Fall With Me

knowing you makes me realize that I’d like one.”
    Since we’re lying there, basically spooning, he can’t see my expression, but if he could he’d see I am smiling, that in fact, I have a huge grin that I can’t wipe off my face.
                 
    *
     
    Uncle Nate seems to be in relatively good spirits during lunch. “Isn’t there supposed to be someone else here?” he asks. “I heard you were bringing a date along.” He smiles as he says this, as though he’s genuinely happy to hear that I might be involved with someone. When he smiles, he looks a lot like Dad.
    “He’s sick,” I tell him. “But he really wanted to come and meet you guys.”
    “It’s the boy she wasn’t getting along with,” Mom says. “Remember?”
    Uncle Nate raises his eyebrows. “Glad to hear you’ve turned that around.”
    We go to a little café that Mom likes and sit outside. Overhead, the clouds are starting to break up and the sun peeks out. I am, in fact, almost done with my turkey club sandwich before Uncle Nate starts talking about Dad.
    “I wanted to make a point to be in Lanai on the anniversary of Mike’s death,” he says. Lanai was where my parents went on their honeymoon, one of the first destinations when Uncle Nate launched his cruise business, the place of some of my favorite childhood vacation memories. I set my sandwich down. “I told myself on the way out here that I wasn’t going to bring it up again. Because, believe it or not, after the last time we got together, I did some reflecting. And while I will always know in my heart of hearts that the accident was not just an accident , I can see why you might want to just try to put the whole thing behind you. This is not to say that I am going to do that, but I believe that you’ve made it abundantly clear you don’t want to hear about it any longer. And I’ve got to respect that; I know Mike would want me to. And maybe . . . maybe there really is nothing to be done. I just don’t want to believe that.”
    Mom reaches across the table and takes his hand. She’s barely touched her lunch. “Accepting what happened doesn’t mean we don’t miss him any less,” she says. “But if you can find it in yourself to try to move on too, I think you’ll be less stressed out about everything. Mike wouldn’t want you to be like this, Nathan. You know he wouldn’t.”
    I don’t say anything. I wonder, suddenly, if it’s silly to think that anything could come of me actually meeting Griffin’s father, if there really is any evidence to uncover. He annoyed the shit out of me every time he brought it up, but now that Uncle Nate is sitting here, maybe admitting defeat, I want to tell him that I might have discovered something that could lead to something else. Except . . . that would mean bringing Griffin into it, and for some reason, there is a little tiny voice that is telling me not to. That it would be a very, very, bad idea.
     
    The feeling stays with me after I say goodbye and am driving back to the ranch. After my parents’ accident, I remember lying in bed awake at nights and trying to think if there’d been some feeling, some voice telling me not go with them that day. I couldn’t recall anything, which made me feel relieved, if nothing else, because if there had been a premonition, why wouldn’t I have tried harder to make them stay home, too?
    But your mind will go in all sorts of directions trying to untangle the knotted mess of tragedy, and mine certainly did. Like, what if they had left five minutes later? Or earlier? Would it still have happened? What if I had gone with them, and looked at that horse? Maybe we would’ve stayed longer. Or: My parents loved each other and had such an awesome relationship. Did Mom wish she had died, too? They did everything together; did she wish they had also met their end together? And then of course, the ever-pervasive, all-consuming, relentless one word question: WHY?
    I thought there really wasn’t an answer for that. But maybe there is.
     

Chapter 23: Griffin
     
    I’m finally starting to feel better the day that Cam is supposed to arrive. The fever has lifted, only traces of that bone-deep exhaustion remain. I can’t remember the last time I saw Cam, and I think it’s unfortunate I won’t be in top form, but who knows, maybe things will actually go better that way.
    Jill and Karen take some of the campers out on a trail ride, which I skip out on since my head still feels a