Five months had passed, and I decided I needed a vacation. I didn’t consciously choose to go to San Diego to look for Greg. But knowing he had been there and lied about it, I needed to see for myself where he had stayed, where he had eaten. The trip was different from my Rochester one, where I had been convinced I would find him and bring him home. Going to California was an act of closure. I simply had to say that I had tried.
I called to tell Sarah, who squealed with delight. She lived north of Los Angeles, but happily agreed to meet me in San Diego for three nights and four days. I felt excited as I packed. My excitement was stifled, like the sound of a band playing in the basement. I could feel the steady thumping of the beat, hear the high notes, but the melody and lyrics were lost. I used Greg’s frequent flyer miles to get my ticket, first-class upgrade included.
Mom and Dad agreed to babysit at our house to lessen the impact to the girls. Hannah was doing better with the adjustment to life without Greg, under the circumstances. She’d had some bedwetting incidents, but they didn’t last. She missed her daddy and frequently asked for Cody. I had no explanation to give her for Cody other than “He ran away.” But we talked regularly, and she was able to express herself.
Leah, on the other hand, was having a tougher time. She still asked for Daddy, and being only two, didn’t understand any given explanation—though there wasn’t one anyway. She cried often and started waking up nightly, wailing for hours on end, high-pitched and painful. I sat in her room, the lights dimmed low, rocking her gently like a newborn, overwhelmed by my solitary responsibilities. Night after night. I was worn out, and my vacation would at least provide me a full night’s sleep, which I hadn’t had in months.
I kissed the girls goodbye with a twinge of guilt. But I also hoped that years later, they wouldn’t remember me leaving. Hopefully, when they were older and looked back on their tough time, they would remember me for getting them through it—as flawed a human as I was. I also recognized that as a mother, there wasn’t a time, tragedy or not, that I could leave my kids without feeling a twinge of guilt. It came with the territory.
I fell asleep soon after takeoff and awoke with a start to the plane touching down on the tarmac. Instead of feeling refreshed, I felt exhausted.
Sarah waited in baggage claim. She jumped up and down, clapping, when she saw me. She was dressed head to toe in white over a golden tan, looking ever the Beach Boys’ California girl, with her blond hair cascading in waves down her back. We embraced, and I felt tears in my eyes. I hadn’t seen her in over a year. With her in front of me, all the reasons I’d pushed her away the last few months seemed silly.
She held me at arm’s length. “You look awful!” But she was smiling.
“Thanks a lot. You know, I’ve been through a tragedy here.”
“Yeah, but do you sleep? At all? You look so tired!”
“If you tell someone they look tired, you mean they look old,” I protested.
“Well, you finally lost those twenty pounds you’ve been talking about for years. How does that feel?”
“Oh, Sarah, I’ve hardly noticed it. Isn’t that the shit of it? I can’t even enjoy being in a size smaller jeans. I’d take every pound back and then some to erase the last six months.” I pulled my red-wheeled suitcase off the conveyer belt.
“How do you look exactly the same?” I asked, shaking my head. “You don’t age; you don’t get fat. Have you had Botox?”
She laughed. “No, no Botox, I swear!”
She linked her arm through mine as we walked into the brilliant sun and led me to her car, a midnight blue BMW convertible. Seriously? Good thing our friendship doesn’t have a competitive edge to it. I let the warm California sun beat down on my shoulders as she drove. The seventy-degree weather felt rejuvenating compared to the cold gray of March in New Jersey.
“What do you want to do while we’re here, Claire?” Sarah asked.
I shrugged. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t know what I wanted.
“Do you want to sightsee?”
“I think so. I think I want this to be a vacation with the understanding that I have to go to the places where I know Greg stayed. And I might need a day to be on my own, following my hunches. Does that sound crazy?”