Page 8 of Every Beautiful Mile

Between her spunky hair, small nose dotted with freckles, and heart-shaped lips, she looks like a fifteen-year-old fairy that hasn’t yet grown wings.

Unlike me, she handled the loss of her dad like someone who had written volumes on healthy grieving. She spent the first days by my side in my crusade to find him, convinced just because they found his plane shredded to smithereens didn’t mean he wasn’t alive.

“I’ve read about people that get in accidents and walk away without even a cut all the time!” she insisted.

After a week of dive teams and recovery efforts relentlessly looking for him and investigators explaining all the reasons they had for declaring him deceased, she accepted their words. While I continued to cling to hope and Google things like how long you can survive treading water, she read sad poetry and then went back to living her life. Meanwhile, I entered a monogamous relationship with misery and stayed fully committed.

When the front door opens and closes again, Finn steps into the kitchen, stack of books under one arm. I turn, shooting him a smile over my shoulder with a “Hey Finn,” before peeling the carrots at the sink.

“Mom’s cooking,” Marin says in a way that implies something else. Like disbelief.

He snorts but says nothing.

As usual.

While Marin is everything easy for me, Finn is not. Gone is the talkative little boy who loved me more than life itself, and in his place a reserved young man who would rather have a lobotomy than a conversation with his mother. Travis had bridged the gap, but with him gone, it’s become staticky radio silence between us most days. At seventeen, he’s at an age where he knows more than me. Every conversation I attempt ends with something that teeters on being an argument.

Don’t take it personally, Nel, Travis told me once.

I hated that advice with a passion. Isn’t the way a mother and son interact the epitome of personal?

Finn runs a hand through his shaggy brown hair and watches me from the doorway, face slanted in annoyance, wielding his superpower of silence.

“I’m making a salad, and I thought we could grill burgers and eat on the porch tonight,” I tell him, playing my favorite game of answering questions he never asks.

“I didn’t know you still knew how to cook.” The bored tone in his voice makes me want to scream. Instead, I exhale.

To a fly living on the wall of this house for the last year, there would be no denying I appear to be a woman who has no clue how to cook anything that isn’t gelled together with preservatives.

“Well, don’t say that until we see if it’s edible.” When I chuckle, he walks away.

Down the hall of our tiny bungalow, the only response he gives is the click of his bedroom door as it closes.

The searing pain in my chest from the sound feels like water boiling.

For the millionth time in the last year, Travis’ absence is so incredibly loud, I almost have to plug my ears for fear of going deaf.

***

“Your grandpa told me today I’m stuck.”

I don’t know why I say it, but dinner is too quiet, and my brain is too loud.

Marin chokes on her bite of cheeseburger while Finn says nothing.

Of course.

I take a sip of wine and stare out of the patio to the hedge of sea grape leaves that fan out like waxy veined saucers.

“Well?” I demand, knowing damn well their silence means they agree.

“Mom, what do you want us to say to that?” Marin asks gently, scrunching her freckled nose. “Everyone grieves differently. It’s just…”

Her voice trails off only for Finn to pick up where she leaves off.

“Let’s see, Mom,” he starts, without hesitation. “You freaked out on an entire church full of people because you thought Dad was alive after two weeks of being out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Then, you spent the last year of our lives moping around while also pretending he was just out running an errand. So, yes, I’d say Grandpa got that right.”

Finn’s amber-brown eyes look at me like he’s challenging me to a duel.

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