Page 9 of Gracie Harris Is Under Construction

“What about Chicago?” she inquires with an incredulous tone that isn’t judging but is genuinely curious.

Ben and I kept saying for years that we needed to take the kids to the city where we met.

Chicago held so many wonderful memories for us.

But as happens with life, things got busy.

Holidays were usually spent with family, spring break meant trips to warm locations, and we never got around to Chicago as a family of four.

So a month and a half ago, the kids and I spent the one-year anniversary of Ben’s death in the city where we’d met two decades ago.

The place that started it all. I needed to be away from the endlessly well-meaning friends, family, neighbors, and strangers who would certainly check in.

I needed the phone on silent and just to be with my earthside reminders of the man I loved. Still love.

I booked three plane tickets on a whim a week before the anniversary and texted everyone our plans. I asked for privacy on the day. I know you’ll be thinking of us , I told them.

We stayed in a fancy hotel downtown, visited museums, and ate endless amounts of food. On the day of his death, we took a cab to campus. Benji still talks about the cab ride being his favorite part of the trip. He loved watching the city pass by through the windows of the car.

I walked the kids into the building where we met, pointing to the long-since-replaced row of lecture-hall seating where Ben first introduced himself to me. We ate a deep-dish for dinner at a mediocre place near campus that we used to go to when we were broke.

As we sat in that sticky pizzeria booth, I told them about the young, perpetually irresponsible version of their dad.

The guy with the wavy, usually crazy hair and freckles who would stay out all night with friends and somehow manage to make it to an 8 a.m. class.

The comically unprepared frat boy who attempted to run a half-marathon without any training on a dare and cramped up afterward so bad he could barely walk for a week.

They howled with laughter at the story of the time he went to an evening class dressed as a hot dog so he could go to a Halloween party immediately after.

Benji and Ava heard about the crappy town house that we rented the year after my graduation.

I told them how it had kitchen cabinets too high for me to reach anything useful and how Ben, with his six-foot-two frame, would come up behind me and say, “Whatcha need, beautiful?” and then kiss me before going back to whatever conversation or work he’d been in the middle of.

I told them how Ben made life easy. He made loving him so easy. Missing him is the hard part.

“No, not even in Chicago,” I tell Jenny. “The kids were so happy to be in this place they’d heard so much about. More than that, though, Jenny, anniversaries are the easy part in some ways. It’s the small moments like tonight when I feel like my heart might explode.”

Jenny takes a deep breath. She and I have always been good at silence.

Sometimes, during our otherwise wild college years when we were a thousand miles apart, we would sit on our respective dorm phones and just hang out in silence while we did our homework, occasionally offering a “Hey, you still there?” to ask each other for synonyms or biology terms or simple commiseration.

Silence is the deep intimacy of friendship.

“Do you want me to plan a visit to Canopy?” she asks with a hint of genuine worry in her eyes. “I think it’s going to be a relief for you to be in a new place, but I will get something on the calendar if you need me.”

“No,” I quickly answer. “Absolutely not.”

Jenny lives with her husband in Michigan now. She spent weeks away from him last summer when they were newlyweds to help take care of me and now she’s five months pregnant. Thinking back, I realize her visit to Nashville for the Maisy interview is probably more than I should have asked of her.

“I’ll be fine,” I say with increased firmness.

“I will be a boring hamster on a wheel writing nonstop, living in a construction zone, and taking breaks only to heap handfuls of candy into my mouth for sustenance. My agent, Felicity, will probably pop down at some point, and I promised Dr. Lisa that I’d try to make new friends. ”

“Gracie, I love you, but you can get really antisocial without a bona fide extrovert like me or Ben around,” she says with a smile. “Promise me you will try to meet new people and carve out something fresh for yourself? Maybe even go on a date?”

“I’ll do my best,” I answer. “Thanks for this, Jenny.”

“Not sure I did anything special, but tell Ava that I solved everything, okay?” she jokes.

“You can do no wrong in that girl’s eyes, but yes, I will. Good night, love,” I say, hitting the little red button before willing myself out of bed and into my pajamas.

—

Our house sitter, Casey, and her boyfriend come by early in the morning to help me get all of the heavy camp trunks and luggage into the car for the drive. It’s not a pretty job, but it fits. One more thing I definitely could not have done on my own.

We also do a lap around the house so that I can give Casey final instructions to make sure things don’t burn down this summer. I remind her of the cleaning and landscaping schedules and also give her the phone number for the former.

“I’d prefer that you not have any raging parties, but if the house gets disheveled for any reason, just call them and they’ll take care of it,” I tell her. “They auto-debit my credit card, and I likely won’t even notice.”

Casey is the most responsible teenager on the block, so I’m not too worried, but sometimes it helps to let people know you won’t disown them if they make a mistake and proactively give a solid solution to potential problems.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Harris,” she says. “I’ll take good care of it, and remember that my parents are right across the street. I’m sure they’re watching us on their front door camera right now.”

The kids walk past us with their survival supplies—tablets, snacks, travel bingo boards—for the four-hour drive.

I hand over the keys and do one last look inside the house before joining Ava and Benji in the SUV, which has not an inch of free room to spare.

They roll down the windows and wave. Casey is their favorite babysitter.

“Good luck this summer, Mrs. Harris,” she yells from the front step as we pull out of the driveway and start our journey.