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I felt awful for skipping out on dinner, but I was finding it hard to be around people—even my own family. It felt like everyone was judging me. They all could guess I had messed things up with Lana in one way or another, and they were all just waiting for me to mess up the marina, too. If I wasn’t disappointing everyone with all of that, I was dragging them all down with the bummer mood I was in.
As I parked my truck in my driveway, my eyes settled on the scrap pile behind the garbage cans. It had been sitting there since the repairs I did on the house the year before, but I couldn’t stand to look at it anymore—just another thing I had been putting off. I was done putting things off, because I was tired of how they came back and bit me in the ass. I stormed out of my truck and started cleaning the whole mess up, dragging each thing to the curb for pickup or tossing some things out into the woods behind my house.
By the time I got started on chopping up some of the wood to save for firewood, my next-door neighbors were beginning to stare.
“Keith!?” Marty called out to me from his front yard. He crossed his arms and watched me in confusion. “What the hell you doing out here chopping wood at this time of night?”
“Sorry for the noise. I’m almost done,” I told him.
As he walked back into his house, I could hear him grumbling about how it was no wonder everyone in town was gossiping about how I was losing my mind.
A while later, once the scrap pile was all cleaned up, I went inside and took a shower. By the time my head hit my pillow, I was exhausted. Yet, I lay there wide awake and stared at the ceiling.
It didn’t matter how hard I worked or how busy I tried to stay. The moment I slowed down like that, she appeared in my mind. I figured she probably would for the rest of my life. When I said I didn’t mind chasing her for the rest of my days, I didn’t know she’d be this far out of my reach…but even though it hurt, it didn’t change anything. I wasn’t going to give up on me and Lana, even if it meant I died alone—without her.
29
LANA
I stood outside the hospital doors, in front of my Volvo van, and winked at Claire. She sucked in a deep breath, then took her first steps through the automatic sliding doors. For many grueling months, she had rolled through those doors in her wheelchair, but today—she finally got to walk through them and never had to use her wheelchair again.
I nearly cried as she approached me. She threw her arms around my neck for a hug, then waved me off to the driver’s seat.
“Can we please dry up and get out of here?”
“You got it!”
I hopped behind the wheel and blasted one of our favorite songs from high school—one I had been saving for this specific occasion. We both sang at the top of our lungs and laughed as we peeled out of the hospital parking lot. Sure, we got a few nasty looks from some of the older people around town, but we didn’t care. Claire had survived a horrible wreck, and finally—after months of rehab, she was free from her wheelchair and walking again. Something the doctors, early on, weren’t so sure she would be able to do again.
“So, where to first?” I asked her.
Without hesitation, she glanced over her shoulder towards her old chair, which was folded up in the trunk.
“Oh, you know exactly what I want to do.”
I gave her a knowing nod and took off for the falls. The hiking trails around it led to a steep drop-off. For months we had been talking about sending her chair plummeting off the side of it on the day she got the all-clear from the doctor that she didn’t have to use the damn thing anymore. We had planned it carefully, pinpointing the exact route that would be easiest for her to take with her legs still building back their strength.
I carried the chair out to the spot, but once we were there—it was all Claire. I unfolded it and watched as she shoved it off the edge. Secretly, I was a nervous wreck that something would happen, and she might slip over right along with it. But I had been mothering her enough that I knew it was getting on her nerves, so I kept all of that to myself.
We watched as the chair went gliding down to the trees and bushes below. It disappeared into them with a crash and a few clinks. We saw one of the wheels bounce up, only to quickly be swallowed up by the brush again. To me, it was all kind of anticlimactic. I was starting to think it would have had a more dramatic effect to burn it, but then I looked over at Claire and knew by the look on her face that she got everything she needed from that moment.
“It’s finally gone,” she said with a happy sigh. “I’m free from that damn thing.”
“Now, please just stay safe so you never have to be in another one.”
“It’s not like this last time was my fault,” she defended. “It could have happened to anyone.”
“I know. I just…I worry. Ugh, don’t listen to me.”
“I think it’s time for you to have kids,” she teased. “Maybe you could get a job at the school with me. You need somewhere to direct all of your motherly instincts.”
“Alright, that’s enough,” I groaned. “How are we going to celebrate? I’m along for the ride, and we can do literally anything your heart desires.”
“I want to go to the grand reopening of the marina, of course. I want to witness the miracle you pulled off in turning that place around.”
I cut my eyes over to her with a look of shock. “That’s still happening today?”
“Well, yeah,” she shrugged. “Why wouldn’t it be? Also…how did you not know? It’s your place.”
