Page 95 of Every Beautiful Mile

“So, I never asked you guys what you found at the visitor’s center earlier. Anything fun we need to add to our list?”

I drop a slice of mushroom on my plate.

Marin clears her throat, and Finn gives her a long look before they both turn to me.

“Actually, Mom, we did.”

“Okay.” I wipe my face with a napkin and narrow my eyes towards them. “And? Don’t keep me waiting all day here, people. If there’s something cool to see, I want to see it already.”

“Well, the thing is, it’s a wilderness experience.”

My eyes widen, and I drop my pizza on my plate.

“Oh no!” I shake my head adamantly. “We just got out of a camper you told me you were sick of, and you want to do a wilderness experience? What does that even mean? I want to hike in Acadia National Park and then sleep in this bed right upstairs.”

I point to the ceiling.

“Well, the thing is, Mom, it’s not for you.” Marin says, twisting the napkin in her lap.

“What are you even talking about, Marin? Finn?”

My eyebrows pinch.

Finn hands me a pamphlet.

“There’s an Acadia Wilderness Experience. It’s for fourteen nights for teens ages fifteen to seventeen. A guide would take us out and teach us about foraging, building shelters, fishing, and tracking. We get to make a canoe even. And then there’s an option to learn to sail if we wanted at the end.”

The blood drains from my face as I open it. Teens out acting like Bear Grylls, smiling in every picture I flip over like they are living their best lives.

“But what about the whales? And puffins?”

My eyes burn with everything this implies.

“Well, we might get to see them, and you could obviously still go on the tours here. We wouldn’t be gone the whole time—just two weeks. We’d have a few days together after.”

“Marin, you want to do this? I mean, Finn, I’m not surprised—but you?” My ears are ringing as I try to process this information.

“Being up in Bethel, Mom, it made me appreciate it out here. I’ll admit, sleeping in a handmade shelter if it rains doesn’t sound appealing, and I would never do it alone, but I don’t know, doing it with Finn sounds, I don’t know, fun. Like one of those experiences people talk about years later as being a source of inspiration, you know?”

Her words make me dizzy, but I also understand them deep in my bones.

I’ll never be able to say no to them, not after stealing their summer and dragging them around this country like a crazy woman who broke out of the local asylum. They want to do this, and I’m going to let them. It might wreck me, but I’ll do it.

I shove down every emotion that wells up in me with several hard swallows and long blinks.

“Is there space?" I ask. “I mean, this seems really last minute.”

“They had two brothers back out last minute, so those spots are ours if we want them,” Finn says between bites of pizza.

“When would you leave?” I ask, thumbing through the pamphlet again, reading about the skills and invaluable lessons they will learn in their two weeks.

“The day after tomorrow.”

The day after tomorrow.

I nod, waiting for the burn in my eyes to subside. All I can say is, “Let’s get you signed up.”

Marin and Finn explode with words of gratitude and hugs and high-fives. For the first time in my life, my heart somehow fills while flattening. A paradox.

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