Chapter 6 - Slow Us Down
My phone started ringing before I'd finished my coffee.
It was still early, the light coming in gray through my apartment window, the kind of morning that feels quiet until it isn't. I was sitting at my small kitchen table with my phone face-up, and when it lit up I saw Jenna's name. She was supposed to be on the trip. She and her husband had booked the same flights as my sister.
I let it ring twice before I answered.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey, what's going on?" she asked. She sounded confused, not angry yet. "Mark just got an email that the whole thing was cancelled. Like the hotel and the dinner reservation. Did something happen at the airport?"
I stared at the chipped edge of my mug. I could hear her kids in the background, a TV on low.
"I was still at the airport when she cancelled it," I said. "You'd have to ask her."
"But are you okay? Are you still going?"
"No," I said. "I wasn't going."
There was a short pause. I heard her breathing on the other end.
"What do you mean you weren't going?" she said.
My sister had told me I was staying home to watch her cats. I didn't repeat it. I didn't want to make it sound smaller than it felt, and I didn't want to make it sound bigger either. I just said, "She decided I should stay back."
Jenna didn't know what to say to that. She said she'd try calling my sister directly and hung up. I set the phone back down and it buzzed again almost right away. A text this time, from another cousin. Then another. Are we still on for this weekend? Did your sister cancel? Is everything okay?
By eleven I'd gotten four calls and seven texts. The same question phrased different ways, all assuming I would know the answer. All assuming I could explain it for her.
My sister didn't call me. My brother-in-law did.
He called around noon. I recognized his number and I almost didn't pick up, but I did. I stood by my kitchen counter and held the phone to my ear.
"Hey," he said. His voice was even, polite, the same tone he'd used at the airport. "You've been getting calls, I guess."
"A few," I said.
"Yeah, people are confused," he said. "We just told them it didn't make sense to try to keep it going with the way things were. You know how it is. You would have slowed us down anyway, with your schedule and everything. It was kind of a logistics thing."
He said it casually, like he was offering me a reasonable explanation I could pass along. Like he was giving me the words to use so it would sound better.
I felt my jaw tighten. I looked down at my hand on the counter. My nails were short, no polish.
"You keep saying that," I said. My voice was quieter than I expected.
There was a pause. I could hear faint airport-like announcement in the background on his end, or maybe it was just traffic.
"Saying what?" he asked.
"That I would have slowed you down."
He gave a small laugh, not unkind, but dismissive. "I didn't mean it like that. You know your sister gets stressed when plans get complicated. It was easier to just call it."
I didn't answer right away. I let the silence sit there. I used to fill those silences for them. I'd say oh yeah, totally get it, no worries, sorry for the hassle. I'd make it easy for whoever was listening to think I'd agreed to the whole thing.
"I'm not going to tell people that," I said finally.
"Tell them what?"
"That I slowed you down. Or that I agreed to stay home."
Another pause, a little longer this time.
"Okay," he said, carefully. "Then what do you want us to tell them?"
"That she cancelled everything," I said. "That's what happened."
He didn't argue. He said they'd handle the calls and that he'd let my sister know people were reaching out. He said it like he was doing me a favor. When we hung up, I realized I was still holding my breath.
The phone buzzed again an hour later. It was my sister.
I didn't answer. I watched it ring until it went to voicemail. She didn't leave a message. A minute later a text came through: Can you just tell Jenna we had to cancel for family reasons? She keeps texting me.
I read it twice. Family reasons. I set the phone face-down and went to rinse my mug in the sink. The water was hot and I let it run over my hands longer than I needed to.
When the next call came, from Jenna again, I picked up.
"Did you talk to her?" she asked.
"She cancelled the entire party at the counter," I said. "I was there. That's all I know."
"So you're just... home? With her cats?"
"No," I said. "I'm home. That's it."
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I didn't apologize for her. I didn't add that it was probably for the best, or that maybe it was easier this way. I didn't make it soft. I just told her what I'd seen, and I let her be quiet on the other end of the line.
After we hung up, I turned my phone on silent and left it on the table. The apartment was quiet again, but it felt different now. The calls weren't stopping because people were looking for me. They were starting to look for her.
