My dad looks from me to Ryan, and then wraps an arm around each of us, pulling us out of our stretches and into him for a hug like he used to when we were younger, so close our cheeks almost smoosh together. “This is a treat for your old man, you know that? Like the old days. Except now you two are gonna have to wait up for me. I’ve been walking with your mom, but I don’t even wanna think about how long it’s been since I’ve run.”
I know exactly how long it’s been since I’ve run, but I don’t want to think about that. Instead I go back further, to before I ever knew Trent, to when Ryan and I started running with our dad. She was fifteen and I was thirteen, and those runs with him were special. They were for summer and weekend days, when he still had the time. He’d get us up and out the door early, never telling us where or how far we were running, but he always made sure there was a cool destination involved. Something to show us, like the top of a ridge where you could see all the way to the ocean, a tunnel made of oaks and hanging Spanish moss, vineyards that stretched and rolled for miles with bitter little grapes we’d pick as we went, a trail off the beaten path where we’d see deer, and wild turkeys, and rabbits. Ryan and I always made a big deal of groaning about getting up, but we both loved those runs with him and the things he showed us.
“I don’t know, Quinn’s a little out of practice.” Ryan looks at me, a hint of challenge behind her smile. “I think we both might finally be able to kick her butt.”
I feel an old fire start to flicker. A competitive one. Ryan and I both ran cross-country and track, but I made the varsity team as a freshman, and I was always a little faster. It drove her crazy, and it was one of the things I loved best about running. That it was mine. My place to shine when she did everywhere else.
Dad shakes his head. “We don’t need to race or anything. We’ll just go slow and get the feel of it again.” He catches my eye. “With something like this, you’ve gotta ease back in.” The way he looks at me, I know he doesn’t just mean physically.
More than once after Trent died, he asked me if I wanted to go for a run together even though he wasn’t really running anymore either. It had always been our special time before, and I think he was looking for a way to find that again—to check in with me, because we hadn’t ever talked about that morning after the fact. He’d been the one the paramedics handed me over to and the one who’d driven me to the hospital, chasing the ambulance with its swirling lights. But after that day I was so far lost I couldn’t talk to him any more than I could run past that stretch of road.
“Okay, we go easy,” Ryan says, “but I choose the route.”
“Deal,” Dad answers.
“Good. I have an idea of somewhere I wanna go.” She looks at me with a grin. “It’s a little tough but nothing you can’t handle.”
I take a deep breath. Hope I can still rise to her challenge.
She bounds down the stairs, and Dad and I follow. I’m not sure she’s right about me being able to handle it, but I hope so. I take another deep breath as my running shoes crunch over our dusty driveway. Ryan starts jogging right away, and so does my dad, and then I have no choice. We head down our driveway at a slow warm-up pace that feels clunky, like my body doesn’t remember how to do this anymore.
Ryan pauses, and for a second I freeze up at the thought of running by that place on the road, but she knows better than that and turns in the opposite direction. We fall into a single-file line on the narrow shoulder, with Ryan leading, Dad in the middle, and me bringing up the rear. I focus on putting one foot in front of the other, not just because I need to if I want to keep up, but because Trent is the first thing I think of once we get going. I was the one who got him running. He was a swimmer and water polo player, definitely not a runner, and in the beginning he’d ride his bike alongside me sometimes, keeping me company and pushing my pace. It wasn’t until sophomore year that he started running with me on the weekends because his coach said he needed the conditioning—and because it was another way to spend time together with how busy our schedules had gotten. We’d meet up in the early mornings between our houses like this for a run into town, have a huge breakfast at Lucille’s, then walk back home the long way, talking and laughing like we had all the time in the world.
I stop, chest all of a sudden aching, out of breath. “I don’t think I can—”
My dad turns around. “You okay?”
“No—I—I think I need to go back.”
Ryan stops and turns. Her cheeks are flushed, and she’s breathing hard as she walks back to me. I expect her to give me an order to keep running, but her eyes soften when she looks at me. “You’re okay,” she says. “It’s just your first time back out here. You don’t need to go back.”
Dad seems to understand too. “Come on. Let’s do this together. We’ll go easy.”
“Just focus on breathing,” Ryan says. “Let your legs do the rest.”
She turns and starts up again, and this time my dad motions for me to go in front of him. I take a step, and then another and another, until I’ve fallen into a semblance of a rhythm, albeit one that feels heavy and out of practice. And after a few minutes we settle into a slow but steady pace. Ryan pulls me forward, and the rhythm of one foot in front of the other gets a little easier. I breathe hard, in-out, in-out, in-out, and my heart pounds away, unused to working like this. My legs burn at first, then start to itch as blood fills and expands the capillaries in a way that it hasn’t for so long. My body starts to remember, starts to come back. Starts to wake up again, like yesterday.
Ryan turns off onto a single-track dirt trail, and I know right away where we’re going. I look back at Dad, and his smile says he does too.
“The ridge?” I yell up to Ryan. “On the first run back?”
“Yep,” she calls over her shoulder. “No sense half stepping!”
“You’re trying to kill me,” I yell.