Chương 8
“It’s not awful.”
“It kind of is.”
“It’s human.”
He sighed.
“Mary said something similar.”
“Of course she did.”
“She said I like being the hero in situations where someone else pays the price.”
I looked down.
That was a harder truth.
Not because it was cruel.
Because it was accurate.
“What did you say?”
“I told her I didn’t know if I agreed.”
“And now?”
“Now I think maybe I do.”
I closed my eyes.
For years, I had wanted him to understand.
Now that he did, I discovered understanding came with its own sadness.
Change meant admitting the old version of yourself had caused harm.
“Richard.”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t need you to hate yourself.”
“I know.”
“I need you to notice.”
“I’m trying.”
The words sounded familiar.
But this time, they did not feel like an excuse.
They felt like work.
“I miss you,” he said.
“I miss you too.”
“Do you regret going?”
I looked at the horizon.
“No.”
The answer came easily.
That surprised both of us.
“I’m glad.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
A longer pause followed.
“Even though I’m not there?”
“Yes.”
That answer stayed with me after we hung up.
Because maybe that was the difference between love and dependence.
Love could survive distance.
Dependence could not.
That night, I sat outside my hotel room with a blanket around my shoulders.
The air was cool.
The parking lot lights buzzed softly.
A family loaded their car for an early departure.
A couple argued over whether they had packed the phone charger.
Someone laughed in another room.
Small pieces of other people's lives floated around me.
I used to think being alone meant something was missing.
Now I was beginning to understand that sometimes being alone was where you finally noticed what was already there.
The following morning, I woke up before sunrise.
I sat on the edge of the bed and listened to the hotel around me.
A shower turned on in another room.
Someone dropped something heavy above me.
A door opened and closed down the hallway.
The world was already moving before I was ready to join it.
I used to think mornings were something to get through.
Wake up.
Get dressed.
Make sure everyone else had what they needed.
Now I sat there with a cup of coffee and nowhere I had to be for another hour.
It was unsettling.
It was also wonderful.
I drove toward the Black Hills that day.
The route had originally been part of our trip, but Richard and I had planned to move quickly through the area.
See the sights.
Take pictures.
Keep moving.
I wondered how many places we had visited without actually being present.
How many dinners we had eaten while discussing tomorrow.
How many sunsets we had watched while checking the time.
I stopped at a small overlook where an older man was sitting on a folding chair beside his truck.
He had a camera around his neck and a thermos beside him.
“You picked a good morning,” he said.
I looked around.
The view was beautiful, but I was not sure what made one morning better than another.
“I guess I did.”
He nodded toward the mountains.
“People come here and spend five minutes looking.”
“Is that bad?”
“No.”
He adjusted his camera strap.
“They’re just usually trying to prove they were here instead of actually being here.”
I smiled.
“Are you always this philosophical with strangers?”
“No.”
He took a sip from his thermos.
“Usually I’m more annoying.”
I laughed.
We talked for ten minutes.
His name was Harold.
He had retired from teaching science and traveled alone several times a year because his wife had passed away five years earlier.
He did not tell me her death dramatically.
He mentioned it the way people mention weather from another season.
A fact that changed everything but was still part of everyday life.
“She would have hated this road,” he said.
“Why?”
“She got carsick.”
He smiled.
“But she loved the destinations.”
I looked at the mountains.
“Sounds familiar.”
He glanced at me.
“Your wife?”
“Actually, my husband.”
He smiled.
“Then you’re ahead of a lot of people.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re still going places together in your head even when you’re not standing next to each other.”
The comment stayed with me.
Not because it solved anything.
It didn’t.
But because it reminded me that my marriage was not only the recent hurt.
It was thirty-two years of ordinary mornings and difficult seasons and shared jokes.
People were not single moments.
Not even painful ones.
I continued driving.
By the afternoon, I reached the campground area where we had originally planned to stay near Yellowstone.
The reservation was gone.
The spot where our cabin would have been was occupied by another couple from Colorado.
I did not feel angry.
I expected to.
Instead, I felt strange acceptance.
The trip I was taking was no longer the trip Richard and I had planned.
It was becoming something else.
That night, I called him.
He answered on the second ring.
“Everything okay?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I could hear the relief in his voice.
“How was your day?”
I told him about Harold.
I told him about the mountains.
I told him about the campground.
He listened.
That alone felt different.
Richard had always been good at listening when the problem had a solution.
He was less comfortable with stories that had nowhere to go.
“Sounds like you’re meeting a lot of people,” he said.
“I am.”
“Are they mostly old men with cameras?”
“Actually, there have been several.”
He laughed.
“I’m glad you’re laughing.”
“Why?”
“Because before you left, you looked like you were carrying something heavy.”
I looked down at my hands.
“I was.”
“Are you still?”
“Yes.”
He did not interrupt.
“I think I spent a long time believing that if I stopped carrying things, everything would fall apart.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It was.”
May you like
Another silence.
Then he said, “I talked to my boss today.”
