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Martin’s eyes narrowed. “Is that what you think?”
He did, but he hadn’t meant to say it. “No.”
“So I’m an idiot, and your mother was an idiot, and everybody who’s ever gotten married and had children and made sacrifices because they loved them—we’re all idiots?”
“No.”
“And you’re the only one who has the answers. You. A thirty-six-year-old man who lives out of a backpack and plans to spend Christmas on an airplane. You’re what we should all be doing.”
“Drop it, Dad.”
Martin stared at his hand gripping the edge of the table and shook his head. When he lifted it, he fixed Carson with an expression full of the same contempt he’d always directed at him, no matter what he did or who he tried to be.
“If you believe that, you really are a fool.”
Martin got up from the table and made his way awkwardly down the short hall to the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.
Carson left.
He walked.
The snow blanketing the cemetery’s gravel path squeaked under his boots. When he reached the vicinity of his mother’s grave site, he veered off and stood at the base of her stone.
VANCE
Gloria
1952–2011
Beloved wife and mother
And beside his mother’s name, his father’s.
Martin
1935–
A blank waiting to be filled in. That’s what his father’s life amounted to.
It didn’t make any sense to construct a life so narrow, the death of one person brought an end to it. Carson needed to be more. He’d left this place behind and made something of himself. Seen the world. Built things, structures that would last long after he was gone.
The world needs you.
She’d meant to slap him with it, but it was true. All you got was sixty or eighty years, and what was the point of it, if not to make your mark in the world?
This was where Julie would end up. It was where he would end up, too, if he stayed in Potter Falls and became what everyone seemed to expect him to be.
Carson Vance. Beloved husband and father.
A man who built his world around a woman. A man who could lose everything at any time.
He couldn’t do it.
It took him less than ten minutes to pack.
Julie watched him stuffing clothes into his bag, and she wanted to take it all back.
I’m sorry I told you to make up your mind.
