Cabin Fever

by Edie Bryant

  I took in a deep breath. “You’re right, of course you’re right. I can’t sit here and ruminate on all that possibly could go wrong. I need to go out there and marry that girl.”

  “Hell yeah, you do. Come on, go meet your bride!” she egged me on.

  I smiled as I walked out of the bathroom and into the main courthouse where Emily was waiting for me.

  We were doing our simple courthouse wedding like we had always talked about. But, we’d specifically driven to the state capital to do it, because the courthouse there was exquisite. I mean, obviously, even the bathrooms were exquisite. But it was especially beautiful this time of year, because, out in the main hall, they had a gorgeous, giant Christmas tree. It was the perfect place to get married.

  Of course, we didn’t have many guests at all. Emily had her family, her parents, and her siblings, whom I’d met several times right now. And I had Jean and her family, who adored Emily endlessly.

  And I didn’t even feel slightly weird about Emily’s family being there while mine wasn’t. Through Emily, I’d learned to accept that I was never going to have the relationship I wanted to have with my family. And I was finally okay with that, because I could see myself having a family in the near future with Emily. And I had already vowed to never, ever treat my children as my parents had treated me. My kids would know unconditional love through both Emily and me.

  I had really never believed that I was going to end up this happy. Being in my late twenties and having dealt with a string of failed relationships, I had lost all hope.

  But Emily had been a miracle for me. Going up to that cabin was the best thing I’d ever done in my life. And, now, we made it a habit to go every year, around this time of year, just to bask in the joy of what had brought us together.

  Though, thankfully, we hadn’t been snowed in since that first time.

  I walked into the lobby where Emily and her family were waiting for me, and Emily was looking incredibly nervous. Before I was able to walk over to them, she was walking to me.

  “Baby, where were you!?” she asked suddenly.

  “Relax, babe, I was just in the bathroom. I was a little nauseated.”

  She frowned and put her hand to my forehead. “You’re not sick, are you? If you’re not feeling okay, you know we can do this another day. I want this to be absolutely perfect for you.”

  God, she was an angel.

  “No, baby, it’s really fine. Believe me, I’m okay. And your family is here! And Jean’s family is here! Of course we’re doing this today.”

  “Good,” she smiled, “but don’t disappear like that again. You had me thinking I was getting left at the altar.”

  I laughed. “Never would happen. I couldn’t walk away from you. You know that. You are my everything.”

  She gave me a quick peck. “And you are mine.”

  “So, you ready to do this?” I asked. “You ready to make an honest woman out of me?”

  “You’ve always been an honest woman,” she kissed my cheek, “but sure, let’s making this thing official.”

  She held my hand as we began to walk back over to our family and friends, who were thrilled to watch us form our union together.

  “You know this is forever, right?” I asked Emily, as we walked.

  “Of course. As I always dreamed it would be.”

  Jean was right. I think this is my happily ever after. I think I’d found it in Emily.

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  11

  PIA

  Pia

  I WAS SITTING in the ticket booth, taking in one of the first cool breezes of the autumn. I was completely content to sit here and take in the scenery.

  Even though it was a little boring. The first day the pumpkin patch opened was always the slowest one. People weren’t in the fall mood yet, not when September just ended yesterday.

  Still, my grandma stayed dedicated to being open every single day of October. She would never allow the patch to open a day late.

  It would normally be her in this ticket booth, but she was sick right now. She had been sick a lot recently, actually, as her immune system wasn’t as good as it used to be. Still, even in her old age, she was quite the hard worker. She still managed to run the farm under her sole leadership, though obviously she had a lot of hired help.

  And there were a lot of people she hired to work the pumpkin patch and corn maze, too. There had to be. There were tons of activities from a petting zoo to a haunted hay ride and they needed to be constantly monitored. It wasn’t as if we could keep the patch completely family run—there wasn’t too much family left to help.

  My Grandpa had passed almost a decade ago and while they had a few children, most of them moved away, so my aunts, uncles, and cousins were all out of state. We still saw them a few times a year, but it wasn’t like they were around to help with stuff like this.

  There was really just me and my parents left in town. I was an only child, so no siblings that could have helped carry the burden either. But the four of us managed pretty well.

  Sometimes I was even grateful that it was only the four of us living in town. Not that I didn’t love my extended family, I definitely did, but I felt like the four of us had created a much stronger bond all living here. I could rely on my family above all else, which was super important to me.

  From the ticket booth, I watched the small amount of people who were here to look at pumpkins. I absolutely loved this time of year. Fall had always been my favorite season.

  I heard footsteps coming up the dirt and gravel so I quickly redirected my attention to whoever was coming to grab a ticket.

  I looked around to see a gorgeous woman making her way over to me. She had perfect wavy blonde hair. I absolutely loved longer hair, even though I wore my own hair pretty short. Blondes in particular were always a weak spot for me.

  She was also dressed really well in this adorable scarf and brown jacket. I hoped that she was gay, like me. I mean, hey, if this day was going to be slow and boring anyway, might as well have someone to flirt with, right? I’d been single for quite a while now and admittedly, a little bored of it.

  My hopes were quickly dashed, though, when I saw a little boy pop up from behind her. Shit, she had a kid. Well, that was a no go, then.

  Not that lesbians couldn’t have kids, of course, but I had no interest in any woman who was a mom. I just knew that I didn’t want kids. It was something I came to accept many years ago, back when I was still a kid, in fact.

  She walked up, looking a little deflated, which was a surprise, since most people who came to the pumpkin patch looked pretty excited. Likewise, the little boy next to her wasn’t looking too happy either.

  “Two tickets please.” She nodded to me.

  “One adult, one child?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Not a problem.” I handed them two little ticket stubs after taking her cash, which was exact change. “I hope you enjoy your day.”

  “Thanks, me too.” She gave a half-hearted smile.

  Huh, I thought as she walked away. That was really strange. That may have been the first time I ever saw an unhappy child come into the corn maze. Maybe they had some kind of fight before they got here; they did look pretty exhausted.

  This was exactly why I wasn’t interested in children. Man, they looked tiring. I wonder how she felt about motherhood at that very moment.

  I heard a voice come up from behind me as the door to the ticket booth opened. “Here for my shift,” a young woman named Elizabeth said to me, grinning.

  “Oh, perfect,” I said as I got out of my chair. “I really wanted to take a look around.”

  The only reason I was even at the ticket booth was because the other person who was supposed to be here called in sick. My grandma didn’t really need me to cover any of the booths, generally speaking; she just liked to have someone
here to oversee everything.

  Which I was eager to go do because there was only so much of the patch I could see from this booth. It was such a perfect, nice, overcast day. I wanted to get a feel for everything.

  Days like this reminded me of being a kid. We spent so many days here at the pumpkin patch growing up. Any time my parents were available to help out, I was here, enjoying my time.

  I liked it so much because, outside of the pumpkin patch season, the farm was pretty boring. As much as I loved my parents and my grandma, I didn’t relish coming to the farm because there was nothing entertaining to do.

  But one month a year, in October, I got to come here and play all day long. Other kids would come and run through the corn maze with me, amazed by how fast I was able to get us out of it. Of course, it wasn’t amazing at all considering how well I knew the damn thing. But I let them be impressed anyway.

  And as a big animal lover, I spent all the time I could in the petting zoo. I was able to have as much free feed as I wanted. There was literally nothing I didn’t like in October.

  The fifteenth was an especially important day for me. It wasn’t my birthday, but it might as well have been. My parents called it my ‘Gotcha’ day. It was the first day they took me home, into their house and into their family.

  They adopted me when I was still a baby. I never knew a life outside of them. And it didn’t change their bond with me whatsoever. I was their daughter, completely and truly. And I’d never had even the slightest desire to search for my biological parents, though I’d heard a few stories.

  All I needed was my mom, dad, and Grandma. And I was so happy to have them.

  As I was walking through everything, I saw the sad looking mother and her son once again. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop, but I was close enough to easily hear their conversation.

  “Do you want to see the animals in the petting zoo?” the mom asked.

  “No… I don’t want to see them.”

  “Well, maybe you want to go see the corn maze?”

  She shook her head again. “I don’t want to see anything. I don’t want to be here. I want to go see Daddy.”

  I sighed. I had wanted so much to believe she was gay, but apparently she had a husband.

  She looked sad and knelt down in front of the son, putting both hands on his shoulders.

  “I told you, we can’t go see Daddy today. Maybe later this week, but not today.”

  “But I don’t understand why we can’t see him!” he said, pouting.

  She sighed. “I told you, you’re just going to spend the day with me today. We’re going to have fun. Daddy wants you to be having fun, remember?”

  “Yeah.” He sighed.

  “Okay.” She nodded. “Then let’s have fun for Daddy. Hey, maybe we can pick a pumpkin you think he might like?”

  This was the only thing that seemed to perk the kid up. “Yeah! Can we put a decoration on it for him?”

  “Absolutely. I think he would love that.” She rubbed his back gently as they headed toward the pumpkins.

  Wow, so even more complicated than I thought. Sounded like a divorced couple situation. Hey, maybe that meant she was still gay, maybe that was why they divorced. She wouldn’t be the first or the last woman who got into an unhappy straight marriage.

  That had to sting though, the way her kid obviously didn’t want to spend time with her. I’d always thought divorce would be really fucking rough. And clearly, it was.

  I probably shouldn’t have been judging her life off a few sentences of conversation but I couldn’t help myself. I was a people watcher by nature. It wasn’t that I was a nosey person… Oh, hell, who was I fooling? I was completely a nosey person.

  I kept an eye on them for the duration of their time here. I tried not to be too obvious about watching them, but I couldn’t help myself. It was a slow day and they’d piqued my curiosity.

  Besides, I didn’t have much else to do. I’d gone to every activity area and everything was running smoothly. Of course it was, it was so slow!

  They didn’t stay very long though, maybe another 45 minutes. I was happy to see, though, that the kid laughed a few times after the mother finally got him over to the petting zoo. That was nice. I was glad he could let loose for a while and enjoy whatever time he got with his mother.

  But when they walked by the ticket booth again to leave, I noticed that neither were smiling. So I didn’t think the happy moment stuck.

  I was a little sad to see them go. The mom was at least eye candy while I did my rounds. Eh, well, hopefully it got busy before the end of the day and I had more people to watch.

  After they left, I decided I’d do another round again. Just so I could get a nice walk in. I didn’t want to go back to sitting in that ticket booth any longer.

  When I reached the petting zoo, the attendant there caught my attention.

  “Hey, Pia, what should I do with this?” he asked, holding up a little stuffed elephant.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Some stuffed animal a kid left.”

  “Wait…” I asked, trying to remember if the kid I was just watching had a stuffed elephant under his arm. I thought he actually did, but I couldn’t be sure because I was mostly watching them from the corner of my eye.

  “Here, I’ll take it,” I told the attendant. “I’ll put it in lost and found.”

  Honestly, I didn’t even know why we kept a lost and found anymore. This happened every year. A bunch of kids left their crap and they almost never bothered to come pick it back up. So each year, at the end of the season, we ended up donating a sea of crappy toys and the occasional pair of sunglasses.

  If you asked me, it would have been a better use of our time to toss the toys out immediately. But I knew my grandma could never do that. It would have broken her heart if some little girl came back, looking for her stuffed bunny, and she had to tell her they didn’t have it. My grandma absolutely adored kids. The lost and found box was her idea, of course.

  So every year I humored her. Because she was my grandma and I loved her. And it wasn’t too much effort to collect the junk left behind at the end of the day.

  Before I went to the lost and found box, though, I decided to peek in the parking lot. Maybe the cute girl and her kid were still in the lot and I could give this to them. But, nope, there was nobody around when I went out there.

  Ahh, oh well, probably for the best. I didn’t need to talk to a cute woman with a kid and develop myself a little crush.

  12

  LILA

  As we left the pumpkin patch, I looked in the rearview mirror at my nephew, who was nestled in his car seat.

  “Did you have at least a little fun?” I asked him, a forced smile on my face.

  “A little,” he answered begrudgingly. “When can we take this to Daddy?”

  I sighed. That was all the poor guy ever thought about, his dad. And I couldn’t blame him because that was all I ever thought about, too.

  “I don’t know, buddy. Why don’t we just worry about decorating it for now? Do you want to carve it or paint it?”

  Painting pumpkins was a little untraditional, but my brother, his father, was an artist. I thought he might choose that since it was more his style.

  But he ignored the question completely. “Can we see him tomorrow?”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “We’ll see him tomorrow.”

  I didn’t want to see him tomorrow, though. I tried to spread out my visits as much as I possibly could. I never went more than two days without seeing him, but I did my best to forget about him when I wasn’t there.

  It was impossible not to think about the fucked up situation we were in when staring him in the face, though.

  “But what about the pumpkin? Paint or carve?”

  “Paint,” he said predictably. “With purple and blue, Daddy’s favorites.”

  “Perfect. Let’s stop by the arts and crafts store on the way home, then.”

  “Daddy has paint at ho
me,” he suggested.

  “I know…” I said hesitantly. “But I don't want to use Daddy’s paints. They’re very expensive. Plus, he might want them when he comes home.”

  “He’s never coming home,” he said seriously.

  My jaw dropped and I pulled the car over immediately, which didn’t take much effort since we were on an empty country road.

  I turned around in my seat to look at him. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he isn’t,” he said.

  “We don’t know that. Nobody knows that. For all we know, Daddy could get better tomorrow.”

  “He won’t, though. He hasn’t been better for a million years.”

  “It’s been less than thirty days,” I reminded him. “We don’t know what will happen. The doctors still think he could make a complete recovery.”

  He nodded, but I could tell he didn’t believe me. But how could I explain any better to a six-year-old? This was too hard of a concept to grasp. All he knew was that his father had been gone longer than he ever had been. I could see why he was starting to doubt if he’d ever be back.

  “Jake, you need to think positive for Daddy, okay? You need to think happy thoughts, like that he’ll be home to you any day now.”

  He nodded. “And if I think happy thoughts, will Daddy get better?”

  “Maybe.” I smiled. “You never know what will help.”

  “Okay, Aunt Lila,” he said as he stared out the window.

  I took in a deep breath and started the car again.

  “So the craft store it is,” I told him as I started driving.

  “Where is the craft store?” he asked.

  “Actually, it’s in the same shopping center as my store.”

  “Can we go?!” he asked excitedly. “Can we go to your store?”

  “Are you sure?” I asked, an eyebrow raised. “We just put up all the Halloween stuff. There are some scary things hanging in there…”

  “Good! I love the scary things!” He grinned.