Southbound Read online

  “Brad?” The flowers I’d bought fell out of my hands. “Brad! What the fuck?”

  I pushed the door open more and Brad tumbled off of the person he was having sex with, which meant that of course I saw who it was—Veronica, one of the contributors to the magazine. Someone I thought of as a work friend. She yanked a sheet up to cover her naked chest.

  “Aspen!” Brad said. “Fuck--aren’t you supposed to be in class?”

  I looked from Brad to Veronica and for a second I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to cry, scream, beat the hell out of both of them, or just leave.

  “What the hell are you two doing?” I could feel my throat becoming sore from the pitch of my voice but I didn’t care. “Don’t answer that. It’s obvious what you’re doing. What the fuck, Brad?”

  I turned my attention away from Veronica for the moment--it was just too much to consider both of them, and how they’d separately betrayed me.

  “Look, Aspen, it’s not what you think,” Brad said.

  All at once, instead of being overwhelmed, or torn, I was filled with rage.

  “Just how stupid do you think I am?” I shook my head. “If course it’s what I think. You’re fucking my coworker--on our anniversary.” I laughed but in the middle of it, a sob caught in my throat. “To think I was going to come here and surprise you!”

  I looked at Veronica. At least she looked uncomfortable. I couldn’t believe she’d do something like this. For the moment, though, I was concerned with Brad.

  “Wait, it’s our anniversary?” Brad looked shocked at this news. I felt my eyes stinging and I knew I had to get out of there before my anger dissolved into despair.

  “Yes, you asshole. It’s our anniversary.” I swallowed against the tight feeling in my throat and took a deep breath. “It’s our two-year anniversary this week, and I got out of class early and thought I would surprise you because--get this--I thought you cared.” I could feel the tightness in my throat getting worse. “But obviously I was mistaken.”

  I turned away from the bedroom door and kicked the flowers I’d gotten, then hurried through the apartment.

  “Aspen, wait!” he called.

  I managed to remember the food I’d bought. Brad didn’t deserve any of it, so I grabbed it on my way to the door. I also managed to have the presence of mind to take his key out and throw it onto the floor. Then I left his apartment, slamming the door in my wake and hurrying down the stairs.

  I found and took the train headed toward Branford where my car would be waiting for me. All I could think of is how much I wanted to be home--to see Grandma. She would, somehow, understand how I felt. I could smell the fried chicken, and my stomach lurched with a weird combination of nausea and hunger. I cried on the train and didn’t even care who saw me; it was Connecticut, after all. People see other people crying on the train all the time and do nothing about it--there’s nothing to do.

  Grandma didn’t even have time to ask why I was home so early before I started sobbing, shoving the bag with the picnic lunch into her arms and pushing past her into the house. “Oh no! What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

  I threw myself down onto the couch and gave into the sobbing for a few moments. Grandma waited for me to calm down enough to tell her what had happened.

  “Brad,” I said, as I started to be able to breathe again.

  “What about him?”

  I wiped at my face and took a shaky breath. “I was thinking about the picnics you and Grandpa had, and I got out of class early, so I thought I’d surprise Brad.”

  I told her what had happened, and Grandma scowled.

  “That little bastard,” Grandma muttered, joining me on the couch. “We’ll figure out what to do about Veronica later--but you did the right thing.”

  I nodded and sat up, reaching onto the coffee table where she’d put my picnic bag down.

  I grabbed a piece of fried chicken and offered the box to Grandma. “I know I did,” I said. “It still just...god, it hurts so much.”

  Grandma snagged a piece of chicken as well, and for a few moments we both just ate in silence.

  “It’s good that you know he isn’t the one for you, at least,” Grandma said finally. “I know it hurts, but the only way you can find the guy who’s right for you is to eliminate the ones who are all wrong.”

  I snorted and ate some more of the crispy skin from the chicken.

  “Yeah, but you lucked out early,” I said, almost feeling resentful of the fact that my grandmother had managed to find love so much earlier in her life--and that Grandpa had turned out to be such a good boyfriend, then husband, and father. It wasn’t fair.

  “You think I didn’t kiss my share of toads? Sweetheart--just because I found your grandpa when I was young doesn’t mean I didn’t have would-be lovers before him.”

  I sighed. “Yeah but you—”

  “But nothing,” Grandma told me sharply. “You’ve read my diaries, but probably skimmed over the ones when I was younger--right?”

  “I must have,” I said, sulking. “I don’t remember you giving your heart to someone and then having it stomped all over.”

  “Well, it happened,” Grandma said, rising to her feet and licking her fingers. “Let me get one of the journals from before I met Grandpa.” She wavered slightly.

  “Let me go get it for you,” I suggested. Grandma suddenly looked so pale. “Sit down, I’ll throw away the bones from your chicken, too. I’ll bring us some plates or something.” I left the room and went into the kitchen, getting stuff to eat the meal I’d planned to have with Brad. I stopped at the bookcase in the hall and grabbed two of the journals, marked on the spines with years before Grandma met Grandpa.

  I brought everything into the living room and sat down, then handed the notebooks to Grandma.

  “Ah yes,” Grandma said, opening one. “I think this is the one where I started seeing Harold…” She flipped through pages and chuckled wryly.

  After reading through a few diary entries where Grandma’s dating life had been--if not as sexual--as bumpy as mine had been, including some early heartbreak, I started feeling better. We ate the rest of the fried chicken carefully, then split the rest of the snacks. Even though I wasn’t exactly over what had happened with Brad, I wasn’t feeling as terrible about it.

  We started talking about her and Grandpa.

  “I wasn’t sure he was the one, you know,” Grandma told me, setting the notebook aside.

  I laughed. “But you gushed about him in your own diary.”

  “I had really hot, really intense feelings for him,” Grandma conceded. “And I was hopeful--but I wasn’t sure it would ever be anything other than a fling until it was more.”

  I thought about that, and saw Grandma frown for a second.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  Grandma shook her head quickly. “Just those damn pills the doctor gave me,” she said. “They make me feel queasy sometimes.”

  “Are you sure it’s not the chicken? Or something else?” I sat up and looked at her.

  She was pale again, her lips almost purple underneath her pearly pink lipstick that she wore every day.

  “I’ve been getting the feeling all day,” Grandma told me. “Go get the diary from…” she paused and made a face. “From 58.”

  I got up to do as she asked, still feeling uneasy. “Are you sure you shouldn’t call the doctor?”

  I went into the hall, where the bookcase was, and put back the journals we’d already taken out.

  “I’ll be fine,” Grandma insisted.

  I brought the journal she wanted and came back into the room with her, sitting down and sipping my drink while Grandma flipped through the pages.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  Grandma smiled slightly, a little lopsided, and found what she was looking for.

  “This,” she said, handing it to me.

  I had to smile when I found out which entry she was bringing to my attention; it was from the night she�
�d met Grandpa. We read it together, and I had to admit I was feeling better about Brad. My meeting with Brad had had none of the fire, none of the synchronicity of Grandma’s meeting with Grandpa.

  “Okay, I get it,” I said. “When you know, you know.”

  I looked at Grandma and she was looking pale again.

  “Promise me something, Aspen,” Grandma said, pushing the notebook away and looking at me intently.

  “What, Grandma?”

  “Promise me that you’ll travel. You have more chance at it than I ever could have--and I took every chance I had when I was younger.”

  “What’s this about?” I asked.

  Grandma shook her head. “Just promise. Promise me you won’t get tied down to one spot before your life even really begins.” She reached out for my hand, fumbled at it, then gripped it harder than I thought she possibly could have.

  “I promise,” I said. “But--Grandma, come on, there’s plenty of time for that.”

  She sighed, and her grip on my hand went shaky.

  “Plenty,” she said, but her voice sounded sad. “Go--go get one of the other journals. The one with...with the wedding.”

  She let go of my hand and I nodded, looking at her for a moment longer, wondering if there was something more wrong than what she’d been claiming.

  I went to the hall again and looked at the bookcase. I tried to remember where I’d read about her wedding to my grandfather, what year it had been. I plucked one of the notebooks and found that it wasn’t the one, then grabbed the one for the next year. It wasn’t the one I wanted, but it had the entry from when they actually got engaged, so the one for the following year had to be it.

  I walked back into the living room, the journal in hand.

  “Found it, finally,” I said, looking down at the entry.

  I glanced up, only to see the couch empty--Grandma wasn’t on it anymore. My heart pounded in my chest, and I looked around; she hadn’t gone far. She was on the floor, collapsed, not moving.

  “Oh! Oh god--Grandma, hold on,” I said, almost more to myself to her. I grabbed my purse and found my phone, then dialed 911.

  Chapter Three

  Aspen

  “Are you sure this is the right way to handle this, Aspen?” Catherine asked.

  I looked at her and shrugged as the estate buyers pulled away from the curb in their huge truck.

  “It’s the best way I can think of to handle it,” I said. “It feels right.”

  “But what about the rest of the family?”

  I rolled my eyes at Catherine’s suggestion and shook my head.

  “The rest of the family didn’t inherit,” I explained. I sighed and closed my eyes.

  Grandma had still been alive when they got her to the hospital, but she hadn’t lasted very long--and she’d never left the hospital. Brad called me the day she had finally passed, saying that he wanted to get back together, that he had made a mistake, but had seen the light. I told him to go to hell.

  “It just seems like you’re throwing everything away,” Catherine pointed out.

  I opened my eyes again. The truck was gone, and the house itself was--as of their leaving--totally emptied out, apart from my bed, Grandma’s journals, a few keepsakes, and what I might need to live on for a few days. I didn’t plan on being in the house for more than a week longer.

  “I made her a promise,” I said quietly. “I told her that I’d spread her ashes where she left Grandpa’s.”

  “You don’t have to get rid of everything to do that,” Catherine countered.

  “I also promised her that I wouldn’t settle down early,” I said. “That I was going to travel, and see some part of the world before I found a man to live the rest of my life with.”

  “But you quit the MFA program for this,” Catherine insisted. “I can’t let myself believe that she would want you to do that.”

  “I’m on hold,” I explained--as I had already explained before. “I can take up to a year before I would have to apply over again.”

  “Why not wait until you’ve gotten the degree out of the way?” Catherine asked. “I’m trying to say this in the gentlest way possible, but you have her ashes—it’s not like they’re going to go bad.”

  I looked at my friend and smiled, even though I knew it looked sad. It probably looked as pathetic as all my smiles had looked since the night I’d followed Grandma’s ambulance ride to the hospital.

  “I just don’t want this hanging over me,” I told her. “I appreciate you being here for all of this--the estate people coming, the move-out…” I sighed and shifted on the porch swing. “They’re going to start setting up for the house showings soon, anyway, and I don’t want to be here while a bunch of people are tromping around the house, questioning Grandma’s interior design skills.”

  “I guess I can see that,” Catherine conceded. “But I don’t know why you decided you had to sell the house anyway.”

  “I can’t stay in here much longer. I don’t think I’ll be living in Connecticut, even...I don’t know where I’ll go after I take care of the ashes, but I just don’t want to be in this town anymore.”

  “Well, I’ll hold onto your extra clothes, and all that,” Catherine said, sighing. “But I just really want to make sure you know what you’re doing, that you’re not just reacting out of grief.”

  I laughed bitterly. “Yeah I guess I’m pretty tragic right now,” I admitted. “My boyfriend cheated on me, my grandmother died within a week of that, and now here we are, four months later.”

  “At least Veronica dumped Brad,” Catherine said with satisfaction. She’d come to the hospital the night Grandma had collapsed, and I’d told her everything. Catherine had wanted to help me devise a scheme to get back at Veronica, but I was over it. Veronica could have Brad—or not.

  “There’s nothing really holding me here anymore,” I said. “I mean--don’t get me wrong, I’ll miss you. But I need to do this.”

  Catherine nodded and didn’t push the issue any further for the rest of her visit.

  I almost asked her to stay the night, but there wouldn’t have been anywhere for her to sleep except alongside me in my bed, and neither of us would be comfortable. Instead I let her heat me up some leftovers from the freezer, and let her watch me eat them—so she could make sure that I had eaten--and then hugged her goodbye as she left with the boxes of my belongings I didn’t intend to take with me just yet.

  I’d managed in four months to cut everything I owned down to a car, a few suitcases, and six boxes that Catherine was holding onto for me, along with Grandma’s ashes. In my room, I had a few weeks’ worth of clothes, already packed, the urn they’d put Grandma into, and a few of the most important journals--the rest were in boxes to stay in Catherine’s garage until I came back.

  After Catherine left, I opened up the journal from the year that Grandma met Grandpa. In order to scatter her ashes where she’d scattered Grandpa’s, twenty years earlier, I would need to go to the Florida Keys; that was where they’d met. But I didn’t have very many clues to go on otherwise, in terms of the specific spot. She’d written about the hotel she’d stayed at, and the travels and day-trips she had taken while she was in the Keys, so I’d figure it out once I got there.

  The real question was how to get there. Selling off Grandma’s belongings--nearly all of them--to the estate people had brought in a good bit of money, along with her insurance policy, which had covered her end-of-life expenses and the cremation. Once the house officially sold, the realtor had my banking information to wire me the money. After everything was paid off, including my student loans, I’d have about $300,000. That was more than enough to cover whatever it might cost to scatter Grandma’s ashes and maybe spend a little time in the Keys. After that, I would have a better idea of what I was going to do with myself.

  I took out my laptop to figure out how I was going to get to Key West. I had a postcard that Grandma had taped into her diary, showing the hotel she’d been staying at. That
was the first thing to check out, and I typed in the name of the place, hoping that I would find out, at least, who had bought it and what might have replaced it. Instead, I discovered that the hotel--the Golden Palm Inn--was still standing, still owned by the same family. It seemed to be in pretty good shape, even after all the years it had gone through, to judge by the pictures on the site.

  I filled in my info to book a room, and as I was waiting for the site to respond, I opened another tab to find out the best possible way to get to the Keys. I could, in theory at least, drive. I checked Google Maps and saw that it would take twenty-four hours of driving. It wasn’t the worst drive I could think of making, but I definitely didn’t relish the idea of being on my own in a car for that long--especially since it would take me longer than twenty-four hours, given that I’d have to sleep, and eat, and occasionally stop to stretch my legs. It’d be two or three days before I’d get to Key West.

  That technically wasn’t a problem, in that I no longer hand a job or classes to go to, but I thought about how spooky and grating it would be, doing so much driving on my own without having any real idea of where I was going beyond the GPS. “You have plenty of money, Aspen,” I muttered to myself. “You might as well at least see what it would be like to fly there.”

  In the end, I booked a flight, along with a rental car. There were a few other places among the Keys that Grandma had mentioned, and while Key West was not that big an island, a car would be convenient--at least, it would give me more options than depending on hotel shuttles and taxis and Uber. Other than that, I had no idea what I’d do once I got down there.

  Catherine had been right in one sense: I had set myself somewhat adrift. But my flight would be leaving in two days, and then I would, I hoped, have some kind of plan. If nothing else, I’d figure out the puzzle of Grandma’s ashes and what to do with them, and I would find out what she’d found so magical about the Keys.

  Chapter Four

  Aspen

  “Why oh why did I pick JFK to fly out of?” I sighed as I waited in line to check in. It had been the cheapest of a few different options, but that didn’t seem to be much of a benefit, considering what a mess JFK was. You don’t have anywhere to be, it’s fine. I would get to Key West when I got there, and the hotel I was staying at would let me check in any time before midnight.