Westbound

The Long Saturday

Chapter 36: Westbound

Kira leaves for Colorado on a Tuesday in May with too many bungee cords and not enough respect for mileage.

This is, in my experience, the only morally coherent way for Kira to leave a state.

Her truck is backed into Mom's driveway by seven-thirty, bed half-loaded with duffels, a camp stove, two milk crates full of gear, and one pothos plant she claims is "emotionally stable enough for altitude."

"The plant's doomed," I say.

"The plant has grit."

"The plant has Indiana in its future."

"Rude."

She throws me a roll of packing tape and points at the open tailgate.

"If you're going to be helpful, start with the cooler."

So I do.

Colorado did not become unmentionable after we went there. That's the strange part. I expected it to remain charged forever, a direction with too much voltage in it. Instead it has become, slowly, a place on the map that can hold more than one story. Micah's unlived one. Elena's actual one. Now Kira's.

She got a seasonal route-setting job outside Leadville through a contact Elena put her onto after the funeral. The first time she told me, she did it in the parking lot behind Summit House while pretending to complain about health insurance.

"Before you say anything," she said, "this isn't me doing some tribute-tour nonsense."

"I know."

"Good."

"Are you going?"

She looked at me like I'd asked whether mountains remain tall when unobserved.

"Yes."

Now the yes is in the driveway with a pothos plant and three pairs of approach shoes.

Mom comes out carrying a cardboard box marked KITCHEN in Dad's handwriting because apparently boxes outlive men too.

"This has the travel mugs," she says.

"I have travel mugs."

"You have inferior travel mugs."

Kira takes the box with the reverence one shows only to mothers and explosives.

"Thank you, Mrs. Whiting."

"Also," Mom says, "there's a wooden spoon and a dish towel. Because all rental kitchens are guilty of something."

"That is absolutely true."

The morning moves under the old rules of departure.

Lift.

Tape.

Rearrange.

Discover that the camp chair does not, in fact, fit where Kira insisted it would.

Mom disappears into the house and comes back with Micah's old thermos — the dented green one that once lived in the footwell of his truck and smelled perpetually of coffee and disrespect.

"Take this," she says.

Kira's face changes for a second before she gets hold of it.

"You sure?"

"Yes."

Mom puts the thermos into the passenger seat herself, a small consecration.

"He would've wanted somebody to use it," she says. "And you know how to hit things without apologizing."

Kira laughs with one hand over her eyes.

"That is the nicest and meanest thing you've ever said to me."

"Good."

At nine, when the truck is finally as loaded as it is ever going to be, Kira stands with her hands on her hips and looks at the whole arrangement like a contractor reviewing a bridge she doesn't trust but must cross anyway.

"This feels fake," she says.

"Leaving?"

"No. Doing exactly what I said I was going to do." She looks at the tree line beyond the yard, not west because Ohio has no sense of theatrical direction, just outward. "I thought it would feel more... cinematic."

"It never does."

"You say that like you've left many states."

"Emotionally, dozens."

She snorts.

"Idiot."

Then she gets quiet.

"I keep thinking he should be driving instead."

There it is. Not as accusation. Just gravity.

"Yeah," I say.

She nods once.

"I hate that it gets to be me and not him."

"I know."

"And I still want to go."

"I know."

This time she looks at me.

"Say something better than that."

So I do.

"Go," I say.

The word lands between us exactly as it did on the county highway a year ago and yet not at all the same.

"Go because it's yours," I say. "Not because it makes anything fair. Not because it repairs anything. Just because it's yours."

Kira breathes out through her nose and looks suddenly younger than she likes people to see.

"Okay," she says.

Mom, who has been pretending not to listen from the porch with all the subtlety of a weather siren, says, "Well, yes. Obviously go."

Kira laughs. The moment breaks the right way.

"You're both extremely bossy."

"We know," Mom says.

Before she gets in, Kira digs in her coat pocket and pulls out a folded route card from Summit House.

August?

V4-ish

Big move, no apology.

She presses it into my hand.

"I made Marcus laminate it because he's a coward and owns the machine."

"You stole gym supplies for sentiment?"

"Professionally."

I slide the card into my jacket pocket without argument.

Kira hugs Mom first. Long and hard and no room for style. Then me.

"Don't get weird about June," she mutters into my shoulder.

"Impossible request."

"I mean it."

"I know."

She pulls back.

"Tell Norah I said if she breaks up with you for being emotionally unmanageable, I get custody of her."

"Cruel."

"Yes."

Then she's in the truck, window down, thermos in the passenger seat, pothos riding shotgun like misplaced hope.

Mom waves from the porch. I stand in the driveway with the laminated route card in my pocket and watch the truck turn onto Mercer and head toward the county road and the interstate and the long west beyond all that.

The house gets quiet in the specific way houses do after departure. Not absence exactly. Momentum gone.

Mom comes down the porch steps and stands beside me.

"She'll be all right," she says.

"Yeah."

"And if she isn't, she'll still be in Colorado. Which counts for something."

I laugh.

"You really liked the mountains."

"I liked that they weren't sorry for me."

We go inside because ordinary life remains hungry even after emotionally significant departures. There are dishes. A phone call from Jude about Saturday pantry numbers. Tomatoes that need using. The whole minor republic of afternoon.

Before lunch, I get a text from Kira from somewhere in Pennsylvania.

Still east of anything that counts. Plant surviving. Send me a picture if the June roses do something obnoxious.

I send back:

Drive.

Then, after a second:

Go.

Her reply is immediate.

Bossy.

I put the phone down smiling.

Outside, the garden is beginning to overcommit itself.

June is coming.