Page 69 of The Apparent Trap

It’s a firework of grief, roaring loudly inside a sterile Scandinavian domestic airport. The grief always sneaks up like that. It’s not just on her birthday or at her favorite restaurant or in the places that make sense. Sometimes it slaps you from behind in the strangest of places because that’s where you miss someone most, and the unexpectedness of it makes you nakedly unprepared.

Time has made it duller most days. But those slaps never get easier.

“Did you have an eventful stay?” the gate agent asks, startling me as I realize I’m next in line. I hand over my ticket, and she scans it.

The memories of the last few days burn bright across my vision.

“Uh, yes,” I reply, the only possible simple answer.

My dad and Carmen have already disappeared around the corner. They’re not my decision to make. They probably never were. Sleeping pills and bean salads and other pathetic attempts were just masking the truth of the situation.

“Time to go,” I hear behind me. I turn and see Lee, watching, sympathy written across his expression, as though he can see my turmoil.

I nod, hating how transparent I apparently am.

“Yeah,” I respond. “I guess it is.”

Chapter 21

I do, indeed, couch potato when I get back.

I get a post-trip mandated two days off in a row, and I use them both to hide at home and watch a bunch of classics that I know by heart.

I spend one day watching Titanic, and then every related documentary. Ghosts of the Abyss is still the winner on the nonfiction side. Although, I really know I’ve been in front of the television too long when I’m on my second documentary about the Titan submersible disaster (the most tenuous Titanic-adjacent viewing one can get).

I try not to pay attention to the BLT that shows up unannounced at my door around lunchtime.

The second day I decide to do classic musicals. I wake up not quite knowing why I landed on that theme, but it feels right. I start to suspect this was a bad idea toward the end of My Fair Lady, when Rex Harrison sings “I’ve grown accustomed to her face” and a memory stings of my dad earnestly singing it to my mom. But there’s something about the pleasure and pain of spending the day amid my sharpest childhood memories, so I keep going. I let Deborah Kerr tell me to “whistle a happy tune” in The King and I, and I still cry watching Topol shout at his on-screen daughters in Fiddler on the Roof, even if I’ve seen it so many times I could recite the lines with his exact cadence.

Eventually I look at the time and realize I need to go to sleep if I’m actually going to show up to work tomorrow.

And, okay, maybe part of why I want to be well rested is because I know Lee is coming in too. Because god forbid I have an extra day without wanting to spontaneously combust from confusion.

But right as I get into bed and am about to turn off the light, Georgia calls me.

“It’s ten p.m., shouldn’t you be asleep?” I say in lieu of a greeting.

“I could say the same to you.”

“I’m in bed!”

“But awake,” she retorts.

“Well, I had to finish my movie marathon.”

“Yes, I had to call and make sure I don’t get any more text messages about imploding submarines or whether or not you should learn to tap dance.”

“Come on, that could be fun!”

“Ez,” she says, her seriousness apparent even through the phone. “You once broke your foot just from tripping over your other foot.”

“I told you that in confidence!”

“And I’ll confidently bring it up if you watch Gene Kelly again and think tap dancing is a good idea.”

“Fine,” I brush off. “What’s up?”

“I just wanted to see if you were in tomorrow.”