“You planned the whole vacation,” he said. “Like you always do.”
They stepped outside, all of their items in reusable bags, Logan holding every bag.
“You don’t have to be okay,” he said.
She stopped there on the sidewalk, the warm, fragrant breeze wrapping itself around her, a stark contrast to the moment. To what he’d just said.
“I do,” she said. “If I’m not okay, then who am I?”
“You’re still you. But you’re a you who’s been through a really shitty thing.”
She looked at him, and in spite of herself, she smiled. “You know, that really does help. It’s been shitty. I don’t know what to do about it. There’s nothing to do but keep going.”
“You can stop sometimes. Catch your breath.”
“I can’t. If I don’t keep on… The boys lost their grandmother. I can’t abandon them too. I can’t destabilize their lives more than they already have been. I…”
“Sam. Breathe.”
So she did. The air was different here, and so was she.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Let’s go barbecue.”
***
“Honey.”
She jerked and turned toward Will. They were lying on a very beautiful beach, and she kept feeling like she was floating off somewhere else.
“You’ve been really distracted,” he said. Like that was a shock.
“Yeah. I was…thinking about… I don’t know.”
“Good thing we waited to come here when the kids are older so we aren’t having to constantly make sure they aren’t wandering into the tide.”
There was something about that image that made her ache. She wished she were back there. When her mom was alive and the kids were little, and if they had a problem, she could scoop them up into her arms and kiss them and it would be fine. Jude was going to college at the end of the summer, and he’d had his heart broken horribly three months ago.
She couldn’t go with him to school.
She couldn’t keep him from getting hurt.
“Are you listening?”
She turned to Will, and she could feel it. His impatience with her pain. With the changes this was carving out inside of her. She wanted to be her old self too. She wanted to come out the other side of it fine and whole and exactly who she’d been before, but she didn’t know how.
She wanted to yell at her mom about it.
You left me unprepared for this.
Smiling and being kind isn’t fixing it.
Being good isn’t getting me anywhere.
I want to yell and scream, and I don’t want to make other people feel better, but all the platitudes just come out of my mouth even when I don’t plan it.
I’m like a robot with a soul that’s dying inside, and I don’t know what to do.
