Page 13 of Big & Lily

“You? Saint Big? What didyoudo this time?”

I understand the sarcasm coming from my husband. When he married me, he didn’t bargain on a bonded pair—like those shelter dogs you have to adopt together. Still, he could handle her. He was patient during extended therapy sessions about the last boyfriend or the last job or the last existential crisis, even when he was tired after a long day at work. He never complained about her camping out at our house when she and Ruth were at each other’s throats. And, of course, he agreed to invest in the store when small businesses were failing all around us.

Tim has a distance from my sister that I’ll never have. He sometimes uses it to declare things are, as he calls it, unbalanced. I don’t see it that way. Me and Lily are, well, me and Lily. That’s not changing anytime soon.

“I’m letting her down,” I answer, not acknowledging the raised eyebrow and the Saint Big nickname I’ve heard before.

Tim takes off his readers and folds down the corner of his pageto mark it. Reading time is over. “I don’t think you are the one who is letting Lily down.”

“My point exactly. First that shit abandons her, and then I do it? She’s threatening to become a polar bear conservationist on aniceberg! And in her state of mind, she may go through with it. Can you imagine? She’ll be pretty far from a Target and the nail place on aniceberg. She’ll never survive.”

“She is a grown—” Tim stops himself. He knows better than to finish that thought. Being a forty-one-year-old grown-ass woman has nothing to do with what Lily needs from me right now. He holds up his hands in surrender. “Okay,” he says instead. “If you want to follow your sister to Alaska, no one is stopping you. It’s just that the Last Frontier stuff doesn’t really seem like your thing.”

“You don’t know that.”

He does know that.Wildernessfor me means the paved walking path behind the library. “I could if I wanted to,” I huff.

Tim knows he’s touched a nerve. Not the Eldest Daughter Syndrome nerve. That’s old news to me. Lately I’ve had a new nerve zap me over and over again. I mean, here I am, almost fifty, my kids are grown, my job here is done. I should be on to my second (or is it third?) act. But what the hell is that? What is mything? Taking calligraphy and French lessons and Thai cooking classes at the Community Education Society isn’t it. The search continues. The longer it goes on, the less confidence I have that I’ll find athing. Motherhood was my thing. Making a home was my thing. Being the eye of the hurricane that is my nuclear family was (okay, still is) my thing. Maybe that’s all there is.

One thing’s for sure, traipsing around in the wild isn’t exactly at the top of my bucket list. Of course, Lily did promise this guided tour would be one step away from a cruise. Isn’t a cruise all comfy staterooms, and beautiful scenery, and copious amounts of food?That, I can manage. And while I never like to admit that Lily might be right (I’m the one who’s always right, damn it), an adventure could be exactly what I need too.

“If it’s what you want to do, if you want to take a spur-of-the-moment trip to keep an eye on your sister, no one here is going to stop you, Bridget. We’ll be perfectly fine without you.”

That hurts. Even if Tim is trying to make things easier for me to give myself permission to go. No one, especially no one who has spent every waking minute at this job, wants to be told she isn’t needed. Which is what I heard.

“Just promise me you aren’t going be a full-time babysitter. Promise me you’ll have some fun. There’s got to be some joy to be had hacking through the jungle with a machete while you’re eaten by frog-size bugs.”

“It’s Alaska, not the Amazon, Tim. Consult your atlas.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m kidding. Seriously, hon, good for you. Spontaneity plus adventure isn’t normally in your dictionary.”

Maybe I do need to leave and let everyone fend for themselves for a minute. Let them get a taste of their own medicine, which I’ve been mixing in pudding to make it all more palatable for them. Screw it. Why shouldn’t I have some of that freedom Lily’s so used to? See what it’s like to feel untethered? To rip up my to-do list. To run free, not run errands. If only for a week. Yes, yes, my grieving sister will be there. I’ll have to save her from running off with a fur trapper or being caught in an avalanche. There’s no saying this can’t be one of those two-birds-with-one-stone situations.

Chapter Seven

“Holy shit, what the hell. Is that real? Big, look. ?Isn’t that crazy? Big, are you paying attention?”

Lily is looking up into the gaping mouth and yellowing fangs of a fourteen-foot-tall-on-its-hind-legs polar bear. I’m sulking too hard to be enthusiastic about a stuffed bear on display in an enormous Plexiglas box—even if it is the grand attraction at the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.

“I can’t believe they lost my luggage.”

I’d survived the twelve-hour flight. Managed to white-knuckle my way through, counting my breaths during turbulence, eating ginger candy by the fistful, and only checking the seat pocket for the motion sickness bag a few times. I’d even managed to distract myself through it all by watching three movies while Lily slept like a baby, wrapped in a silk neck pillow, a lavender acupressure eye mask, and cashmere slipper-socks, all from the Sleep on the Road collection at Sweet Dreams. I, the world’s most nervous flyer, was not shutting my eyes for a second—lest my lack of vigilance bring the plane down. But the Travel Gods decided to put me through one more test. They’d sent my luggage to Honolulu. Which is also where I should be.

“It happens all the time,” says my sister with a flip of her wrist. “They told you they’d deliver it to you, right? They’ve got to; I think that’s a law.”

“Yeah, I guess. The woman at baggage claim said it would be on the next flight from Hawaii. How many flights to you think there are from Honolulu a day? Who in their right mind would leave an island paradise to come to Alaska?”

“Try not to be a downer about this. They’ll find your stuff.”

“Easy for you to say. You have clean underwear.”

“I’m sure our driver would be willing to stop at a Target along the way for you to pick up a pack of Hanes to tide you over. If you ask nicely and give them your famous pathetic face.”

“I make a pathet—?”

“Where is this guy,” says Lily, completely over my lack-of-panties issue.

The polar bear is our meeting place, so said an email from someone called Brick Malone, whose signature included “Earth Walker, Soul Searcher, and Owner of Grizzly Tracks Adventures.”