by Mandi Lynn
I shake my head, the self-doubt plaguing me. “They haven’t hung it yet. I handed the photo to someone, but they didn’t say when they’d hang it, just that they will when they can.”
Lori’s quiet on the other end, and all I can hear is the sound of the crashing waves around me.
“I think I want to start taking photography clients again,” I say, the words feeling unsteady. “I was able to sell a few stock photos, and I know I can make money working one-on-one with clients because I already did it once, so why not?”
“That’s great!” Lori perks up on the other line, and I fear she’s about to jump into a lecture about what I can do.
“But I need to do it on my own,” I say before she can go on. “You’ve helped me a lot the past few months, and I love you for it, but I need to figure out the rest myself. No more teaming up with my family to ambush me, or stalking boys, or letting them kidnap me.”
Lori takes a moment to let my words sink in. “I’m sorry,” she says.
“I know.” I sigh, letting the anger diffuse.
We hang up soon afterward, and I sit on the beach for what feels like hours, but I’m sure is only a handful of minutes. Getting up, I start to walk toward the campground again and eventually the bus comes back into sight. I try to spot Dylan, but I’m still too far away to make anything out.
Turning back to the ocean, I sit in the sand, burying my feet in the warmth. I spend a long time trying to memorize the texture of the sand to give my mind something else to focus on. That’s the thing about the beach. Everything is always moving. There’s always something else to watch and focus on. Seagulls fly overhead, and a few even come close to see if I have food. When they notice I’m empty-handed, they scurry away.
When the sun starts to set, I wrap my arms around my knees, tucking my chin in to keep warm. I know I have to go back, but I let myself sit in silence.
“Hey.” I hear Dylan’s voice come up from behind me. I don’t turn to look at him in a slim hope that maybe if I ignore him, he’ll go away on his own.
“I’ll sleep in the tent tonight,” he says, standing next to me. When I don’t say anything, he moves to sit beside me, leaving a few feet of space between us. I look forward and memorize the purple and pink color of the sky. There are a lot of clouds tonight. The perfect conditions for a sunset, though the sun is setting behind my back, which means it will rise on the ocean in the morning.
“I called Lori a few minutes ago,” he says. “She said you guys talked.”
I feel his gaze, but I keep my face forward.
“You shouldn’t be mad at her. It was my idea.”
I don’t so much as move, waiting out the conversation.
“Please, just talk to me,” Dylan tries again.
I turn to face him, and I’m a little blindsided by how the sunset at our backs makes his face glow with life. And maybe what frustrates me most is that despite everything, the thought of saying goodbye to him is terrifying, and I hate myself for getting wrapped up in him.
“What do you want me to say?” I say.
“Just tell me what you’re upset about so I can fix it.”
And that’s where I lose it.
“You don’t know why I’m upset?” My voice rises an octave, and I remind myself to breathe. “Every day it feels like I’m reliving the same nightmare where my parents are dying, and I can’t get to the hospital to say goodbye. Everywhere I go looking for them, they aren’t there.” I bury my hands in the sand, clinging onto it. “They aren’t here.” I let go of the sand. “They aren’t in Tennessee, or Colorado, or Wyoming, or Washington. So why would they be here in North Carolina?”
I struggle to breathe, and I’m grasping for the words when I continue.
“The only place where I know my parents are, is home. So when I say I want to go home, it means I want to go home.” I say the words, but I don’t mean them. Because to mean them, I’d have to go to my parents’ house, and stepping through those doors feels like an impossible task.
“I’m—” Dylan tries, but I stop him.
“No,” I say, my voice firm. “Don’t say sorry. You knew what you were doing. You knew I wanted to go home. You literally saw me crumpled on the floor crying and thought it would be a good idea to blindside me and bring me to the completely wrong state? What did you think was going to happen? That we would pull up to the beach, and I’d magically be excited and forget that I wanted to go home? To the one place where at least I feel safe?”
I stare at him, waiting for a response, but he doesn’t say anything.
“I trusted you. You told me you didn’t care about the trip, so why did you bring me here?”
“Because I thought you didn’t mean it when you said you wanted to go home,” he says, his voice lowering in surrender. “It seemed like you were enjoying the trip. I thought it was just one bad day and that if I brought you straight home, you would regret it.”
Part of me knows he’s right, even if I’m not willing to admit it out loud. I don’t really want to go home. At least not yet, and now I’m more confused than ever, lost on what could make me happy. Every situation and possibility I can think of right now hurts.
“We could have stayed in Tennessee,” I say, my eyes pleading.
He looks down. “I’m sorry, I thought change of scenery would help, and we were already planning on coming here.”
I nod, resting my chin on my knees. I watch the waves, how they turn white-capped right before crashing into the sand.
“I can’t feel them,” I admit. “I’ve heard of stories where after someone dies, their family members see rainbows or butterflies, and they say it’s their loved one trying to send them a message. I always thought it was silly, that people just imagine it.” I draw in a breath, remembering Lamar Valley and Mount Elbert. I’d gone searching for that feeling, thinking that if I hiked the same places my dad wanted to go, I’d feel him there. I wanted to say goodbye. “I’ve never experienced that.”
Dylan looks off, his gaze wandering to the ocean before turning back to me. “Would that change anything, even if you did?”
Shaking my head, my body sinks into itself. I knew it wouldn’t change anything, but it was the last bit of connection I had left. And there was a hope, no matter how small, that if I could experience something like that, some of the pain would go away.
A deep sigh runs through my chest. I sit up and glance back at the bus.
“I can take you home,” Dylan says.
I try to imagine what I want, not what I need, or what everyone thinks I should do. Most of all, I try to imagine what I would do if my parents were both alive waiting for me to come home from a road trip. My mom would want me home in time to settle back into the reality of life. But my dad lived by a different road map.
One more stop, why not? That was his approach to life.
“We don’t have to be home for a few more days,” I say, the words sounding so sure I surprise myself. I give in to the adventure the way my dad always wanted me to, because I know a year ago, that’s what I would have chosen.
Chapter 26
Dylan still wants to sleep in the tent that night, but I insist I’ll sleep better with him in the bus. Eventually, he complies, and that night I do sleep, mostly out of exhaustion. It’s Dylan who leans forward in the morning to swing the doors of the bus open to watch the sunrise. He had set an alarm on his phone, and I’m barely awake when it goes off.
“Marly, move over here,” he whispers. I lift my head, and he’s standing at the end of the bed, pointing to the side of the mattress closest to the door. I roll over and once I do, Dylan slides back into bed behind me, so we’re both facing the sunrise now. “I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss it.”
I pull the blanket up until it’s tucked under my chin, as the chill of the morning ocean air flows into the bus. The door of the bus is just
big enough for us both to peek out to the horizon. The rhythmic crashing of the waves keeps my body half-asleep, and I’m tempted to let my eyes close again until I see a sliver of orange. Over the ocean, the sun peeks through.
We both lie there in silence, watching the sunrise as the colors shift from shades of orange and yellow to pink and purple. Clouds are sitting along the horizon, catching the rays of light and making the entire sky glow.
“Did you want to take a photo?” Dylan asks quietly behind me.
I shake my head. “Too comfy,” I say, pulling the blanket up to my cheeks. Dylan shifts behind me for a few seconds and then leans forward to show me his phone.
“Gotta have at least one,” he says, showing me a photo of the sunrise on the screen. He flips to the next photo, which is me curled up in the blanket while the sun rises in the background.
I smile a quiet thanks, and he settles back again. We’re both silent for so long that I think he must have fallen asleep, but when I turn, he glances over to me with a grin. I settle into the pillow and watch as the sunrise fades and the sky turns blue again—the start of another day.
“Can I ask you a question?” Dylan asks. I turn until I’m facing him. “Yesterday, you said something about never being able to say goodbye to your parents. What happened?”
My face drops. I hesitate, wondering where to start. “When they got into the car accident, the hospital called me because I was listed on their emergency contact information, but I didn’t get the call. Or, technically I got the call, but I didn’t have my phone. I was visiting some friends while I was waiting for my parents to arrive and when I realized it had been too long, I went to find my phone and heard the voicemails. Lori drove me over to the hospital, but I was too late.”
I stare at the sheets while I talk, but I can feel Dylan’s eyes on me, waiting.
“For a long time, it was the fact that they died coming to visit me, and that still bothers me, but I never got to say goodbye because I was too distracted to realize I didn’t have my phone on me.”
“But who’s to say if you had your phone and got the call right away, that you would have been able to see them anyway?” Dylan offers.
“The times of their deaths were an hour after the phone call,” I say, hating the words as they come out.
“That’s not what I mean,” Dylan says. “They might not have let you see them, even if you had been there in time. You might have just been sitting in the waiting room, a nervous wreck.”
He’s right. My dad’s family were there in the waiting room before I got there. They were sitting ducks because they couldn’t do anything except keep trying to call me when I never picked up.
“I should have been in that waiting room,” I say.
“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” Dylan says, this time turning my face to look at him.
I blink, letting the words sink in.
“You still want to hike Mount Washington, right?” Dylan asks.
I laugh, but the sound is low and tired. “I want to do the hike,” I say.
Dylan smiles at my answer. “Then I have an idea for you to have the goodbye with your parents that you never got.”
I wait, confused.
“Do you have photos of your parents, like printed photos?” he asks.
“Yeah, mostly from when I was a kid, though. There are a couple of photo albums at the house.”
“Okay, we’re going to go to the house, and you’re going to show me where the photos are. But I don’t want you to look through the photos. I have an idea, but I just need you to show me where the photos are.”
The mention of going to the house sets me on edge, but I swallow it down. The absence of my parents is everywhere, but never more apparent than going into that house.
“Okay,” I say.
Once the sun is in the sky, we drive to Corolla, North Carolina, which is known for its wild horses. On a whim after eating breakfast, I book us a wild horse tour along the beach, and now Dylan and I sit strapped into a large Hummer with about ten other people. The vehicle is massive with a tarped roof and open sides. Dylan and I sit in the back, and I claim the window seat with my camera. Our tour guide jumps into the vehicle and begins driving.
“Hello, everyone, my name is Justin and I’ll be your tour guide today. I’ll be taking you to the Outer Banks where we’re going to go see wild horse herds that have been here for the past five hundred years. The horses we’re going to see today were brought to the New World by Spanish explorers in the 1500s. It’s not clear exactly how they got here. Some say they swam here from a nearby shipwreck, while others say the Spanish explorers had settlements here in the outer banks. All that’s clear is now we have these beautiful creatures here that roam freely.”
We near the ocean, and the road shifts from asphalt to sand as we drive across the beach. Our tour guide continues, telling us the history of the horses and how to find them on the beaches.
“None of the horses you see today are tagged or marked in any way. Instead, we track them by following their herd patterns during the day and different weather.”
It’s not long until we see the horses, and when we do, everyone sits at attention in their seats. There are close to ten in front of us, ranging in shades of brown and black. They stand in grassy sand dunes, their tails in constant motion as they eat.
“Look right there,” Dylan says, pointing over my shoulder. I follow his gaze, and in the very back of the herd is a baby horse, standing close by.
I pull my camera up, zooming in on the foal. He’s almost completely brown except for a white spot on his forehead. With ears erect, he keeps his head low, eating as he clings to another brown and white horse.
The tour guide takes us as close to the herd as possible while still keeping a safe distance.
“Lori is going to be jealous for sure,” I say, taking as many photos as possible. One horse in particular takes a few steps toward us, watching from afar. I snap a photo as he gazes back at me.
“Lori? My sister is going to be mad she missed this,” Dylan says.
We stick around the herd for a long time, asking questions and learning about them as everyone takes photos.
Two days pass in North Carolina. We explore the local towns and beaches, and stop to each at almost every restaurant we find. By the time I curl into bed each night, I’m sunburnt and exhausted. Sleep still doesn’t come fast, but the ocean air exhausts me in a way that the mountains never did. Most importantly, I don’t dream.
The third day that we wake up in North Carolina, Dylan packs up the bus to drive it home. Not the apartment, but my parents’ house. And with that brings a new level of unease.
Chapter 27
Everything feels the same and different all at once. Highways are familiar again, and soon we’re driving down roads I’ve known all my life. The closer we get to my parents’ house, the quieter I get. Dylan turns off the podcast we started listening to and switches to music playing quietly in the background. At some point, he reaches a hand out, grabbing my own.
“We have to stop at my aunt’s house first,” I say. “My keys are at my apartment, but she lives a couple of blocks down. She’ll let us borrow the keys.”
“Just tell me where to go,” Dylan says.
I text my Aunt Cora as we drive, directing Dylan to take a right at the next intersection.
I need to stop by the house to get something. Can I borrow your keys?
She responds quickly.
Of course. You’re always welcome to borrow my set!
Ten minutes later, we pull into the driveway. I can’t see my parents’ house from Cora’s driveway, but I still catch myself trying to avoid looking to the right. I unbuckle with shaky hands, looking down at the floor of the bus.
“Can you stay here? I want to be quick, but if she sees you, it will be a million questions,” I s
ay, opening the door before I have the chance to regret it.
“Sure,” Dylan says, watching me as I close the door.
Cora greets me at the front porch before I reach the first step.
“You’re back. How was your trip?” she asks, excited, eying the bus behind me. I see the moment her gaze locks on Dylan because her eyes go wide, and her mouth hangs open a little in surprise. She shifts her gaze back to me, eyebrows raised and an extra glint in her eye. “Looks like you had fun.”
I glance back at the bus, and Dylan gives us a small wave.
“I just got back. I need to pick something up at the house, but my keys are back at the apartment. I figured it would be easier to stop by than to drive all the way there,” I say. Cora’s face softens, and she steps into the house, signaling for me to follow.
“Did you want me to come with you?” she asks, walking into the kitchen where they keep the key rack.
“I’ll be fine,” I say. Cora hands over the keys, and I take them, stuffing them into my pocket.
“You have company,” Cora says, eyebrow raised.
“That’s Dylan. He,” I pause, struggling to put into words what he is. My boyfriend? At the very least, a guy who’s driven cross-country with me and who’s slept in the bus with me. He’s not a stranger anymore. “He’s been helping me,” I say, leaving it at that.
“Well, you are your mother’s daughter,” Cora says, laughing to herself. “You should have seen her with my brother back in the day. I’m surprised that girl didn’t run off with him in that bus just like you’re doing.”
“You know the bus was my mom’s?” I ask.
“Your gran told me.” She winks. “My guess is your mom abandoned the idea of the bus when she realized how adventurous your dad was. She had her hands full with him—didn’t need to get him even more worked up.”
I think about the possibility of that scenario, which sounds likely enough. She was always trying to rein my dad in; not to be discouraging, but to make sure he never got in over his head.