1. North America

Dad died when he was seventy-two. Even before I knew exactly why, I felt he wouldn’t last much longer. He smoked up until the end, and every day he ate a rasher of fatty bacon, always smothered with a film of syrup. 

Whenever Ginny came to visit, she hated the smell of smoke and meat in the house. It was always the same; like a brick wall, she would invariably say after visiting his little house down the freeway. Dad would be smoking a cigarette in his easy chair when Ginny walked into the room. His dirty, syrupy plate would just be sitting there on the side table. The smoke had permeated the walls, and every time Ginny commented on that too as Dad smirked and watched the National Geographic channel on the old TV at the front of the room. 

"You have got to do something about your diet, Dad,” Ginny often said. “I can run off some recipes, and we can do it together!” 

Dad grunted, “I don’t want any of that health food s**t.” This always caused Ginny to shake her head, and Dad would laugh at her until he coughed.

Check visited Dad less than Ginny, but he still went relatively often. He lived nearby - just an hour away - and so when he dropped in, sometimes Ginny was there too. Check was less critical. He didn’t have the healthiest lifestyle either, and he had a philosophy of, “Dad’s old enough, let him do what he wants.” Ginny didn’t always like it when Check came by the house when she was there. She often sat quietly in the corner of the room while Dad and Check joked about something or other, usually because she thought they were a little too vulgar for her tastes. Besides, Check and Dad had a certain first son-father relationship built over time. It was a relationship that had weathered ups and downs and now had steadied out, not into the normal “I love you” parent-child relationship but something more like a friendship.

I had moved a few states away after accepting a job with a newspaper - my dream job. I lucked into it. It grew harder for me to visit Dad, but I still tried every once in a while. When I did, I still hated going to his house. I would have preferred that we all go in on a house somewhere more central, maybe on a lake or a beach, a neutral territory. But every time I brought it up, the response was that there wasn’t enough money. Of course, there was enough money. It was just that nobody wanted to spend it on something together. Check didn’t like moving around very much, and Ginny already felt bad that Dad had to move to a new house. She always wished that Dad could have stayed in the house where we grew up, where he and Mom shared their last moments, the place where Dad called Home. 

It was Ginny that found the White House, or so we called it. It was just a small bungalow, the name ironic for its size, but also fitting because that’s where Dad would issue his decrees, calling us at odd hours to update us on something or other. Ginny worked hard to keep it up for him. Always on her visits, she tidied up a little bit, opened the window to let the smoke out and let some fresh air in. It wasn’t hard - that one-bedroom house only had a few rooms - but it was packed to the gills with old things, and I was never sure that Dad even knew what was in there. 

Our old house was way too big, and besides, it was far. Dad barely kept up with the White House as it was, his stacks of papers piling up in random corners of each room, dirty dishes going unwashed for days, boxes of old stuff socked away in invisible corners. If he had kept on living in the old two-story house, we surely would have lost him sooner, not to death, but in the literal sense - lost like change in the corner of a couch.

Hale was a different story. She lived overseas, and we never could quite figure out what she was doing. She was my twin sister, but I never really shared that stereotypical twin connection with her. We always considered her the youngest of the family, even though I was technically a minute or so behind her. I think it was her demeanor and attitude that made her seem younger. Mom perpetuated this, calling her “my baby girl,” while I was her “little man.”

  Besides, Hale never really kept up a solid line of communication with us. After college, people said she was on track to do something special, and I’m sure she could have done anything she wanted to - pass the LSAT, go to business school - any highly-regarded next-level thing. Instead, she decided to take a year off. We all thought it was to get everything out of her system - a normal post-college step - but she stayed abroad and kept on going. She taught kids English if I understood correctly, staying just long enough to save up a little bit of money and move on to the next place.  I never asked if she had savings, nor could I figure out exactly how she could afford to do what she did, but she had been to more countries than I could name off-hand and showed no signs of slowing down any time soon. 

Check was bitter towards Hale, saying she was a tax-dodger, and Ginny wished she could stay closer to home where it was safer. I found her life pretty interesting, although we only messaged now and again. Hale’s messages stretched endlessly in a torrential stream of consciousness, hopping from subject to subject, often more confusing than if she hadn’t sent any update at all. I would reply with something generic and then wouldn’t hear from her again for weeks, sometimes months, when she would update from some new and exotic place. She would stop by occasionally but hadn’t been back home in a couple of years.

Hale’s endless traveling also confused Dad, who was always a couple of steps behind, since he couldn’t message and only barely checked his emails. 

“And little Hale is in China right now!” he would sometimes cut in. 

“No, she’s in Dubai right now, Dad.” 

“What’s that?” 

It would continue like this until he just waved off the conversation, shaking his head and smiling. It tickled him to think that his baby girl knew so many places he had never heard of.

We all had our nicknames. I think it was Mom who designed it that way. If Dad had his way, we would all have more basic names like John and Jill. However, Mom liked the idea of a more and less formal name. Check’s name was somehow short for Chester, Ginny was short for Genevieve, and Hale was short for Haleigh. I was supposed to be Harry - short for Harrison - but I hated that name as soon as I heard it. I never answered to the name Harry, and I lashed out at anyone who tried to call me that. I’m not sure why, but I have always been Harrison. 

Mom’s death was more of a shock. It just wasn’t her time to go, everyone said at the funeral. Hale and I were about to graduate college, and Check had just gotten married. The doctors just said she had a glitch in her heart, something in the electrical wiring that simply caused it to stop. “What do you mean a glitch?!” Check asked, incredulously, and just kept repeating that question, over and over again. The doctor tried to explain further, but Check was already gone after having flipped a tray in the middle of the hall. Ginny was inconsolable. Hale and I were numb. I remember standing there listening to the doctor drone on and on. Hale was looking out the window. It was sunny that day. Spring, Mom’s favorite time of year. 

Dad looked more confused than anything, and in the months that followed, it was like watching a baby learn to walk. He wasn’t used to doing anything on his own. On our first visits to the house, we would find that he hadn’t gone grocery shopping in weeks, but that he had raided every garage sale in the area. Those actions made my Dad seem so much smaller, so much more helpless. He didn’t show his mourning very much, but he had become a different man.

 

-

 

I guess we all had prepared for Dad’s eventual death in some way or another. His decline was more slow and gradual, and that made it easier somehow to wrap our heads around the fact that we would soon be on our own. It seemed to me that Dad died long before he physically, actually did. His last year was mostly spent inside watching TV. It was almost like he was just waiting around instead of fighting on. 

Ginny visited faithfully, and she probably made that last year more humane and tolerable for him than it otherwise would have been. Check probably wouldn’t have been much help on his own, and he said less and less about it as Dad’s condition worsened. Dad never gave any indication that anything was wrong, but we all had our suspicions. Whenever we asked if everything was OK, he would respond in a tone that inferred, “Don’t you say anything,” while the words he actually spoke were, “Of course, never better.” He lost a lot of weight that year. Hale asked about Dad in her messages, and she said she was planning to come back in a couple of months. I think Dad was waiting to see us all together one last time too. Then he started vomiting blood. 

Ginny called me but didn’t really say anything on the phone. She just made small talk in a quivering voice that let me know without explicitly stating anything that the time was close. Check called as I was out the door ready for a drive over there one last time and confirmed that it wouldn’t be long. I didn’t have a number for Hale, so I sent her an email with a message saying she had better get over here as quickly as possible.

Once again, I was numb on the way over. I didn’t speed like in the movies. I wasn’t shaky. It was just like any other visit to the White House. I got there when it was dark. I opened the door, and there was Dad, still propped up in his easy chair, with a dirty, syrupy plate by his side. It even still smelled like smoke. This time, however, he had a bucket next to him. This was a strange sight, just the one thing off, like one of those “Can you spot the difference?” comics in the paper, like nothing was wrong. I don’t know how long I stood there in the doorway until Dad asked, “Well, are you going to come in or what?” 

My first words came out, “Did you go to a doctor, Dad?” I couldn’t think of anything better to say. 

He gave his typical response, “Oh it’s nothing.”

I raised my voice, “Dad, vomiting blood is definitely something. “

“Harrison, it’s cancer.” Ginny gasped.

Dad sighed, “Oh, you mean the cancer.” 

I stood there dumbly. Of course, I had known something was wrong, but the word cancer left me stunned.

Chuck chortled, “He didn’t want to go, but we got him there. We’re waiting for the doctor to tell us how much time.” How much time, as if his imminent death was just another appointment coming up, a scheduled rendezvous, a train to catch. The house still smelled like smoke and meat and gave no indication of the sickness that was living inside of his frail old body. He looked so much more pathetic, nothing like the boisterous middle-aged jokester that stood out as the image of my father in my memory. His body had molded to that easy chair, the lamp next to him a spotlight on his condition.

He simply said, “Well, it happens,” and spit a pink froth into his bucket. “Have you heard from Hale?” 

In fact, I had. I told everyone that she would come in a few days, that Hale had quit her job upon hearing the news but still needed to get some things in order before making the flight from Vietnam, her last posting. Dad got that look in his eyes. “Vietnam?” 

Check rolled his eyes. “Now why would anyone want to visit that hellhole?”

Ginny hadn’t said a word since I walked in. She got up and moved some plates into the kitchen. She always played it safe, and she probably wondered to herself how something this tragic could be happening to her. Ginny’s red face and an empty Kleenex box told the story of how her day went. She was a stay-at-home mom, but since Dad had started going downhill, she didn’t stay at home for much of the day. At this point, she was raising three kids: her own two and Dad. I remembered I hadn’t asked her about how the kids were doing. They must have been school-aged by now. Her husband Vick, your typical good guy, took care of her. Sometimes it felt like Ginny looked at Vick’s family - both of his parents still alive and in good health, and his brother a lawyer - and wished she had grown up in it instead of ours. Vick’s family was the kind that ran 5K’s together and went out to breakfast afterward, seemingly laughing the whole way. Ginny always wanted the wholesome TV childhood, not the reality show that she felt she had.

The TV droned, “On the savannas of the Serengeti, the lion prowls in search of his prey. Often, it is a simple injury that spells certain doom. It is the smallest opening that allows the lion to gain the advantage.” For Dad, the illness began as a simple cough that wouldn’t go away. He downed cough medicine and sucked on lozenges for a while. Any “You should get that checked out, Dad” was met with a distrustful look and a “just that time of year” type of comment. Dad didn’t even like to get his blood drawn at the doctor’s office. He hadn’t been to a physical in years. “I’m just fine. I’m still walking around, aren’t I?” We told Ginny that he had to see a doctor, but she didn’t like to push him either. It wasn’t until the bucket, just a week before, that he was finally persuaded.

“Now wouldn’t it be something if I could get out and see something like that?” Dad fancied himself on a safari. “You’d bet Hale has done something like that,” he added. 

Check said, “Dad you don’t even like leaving the house. You got all the safari you need right here.” 

“You know she’s coming in a few days,” I told him, “You can ask her about it yourself.” 

“Is that right?” he said, staring at the screen. He coughed.

The next day we got an update. The cancer was in his lungs and liver, and he wouldn’t have very long. Dad didn’t seem surprised. Check was angry. Ginny was devastated. I could only look out the window. The call had just confirmed the hard facts, the suspicion that we all had in the back of our minds that Dad’s time had come. 

Ginny reacted as if the call itself had caused the cancer, but the fact remained that it had been growing inside of him for a long time. She couldn’t breathe. The weight of the news was still settling on her. 

Check scolded, “D****t Dad why didn’t you just go to the doctor earlier?” 

Dad replied, “Now, before, what difference would it have made?” He was seventy-two years old. Maybe he would have gotten a few months more on a 30 pill-per-day diet. Would an earlier doctor’s visit have eliminated the cancer? Would it have magically rebuffed the small seedlings in his pancreas from sprouting into his liver and his lungs or magically cleared the cough away? The diagnosis topped off what was probably a decade-long process, the culmination of years of smoke and meat and loneliness and unrealized dreams finally compounded and solidified into one self-sustaining, mutating, growing mass deep inside where nobody could see it until it was too late. Yes, his time had come.

I left the house and took a walk around the block. If the inside of the house felt too small and confining, the neighborhood outside provided no comfort. The neighborhood looked slightly depressing in that edge-of-the-suburbs manner. On one side of the street lay the freeway, gray and hulking and noisy; on the other side of the street squatted wooden houses with rusting patio furniture outside, some overgrown hedges, a porch with holes in the screen. Inside each darkened window, a TV glared at the opposite wall. I imagined all of them as the final resting places of older people whose children had dropped them off there. A sort of geriatric kennel. It wasn’t that the houses weren’t livable. It was just that time was catching up to them as it catches up to us all eventually, clutching on to our things in our sad, squat houses, waiting for someone to take them off our hands.

Summer had arrived, and the asphalt radiated heat. Most of the trees along the street were ornamental and filled with cicadas, all of them screaming into the midday sun. There was no sidewalk. It was no place for walking. This section of the city was designed for cars. In this way, it felt more confining than ever. I rounded the corner and popped into a convenience store and got a bottle of water. The clerk gave me an odd look, a well-dressed man walking into the store with no car. Even Ginny would drive to the store when she needed something. The looks were one of the reasons I left the area. I left even before Mom died, choosing to go to the coast for college instead of staying in-state. When Mom passed, I had even less of a reason to stay. 

I chugged the whole water outside of the store, held on to the bottle, and rounded the corner again. It was no time for a walk - the heat was stifling - but I couldn’t go back into the house, not when I already knew what was happening inside. Check was arguing his point while Ginny sat in the corner crying. The process, always so predictable, grated on me, and I usually would have liked to avoid it. And so I kept walking, sweating, taking the looks from the people inside their darkened houses, jacket in my arms, empty water bottle in my hands, walking to stay away from the same inevitable conversation my family was having and had been having for years and years, the same points being made over and over again. I was surprised when I got back inside and Ginny was the one speaking, “What do you mean you don’t want any help?” 

“When it’s my time then it’s my time, what good is another month or so going to do me anyway?” This time Check was quiet, looking down at the carpet, his hands on his knees, for once having nothing to say. Dad had fully accepted his fate and was already more concerned with what was on the TV. It seemed like he had already processed this long ago. We were all just now catching up to him. 

Dad got up and walked to the bathroom. “Are you going to do anything?” Ginny pleaded.

Check got up and walked to the window, “What do you want us to do? Stubborn old man won’t take any suggestions.” 

“But they can do so much these days.” 

“He’s made his decision, let it be.” 

I left again and sat on the front patio in one of the pair of rocking chairs left over from the old house. I still had my empty water bottle in my hands. I hadn’t said anything since hearing the news. I had realized something was happening before, but I didn’t know how immediate the announcement would feel. I called work and said I wouldn’t be back in the office. I was going to work remotely for a while, one of the benefits of a writing gig. I was a planner, and I didn’t know how long this was going to take.

They gave me the OK on the condition that I wrote a story about it. “This will be great,” they said.

“Oh, will it?” I responded mockingly. 

“Well not great, err, you know what we mean. Sorry about your loss.” My loss. It had already happened. 

“Cancer is a cliché. It’s been played out. What am I going to do, write about how everyone feels?” 

“We think you can make this great. A first-person perspective in real time. It plays well online,” they prodded. I sighed. 

“Take your time,” they said. When I hung up, I didn’t check on my work like I usually do. I just sat and rocked on one of Dad’s old patio chairs, looking out at the wall of the freeway, listening to the sound of an endless chain of cars going by in the heat.

I was staying in a chain hotel closer to town. The view from my fourth-floor window looked out on the landscape, a carpet of green dotted with brown roofs and circular swimming pools. Directly across the street lay a strip mall - in it a grocery store, a small clothing store, a liquor store, a dentist’s office, a mattress store, and a Greek restaurant. The development called itself The Crossroads at the Centre, a grand name that said nothing at all, being neither at a crossroads nor the center of anything. I picked up a small continental breakfast downstairs, filled up my coffee, and jumped back into my rental car. This was going to be another hot one, and I could already feel a circle of sweat forming on my back as it hit the seat.

The door was open when I walked up. I noticed the screen was slightly cracked, and I could already smell the bacon smell before entering the room. Like a brick wall, I thought and let myself in. Dad was standing in the kitchen in his underwear, hunched over the stove, forking strips of bacon onto a plate. “Jesus, Dad, should you be eating that right now?” 

“And why the hell not - you want some?” 

“I already ate.” 

“Oh, shame - it’s a real good batch.” He poured a little bit of syrup on the side. It was a habit he picked up at diners during our road trips as kids, driving out into the forest somewhere, the only restaurants open being these small-town mom-and-pop places. I remember thinking it was a treat at one point, but now the thought of it repulsed me. He was right, of course, it wouldn’t hurt him any more than it already had, but it wasn’t medicine either. 

“When are you going to go pick up Haleigh?” 

“Excuse me?” 

Dad always caught me off-guard in one way or another. “Your sister.” 

“I know who Haleigh is, Dad, what do you mean pick up?” 

“She’s flying in. Today. You knew that right?” I did not. She had emailed Dad on her own with the flight details. “Well, you had better hurry, she’s coming in pretty soon.” 

“Jesus Dad,” I said again and left the house and ran down the steps and got into the car. I came back in, having forgotten to get any of the information. Dad was already in the easy chair, swirling his bacon into that little pool of syrup, smiling.

None of us communicated anymore. My updates from Hale were always indiscernible. Calls with Check were always short, and Ginny was living her own life. We were all wrapped up in ourselves. Either that or the things that most of us were doing just didn’t feel that significant. Or in Hale’s case, everything was significant, so in the end, all of her updates just blurred into one long block of text, all her ideas flowing from one to the next. I always had to reread each message just to pick out what I thought the point was. Check was a meat inspector, and he didn’t take much time off of work. After his divorce, he lived mostly for himself and by himself. His ex-wife Wendy never talked to him again after the break-up. I really liked her too. She seemed like a sweet woman. He probably would have had a much different life, but Mom died suddenly, and that was that. After that, Check became moody, and he didn’t like to go out anymore. Ginny led a different kind of life altogether, never taking risks, and trying to find the safest route. She had even dropped out of college, unable to stand being away from home for so long. After a while, we grew up, and she just stayed home, only moving a short distance away - her biggest move in life was living with Vick, moving into town instead of just outside of it.

I got into my car and turned onto the freeway, mechanically driving to the airport, a route I had memorized long ago. I looked down to the side of the freeway and saw rows and rows of sad houses, all of them the same, all of them containing people living their own lives, and I wondered what stories were unfolding in each one. I envied them, these people washing their dishes or their cars, looking up and thinking about someone for a moment. All their stories were moving forward, parallel to each other but incomprehensible to those around. I felt the weight of my own story, a father on the brink of death, a family splintered and scattered around, dreading coming together, and for a brief moment, I wished I was simply at home washing dishes, as though nothing had ever happened. But something did, and here I was, driving towards a reunion I half-dreaded and whose details I could never predict, each flyover bringing me closer to a collision course with a woman who, though the same age as me, seemed incomprehensible as her words, always written like a waterfall spilling across the screen.

I paid for parking and walked inside the airport, the quiet chaos and hushed white noise bouncing off the high walls and ceiling of the building, and I made my way to the arrivals gate and found a spot just outside of the doors leading away from customs. I looked up at each group, each of them smiling and rushing with their luggage to hug their loved ones, passing awkwardly around the barrier erected to route people away from the double doors just behind them. I also put on one of these smiles whenever the door opened, conscious of my first physical impression on this woman whom I had known my whole life, but who felt like a stranger to me. It had already been a few years since I had seen her last. 

And then there she was. Hale appeared in front of the double doors and scanned the scene, clutching just the handle of a small rolling bag she dragged behind her. She seemed fluid; her hair flowed over her slight shoulders, and she was dressed in a white shirt that was not too big but drifted behind her as she walked. Her baggy pants, printed in riotous patterns, billowed slightly around her frame as well. She stood up on her toes, her hemp-like shoes creasing beneath her, and she waved her hand above her body, her clothes cascading all around her as she stretched, and the movement revealed a small linen bag, bouncing off her side. She shuffled around the barrier and put out her arms, and suddenly she was all around me, and I swam in her clothes, being enveloped in a blob of linen and cotton and color.

Her words surrounded me immediately too, pouring from her mouth as if each sentence were connected to the last in a long rope emanating straight from her brain, “How are you it’s amazing to see you you look amazing I have so much to tell you it was such a long flight how was the drive here alright I guess I’ll find out and how is Check and Ginny and the kids have you seen them I’ll bet they are so huge I just can’t wait I have so much to catch up with it’s so weird to be back here.” 

And on it went as we walked back to the car, and for a moment I had trouble breathing, crushed under the weight of all her words. I thought that maybe she would burn herself out and then we could address each question or comment individually, but she continued on and on, and it was impossible to tell where one story or question ended and the next began.

Finally, the spotlight swung back to me, and I was put on the spot for an answer, “And how is Dad?” Silence for the first time. How would I answer that? 

“It’s bad, Hale. I’m glad you came. It’s almost time.” She looked out the window for a moment, taking in the first 10 words I had spoken to her, turning them over in her mind. 

“You know, I just thought he would last longer,” she finally said. 

“Last longer? He’s a person, Hale, not produce.” 

“You know what I mean.” 

I did know what she meant. We always saw him as larger than life, a force unstoppable as time itself. He shed the least tears in the weeks after Mom’s funeral, saying only, “We’ll do right by her, she wouldn’t want any fuss,” when I asked how he was feeling the following month. He always talked about waiting until after he was retired to take a massive trip to honor Mom, but the years ticked on. After he retired he spent more and more time in the White House. It seemed as though he was slowly losing speed, bit by bit, until finally, suddenly, he looked old and tired, like he had crossed over from waiting for the right time to make his big move to simply waiting. 

“It’s almost time,” I repeated, and this time it sounded less profound and more dumb. The clunky words replaced significance and profundity with simple factual information as if Dad’s impending death was just another doctor’s appointment. 

She nodded and looked out the window, and in that sarcastic tone that she always used she just said, “Fun.”

I parked the car in front of the White House and Haleigh looked confused. “This is it?” she asked. I said, “Yeah, remember?”

“I just remember it being… well I remember it feeling bigger.” 

It had, at one time, exuded promise. “Just the right size,” we said right when he moved in. But the house became slowly overcome with junk, and the outside wasn’t kept up very well, and the very walls seemed to shrink with each disappearing possibility. Check and Ginny’s cars were in front of the house, on the street by the driveway, and I said that they must have come over as I picked her up at the airport. She said, “Can’t wait to see how old Chester and Ginny are doing.” 

“Watch it,” I laughed, “You’re not Mom. Check will not be happy if you call him that.” 

“Check won’t be happy either way,” she snorted and got out of the car. I sat in the car for a moment and readied my escape plan in case things got bad.

We opened the door, and Hale bounded into the house. I heard a unison of shouts rise from inside. “Hale!” everyone said, and the door closed behind her. I opened the trunk and grabbed her things, as few as they were. What could be in these bags, I wondered? Everything was so light.

I brought her bags up the stairs and opened the door, and already Hale had made herself comfortable on the yellow couch on the side of the room. The TV was off, for once, and I guessed that Dad had readied himself for a new source of entertainment. A torrential monologue was filling the room with sound, and everyone was rapt in silence - Dad in wonder, Ginny in confusion, Check in disbelief, and I, unable to penetrate the wall of sound, stood uncomfortably in front of the door.

After a minute, Dad made a proclamation.“ Well, this calls for a celebration. I made a reservation at Beckett’s for us tonight.” 

“You what?” sighed Check. 

Dad must have called while I was out and before Check and Ginny arrived at the house to greet Hale. “Great!” said Hale.

That night we drove to Beckett’s, the old family hangout in the older part of downtown, a stretch that at one time was the quintessential Main Street of America, but now was home to mostly barber shops, pawn shops, and smoke shops. Beckett’s was a mainstay near the end of the old street, and next to it, the Wallace Butchery, its various cuts of meat still creeping me out as we passed by from the parking lot behind the building to the entrance around the corner. We didn’t need a reservation. The room was half empty, and the inside was as tired as the uniforms of the wait staff. I wondered to myself how we considered this fine dining in our youth, but it was as much a mainstay for our family as it was for the town, and I remembered the long drives from the big house in the country, passing miles and miles of trees and rundown houses to get here. I recalled the boredom of the drive, Hale and I wedged in between siblings that were much older than we were, having conversations like adults that felt unrelatable and distant. 

Dad declared simply that there would be no talk of health for this dinner, and that we would simply enjoy a family meal together like we used to. It felt like preparing for the last supper, and the sauntering pace that we took down Main Street and into the restaurant and to our table made the procession all the more funereal. The rhythmic scrape of Dad’s walker grew louder when we entered the restaurant, and the sounds of the diners faded as we filed in, all patiently walking in a line behind Dad. We finally sat, and an elderly man absurdly dressed in a full tuxedo brought us some bread and the menus. He poured water into all our glasses from a pitcher, his hand shaking, his face stretched into a kind of permanent smile after a lifetime of service. He wheezed, “My, you all have grown up a lot!” I could not recall this man or any details about him, but he acted as if he were a central figure in our lives, decades of dining here in our youth simply resumed as if we had never stopped coming. “Will the Miss have the chicken fingers platter again?” he asked Hale. Her face betrayed the same confusion that I felt. 

Dad poked in as we scanned the menu, “You all get what you want,” his permission an unnecessary nicety. Hale replied to the waiter, “Manhattan, then a side salad and eggplant parm.” She spoke with authority, but then added, “Please,” almost pathetically as she handed him the menu across the table. He gave another little charmed smile. I ordered a spaghetti and meatball dish, remembering the huge meatballs from my youth. Check and Ginny both ordered a filet, Ginny’s medium, and Check’s rare. Dad eyed the menu. “Peanut butter pie please,” he said and flashed us all a big smile. He was chuckling. 

“Is that all you want Dad?” Ginny asked. 

He added, “With extra whipped cream.” None of us were laughing. “You all get what you want,” he repeated. “I’m not too hungry anyhow.” He coughed a little bit and wiped his mouth with the napkin from his lap. 

We sat and waited for the meal, none of us having anything of interest to say to each other. A baby cried out from the back of the restaurant and its Mom hushed it down and brought it hurriedly out the front door. The sounds of cutlery scraping against plates and bowls and the hushed whisper of other diners filled the room. 

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out and looked at it. The name Samuel flashed across the screen, along with his face, smiling broadly in front of a backdrop of spring flowers. I announced to the table, “I have to take this. Work,” and I got up, my chair screeching loudly across the tile floors. “Sorry” I whispered, and brought the phone to my ear, and out of habit, I pressed my finger into my other ear. 

“Samuel,” I said, “Sammie, I’m out to dinner right now.” 

“You haven’t called in a couple of weeks, I’m worried about you,” Samuel said, his voice concerned on the other end. I made my way to the bathroom and turned on the light. I locked the door, and the light flickered on, buzzing above me with the quiet, consistent sound of an exhaust fan. “I miss you,” he continued. 

I sighed and said, “Things aren’t good here right now. Hale came. You know, my sister. She’s here. We’re all here.” I sounded lame. I didn’t want to go into details, not in this bathroom. I was distracted by the red wallpaper, the faux Greco-Roman artwork adorning the walls, like blueprints of an ancient ruin. 

“Let me support you. Let me help you through this. We can do it together if you just let me know what I can do,” Samuel said, almost pleading, trying to break through. 

“I can’t talk right now. I’ll call you later.” I said, finally. 

He breathed hard through the mouthpiece. “I’m here for you, whatever you need. I love you.” 

“Thank you,” I said, and hung up the phone, looking for a moment at his picture as it faded to black from the screen of the phone. The picture was from our trip to Mackinac Island, right outside of the grand patio of an old Victorian hotel, on the last day of one of the best trips of my life. It was there that he told me “I Love You” for the first time. It took my breath away. And for a moment I didn’t know what to say. The sun was bright overhead in the bluest sky I had ever seen. It was a relaxed weekend, the first break that I had taken since I could remember, and everything was going well. The picture disappeared from the screen, and I came to, staring into my own reflection on the screen, listening to the steady whirr of the exhaust fan overhead. I splashed some water on my face, dried my hands, went back into the dining room, dim and velvety, and found my way back to our table near the center of the room.

“Everything OK?” asked Ginny. 

I lied. “Yep, just giving an update on the latest project.” 

“That’s great,” Dad chimed in. “Look at all of you, here at Beckett’s just like the old times. If Mom could see you now… You’ve branched out Hale - no chicken fingers for you this time!” 

Hale responded flatly, “I’m a vegetarian, Dad. I haven’t eaten chicken fingers in probably twenty years.” 

“We always tried to order for you because you never wanted anything else,” Dad continued, his memory unfazed by this new information. 

Check needled her, “I don’t know how you just eat salads all the time. What are you Buddhist or something?” 

“No, just spiritual,” she responded matter of factly, “I don’t understand how you can support the slaughter of so many innocent creatures in an inhumane factory.” 

Check said, “Without it, I’d be out of work, and besides it’s delicious. Enjoy your turtle feed, and hope you get lots of karma points for it.” Hale rolled her eyes.

  Dad burst in again, “Buddhist, eh? Is that what they are down there in, where are you again? China?” 

“Vietnam, Dad, remember I told you just earlier today,” she responded, slightly annoyed. 

“Same difference,” mumbled Check. 

“Well, that’s amazing. What language do they speak down there in Viet-Nam.” Dad’s accent emphasized the ‘Nam. 

“Vietnamese,” said Hale. “You’d love it Dad - the temples, the culture, the food.” 

Check broke in again, “The heat, the bugs, the Chinese.”

Ginny interrupted. “Come on now Check.” 

“It would probably do you some good to get out and see it for yourself, Chester,” Hale smiled. 

It was my nightmare. All of us here, together again, without Mom, sitting in a ridiculous and dimly lit room, arguing over pointless details. I had the strong urge to get up and leave, but Dad seemed to be having a great time, oblivious to the negative energy building up around the table. “It’s so great to have all of you here from all around the world!” Dad gestured.

The phone vibrated in my pocket again. I didn’t answer it. The old waiter in the full tuxedo brought out our food. It sat ungarnished in front of us, the meatballs on top of my pasta smaller than I remembered and smoother as if they had been frozen for some time. Check and Ginny’s steaks looked buttery and solid against the white plate, each of them beside a humongous potato, still in its foil, leaking butter. The breading on Hale’s eggplant parmesan was coming off, and she poked at it with her fork, manipulating the lost coating back into the bald spot on the side of the filet. The waiter finally placed a large wedge of pie, heaping with frilly, piped whipped cream, in front of Dad. It instantly became the focal point of the table, rendering the rest of the meals tiny by comparison, even my serving of pasta, which was presented in what seemed like a serving bowl. 

Is this what Beckett’s has always been, I wondered? Has my memory betrayed me so much? This place, seemingly so posh in my youth, Mom reacting in wonder when the meal came, Dad rubbing his hands together before putting his arms around whoever happened to be sitting next to him at the time. Were my memories of my childhood all lies? 

Was this really what it meant to be part of a family? Sitting in a ridiculous restaurant each week, feigning interest in these conversations, or worse, belittling each others’ experiences? Is this the destiny that Samuel wants when he mentions that he wants us to support each other? To grow old together? To start a family together? Was this the destiny of our family? And if so, what was the point? To make small talk around a sad little table as we inevitably grow more and more distant, us parents in our old age fading further and further in health and well-being, trying to remain impressed by our kids who either have outgrown us or worse, never leaving home at all, left to sit week after week in a small and dark restaurant, pretending that this is as good as it gets? Count me out. There was too much to do, too much to accomplish.

I looked over at Ginny. How old are her kids, I wondered. I didn’t even know. Dad shoveled a pile of whipped cream into his mouth, and a spot remained on his upper lip. Hale defended her life choices against Check’s slightly racist remarks. No, this wasn’t a family. This was a s**t-show. I wasn’t going to have it. This wasn’t going to become my destiny.

            I put on my fake smile and didn’t say much for the rest of the night. I offered to pay when the bill came, the waiter’s hand shaking as he extended it in my direction. Dad was having a coughing fit, but he managed to squeeze out, “No, no, let me.” The old waiter nodded, and he swung his outstretched arm in my Dad’s direction. He kept coughing, and Hale took the bill and waited for him to stop. He wiped his mouth and a small red spot remained on the napkin. He folded it and put it under his bowl. “The pleasure is all mine,” he said and slipped a stack of bills into the folder. “Keep the rest, Carl.” The man took the folder and smiled and left. We got up and made our way to the exit. I helped open the door as Dad scraped his walker across the floor. 

            From the White House, we all got in our separate cars and got ready to go home. “And where are you headed?” I asked Hale. 

She said, “Oh right, can I have a ride to my friend’s house? I’ll be crashing there for a little while.” 

We rode back, and a light rain began to fall. As I turned on the windshield wipers, Hale made a serious face. “I’m Check and I have no idea how the world works,” she said in a deep voice. 

I chuckled, “That was an awful impression. Just not creative at all.” 

She laughed. “Was he always that bad? Complaining about everything? What an old curmudgeon.” 

“Probably,” I said. “Also, nice word.”

            We pulled up at a townhouse in a complex on a dimly lit suburban road. “I’m glad you’re here,” Hale nudged. 

“Me?” I said, “You’re the one who flew from Vietnam.” 

“You just help things… stay cool,” she continued, and she got out of the car, opened the back door of the car, grabbed her suitcase and bag, and ran toward the door of the townhouse, her clothes billowing behind her. She looked back and smiled, and then hugged the silhouette of a woman in the door, and then entered the house and closed the door. I drove back home, the wipers wiping away the raindrops every few seconds after they collected on the windshield, blurring my vision slightly, just for a fraction of a second too long each time.

            Back at the hotel, I climbed into the elevator, walked down the hallway to my room, slid my key card into the door, and entered the room. I took off my jacket and put it on the chair next to the desk. I closed the curtains, the rain having washed out the view of the strip mall across the street, and I turned back to the bed and laid down on it. I took my phone out of my pocket and lifted it over my head and I looked at the screen, scrolling through my contacts until I arrived at the familiar number - Samuel. 

            I pressed call, and I put the receiver to my ear, and I waited: one ring, two rings. “Harrison,” called the voice on the other side of the line. “I miss you so much,” Samuel said again. I didn’t respond. I looked over to the closed curtains on the other side of the room, and I looked up at the ceiling again, the receiver still pressed to my ear. “Harrison, what is it that you need? What is it? Let me be your support system. Let me be your family. Let me be the one you talk to when things get hard.” 

My voice slightly quivered and I said, “I can’t do this. I’m not ready for this.” 

“Ready for what?” he said after a moment. 

“What is the point of this?” I asked finally. “Of any of this? Of us?” 

“Don’t say that Harry. You have me. You know that. They know that.” I didn’t respond.

“You haven’t told them yet?” 

“I’m not ready,” I said. 

“We can figure this out. We can do it together.” Samuel sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as me. 

“I can’t. Not right now.” I said. There was soft breathing on the other end of the line. “I’ll call you later. I need to sort some things out. I need time.” 

“Don’t do this.” Samuel pleaded.

“Goodbye Sammie,” I said, and I hung up the phone. I didn’t want to be in this relationship. I just was. My whole life I was never really attracted to anyone. I never felt connected to another girl, another guy, whatever. Sammie was different. He put up with my distracted conversations, my long nights up working. But the timing wasn’t right. And besides, he wanted to build a family while mine was falling apart. I put the phone on the edge of the bed and I turned onto my side, toward the closed curtains, the lights still on, my clothes still on. I closed my eyes, and I fell asleep. 

 

-

 

The phone buzzed me awake the next morning. It was Ginny. She was crying hysterically. “I called Check. I don’t know what to do.” 

“What happened?” I asked, still waking up. 

“Please come over here. To the White House.” She hung up the phone without any more information. 

I still had my clothes on from the night before. I slipped on my shoes and went outside and got in the car and drove straight to the White House. Check’s car was in the driveway, his door still open. I closed it for him and I walked up the steps to the front door, which was also open, and I heard Ginny crying in the other room. When I came in, she looked up and said, “I didn’t know what to do.” She was breathing heavily. There was a pan of bacon on the floor, and the coils on the stove were still hot. I opened the window to let some of the smoke out, and I helped her up, then went around the corner to the hallway. Check was helping Dad from the bathroom into the bedroom. 

Check’s arm was around Dad, under his arms, and I quickly ran into the hallway and took his other arm. We guided him into the bed, and he coughed and coughed and he said, “That bucket, get me the bucket.” Dad was choking. He leaned over the side of the bed and threw up. It was half blood. 

I left the room. The hallway was spinning. I steadied myself on the wall, under a framed picture of the four of us - Hale and I looked young and Ginny looked to be about in middle school and Check was in a football uniform. I squatted down and looked at the threads in the carpet, and eventually sat against the wall in the hallway, just outside of the door. I called Hale, and when she picked up the phone I just said, “You need to get here now. However you can.” I hung up the phone and I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall, and again I heard Dad, vomiting and gurgling around the corner in the dimly lit bedroom.

Hale sprang into the house, and the door slammed against the wall. I got up and blocked the way into the bedroom, from which a deathly smell now emanated. I held my hands out against the walls of the hallway and she tried to push through my body until finally she stopped and hugged me, crying into my chest. I stood there, dumbly holding the walls until I finally let my arms down. They felt strangely light, as if I had been holding up a great weight, and I put my arms around Hale too, and I moved us back into the living room and put her down on the couch. She held her head in her hands, then propped it up and asked me, “What is going on in there? I need to know.”

 I heard a scraping sound coming from the kitchen, and saw Ginny picking up pieces of crispy bacon off the floor and moving the frying pan to the counter. She came into the living room, her face red and swollen, and sat down next to Hale. Ginny said, “I called as soon as I saw him there.” 

I just said, “I know, I know.” 

“I think this is it,” said Check, walking out of the bedroom. 

Hale stood up. “What do you mean this is it? We just all went out to eat together last night and he seemed fine.” 

Check sighed and said, “You wouldn’t know how Dad has been, Hale, you just got here.” 

I agreed with Hale, “No, this doesn’t make much sense,” I said. 

Ginny shook her head. “Dad’s always been great at hiding things.” She didn’t mean the objects hidden throughout the house. Dad hated going to the doctor, and would rather suffer through any amount of pain than have a nurse take blood from his arm. 

“No, it’s impossible.” Hale was still standing in the middle of the room, she walked toward the hallway. I got up and tried to go and stop her, but Check moved out of the way. “Suit yourself.” He gestured down the hallway. 

The sound of heavy coughing emanated from the room, and Hale proceeded with caution. We all followed behind her, ready to check in once the coughing subsided. She pushed open the door and walked into the room. We all followed her in. The room smelled like vomit, and spots of blood dotted the pillow around his head. 

“Hale! You came,” Dad said. He held his hand out weakly, then put it down on the side of the bed. His eyes were barely open.  

“I’ve been here, Dad, I’ve already been here.” He nodded and his eyes closed. 

Check pushed her out of the way, “Dad, open your eyes, Dad.” But Dad was sleeping, his dysrhythmic wheeze continuing as he slept. Ginny had already left the room, and she leaned against a wall in the hallway, praying. 

“Get out of here,” Check snarled at Hale. She shook her head and made a motion to the side of the bed. Check stepped in her way and said, “Go sit in the living room, I think you’ve done enough here.” 

“Done enough?” she said, “I belong here as much as you all, I have a right to say goodbye.” 

Ginny wept in the hallway, “Now don’t you say that.” I couldn’t think of anything to add, but I put my hand around Hale’s shoulder and walked her out of the room. 

“Is anybody going to call an ambulance?” she asked. Somehow, nobody had thought to dial 911. 

Check said, “I got it,” and he closed the door.

“I just wanted to see him one last time,” she said, the sunlight making her wince. 

I nodded, “I know, me too.” We sat out on the stoop in front of the White House, and I wiped my forehead. I didn’t know if I was sweating from the heat of the direct sunlight or from everything that had just happened. I still didn’t know what else to say. “Remember the view from the porch at the old house?” I asked. 

Hale smiled. “Nothing around but grass, it was perfect for running, the car parked directly next to the house, the rusty old basketball hoop dangling over the car. A bit of a change huh? You know, the thing I remember most was the set of handprints in the cement leading from the driveway up to the porch. All of our hands, small to big, his handprints right at the bottom of the stairs.” 

“That’s right,” I said. A siren’s wail grew louder, on its way over from a nearby street. “It was all of us there together.” 

 

-

 

            Samuel tried to call two more times in the next couple of days, but I didn’t answer either time. His consolation was the last thing I wanted, and I didn’t feel like listening to his overly helpful, protective speech, almost certainly ending with a request for me to tell my family about us. Hale knew some vague details, and she wasn’t about to talk to anyone about it. She was also distracted. Each day, I picked her up from her friend’s house like a kid being picked up from a sleepover each night and drove her to the hospital. I tried to work on my article about cancer, but, just as my mind went blank when talking to my family, nothing came from my fingers when I sat in front of the screen, needing to type something, anything about what was supposed to be my personal experience with this devastating disease. As if cancer needed another sad story, another article about ruined lives, a person reduced to a heap of skin on a bed, a family reduced to a blubbering group of strangers eating lukewarm hospital food.

Dad sat half-propped up in a hospital bed, connected to an array of wires, most of which I couldn’t identify. He would have hated it had he been conscious at the time. However, he wasn’t awake. He had fallen into a deep sleep - not a coma, the doctor clarified, but a heavy, nearly constant state of sleep. He would wake up every once in a while for a few minutes each time. His eyes would open weakly, and he would motion vaguely with his hand. One of us always asked, “What do you need, Dad?” and then he would turn his head over and fall back asleep. 

I wondered what he was motioning for but thought that ultimately it didn’t matter. Maybe he was trying to make some grand and meaningful statement that he couldn’t get out, or perhaps it was just a reflex, a few stray brainwaves making their way through from a distant time. We all hoped that he would say something else, something final.

He never did, and there was no grand final moment either. Rather, he sort of slipped away, faded into the cosmos, into the rhythmic beep of the hospital machines, the sounds becoming slower and slower, the time spent awake less and less until there were no more moments to string together. We had all expected there to be a Hollywood-style ending in which he would finally open his eyes, wave us all goodbye, and then flatline, his hand going limp in ours, as we cried and nodded to each other. But most of us weren’t even in the room when the final breath apparently happened. There was no limp hand, just his limp frame breathing more and more slowly into the middle of the night until finally his breathing stopped. Ginny was there by his side, as she usually was, and she heard the machine finally stop beeping. She swears she saw a shooting star, but Ginny has always been prone to dramatic statements, the line between what actually happened and what she wishes happened permanently blurred. She sat sobbing in the room when we came in early in the morning. She had been there for two hours already, telling the doctors to wait to take him away until we could see him. 

We all had one final look, but it felt like we had already done that throughout the previous day, and when he was taken away from the room, it felt like there was no more emotion to give, no more meaningful supportive statements to give to each other. An empty, drained feeling replaced the moments previously filled with waiting. A doctor came in and shook our hands, a person who we hadn’t seen before. And now, there were only the dry, logistical post-mortem steps that had to be taken.

 

-

 

We held the funeral in Ginny’s house. Dad had arranged for his remains to be cremated rather than preserved and buried in the same plot as our Mom. It surprised all of us except Check, whom Dad had told beforehand with the express instructions not to tell anyone until after the death for fear that it would upset Ginny. The turn of events upset Ginny terribly, and when we showed her the instructions, she cried out and asked, “Where will he go?” 

We arranged for the ashes to be held in Ginny’s house, on her mantel, and we ceremoniously placed the urn up there after saying a few words to remember Dad by. I told a story about how I shared my first drink with Dad. I was never a big partier in school, and I hadn’t drank a drop in high school. The week after Mom passed away, while we were waiting for her funeral, he uncorked a bottle of scotch and poured one for each of us. He said, when times get a little bit rough, a good scotch did the trick. When I winced after I drank the shot of scotch - I had taken the whole thing instead of sipping it - he asked me, “Do you know how much that cost?” He had saved that bottle for several years, and it was one of his best. 

I said no, assuming at the time that most alcohol was cheap. “I thought this was supposed to do the trick. I thought this would make things feel right.” 

He said the alcohol wouldn’t make things right, but seeing me grown did. He said he knew he had done something right in the world now that I was old enough to enjoy a sip with him. He felt he had to have done something right as a parent. I repaid him later, buying him a set of monogrammed highball glasses, and every time I came over we shared a nip of a good bottle and talked about Mom. My tastes improved over time. We always left a sip for Mom, and I vowed to continue the tradition, pouring out a sip for both of them with all the people gathered there. It was a rambling story, but I felt that it was appropriate. It was one of the only rituals that Dad and I shared. I winked at Noah and Eli, and although I still didn’t know how old they were, I was certain that I wouldn’t share a drink with them for a little while.

Hale was next and she talked about the day she graduated college. She graduated a year after I did from a large state college. She said that at her graduation his smile was the biggest she had ever seen. I was there on that day also, and I remember that smile. It was a smile I had only seen a few other times in his life.

Ginny was up next. She was mostly crying, but she got out a few lines about how she would never forget him and would think about him every day. 

Check simply said, “Thanks Dad, thanks for everything.” 

Then there was silence, as if he were going to say something else, like it was just on the tip of his tongue, but nothing came, and he turned and walked to the outside of the small circle that we had formed in the center of Ginny and Vick’s living room. 

After that, the priest that Ginny had brought in to lead our little service said a final prayer and blessed the urn that we had transferred Dad’s ashes into. We didn’t have any music, and after the prayer, we simply thanked the priest and moved into the kitchen where we had some small bites to eat. We were exhausted and somewhat directionless, and we didn’t want to think about any next steps. 

Once again, it was Check that led the charge. “Well, I guess now we need to settle the will.” 

Ginny said, “Give it a minute, Check.” 

He pushed the issue, “You know, the quicker the better.” 

I asked, “Do you think that he really has anything - at least that we didn’t already know?” 

Check said, “I guess it’s time to find out.” 

Ginny pleaded, “Let’s wait, at least until tomorrow.” 

Check was already on the phone, calling the lawyer who would unseal the will. He simply nodded and set up an appointment for the following morning.

-

We gathered in the probate lawyer’s office. He was slightly late, and he apologized as he walked through the door, rushed. “You know, your Dad and I had some interesting conversations over the past few months, but you probably knew something about that.” We did not. It was just like the reservation that he made at Beckett’s the night before his last episode. He always found a way to do something unexpected while nobody else could see. None of us said anything, and the lawyer continued, “Alright well then let’s get down to it. You know, this case is highly unusual.” 

Check immediately raised his eyebrow, “Unusual? Dad didn’t have any second wives or pets or anything crazy that we didn’t know about. We were told things were going to be straightforward.” 

The lawyer chuckled a little bit and said, “Well, you’re right, the beneficiaries are straightforward - don’t worry about anything like that. However, he designated me and my firm as the executor of the estate. And as such, I am legally now required to tell you the wishes of the deceased person, of your father. Hold on, let me read it for you:

“This is the last will and testament of Andrew Lawrence Cook. Being of sound mind, I hereby revoke any and all prior wills that I have made. I name Leonard Grey - that’s me - to be the executor of my estate, to store all my assets and distribute them to my beneficiaries at which time my final wishes have been fulfilled. In the case that Mr. Grey is not able to carry out his duty as executor, another senior member of his firm will take on his role as the executor of my estate. My estate consists of the contents of my personal bank account, my life insurance policy, as well as any other assets not otherwise co-owned. The beneficiaries of my estate are my loving children, named as follows: Chester Cook, Genevieve Rodriguez, Haleigh Cook, and Harrison Cook. All assets bequeathed in this will shall be divided evenly among those four beneficiaries.”

“Well, what is so unusual about that? Seems pretty straightforward. Let’s finish this thing, split everything up, whatever it is, and move forward.” 

“Right, well let me continue,” the lawyer nodded.

 “In honor of my loving late wife, I withhold any and all contents from my personal bank account and life insurance policy, as well as any information regarding the amount to be disbursed, until the following conditions have been met in full: 

1) My body has been cremated.

2) The complete contents of my ashes have been spread onto each of the seven continents of the world: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. 

3) The ashes are spread in the calendar year following my death, directly by my four children: Chester, Genevieve, Haleigh, and Harrison, together on each continent.

Until such time that these conditions have been met in full, I request that my assets and any further information be held by the executor of my estate.”

Even after his death, Dad had managed to make us speechless, once again. “Well, that’s impossible,” Check said. “This is a joke, right? This must be a joke.” 

Ginny was already crying in a swiveling chair on the side of the room. It was too much for her to take in at the moment. 

Hale had a smirk on her face. 

“What is so funny to you?” Check asked Hale. “Did you put him up to this?” 

“I didn’t put him up to anything,” Hale said and put her arms up.

 The lawyer continued. “I give, devise, and bequeath all the rest and remainder of my property including, but not limited to, real and personal property which is not otherwise effectively disposed of, to my oldest son Chester Cook, with the condition that any value gained from the sale of such property being shared equally among the other beneficiaries. I hereby sign and date this, my last will and testament, Andrew Lawrence Cook.”

“So what other property does Dad currently have, do you know?” asked Check, now fuming rather than sad. 

The lawyer said, “Currently, the only thing I know of is the house where he was living and the things in the house. So you can take care of that however you need to.” 

“And what does the rest of it all mean, that we have to go to every continent and put some of his ashes there?” 

“That seems to be the case. Like I said, it’s a highly unusual situation.” 

“Can we just mail some of it out, and you know, have someone do it over there?” 

“I’m afraid not. It’s rather airtight,” continued the lawyer, taking off his glasses and cleaning them with his shirt. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” 

“Well, what’s in the account?” I asked. 

“As the will says, I cannot divulge the amount in the account until his conditions have been met,” the lawyer answered. 

“So you’re telling me that we have to go around the world, spend all that money and time, so that we can get an amount of money that we can’t even know until it’s finished?” Check asked, shaking his head. 

“Yes, and it needs to be this year,” the lawyer clarified. 

“Or what?” Ginny asked, exasperated. 

“Well, in that case, I’m afraid that the assets will be retained by the executor of the will, which in this case, is me and my firm.” 

“You a*****e, you made him do this,” Check was looking out the window. He looked as if he might snap at any moment. 

“No, we advised him not to do something like this, to minimize risk and uncertainty. But he was quite adamant. We even asked him to consider releasing the money little by little as you traveled to each continent or to take away the time limit, but his mind was made up, and he did not revisit the will again. Once it was signed and sealed, he didn’t answer any of my calls again. So I’m afraid this is the way it has to be.”

“I can’t do this. I’ve never even been out of the country. I have kids and a husband, and... and this is just not the right time for this,” Ginny pleaded. “Hale could do this, but me, no way - I can’t go to Africa, to Asia, to Antarctica, I have no idea how to even start going to any of those places.” 

“You know what I agree with Ginny here, this is crazy.” I shook my head. 

The lawyer responded, “Crazy or not, this is what your Dad has requested, and now that the will has been unsealed, and your father cremated, your year-long period has officially started.”

Hale chimed in, “I think we can do this. Dad mentioned that this was in honor of Mom. Remember that they wanted to travel the world together? This is it, this is what we have to do.”

“How do you propose that we do that?” Check challenged. We all sat in silence. 

The lawyer spoke up, “You could split the load. I hate to leave you out on a limb like this, and I’ll help as much as I can. I can’t advise much, but I say that you help each other plan out how you’re going to do this. Has anyone traveled before?” 

“Just Hale,” I said.

“Wait a minute,” Ginny piped in. “Check went to Australia, on his honeymoon. What did you do for that Check?” 

He replied, “No, no I’m not planning a vacation for us.” 

“This isn’t a vacation,” Hale said, “It’s a mission.” 

Ginny nodded, “I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but we’ll find a way to get it done, for Mom and Dad.” 

“Are you people crazy?” Check asked. 

Something clicked in my mind. “No, you know what? This is doable. I’m working on a project about Dad’s condition. But I think the project just changed. Wait right there.” I walked out of the room and called my boss, pacing in the wood-paneled hallway of the lawyer’s office. Before he could say hello, I said, “The project just changed.” 

“Hello, and what?” my boss responded. 

I explained the situation, “Listen, the story isn’t about cancer anymore. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a gold bar in what has been one of the shittiest experiences of my life. Here’s what I can do if you just help us out, a little bit. I have to go to every continent in one year and spread my father’s ashes somewhere in each one. I can do travel writing, I can do personal interest, it can be whatever you want. When you told me to do the cancer thing, I couldn’t do it. I don’t have anything for you on that right now. But somehow, out of all this, I’ve felt more inspired than I have in a really long time. This is what the story is meant to be.” 

There was a pause on the other side of the line, then, “This is a joke right? You want me to fund you and your family to vacation around the world now that your Dad has died?” 

I told him, “No, we have to. That’s the twist. It’s a mystery, it’s an adventure. What’s going to happen when this thing is done? Nobody knows for sure, maybe there’s nothing, maybe there’s a million dollars. But if we can somehow just pull together and do this thing, it would be a hell of a story.” 

He said, “Look, if you can somehow make this sound less crazy than it does right now, I’ll consider it. But I can’t promise anything, and we couldn’t do it for your family - we would only be able to give you some sort of advance.” 

“OK I’ll get back to you in a little while,” I said, and I hung up without saying goodbye.

I stormed back into the lawyer’s office. “Listen, guys,” I started. 

Hale said, “Yes, we’re doing it. We just decided.” 

Ginny looked shocked, but she repeated, “I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but we have to, for Dad and Mom.” 

Check muttered, “The stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” We all stood in silence for a minute, all of us around the table. 

“I can write up a story, help us out a little bit through a bit of an advance on a few articles, maybe a book,” I said. 

Hale said, “I’ve been to a lot of Europe and Asia - I can help plan those legs.” 

Check grumbled, “So what are we going to do for the others?” 

The gears turned in my head. “Check, just like Ginny said, you’ve been to Australia, you plan our way over there. We’re already here in North America, so we’re already one down. What’s left? We have Africa, Antarctica, and South America, so Ginny, you can take two, and Check you take one more, That’s two for each of you, Ginny, and Hale. Perfect.” 

Check countered, “Perfect? You haven’t taken any yet, I knew that this would happen.” 

“Check,” I said, “I can document this, make it all happen. I have to be an observer here. I’ll be right there with you guys, but it’s going to take time.” 

“Oh right, coasting through life by having others do the work, that’s typical of you media types.” 

“Check, I can split my earnings with you guys, it’s like a guaranteed extra little bit. If the project is a bust afterward, you can recoup some of your investment.”

“Oh this’ll be an investment alright, but if this is how Dad wanted to do it, then this is what we’ll do. Harrison, you better not be shitting us about that project. Plan a trip to Australia on short notice? OK, you got it, but it’s on my terms - in and out. I can’t be taking so much time off of work. For some, we’ll have to travel around Christmas also, everyone OK with that?” 

Ginny looked up, “You mean we have to miss Christmas? I can’t do any of this - Africa? Antarctica? South America? I wouldn’t even know where to start.” 

“Oh, we’ll figure it out! You can just get a travel agent,” Hale said. 

“Easy for you to say, you’ve already traveled a lot. I don’t even have a passport yet. And where will all this money come from?”

Check said, “I’m sure we can find some sources. Until then, we’ll need to load up those credit cards and hope to God that there’s something on the other side.”

“Alright, so it’s happening then?” I asked everyone.

Check shook his head, “Do we have a choice?”

Reviews

[Richard Knox]

Greg, I am really enjoying this book. The characters are interesting, aggravating, sympathetic, and real. I am engrossed in the characters and story enough to care what happens, even though I think I have an idea how it will all resolve.

[Greg Herb]

Glad you are enjoying the book! I am curious about your predictions haha.

[Richard Knox]

Ha ha! I will be delighted if my predictions are wrong.