“You’re going on a cruise.”
My sister Lynn said it like a doctor announcing a diagnosis. She was standing in my living room with her purse on her shoulder and her car keys still in her hand. She’d let herself in with her spare key, which she does whenever she’s decided I’m not answering the phone on purpose.
I was on the couch in Greg’s old flannel shirt. I hadn’t washed my hair in four days. There was a box of tissues on my lap and a cold cup of tea on the coffee table that I had made sometime the day before.
“I’m not going on a cruise,” I said.
“Yes, you are. It’s already booked. It leaves from Miami in nine days. Seven nights in the Caribbean. I got you a room with a balcony.”
“Lynn. I can’t afford a cruise.”
“You’re not paying for it. I am. Well, technically Rob is, but he doesn’t know yet.”
“I can’t just leave.”
“Why not?”
I opened my mouth. Then I closed it.
“Exactly,” Lynn said. She sat down on the arm of the couch and pulled my greasy hair back from my face the way she used to when we were kids. “Claire, look at you. You’re not sleeping. You’re not eating. You’ve lost ten pounds. Patty told me you called Greg’s secretary. His secretary, Claire.”
“I needed to know.”
“I know you did. But you’ve been searching for answers for three weeks, and you haven’t found a single one. If you keep this up, you’re going to drive yourself crazy. Maybe the answer is that there isn’t one. Maybe he’s just having a midlife crisis, and he’s going to wake up in six months with a red sports car and a lot of regret.”
“That’s not Greg.”
“I know it’s not.” She sighed. “That’s what scares me.”
I looked down at the tissues in my lap.
“Go,” she said softly. “Just go. Sit on a balcony and look at the ocean. Eat too much shrimp. Let somebody else make your bed for a week. Get away from this house and that kitchen table and that stupid salt shaker you keep staring at.”
I hadn’t realized she’d noticed me staring at the salt shaker.
“Biscuit,” I said weakly.
“Biscuit can stay with me. The kids will love it.”
So nine days later, I went on a cruise by myself.
I’ll be honest. The first two nights were terrible.
Everywhere I looked there were couples. Couples holding hands at the railing. Couples sharing desserts. Couples slow dancing at the piano bar to old Frank Sinatra songs. Old couples and young couples and couples on their honeymoons with matching T-shirts that said “JUST MARRIED.”
On the first night, I ate a cheeseburger alone in my cabin and cried myself to sleep.
On the second night, I made it to the dining room, sat down at a table for two, looked at the empty chair across from me, and walked right back out.
But on the third day, something changed.
I was sitting on a lounge chair by the pool with a book I wasn’t actually reading, when a shadow fell across the page.
“Is anybody sitting here, sweetheart?”
I looked up. An older woman was standing over me. She had short silver hair, enormous sunglasses, and a straw hat with a fake sunflower on it. Behind her, a tall old man with a white mustache was carrying two fruity drinks with little umbrellas in them.
“No,” I said. “Go ahead.”
“Oh, good.” She plopped down on the lounge chair next to me. “My name’s June. That handsome devil is Walt. We’re from Oregon. Fifty-one years married, and he still can’t carry two drinks without spilling one.”
“I spilled half of one,” Walt said, handing her the fuller glass. “That’s not the same thing.”
I laughed. It surprised me. It was the first time I had laughed in almost a month.
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