“Tell me more about that,” she said.
“It’s easy, to start glossing things over once somebody is gone. It would be easy for me to pretend that my marriage to Becca was perfect. That she and I didn’t have problems. That we were a perfect couple, who would have absolutely been married forever, and would have been happy the whole time.” He thumped his hand against the steering wheel. “But I don’t know that, Samantha. I can’t know it. Hell, watching you and Will has drawn a line under that. If we’d had ten more years together, who knows what those years would have been like. The ten that we had weren’t perfect. I loved her, but we fought.” He cleared his throat. “She threatened to divorce me a couple of times.”
“Why?” she asked, completely blindsided by that revelation.
“Just regular couple stuff. At first she regretted getting married so young. That was a regular thread in the fighting until Chloe came along. Then she was a lot more settled. Content. I don’t think she ever regretted being a mother that young. But I didn’t make very much money at first, so we had stress over that. I wasn’t as helpful to her as I should have been. You know, it is just what it is. In the end, she made sure I knew that she was happy. She said… ‘Isn’t it stupid that I used to regret getting so serious so young. When young was all I had.’” His voice had gone low, and her throat tightened, emotion welling up inside of her, her eyes glossy with tears.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “It’s just awful. It’s just awful.”
“It is. We made our peace. With the time that we had. But we will never know what would’ve happened if there was more time. I’m grateful that we got to say the things that needed saying. That she got to clear the air. I got to apologize for not helping around the house enough. For staying out too late sometimes. Not understanding how stressful it was, staying home with the baby. Not at first. Feeling like I was the one doing the hard work, you know. That dumb stuff.”
It hooked into something she recognized. Deep in her heart. An issue that she had often felt was simmering below the surface between her and Will, whether she wanted to think about it or not.
“Yeah. I know. The great workload conflict.” She swallowed hard. “It has taken me all these years to begin to untangle what I wish I would’ve said to my mom. Positive and negative. But I was too afraid to say it. I looked at her lying there in the bed, and the words just stuck in my throat. I couldn’t tell her what she meant to me. I couldn’t tell her how she made me afraid. Of the parts of myself that were strong-willed. The parts of myself that were difficult or angry. How she made me fearful sometimes of my own instincts. But how also at the same time I knew she loved me so much, and she was such a good grandma to my kids, and a good wife to my dad, and… I didn’t say any of it. Then there was no more time. What the hell are you even afraid of when another person is lying there dying and thereis no more time? What’s the point of being placating? What’s the point of being dishonest? What’s the point of being silent? But I was silent. I couldn’t stand the weight of it. I let it crush everything I had to say. I just don’t get to say it now. So instead I’m just still afraid of tattoos and what she would think…what she would think if she knew that Will had asked for an open marriage. What she’d think if she knew that I left. That I almost kissed you.” She rubbed her hands over her face. “If she knew that, in her name, I toyed with the idea of a tattoo, she would come back from the grave and slap me.”
Logan shifted. “Well, if she did that, then you’d have a chance to tell her what you needed to.”
“Yeah,” she said, laughing in spite of herself. “So that would be the upshot.” She blinked back her sorrow. “I guess I can’t live for her anymore either.”
“No,” he said. “That’s another thing. The thing I’ve accepted after a whole decade of living with loss. I want to make sure that I do right by Chloe, that Chloe remembers Becca. In that sense, I want to live a life, and raise our child, in a way that would make her happy. But when it comes to me, I can’t live for her. Because she isn’t here for me to live for. If I don’t find other things, I might as well lay down and die. But I had Chloe.”
“And zip lines,” she said.
“Exactly. I wish she could see how successful the business became. That’s the worst part of losing somebody. Someone you were trying to make proud. None of it matters. I would have bought first-class seats for her.”
“I know,” she said. “I meant what I said. Watching you with her was such a real expression of love. I will never forget it as long as I live. Actually knowing that you are like the rest of us, imperfect, makes it matter even more.”
“But you thought you and Will were perfect until relatively recently.”
She laughed. “Yeah. Don’t remind me of what an idiot I am. Because I am an idiot. An idiot who really wants a tattoo.”
“A tattoo.”
“Iwouldlike a tattoo,” she said, affirming it for herself.
“Youreallywant a tattoo?”
“Yes. Because you’re right. It’s my body. My tribute. It’s not to make her proud. It’s to help me remember.”
“Then we’ll get you a tattoo.”
“I appreciate it.”
“It’s a full-service tour. Traveling the majestic Oregon Trail, making stops for roadside attractions and body art.”
***
They had to make an obligatory drive through Yellowstone, where she hadn’t been since the kids were little. It was crowded in spots, and warm.
But neither thing inhibited her enjoyment of the natural beauty.
“You want to run around with the buffalo?” he asked when they were stopped alongside the road by some of the grazing beasts.
“I do not. Have you never seen viral videos of tourists getting tossed around?”
“I have. I just thought you were, like, doing new things.”
“Roaming with the buffalo is not going to be one of them.”
