Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 82201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82201 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 411(@200wpm)___ 329(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Right. “On that note, do you need another Band-Aid for your knee? You scraped it pretty badly on that pebble.”
Oh, she glowered.
I grinned.
“All right, Dad and I will be over by the firepit,” Nate said. “Holler if you need anything. And that includes if Micah or Lily comes outside.”
We’d still see the RV. We’d be maybe thirty feet away.
“Why are you going all the way over there?” Hallie wondered.
I pulled out the cigar from my chest pocket.
My little tradition for summer vacations.
“Ewww, that smell.” She made a face.
Hence, why I wasn’t going to sit at the table right below.
“Have a good night, kiddos. Love you both.” I sent them a two-finger wave before I started my short trek over to the fire. Luck was on my side, because none of the other camping enthusiasts were around.
Dylan and Hallie would be preoccupied for a while. Dylan with his camera, Hallie with…her phone. And Lily and Mikey were watching a movie on Nate’s iPad—if they hadn’t fallen asleep.
Four logs formed a framework around the fire, and I sat down on one of them and inspected the construction. I could totally build this, a smaller version anyway, the day I bought a house. A day I was getting increasingly ready for.
I needed a place that felt like home. I missed it.
At this point, I felt more at home in a rented RV than in that shitty little apartment.
Hell, I felt at home right here. Surrounded by forest and RVs and mountains in the dark. With millions of stars up above.
“Damn.” I’d forgotten. I stood up again and pulled out my whiskey flask, and I took two quick sips before I placed it on the rocks close to the fire. Let’s get that fucker warm.
Oof, that was a good blend. The strong flavors flooded my senses and burned a weirdly smooth trail down my throat.
I’d mixed an Irish whiskey with caramel notes with a spicy bourbon, and no regrets.
Then I sat down again and dug out my lighter and the cigar.
Nathan joined me soon enough, and he’d brought our National Parks Passport.
“That time of the year, huh?” I asked.
He smiled indulgently and took a seat next to me. “I don’t even know if there’ll be a next trip, but I’m going to pretend for a moment.”
I took a puff from the cigar and side-eyed him.
I’d become a pro at pretending. Every once in a while, I did it so well that I believed, for a hot second, that we were still together.
“We never made it to Biscayne,” he murmured, flipping through the pages.
I hummed. We’d talked about it a couple years ago, then decided it was best to go there when the youngest were a little older. So that they could enjoy it more. We’d wanted to go scuba diving and snorkeling.
We hadn’t made it to Yosemite either.
When Nathan went back to the beginning of the little book, I felt like I could read his mind. Stamp after stamp, sticker after sticker. Some doodling by the kids too.
Out of all the treasured memories we’d collected over the years, I knew that passport was going to be the one thing we’d both want in the divorce.
Countless weekends had been spent on shorter road trips and checking out nearby sites, like Shenandoah, Harpers Ferry, New River, Fort Monroe, and the list went on. And then every summer, we’d driven off. A week, ten days, sometimes two weeks. Three weeks once, when we’d done the West Coast. Redwood, Mount Rainier…
“Remember when we thought we’d lost Dylan at the Mount Rainier visitor center?”
“Oh God,” he muttered. “Those thirty seconds probably took ten years off my life.”
Yeah, same.
He flipped through a few more pages, brushing his fingers over the stickers we’d bought and some of the anecdotes he’d jotted down. Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains. Then he stopped at our only stamp in Georgia.
“Or when he tried to pronounce Chattahoochee,” he chuckled quietly.
“And when he succeeded, he wouldn’t fucking stop saying it.”
He laughed at that.
I smiled, even as heavy grief struck me. It wasn’t often I saw a genuine smile on his face anymore.
I rubbed at my chest and took another puff from the cigar.
The whiskey should be ready soon. I needed it.
I took a deep breath, inhaling the scents of the forest, the fire, the cigar, and the soil.
I desperately needed something to ground me, because I’d spent months and months floundering now. Always on edge, always uneasy, always lost.
Nate exhaled and closed the book, and he stared into the fire.
“I had it all figured out a few years ago,” he murmured. “This year, we were gonna do Maine and Vermont. Next year, we’d visit Big Bend in Texas—so you could climb or boulder, and Micah always wants to see new beetles and lizards. The year after, we’d finally get to Yosemite, and I guess… My big worry at that time was Dylan and whether he’d want to come with us once he started college.”