Then we’re on the road.
I drive the green Jeep down a scenic two-lane highway, the faintest ache in my right knee. Sandstone cliffs rise in brown and green gorgeous fucking hues. Some rust-colored crags up ahead, spiked in unique shapes that can’t be found anywhere but right here.
Right now.
Daisy rolls down the windows, wind whipping through the Jeep. There’s no car in sight down the lengthy stretch of highway. I look to my wife, to the road, and back to my wife, her lips upturning playfully.
“What do you fucking say, Calloway? Fast or slow?”
Daisy smiles so brightly, so fucking heartfelt—it’s hard to stare for long, but I always take the fucking risk. My eyes burn like I’m meeting the sun.
And she says, “I love you.”
In ten years, our love has never fucking waned. I raise my brows at Dais and feel my smile touch my lips. “Fucking fast then.” I step hard on the gas, her smile flooding the car, and the Jeep races down the highway.
“Whoa,” Sulli says and immediately sticks her head out the window. Nutty joins, tail wagging.
Winona shrieks in glee, bouncing in her booster seat. “Faster!”
Already flying, I pretend to go fucking faster but keep this speed. Daisy stays in the car, her long legs extended across my lap. With her hand, she draws waves in the wind.
No words need to fucking pass. No radio needs to be flipped on. Our music exists right here. We’re alive. We’re alive.
God, we’re all fucking alive.
In this present moment.
In this place together.
{ goodbye }
May 2028
The Lake House
Smoky Mountains
LILY HALE
“I’ll pick up where I left off.” Luna flips through her journal, multi-colored stars doodled on the cover. Inside I spot pages and pages of scrawled words. Eight-years-old and so smart already.
I told Lo that she’ll turn out to be a Ravenclaw like her namesake.
Lo told me that Ravenclaws don’t forget to brush their teeth and flush the toilet.
I snapped back, “You just want her to be Hufflepuff.”
“So what if I do.” He pinched my cheek.
I smile at the memory, but Lo isn’t with us this late morning. Luna and I share a pillow, lounging on the bottom bunk in a lake house bedroom. I split a Pop-Tart with Kinney, my three-year-old tucked up against me, her elbow on my bony shoulder as she eats.
“How far through are we?” Kinney asks, crumbs spilling from her lips.
I glance at my hair. Yep. Tart crumbs are all over my shoulder-length strands. I brush them away but give up when they break apart into crumbier crumbs.
My hair has seen so much worse than this.
“We’re at the end,” Luna tells us, her Hulk slippers swaying with her feet. I’m quiet, but I like listening to my kids just as much as talking.
Luna finds the correct page, and then with an alien headband, she pulls her long, light brown hair back, little green bulbs swinging.
Kinney finishes off her Pop-Tart faster than me, and she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. She also has my round face, but unlike Luna, she has my big green eyes and shade of brown hair. Where Luna is outlandish and spirited, Kinney appears thoughtful and attentive.
Sometimes I wonder if they’ve taken after the two sides of me: goofy but introspective.
Luna begins reading, and I’m engrossed, not even realizing I’ve eaten my whole Pop-Tart until I try to shove an invisible piece in my mouth.
“Zhora forgot her ray gun and fluffy mallows on the hovercraft,” Luna reads loudly, “and she needed to hurry. Dash was waiting.”
Kinney scrunches her nose. “Where are the ghosts or the trolls? Is there a witch at least?”
“Just aliens.” Luna taps Kinney’s nose. “Beep, beep.”
Kinney barely flinches. She says matter-of-factly, “Ghosts are better than aliens.”
Luna shrugs and flips a page in her journal. “Everyone likes different sorts of things.” She glances at me, and when she starts smiling, I realize that I’ve been beaming at my eight-year-old like she’s the empress of an intergalactic universe—and I’m just a little astronaut floating by, witnessing this beauty.
Luna Hale might not have any friends outside of relatives, but she has more confidence at eight-years-old than I did when I was twenty.
Never ashamed.
My daughter is never ashamed.
“You made Mommy cry,” Kinney says and starts drying my tears with her Darth Vader pajama shirt.
“Happy tears,” I tell them, wiping at my wet eyes, tears overflowing.
Luna touches her Hulk slipper to my Thor slipper and singsongs, “Fan fiction.” She makes a smooching noise, Hulk kissing Thor.
I laugh at the Hulk-Thor alternate universe. Kinney scoots higher, sitting up on my stomach. I hold her waist, bony like me. Like Luna, too.
I squint at Kinney. “So you’re not scared of any ghosts?” I’m scared of ghosts and all the horror movies Lo watches with Garrison. They act like they’re comedies.
The only funny thing about horror movies is my petrified face in the black credit screen.
Kinney tells me, “I’m scared of nothin’ in the world.” For being three, she says this very seriously—to the point where I think I believe her. I try to recall any frightened Kinney moments, but most are just content Kinney moments.
“Uh-huh, not true,” Luna says, tapping Kinney’s nose.
Kinney swats her hand away. “Is too.”
“Then ask Eliot to tell you a ghost story and see what happens.”
“Let’s not,” I interject while Kinney says, “Okay.”
“Nonono,” I slur. “Not okay. We’re in the middle of a fun story about aliens.” I like these aliens. There are marshmallows and lots of chaste naps on the hovercraft. I almost think I could exist somewhere on Luna’s planet.
“Mommy’s scared,” Kinney says with a devilish smile.
Now I’m scared.
Luna annoys Kinney with another beep beep nose tap, and the devilish smile seems less Children of the Corn.
I convince them to return to the story by just pointing at Luna’s journal and asking, “What’s happening?”
Luna starts reading again, and Kinney listens as intently as me. Only one page left and the door flies open.
“Mommy!” Five-year-old Xander races into the bedroom, floppy-eared Gotham hot on his heels. Xander’s smile is more apparent at the lake house than anywhere else. It’s the one safe place void of media attention.
No cameras in his face. No one shouting his name. We like bringing him here, especially when he needs to mentally relax and recuperate.
Xander tugs down his green Power Ranger shirt that rides up. Maybe he forgot what he wanted because he just stands still, smiling, pieces of his brown hair falling over his forehead. Gotham pants beside him.
Before I ask, my oldest son jogs into the bedroom, not out of breath, but smiling too.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Hi…?” I switch on Lily investigation mode.
Moffy lightly squeezes Xander’s shoulder in affection before tapping his sisters’ heads like bongos. “Luna, Kinney.” Then he pats mine. “Mom. Ready to go?”
“Wha…?”
Luna shuts her journal.
“Waitwaitwait, we have one page left.” I might have whined that. I’m just deeply invested in what happens to Zhola and Dash. It was a devoted whine, a whine that every person in every fandom may understand.
So there.
Luna says robotically, “Later.” She mimes a robot as she stands off the bed. Kinney slides off me and then the mattress before darting to Xander’s side.
I try to dust away the cobwebs of my brain, but confusion still crinkles my nose and brows. Moffy grabs both my hands and pulls me to my feet.
“What’s going on?” I ask my four kids. They’re never this sneaky. Luna has trouble keeping secrets from me; Kinney will rehash her entire day, including the driest details: I walked down the hall. I turned the doorknob. And then I sat on my bed; Xander lied once about doing his homework and two seconds later made a tearful confession; and Maximoff—he likes being treated like a grown-up, like if anyone is doing the sneaking, it’d be all the other little kids. Not him.
“It’s about my bike,” Moffy tells me.