Wanderlust

katie barton

Sawyer fiddled with her ring. The right rim of her forehead was pressed against the passenger seat window, the build-up of pressure giving her just enough of a headache to keep out whatever forbidden stream of consciousness might betray her composure. The light breeze from the A/C kicked curly red strands of hair around her face.

“Just a little over five miles now.” Rowan’s voice cut through the static that had been filling her head for the past hour and a half. “Should be no more than ten minutes.”

Her husband adjusted the rearview mirror, shot a glance at the traffic behind them, and craned his neck forward to examine the red SUV ahead.

“That is if this guy decides to get off his damn phone and step on the gas.” He jammed his palm against the car horn and stuck his head out the rolled-down window. “Hey! Move it, asshole! The rest of us have places to be!”

Sawyer grabbed Rowan’s right arm and yanked him back into the car as he guffawed at his own inappropriate behavior.

“Jesus, do you want to get keyed?” Sawyer said.

She shielded her eyes from neighboring cars and sank deeper into the passenger seat. “I wasn’t aware keying cars was such an issue on road bridges,” Rowan jested, then shrugged with a laugh and drummed his fingers on the wheel. “In that case, I say let them key ‘er. If all goes as planned today, I give this gal a month before she’s a cube of junk resting in some garbage patch.” “Right,” Sawyer muttered. She returned her gaze to the window, shifting her attention to a flock of seagulls as they disappeared below the bridge with a dive toward the chopped waters below. Part of her wished she could follow them. “Act a little excited, Sawyer,” Rowan interjected, almost sounding a little hurt. “This is an adventure!” He took a hand off the wheel to shake her shoulder. “I am excited,” Sawyer insisted as she nudged his hand away, trying to add a little lilt to her voice to further sell it. “I’m just tired. That’s all.” “You’re always tired,” Rowan muttered as the car in front of them began to move. He pressed on the gas. Sawyer’s phone buzzed, bouncing about in the cupholder beside her. She clasped it in her hands as the car tires jolted over the metal seam between road-and-bridge. “Your mother?” Rowan asked with a quick glance in her direction. “As always,” Sawyer sighed, rejecting the call and placing it back in the cupholder.

She settled herself back against the window and closed her eyes.

“Have you told her yet?”

“Nope.”

“Well, why not?”

“I’m not sure she’d be too thrilled to hear her son-in-law quit his well-paying job and put the house on the market so that he could buy a yacht and whisk away her only daughter to travel ‘round the world with no financial plan whatsoever,” is what she wanted to say. Instead she remained slumped against the door, not meeting her husband’s gaze. “Not sure.”

They drove past beach houses with faded paint jobs and clusters of palm trees—each one swaying in uneven motions against the dark storm clouds gathering in the sky. A cat sat on one porch, eyeing them with suspicion. An old woman tended to her garden, one hand placed on her wide brim straw hat to keep the wind from snagging it away.

“You know, I was thinking,” Rowan finally said. “We should start up our old travel blog again. Remember that?”

Sawyer nodded. How could she forget? It was their primary source of income for so many years. An unreliable source of income. That she remembered clearly.

“It will be hard to access the internet in the middle of the ocean,” she said.

Rowan laughed. “Well, obvious ly we’d have to wait until we reached port somewhere. Hopefully we haven’t lost too many readers during our brief stint of inactivity. But just in case, you can always pick up your freelance again. People still read National Geographic, right?”

“I sold my camera,” Sawyer reminded him. “We needed money for the baby crib.”

This time she turned to look directly at him, but his darkened eyes were kept purposely on the road ahead as he gripped the steering wheel.

There was that familiar silence. She knew what he wished he could say: how she should have sold that thing months ago, how it only brings back painful memories, how it only sits collecting dust. She also knew he was smarter than that, and the last thing he wanted to do was instigate another “episode” of hers.

“Well, I’m sure we’ll figure something out,” he said instead, offering her a quick glance. “We’ll be saving some money, no longer needing to pay for health insurance and all—maybe I’ll use some of those funds to buy you a new one. Would you like that?”

Sawyer flashed him a faint smile. “Sure.”

Rowan returned the expression, before shifting his attention ahead to enter a parking lot. “And here. We. Are,” he said.

Sawyer leaned in to get a better

look at the rows of boats lining the adjacent docks. Everything from sunfish to catamarans to cuddy cabins bobbed up and down on dark, choppy water. “There she is!” Rowan’s eyes were caught on what had to be a fifty-foot-long sailboat, complete with two towering masts that cast shadows over a weather-protected cockpit. “What do you think?” He studied Sawyer for a reaction. “Worth the three hundred grand we settled on?” “Looks promising from here,”Sawyer commented, arms crossed. Her eyes drifted to an older man in a worn-down raincoat standing on the dock beside the vessel. He flipped through the pages on his clipboard and took a visual sweep of the parking lot. “Well, it better be,” Rowan laughed as he followed her gaze. “After all the hours on the phone I spent with this guy.” He turned off the engine and ducked out of the car before beckoning for Sawyer to follow him. “Err, actually-” Sawyer shifted uncomfortably in her seat, unsure how much more of this pretending she could take. “I’d rather stay in here.” She noticed his brows furrow in confusion. “If that’s alright with you.” She rolled her eyes playfully with a compulsory smile and fluttered her pointer finger toward the window. “The … storm.” “Oh,” Rowan said. “Right.”

He flashed a look at the boat dealer and turned back to his wife.

“That’s fine. I mean, I’m sure it won’t rain for another thirty minutes, but whatever makes you most comfortable. I’ll just-,” he took a breath through his nose and drummed the top of the car, “leave you here then.” He pointed at the dock with his thumb as he took a slow step back. “I’m right over there if you need me.”

Sawyer smiled and nodded as the door slammed behind him, leaving her alone in the car. She watched as Rowan approached the boat dealer—then letout a deep, trembling breath and shook out her shoulders. In. Out. In. Out. She practiced the breathing exercises her therapist had taught her. Several moments passed before the crushing weight in her chest had faded to a dull throb. She glanced around the car for a bit, then raised her chin toward the rearview mirror and lifted a finger to tap the braided-rope sloth ornament dangling from it. The sloth bobbled back and forth for a moment before taking a slow spin to observe the car. The words Pura Vida were stitched into the side in faded green lettering. Which trip to Costa Rica was this one from? Sawyer couldn’t remember. They had all started to blend together in her memory. Rowan probably knew. He probably remembered what they had for breakfast that morning and the name of the hotel they were staying in.

He probably remembered the conversation they had with the cajero and how many colóns the trinket cost. It didn’t look old enough to be from their first trip ten years ago, back when they were just two college students seeking the thrills of studying abroad. Back when they first met—a couple of twenty-year-olds with far too much wanderlust to stay in one place too long. Sawyer closed her eyes, trying to transport herself back to those times. Rowan and Sawyer. A match made in heaven, everyone said. Nobody was surprised when they got engaged after graduation. Nobody, that was, except Rowan, who proposed on a whim in the middle of a canal cruise in Amsterdam. Sawyer found his spontaneity charming The sloth’s revolution ended with it facing her. Its faded eyes met hers, unblinking. Sawyer realized she was holding her breath. Next thing she saw were her fingers wrapped around the knitted animal’s head, the sloth’s delicate face squished within her palm, and her wrist yanking down. There was a snap and then the threads came tumbling apart as her hand dropped to her lap, starting at the frayed ends of the broken loop before unravelingdown the head. She watched as the sloth’s face turned into a disorganized mass of rope. And she felt nothing. Her other hand reached for the dashboard to open the glove compartment. She dropped the disheveled thing among stashed-away travel brochures and educational pamphlets on destinations ranging from Iceland to the Galápagos—places Rowan still wanted to go. Places he likely blamed her for never visiting, even if he didn’t say it aloud. “Whatever makes you happy, Sawyer,” he had said the day they hit “publish” on their last blog post and filed away their worn passports—over two years ago now, she realized. She had convinced herself the resignation in his eyes was nothing more than a product of her own insecurity. That once he was settled into his new desk job and they had a baby on the way, he would see the appeal of the new adventure she had spelled out to him. One far more exciting than backpacking across Europe or trekking through the Amazon or freediving in the Great Barrier Reef. Sawyer tried to close the glove compartment, seal away the brochures forever, but her hand was frozen in place as her eyes kept drifting toward a purple pamphlet stuck between the pages of Afar magazine. She slid the piece of parchment from its hold and held it so it hovered just above her lap and out of Rowan’s line of sight if he cared to glance back. At the top of the pamphlet in dusty white letters: Whole Family Adoption Agency.

She ran her fingers over the cover, sending particles flying into the air, and admired the picture hiding underneath. A man and woman with wide grins and outstretched arms and an equally excited little girl sprinting across a fresh green lawn to fall into their embrace. Notes in Sawyer’s handwriting marked the margins of the information inside. A smeared list of phone numbers covered the back, penned by their doctor from the fertility clinic.

“Maybe someday.” Rowan’s words, ones Sawyer had heard time and time again, wrapped themselves around her brain. “But let’s focus on today.”

Sawyer jolted upright at the beep-and-click of the car unlocking. She shoved the pamphlet deep into the sea of papers and thrust the glove compartment shut with a clamorous slam. At the same moment Rowan opened the driver’s seat door.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.” Sawyer slid her hands down from the dashboard and folded them neatly in her lap. “Just looking at our old travel brochures.”

Was that an expression of relief she saw in her peripheral vision?

“That was fast.” She forced her shoulders to relax and turned to face her husband. “So?”

Rowan held up and waved a stapled batch of papers. “We’re the proud new owners of a forty-nine-point-four cutter ketch!”

The pride in his eyes as he opened his arms for a celebratory hug sent pain through Sawyer’s chest.

Sawyer smiled and leaned over the center console to wrap her arms around her husband.

She let out a happy “hmm,” eyes closed as she rested her chin on his shoulder, then added in a quieter voice, “I know you’ve wanted this for a really long time.”

Which was probably the first thing she said all day that she meant with her whole heart.

She tried not to choke on the words as she pulled back to her seat. She thought she caught Rowan’s eyes glance up at the empty space below the rear-view mirror as he settled into the driver’s seat, but if he noticed what was missing he didn’t say. Instead he just cleared his throat and turned the key.

The tip-tap sound of rain hitting tempered glass turned Sawyer’s attention back to the passenger seat window. She pressed her left palm against the cold pane, admiring how the damp rays pooling in from Rowan’s side flecked shadows across the back of her hand. Her ring clicked against the glass as the engine started. In this light, for a passing moment, she yearned for it to shine.