Chương 5
Then I started driving.
The first hour felt strange.
I kept expecting my phone to ring.
Not because I wanted an emergency.
Because for most of my adult life, leaving the house meant someone would eventually need something.
A forgotten permission slip.
A question about dinner.
A reminder about an appointment.
A request that started with, “Since you’re already out…”
But the phone stayed quiet.
Around noon, I stopped at a small diner outside Indianapolis.
The kind of place Richard and I would have chosen because he liked places with handwritten menus and coffee served in thick mugs.
I sat at a booth by the window.
The waitress placed a menu in front of me.
“Just you today?”
The question was harmless.
But it landed strangely.
“Yes,” I said.
She smiled.
“Good. We have plenty of room.”
I ordered chicken salad and iced tea.
While I waited, I watched a man at the counter teaching his granddaughter how to play a card game.
She kept making mistakes.
He kept pretending she was winning.
I smiled without meaning to.
The waitress noticed.
“Cute, huh?”
“Yes.”
“My dad used to do that with me.”
She wiped the table beside mine.
“People think kids remember big things.”
She glanced toward the counter.
“They usually remember small things.”
I looked down at my hands.
I wondered what small things people remembered about me.
Did my children remember the cookies I made after school?
The songs I sang in the car?
The way I kept extra blankets in the closet because someone was always cold?
Or did they mostly remember that I answered when they called?
After lunch, I wrote in my notebook.
Not a journal.
I had never been someone who kept a diary.
Just observations.
Things I did not want to forget.
The first one was simple.
I ate lunch alone and nobody needed me.
The sentence looked sad.
I crossed it out.
Then I wrote it again.
I ate lunch alone and enjoyed it.
That felt more honest.
By late afternoon, I reached my first planned stop.
A small hotel near the edge of the highway.
Not the one I originally booked.
That reservation was gone.
This place was cheaper.
Cleaner.
Fine.
I carried my suitcase inside and checked in.
The woman at the front desk asked if I was traveling for business.
“No.”
“Visiting family?”
“No.”
She looked up.
“Vacation?”
I almost answered no again.
Because for years, vacation had meant something that happened only after everything else was handled.
Then I stopped.
“Yes,” I said.
“Vacation.”
The word sounded unfamiliar.
But not impossible.
In the room, I unpacked only what I needed.
The bed was too firm.
The television remote had too many buttons.
The air conditioner made a clicking sound every few minutes.
Normal hotel things.
I stood by the window with a cup of coffee from the lobby.
Cars moved along the highway.
People were heading somewhere.
Coming back from somewhere.
Starting something.
Ending something.
I thought about Richard sitting at home.
About Denise finding another solution.
About the route ahead.
For the first time in years, tomorrow belonged entirely to me.
And instead of feeling empty, it felt like a space I had forgotten existed.
The next morning, I woke before the alarm on my phone.
For a few seconds, I did not know where I was.
The ceiling was unfamiliar.
The hum of the air conditioner was unfamiliar.
Then I saw the suitcase near the chair and remembered.
I was somewhere because I had chosen to be there.
That feeling was still new enough to surprise me.
I made coffee from the little machine beside the television and sat by the window.
The hotel parking lot slowly filled with people carrying bags and travel cups.
A family loaded a minivan two spaces away.
The father opened the trunk and stared inside like he was trying to solve a puzzle.
His wife laughed and moved things around.
I watched them for a moment, then looked away.
Not because there was anything wrong with watching.
Because I realized I was no longer waiting for my own memories to appear in everyone else's lives.
I had spent years measuring my days through other people's needs.
This morning, my only responsibility was deciding when to leave.
I checked the route.
The original plan had been to drive farther each day because Richard liked efficient travel.
He hated stopping too often.
He considered unnecessary stops a failure of planning.
I had always joked that he could turn a vacation into a military operation.
He would laugh.
Then he would create a spreadsheet.
This time, I looked at the map and changed the route.
I added a stop at a small state park I had marked months earlier but removed because Richard thought it would slow us down.
It was only forty minutes off the highway.
I had wanted to see it.
That was the reason.
No other reason was required.
The thought felt almost rebellious.
At sixty-one years old, I was making a decision based on curiosity.
I packed my bag and checked out.
The woman at the desk recognized me.
“Heading out already?”
“Yes.”
“Long drive?”
“Not today.”
She smiled.
“Good.”
I looked at her.
“Good?”
She shrugged.
“Most people rush through places they came all this way to see.”
I smiled.
“That’s probably true.”
The drive was easier than the day before.
The first day had been about proving I could do it.
The second day felt like actually living it.
I stopped when I wanted.
I played music I liked.
I skipped the podcasts Richard usually listened to because he said silence made him sleepy.
I sang along badly to songs from my twenties.
Nobody complained.
Nobody laughed.
Nobody told me I was changing the lyrics.
At the state park, I parked beside a row of cars and walked toward the trail.
It was not dramatic.
There was no perfect movie moment.
May you like
The path was uneven.
The trees were ordinary.
