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“I didn’t have that. At least not for long, not long enough anyway. I…”
“What?”
She takes a deep breath before she continues.
“Sometimes I wonder if I made a lot of it up in my mind. I was so young when my parents died. I remember them as loving and caring –”
“I’m sure they were.”
“With me, yes, but with each other? Life was hard. They had me, and they were trying to build a future.” She shakes her head. “I think my imagination filled in some of the details. With what I wanted. Not how it was.”
“What’s wrong with that?” I pick up her hand and wrap both of mine around it.
“I think it gave me unrealistic expectations. No relationship is going to be perfect, or close to it, all the time.”
“You are perfect.”
She pulls her hand out of mine.
“I’m being serious,” I reassure her.
“Maybe you are, but you aren’t being realistic or honest.” She looks right at me.
“How do you…?”
“I know. I can feel things I didn’t feel before. You can feel them, too, right?” she asks.
I nod.
“I think you need to figure out how much of what you are feeling is about us and how much of it is about what you think about relationships in general.”
“Okay.”
“Relationships in general and your parents’ relationship in particular.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not blind. I mean, I hope my parents didn’t have that much animosity towards each other,” she replies.
The food arrives. I attack it. She’s probably right.
“So what do I do?” I ask her between bites. She finishes chewing and takes a large sip of her water before answering.
“I think you should talk to them.”
“No.”
The word comes out automatically. I wait for Mira to argue her point but she just pats me on the shoulder.
“I think it would help, but I’m not going to nag you about it. It has to be your decision.”
“Do you want to go for a nice long hike today?”
She blinks once, her only reaction to my abruptly changing the subject. She agrees, and I start telling her about one of my favorite hikes. It’s not one I’ve done for training. There’s virtually no climbing, it’s just a long, slow walk winding around the mountain until you get to the peak.
“I think I would like that.”
We are all fueled up from the huge breakfast, so we go next door to the inn. I pack up some snacks and my emergency essentials. Mira asks if she should carry some of it, but I shake my head.
