Page 19 of The Trouble with Wanting

I shake my head as I pull my backpack around to the front of my body and dig around for the address. If I remember correctly, I wrote it down in my notebook.

I keep rummaging while I move over to a bench and take a seat. Finally, my hand grips the book and I pull it out, flipping quickly through the scribbled notes and doodles until I find the address I highlighted in pink. I take a picture for easier reference then flip it closed to shove back in my bag.

But my eye catches unfamiliar handwriting scrawled on an unused page. I quickly open it back up and take a look at the note.

Ruby, I’m sorry I didn’t wake you to say goodbye. I fell asleep myself and didn’t wake up until just as our feet touched the ground. I enjoyed chatting with you. I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m not much for small talk. Thanks for showing me that it can be worthwhile.

I hope you have a lovely vacation and time with your ‘dad.’ If things fall apart or you’re looking for something to do, give me a call. I have plenty of family members I’ll happily pawn off on you.

Happy travels,

Boyd (Mitchell)

Underneath his name is his phone number and an arrow pointing at it that says Use it.

A smile breaks out on my face and I clutch the notebook to my chest.

Maybe this trip will have an upside after all.

chapter five

Boyd

The drive from the airport is everything I remember it being, both from my time growing up in our small town and from each of my visits home over the past decade.

Cedar Point is a community of about 2,500 people during most of the year, though that number swells up significantly during the summer. Named for the incense cedars that grow in a cluster along the south bank, it’s tucked away in the Tahoe National Forest and serves as a midway point between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe.

I’m sure there are plenty of kids out there who would much rather grow up in a larger city or in the suburbs of a metropolis, but I was never one to complain about growing up in Cedar Point. I loved waking up early and going for a swim or jogging the lower trails between the ponderosa pines and Douglas fir trees that line the banks of the lake.

In my opinion, we had the perfect setup: access to city life down the hill whenever we wanted it while still getting the quiet calm of a small town. It’s a beautiful place to live, to grow up.

The only reason I knew I couldn’t stay in Cedar Point forever was the fact that everyone was in everybody’s business, especially my family’s.

Sure, small towns are like that in general, but the Mitchell family goes back several generations in Cedar Point, to the mid-1800s, our great-great-grandparents being the original founders of the small community that surrounds Cedar Lake.

When the small downtown intersection is Main Street and Mitchell Road, there isn’t really anywhere to escape to if you’re a teenager wishing people weren’t watching your every move.

But it’s one of those things we just had to accept. You take the good, you take the bad, and all of that.

When I pull up in front of the home I grew up in, an overwhelming sense of calm fills me.

I always forget it’s like this. I put up a fight every year about coming home for the last two weeks of August, telling everyone and their mother I don’t have enough time and taking vacation from work is inconvenient and unrealistic.

But, like clockwork, the minute I arrive and see the wind chime my father made for my mom for her fortieth birthday hanging in the same spot on the porch facing the grassy yard, I’m flooded with a million memories.

Like the year we spent eleven hours setting up Christmas decorations for the annual lights competition only to completely lose power because we didn’t consider the fact that five thousand lights might overwhelm the generator.

Or the time my dad convinced our entire family to be the Kardashians for Halloween then spent the entire night scaring kids away while dressed up as Khloe.

All the years we spent sunning on the deck during summer or hanging out on the boat. Even now, as adults, kicking back with a beer in front of the fire pit during the sunset.

There’s something special about Cedar Point, something that can’t be recreated anywhere else.

Not for the first time, I feel thankful that my mom is such a hard-ass about us returning home for a couple weeks every summer so we can create new memories to mix in with the old.

“Anybody home?”

My voice echoes through the house, and I’m not surprised to find that nobody is here.

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