Page 81 of Cruel Summer

She shook her head. “No. I mean… Is there anything that you want to do that you haven’t done?”

He looked at her for a moment and she felt it, down to her toes. “Well. That is a loaded question.”

“It doesn’t have to be. We can be honest. With each other, right?”

“I guess,” he said. “All right. I haven’t ever traveled overseas. I’ve been to Canada, but it’s the only other country that I have been to. I sort of figured that I’d like to do that someday. But responsibilities, Chloe at home, and then work. I just haven’t ever done it.”

She breathed out, and it sounded more wistful than she intended. She felt more wistful than she’d realized. “I’ve always wanted to do that. I haven’t either. You know… There’s some things that I just… They sit there, in the back of my mind, not pressing, but when I think of them, they make my stomach feel like it’s hollowed out. I get this excited feeling. The sense of anticipation. Then part of me just thinks… I think I have to do it the next time around.” She laughed. Because until she’d said that out loud, she hadn’t really realized she thought that, in those terms. But she did. “But there is no next time around, is there? I don’t even believe in reincarnation. I just… That thought just popped into my head. It placates me when I think of something that I can’t have. I… I have to figure out how to do it allthistime around. This only time.”

It was sobering.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “What is it that you want?”

“I just said something that I wanted.”

“You said something thatIwanted back to me. You share it. That’s fine. But you tell me something right now that you’ve never been able to do, that you’ve always wanted to do. Big or small.”

“Ummm… I don’t know. Get a tattoo.” She said it, stream of consciousness, and hadn’t fully realized how much that was true until she said it either. “Ihavealways wanted one. But Will doesn’t like them. My mom hated them too. You know, I couldn’t really taketwono votes against that.”

He looked at her, a sidelong glance from the driver’s seat. “It’s your body,” he said.

“Yes. And my mother created that body, and my husband… Well.”

“Do you hear yourself?”

“I do. I do. I don’t act like it, but if people aren’t happy with a choice that I make… I mean, the people that are closest to me. Then I’m not really going to be happy with it either.”

For so long, one of the most important things to her had been making the people around her happy with her. Getting along.

“I just… It seems like, you know, given we do only have one life, you want to be in harmony as much as possible.” That might have been more impactful if she wasn’t questioning every single thing about her life. “But then, what do I know? I wasn’t actually doing myself any favors, was I? I thought I was.”

“You’re not wrong, really,” he said. “We’ve all done it. Made a decision because it was the easy one. Because who wants to live their life on a battlefield?”

“Nobody,” she said. “But…you know, it’s the kind of thing that sticks in my head even now. That my mom would hate a tattoo. You know what, I wanted to get one for her. I wanted to get lavender. Because she—” She stopped for a moment, looking out at the scenery, blinking back tears. “When she was in hospice, she would rub lavender oil on her hands. The smell was soothing. I love that it comforted her. I love that there was something that did. Among all of the hard stuff, I was just glad that she had something, and it felt like a way to remember without, you know, getting a portrait or something. Which, if that’s what people want to do, that’s fine.”

“The tribute’s not forher, not really. It’s for you. If you want it, you should get it.”

“But it’s in the back of my head… Her voice. Being disappointed in me, and I…” She stopped herself. Guilt washed over her. She didn’t know how to explain that. That she still wanted to please her mother, as much as she sometimes resented that her mother had so many rules. Even swearing was something she never would’ve done in front of her mother. She did it sometimes, because Will did, and the boys certainly did.

But she felt a kick of guilt. Guilt was just so easy for her to access.

She felt guilty when she didn’t have dinner ready for Will. She felt guilty when she didn’t make her bed. Most of all, she felt lingering guilt over the pregnancy that had been her reason for marrying Will in the first place.

They’d had to get married, before high school finished, because she was pregnant, and for so many years she’d told the story differently. Who admitted to a shotgun wedding? She talked about their marriage as if it had been a certainty—pregnancy or not.

But she didn’t know that. It was impossible to know that. Maybe she would have gone away to college. Maybe he would have too. Maybe they would have been a casualty of the distance. Of time. Of age.

If they’d waited, they might not have followed through with it at all.

That was too many dark and hollow thoughts for a road quite this lonely.

“Does it ever feel like you still have to do the things that Becca would want?” Bringing up his wife wasn’t really an escape from the dark and lonely thoughts. She probably shouldn’t have done it.

But he was the only person she’d ever talked to about this. This honestly. On this level.

The question earned her another long, slow look from his side of the car. “I sincerely doubt my wife would approve of some of the things that I do. She would think that it was self-destructive. She would say that I was better than the things I do when I’m lonely and sad, angry at the world. But she’d be wrong. I can’t be better than that. Because I do it. She wasn’t right about everything.” He stared out ahead at the road. “About me, about us. Just because she died doesn’t mean she’s a saint.”

He didn’t say it bitter, or mean. It was just a very simple, accepted statement. She wanted to know more. Wanted to know how he could say that, while holding all the love he had for her at the same time.

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