after dinner. Finn keeps his eyes on his phone and any other day, it would annoy me, but today I’m just happy we made it.
When we get back to the camper, the rush of adrenaline from the day is gone and leaves me exhausted.
Marin pulls out a deck of cards.
“Rummy?” she asks, shuffling them.
Finn nods and takes the seat across from her. I shake my head with a yawn.
“I’m tired,” I say, dropping kisses on their heads.
“Night, Mom,” Marin says, dealing the cards. “Love you.”
“Love you guys.”
Finn lifts his chin. The closest thing I’ll get to love you, too from him tonight.
Inside, I bumble through a quick shower in the too-tiny bathroom and climb the ladder up to my coffin-like loft bed. When I pull the little curtain closed, I breathe a sigh of relief.
We did it.
I smile until I realize I’m spinning my wedding band. I slide it off my finger, the faint light from the window reflecting off the shiny gold.
It weighs you down like an anchor.
I reach into the small space between the mattress and the wall and grab the box my dad gave me.
“Travis,” I say out loud, snapping my mouth shut instantly at the sound.
Wrapping my fingers into a tight fist around the ring, it feels like holding my own heart in my hand.
“Travis, I’m talking to you. I know you aren’t here, I know that, but along with everything else you were, my best friend was a big one. And, you know, your job as my best friend is to listen, so here we are. Me lying in the cramped bed of a camper you bought while I talk to you when you aren’t actually here. So that’s how I’m doing…” I laugh under my breath, closing my eyes to let the next words come out in an unfiltered stream of consciousness. “We are going on the trip you planned. Or kind of planned. And I let the kids pick some of the stops, and we decorated the camper to match the 70s time period. Can you believe you can still buy shag carpet? Leave it to Marin to be able to find it.”
I smile but my throat burns, cracking my voice.
“Dammit, Travis, I still miss you so much it physically hurts. I miss you so much, over a year went by, and I couldn’t tell you much of anything that happened until we started working on the camper. I might as well have been on that plane with you because I’m a ghost in my skin. Like a Travis-sized piece of me is missing. And since you were bigger than me, I guess that means I’ve just been missing.”
I swipe at my eyes as I stare at the too-low ceiling above my face.
The words I want to say next feel like they might split me in two, but I know I have to say them, anyway. I have to move forward and telling him is the only way I know how to start.
“I don’t want the kids to remember me this way. I want to be normal. Happy. I want to go to farmers markets and scream over the seasonal fruit or the smell of herbs. I want to laugh when I make a cocktail. I want the kids to want to be around me. I know the only way I’ll be able to do that is if I stop letting your absence consume every second of every day.
“Finn told me I miss you out loud and look for you everywhere, and God, if that kid doesn’t see me better than I see myself sometimes.
“I’m going to put your ring on this necklace so I can stop looking for you everywhere we go. I’m going to have fun with them and buy stupid t-shirts and make memories that are only ours, even though they are because of you. I love you, Travis Crawford. Thank you for loving us so much it hurts.”
Before I change my mind, I slip the ring on the chain and fasten it around my neck.
As the kids laugh outside, I cry every tear my body can make until I finally fall asleep.