The Last Road Trip (OTT Shorts #5)

1. Chapter 1

Harriet

Kwemby:

Bring back stories.

He always knows how to cut through my anxieties, reminding me exactly why I’m doing this.

Me:

Will try to find something interesting to report. Might be tough with this crowd, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to give it a shot.

I pause for a second, my thumb hovering over the screen before continuing.

Me:

How’s the new diner coming along?

Kwemby and I have been friends for thirty years, which is five years longer than Buck and I have been married.

During all this time, Kwemby and I have sent occasional life updates via text and have the rare lunch together at least once a year.

We’ve been careful not to step past any boundaries, because I’m married.

His reply comes a minute later.

Kwemby:

Got good bones. Roof leaks in the kitchen. Floor is drying though. You’d be proud.

My face softens. I imagine him at the diner, coffee cup in hand, surveying the damage with that steady look of his. After working at a roadside diner for twenty years, he started purchasing other small diners from retirees about ten years ago to rehab and run.

“Harriet?” Buck’s voice cuts through from the living room. “You almost ready?”

“Yeah, just finishing up my conversation with Kwemby!” I call back. I’ve never had anything to hide from my husband and don’t plan on starting now.

Me:

Got to go. Talk soon. Good luck!

My tote bag sits by the door, packed with my phone charger, headache medicine, clothes, and other overnight essentials. Next to it is Buck’s gym bag, which I packed for him this morning after he left for work. I even remembered his special dandruff shampoo. It’s horrible this time of year.

Keys jangle in the front hall as Buck paces near the door.

My chest tightens, though not from impatience.

With Buck running the grocery store forty hours a week and the twins settled into their off-campus graduate apartments, the house stays entirely silent most days.

Housework occupies my hands, and volunteering at the animal shelter fills my afternoons, but the heavy quiet still lingers in the empty rooms. Climbing into the SUV for a two-hour drive to Gary’s house changes that.

It means two uninterrupted hours in the close confines of the front seat, where we can finally reconnect and talk.

“Girls!” Buck calls up the stairs. “Let’s go! Your uncle’s waiting!”

Footsteps thud overhead. The twins, identical in everything except math skills, clatter down the stairs with their overnight bags. Coris, the older by seven minutes, is already on her phone, thumbs flying across the screen. Maren follows, earbuds in, nodding to music.

“You grabbed everything from your place?” I ask. Coris and Maren are graduate students at our state university. They share a nice, but modest, apartment right outside campus.

Coris nods without looking up. “Yep.”

“I put extra towels in your bag,” I say.

This gets me a half-second of eye contact. “Thanks, Mom.” Then she’s back to her screen.

They sweep past me to the front door with the quiet, self-contained autonomy of women in their mid-twenties. They have spent the last few years managing their own utility bills, lease renewals, and grocery lists, reducing my role from a daily necessity to a soft place to land on long weekends.

Buck appears in the doorway, car keys swinging from his finger. Together, we head to the car where I settle into the passenger seat of the SUV, adjusting the seat belt across my chest. Behind me, the twins have claimed their usual spots—Coris behind Buck, Maren behind me.

Buck starts the engine and backs out of the driveway.

“How was your week at the store?” I ask, folding my hands in my lap.

My right thumb moves over the smooth rose gold of my wedding band, tracing the tiny dot of its diamond.

The skin beside it feels empty without my great-great-great-grandmother’s ring.

The thin gold wire and its small oval garnet remain locked in the bedroom closet safe back at the house.

It’s a placement Buck insisted on to keep the heirloom from getting lost. I drop my thumb and let my hands fall still against my jeans.

“Fine,” he says, not taking his eyes off the road.

The radio is already on some sports talk show with two men arguing about a player’s contract. Buck turns it up a notch.

“Any word on when the remodel is starting?”

He grunts in response. Okay, this is my fault. Naturally, he doesn’t want to talk about work. I wouldn’t want to on my day off either.

“I downloaded a trivia app,” I say, pulling out my phone. “It’s got all kinds of categories. Might be fun to play together.”

“I’m focused on driving, Harriet,” Buck says, voice flat.

“Oh, we don’t have to play a game then. Do you think your brother and Christine will mind that we’re not bringing a dish?

” I was raised to always bring something homemade to people’s homes while visiting, and I was going to this time, but Buck said Gary and Christine were making dinner, and I didn’t want to impose.

As long as we don’t have fish—I’m allergic—I’m okay eating anything.

“I don’t know, Harriet. Can we please not talk?”

From the backseat, there’s not a word. Just the occasional tap of fingers on glass from the girls’ phones. I’ll give everyone a few minutes to themselves. Perhaps it’s selfish of me to expect conversation so quickly. After all, we have about two hours of this drive. There’ll be time.

“You’re right, I’m sorry. Let’s take turns picking songs,” I offer, instead.

Buck reaches for the dial and changes the station. Now it’s classic rock.

“Okay, you can go first,” I say, since he has taken the liberty to do so.

Buck points at the center console without looking at it and asks me to pull out the bottle of water in there. I do.

“Thirsty?” I ask.

“I got that for you.”

My chest warms despite being rebuffed for quality time. He thought of me. It’s such a small thing, but it means so much to me.

“Thank you,” I say, unscrewing the cap.

The water is cool going down, yet a little sweet. Wondering if he put in one of those flavoring packs, I take another sip, then another. The bottle is half empty when I finally set it in the cup holder beside me.

We merge onto the highway, heading north toward Buck’s brother’s place. I close my eyes for just a moment, letting the motion of the car lull me.

When I open them, something feels wrong. My eyelids are too heavy, my vision slightly blurred at the edges. I blink hard, trying to focus on the road signs flashing past the window.

“You okay?” Buck asks, not turning.

“Fine,” I say, the word coming out slower than I intended. “Just tired.”

He nods. “Rest. I’ve got this.”

My head tips toward the window before falling and smacking against it.

Ouch. I straighten with effort, forcing my spine against the seat.

It’s difficult to move. The car feels like it’s moving too fast now, or maybe I’m moving too slowly.

My hands feel strange in my lap, like they belong to someone else.

“Mom?” One of the twins—Coris, I think—says from the back. “You look weird.”

“I’m fine,” I say again, but the words are thick in my mouth.

My phone is in my pocket. I should text Kwemby.

He’d know what to do. But my arms won’t move, and underneath that, there is the guilt I get sometimes.

Kwemby asked me out before Buck and I even met.

Not wanting to ruin our friendship, I said no.

At twenty-five, I stupidly believed that love had to be loud, complicated, and look like the traditional picture Buck eventually offered, rather than the quiet, effortless safety Kwemby had given me for free.

I thought love in friendship could not equal love in relationships.

Yet, late at night, sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like had I said yes.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my life and my girls, but every now and then it seems like Buck merely tolerates me. Deep down, I know Kwemby and I would have had more passion.