Page 78 of Coastal Rewind

“No. Mason is great. Everything is great.” My voice cracked but I swallowed it back down.

My dad didn’t accuse me of being dramatic or ask me what was wrong again. We just sat there in silence. He was always great at giving me the space to feel everything I needed to.

When we were growing up, my dad was pretty absent. The memories of my mom in the Connecticut house were just too much to bear so he buried himself in work and traveled a lot coast to coast. While my siblings really struggled with his distance, I grew to appreciate it. I didn’t want anyone breathing down my neck and I learned how to support myself.

If I didn’t have that space, I never would’ve been able to leave home and survive on my own.

I picked my head up and looked out in the distance. “I missed out on a lot.”

He looked over at me. “You did.”

“I don’t know how to fit in here now. I feel like I missed out on my chance to do that.”

“Oh, sweetie, you fit in perfectly. Everyone in there is elated that you’re home.”

“I know they are, but it still feels like a life I’ll never have.”

My dad blew out a breath. “When you left home, what was your reason? Back when you were eighteen.”

“I needed space. Everything I wanted I could no longer have, and I wanted to see what else was in the world that I could look forward to. I wanted to live while I still could.”

“And did you find anything worth chasing?”

I shrugged. “I found lots of things, but I never quite had the pull to settle anywhere.”

My dad chuckled and leaned back. I scrunched my nose at him.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re so much like your mother, it’s actually scary sometimes.”

The tears returned with a vengeance at the mention of my mom. “How?”

“You knew your mother when she was settled down and responsible. You watched as she had four more kids after you and Owen, and really grew into her role as your mom. But I knew her as this fun-loving wild child who refused to be brought down by anything or anyone.”

I laughed lightly. “She was a fun spirit.”

“She was, but it was more than that. When we met, I was this suit who was in over his head running a company that was growing at a pace no one expected. I worked insane hours and had more money than I knew what to do with. Your mom came into my life like a whirlwind. All she wanted was to leave California and never return. She wanted to experience everything life had to offer. One day she wanted to rent an RV and drive the entire length of Route 66. The next, she wanted to go on a tour of the country to try the best corn dogs that local and state fairs had to offer. There was always a new idea or next adventure.”

I felt the smile creeping up on my face. “But she never did those things.”

“No,” he whispered. “She never did.”

“Why not?”

“She discovered the adventure she was always looking for, and when she got it she stopped running toward the next one.”

I tilted my head. “What was it?”

He smiled at me. “You, sweetie. And Owen, and Aiden, Nolan, Keegan, and Maeve.”

A tear slipped through and I quickly wiped it away with the sleeve of my LA Sparrows sweatshirt I had stolen from Mason’s closet. Hearing about how alike my mom and I were was bittersweet in so many ways.

If you tilt your head just right, you’d see I got to experience all the things my mom never got the chance to. I traveled the country. I lived life for the moment and not the future, but I didn’t have a future mapped out that was meaningful.

On the other hand, my mom got to live the adventure I truly craved.

Kind of ironic, wasn’t it?