I motion around the room. “Just long enough to pack up.”
“Pack up?”
“We’re selling the cottage. Didn’t Eli tell you?”
“Why are you selling the cottage?” He tilts his head and stares at me. It’s almost unnerving how direct his gaze is.
“No one comes here anymore.” I give him a shrug. “We have to divvy things up for the divorce.”
His brow furrows. “Divorce?”
“Yeah, it’s time…” I say slowly.
“Why?” He has a little vee between his eyebrows, and the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes crinkle a little as he frowns.
I heave a sigh. “It just is. I’m actually surprised that Eli didn’t tell you.”
“Oh, he did,” he replies. “I just wanted to hear it from you.”
“Did he tell you why?”
“No. He never did.”
He still stares at me. His gaze is unnerving, like he can see into my soul. I turn and walk to the kitchen. “You want some coffee?”
“Only if you can make it a cup to go. I have somewhere I need to be this morning.”
I reach into the cabinet and take out a mug with a lid.
“Hey,” he says slowly. “Do you have plans today?”
“Just packing,” I reply as I fill up his coffee cup and top it with a plastic lid. “Why?”
“I want you to go somewhere with me. Will you?”
“Where are we going?” I ask as I fill a cup for me too.
He grins. “I’ll tell you when we get there.”
“I don’t know.” I hesitate to say yes, even though he’s adorable asking the way he is. “Especially since you won’t tell me where we’re going.”
“You used to be fearless, Bess,” he says. “What happened to you?”
I straighten my spine. “Life happened. That’s what happened.”
“I only need you for a few hours,” he coaxes. “Come on, Bess. Fly away with me.”
We were six years old the first time he used that line on me. We’d been making paper wings and we had them on our backs. Mine were fairy wings and his were dragonfly wings, although to me they looked remarkably similar. He’d jumped on his bike and called for me to come fly away with him. I didn’t want to because I still had to add the glitter to my wings. But then he’d said the magic word:
“Chicken.”
I’d jumped on my bike and raced after him, my wings blowing in the breeze, riding so fast down the hills that my wings bent from the force of the wind.
Now he stares into my eyes and says it again. “Chicken.” It’s slow and succinct.
I look down at what I’m wearing. “Can I at least go change?”
He grins. “I kind of like the duck jammies.”
“Give me fifteen minutes.” I go to the bedroom and start to get dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Then I pull my hair into a ponytail. I yell into the kitchen, where I can hear him moving around, “I don’t have to look nice for this, do I?”
“You don’t ever have to look nice for me, Bess,” he calls back. “I’ve seen you naked, remember?”
“It was one time when we were thirteen!” I respond. “It doesn’t count!”
“The curtain shifted where you were changing clothes and there was your booty.” He barks out a laugh.
I come out of the bedroom feeling lighter than I have in a really long time. “And you started singing ‘Baby Got Back’.” I shove his shoulder. “You’re still a jerk-face.”
“You ready to go?”
He has a pile of my mom’s photo albums in his arms. “What are you doing with those?”
“Taking them with us. I want to look at them.”
My mom took pictures of everything, and there are photo books all over the cabin, along with stray photos that never got placed between plastic pages.
“Have you seen Eli?” I ask as we walk out the front door.
“He’s fishing with my twelve-year-old, Sam.” He points toward the lake, where I can see two figures sitting on the edge of the dock, their feet swinging back and forth.
“Where are the other two kids?” Last time I checked, he had three.
“Kerry-Anne is with her new bestie, Trixie, Jake and Katie’s daughter. And Miles is with the babysitter, who just happens to be Jake and Katie’s other daughter.” He opens the car door for me to get in. “Do you need to tell Eli you’re leaving?”
I shake my head and get in. “He won’t even notice I’m gone.”
And that is the truth. I could dye my hair purple and put on a pink tutu and Eli wouldn’t notice.
“I think he notices more than you think,” Aaron says after he gets in and tosses the photo albums into the back seat.
“No. He really doesn’t,” I say quietly.
He reaches over and gives my hand a squeeze. But I’m okay with where my marriage is right now. I’m okay with it being over.
“So, what’s up with you?” I ask.
“Not much,” he replies. “Staying busy.” He drives out of the complex and past the campground.
“Kids are doing okay? Since Lynda?” I don’t say “since Lynda’s death” because that part still seems like poking at an open sore.
“Miles and Kerry-Anne are fine. Sam is a little bit of a challenge. She misses her mom. I think she wishes it was me who’d died instead.”
I turn to face him. “She doesn’t wish that.”
“It’s okay,” he replies. “I wish it had been me too.”
The car is quiet for a few minutes. I can’t think of the right thing to say.
“How’s work?” he finally asks me, breaking the silence. “Are you still taking pictures?”
“No,” I reply. I quit doing that a few years ago. “I got an office job. Crunching numbers.”
His brow furrows. “You hate numbers.”
“Have to pay the bills, and taking pictures was just a hobby.”
“When we were little, you never went anywhere without a camera.”
I had wanted to be just like my mom. She always had her camera with her, and I wanted to do everything she did. “I’m not little anymore,” I remind him.
He turns off the highway and pulls up to a medical building. “Come on,” he says as he flings open his door.
“Why are we here?” I ask as I get out.
“I have an appointment,” he replies. He gets the photo albums out of the back of the car. I follow him in through the glass door, the cold air tingling my cheeks. He checks in and I stand back, but they take him to the back immediately and he motions for me to come too. I follow warily, unsure of what we’re doing. He follows the chatty nurse to the back of the building, where lines of chairs and curtains are set up. He settles into a chair and unbuttons his shirt, where I see a tiny plastic disc on his chest.
I lean closer so I can see it more clearly. “What’s that?”
“Chemo port,” he says blandly, still chatting with the nurse as she gives him a little cup with pills in it, hangs a bag of fluid, and affixes the other end of the tube to the port.