The Edge of Always

“Do what, exactly?”

She rests both arms across the table out in front of her, tangling her fingers.

“Travel with Lily.”

I pause and then lean my back against the chair. “Yeah, I do think we can pull it off. Don’t you?”

Her smile weakens.

“Camryn, do you not want to travel anymore?”

She shakes her head. “No, that’s not it at all. I’m just really scared. I’ve never known anyone personally who has tried anything like that. It’s just scary. What if we’re just being delusional? Maybe normal people don’t do this sort of thing for a reason.”

At first, I was worried. I had this gut feeling that maybe she had changed her mind, and while I’d be OK with whatever she wanted to do, a part of me would’ve been disappointed for a while.

I lean back up and rest both arms across the table in front of me just like Camryn. My eyes soften as I look at her. “I know we can do this. As long as it’s what we both want equally, that neither one of us are only doing it because we think it’s what the other wants, then yes, Camryn, I know we can pull it off. We have the savings. It’ll be a few years before Lily starts school. There’s nothing stopping us.”

“Is it what you really want?” she asks. “You promise there’s not some part of you that’s only going through with it because of me?”

I shake my head. “No. Even though if I didn’t want it as much as you, I would do it anyway because it’s what you want—but no, I truly want it.”

That weak smile of hers strengthens again.

“And you’re right,” I go on, “it’s scary, I admit. It wouldn’t be so much if it were just you and me, but—think about this for a second. If we didn’t do this, what else would we do?”

Camryn looks away in thought. She shrugs and says, “Work and raise a family here, I guess.”

“Exactly,” I say. “That fear is the fine line between us and them.” I gesture outward to indicate “them,” the kind of people in the world we want to avoid becoming. Camryn understands; I can see it in her face. And I’m not saying that people who choose to stay in one place all their life and raise a family are wrong. It’s the people who don’t want to live like that, who dream about being something more, doing something more, but never pull it off because they let fear stop them before they get started.

“But what will we do?” she asks.

“Whatever we want,” I say. “You know that.”

“Yeah, but I mean later on. Five, ten years from now, what will we be doing with our lives, with Lily’s life? As much as I love the thought of doing it forever, I really can’t imagine it being realistic. We’ll run out of money eventually. Lily will have to start school. Then, we’ll end up right back here and become one of them anyway.”

I shake my head and smile. “Make that fear and excuses that make up that fine line. Babe, we’ll be OK. Lily will be OK. We will do whatever we want, go wherever we want to go and we’ll enjoy our lives, not settle for a life that neither of us really want. Whatever happens, whether we start to run out of money, can’t find work to replace it, Lily needs school and we have to make the decision to stay put in one place for a long time, even if that place is back here in this house, then we’ll do what we have to do. But right now—” I point sternly at the table “—right now those aren’t things we have to worry about.”

She smiles. “OK. I just wanted to make sure.”

I nod and reach across the table, nudging the hat over toward her with my finger.

“You get first pick,” I say.

She starts to reach inside, but stops and narrows her gaze on me. “Did you put Italy in there?”

“Yes, I did. I promise.”

Knowing I’m telling the truth this time, Camryn reaches the rest of the way into the hat and shuffles the pieces of paper around with her fingers. She pulls one out and holds it in her crushed fist.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” I ask.

She places her hand into mine and says, “I want you to read it.”

I nod and take the paper from her and carefully unfold it. I read it to myself first, letting my imagination run wild with visions of the three of us here. I was so fixated on winning that bet with Brazil that I never thought much about any of the other countries, but now that I’ve lost, it’s easy to imagine.

“Well?” She’s getting impatient.

I smile and toss the strip of paper onto the table, faceup. “Jamaica,” I announce. “Looks like we both lost the bet.”

Camryn smiles widely. That tiny strip of paper lying on the table in front of us is something so much more than paper and ink. It has officially set in motion the rest of our lives together.

40

And what an amazing and wonderful life it turned out to be.

I remember it like it was yesterday, the day we left in late spring and set off for Jamaica. Lily wore a yellow dress and two flower barrettes in her hair. She didn’t cry or fuss on the plane to Montego Bay. She was the perfect angel. And when we arrived at that first destination, the moment we stepped off the plane and into a new country, it all became real.

That was when Andrew and I became… different.

But I’ll get to that in a moment.

This was a long time ago, and I want to start from the beginning.

For two months leading up to the day we boarded that plane, I remained afraid of going through with it. As much as I wanted to do it, as often as I told myself that Andrew was right and that I shouldn’t worry, I always worried, of course. So much so that two days before we were to leave, I almost backed out.

But I thought back to a time when Andrew and I first met, when he made me shove his clothes into that duffel bag, of all things:

“So, where are we going to go first?” I said, folding a shirt he gave me to pack, on top of the pile.

He was still rummaging through the closet.

“No, no,” he said from inside, his voice muffled. “No outlines, Camryn. We’re just going to get into the car and drive. No maps or plans or—” He popped his head out of the closet and his voice was clearer. “What are you doing?”

I looked up, the second shirt from the pile already in a half fold.

“I’m folding them for you.”

I heard a thump-thump as he dropped a pair of black running shoes on the floor and emerged from the closet. When he made it over, he looked at me like I’d done something wrong and took the half-folded shirt from my hands.

“Don’t be so perfect, babe; just shove them in the bag.”

A seemingly insignificant moment we shared, yet it was ultimately what gave me the courage to get on that plane. I knew that if I stayed, if I continued to put too much thought into it, the only thing I’d accomplish would be to let fear control my, our, entire life from that point on.

And every day that I look back on our life now, the only thing that scares me anymore is knowing that we came within an inch of spending the rest of our lives in North Carolina.

We spent three weeks in Jamaica, loved it so much that we didn’t really want to leave. But we knew that we had so much more to do, so many places yet to see. And so one night after mingling on the beach with the locals, Andrew reached inside the bag (we swapped out the cowgirl hat for a purple Crown Royal bag, since it was easier to carry around) and pulled out Japan. On the other side of the ocean…

This was something we didn’t anticipate.