Chapter 10 - I Finally Went to Maui
For seven years after Margaret’s death, I refused to visit Hawaii.
Not consciously.
Whenever friends suggested Maui, I changed destinations.
Then Melissa noticed.
“You’ve let Cassandra’s phone call steal an island.”
“I have not.”
“You absolutely have.”
Annoying.
So for my fifty-third birthday, I booked Maui.
Alone initially.
Then Melissa invited herself.
We stayed nowhere near Mark’s old resort, which had been sold during restructuring.
On the first morning, I stood on the beach listening to waves.
The exact sound behind Cassandra’s laughter on call thirty-one.
For a moment, hospital room 807? Wrong story. Here emergency room. The hospital returned.
Margaret’s oxygen mask.
The key.
The long tone.
Then the memory loosened.
Waves were waves.
Not betrayal.
Melissa handed me coffee.
“Still hate Maui?”
“No.”
“Good. Expensive place to hate.”
We laughed.
I swam.
Ate pineapple.
Watched sunset.
May you like
Nothing dramatic happened.
Healing sometimes disappoints storytellers.
