Now I’m leaving Eddie for six whole nights. I’m traveling through time, back to a phase in my life when I didn’t have a son who commanded the vast bulk of my focus. Will I miss him? Will I fret for him? Or the most frightening possibility of all—will I feel relief to be unburdened of the responsibility for his care? I love Eddie—God, I adore him. But so often when I think about the life I have with my son, I feel completely alone and endlessly overwhelmed.

The spiteful part of me hopes that in the next six days, Wade gets a taste of what that’s like. That’s the part of me that knows all of this documentation I’m doing about Eddie’s routine is pointless, because my husband is far too arrogant to bother to follow it.

I have a PhD, Ally. I can handle a few days with two kids.

It’s the casual dismissal of the complexity of my role in our family that goads me—rarely spoken so explicitly, but implicit in so many of our interactions over the last few years. Even now, when Wade is very much in my good books for how supportive he’s being, I know he’s underestimating the difficulty of what he’s signed up for in this coming week.

And I’m chiefly concerned about Eddie, but Callie factors into this equation too. She’s a beautiful little girl, but her giftedness is a challenge of its own sometimes. She’s a terror when she’s understimulated so her schedule is jam-packed, and her mind runs at a million miles an hour all of the time. That needs careful monitoring, because when it all overwhelms her, she tends to melt down. Wade’s never really had to deal with that side of her. What would he even do if she was upset?

I draw in a deep breath and promise myself that whatever happens, they will survive. They will all survive. And so will I.

* * *

I’ve organized everything I can organize, I’ve emailed the tour guide everything she needed, and I’ve packed with military precision—but the minute we step into the airport, the enormity of what I’m leaving behind settles around me like a heavy fog, and suddenly, that’s all I can think about. I feel only dread and anxiety and regret—what a stupid, impulsive thing I’ve done! What if something happens to Eddie or Callie and I’m on the other side of the planet? It would take me days to get home. And—my God—what if something happens to Babcia? What do I really think I’m going to find for her, anyway? I don’t even know what she’s looking for.

“Alice,” Wade says suddenly.

I turn to him, and I’m suddenly aware that I’m audibly hyperventilating. He grips my upper arms, and he stares down at me.

“I will not let you down,” he says softly. “The kids will be fine. I promise you.”

“This was a mistake,” I breathe. “I was impulsive and angry and I’m upset—”

“No,” he interrupts me, but he does so gently, carefully. I’m struck by the tenderness in his voice, and I trail off my protestations to let him take his time before he explains. He draws in a deep breath, then he lifts his hand from my upper arm to cup my face gently between his palms. “In these past few years, you’ve lived and breathed our family. You’re a wonderful wife. A brilliant mother. But... Ally...” He draws in another soft breath, then his gaze grows pleading. “As great as that is, that’s not all you wanted to be, honey. I know this trip is for Babcia. But... I also... I kind of hope it’s also for you. A chance for you to drop some of the heaviness of our family life and for me to catch it, so you can pick up something else too. I’ve been doing some thinking since we talked the other night. Never for a second of our life together have you asked me to put my stuff second. Well, this week I want you to know what that feels like, so you can know that I do appreciate it. Maybe...we can figure all of this out and share the load of it better one day. I don’t know what that looks like, or how we do it, but I want to be a better husband for you. A better Dad...for...for Eddie.”

That’s the first time in years he’s called Eddie by his nickname. It’s also the closest Wade has ever come to admitting he’s failed our son, and in doing so, he’s failed me. I should probably be upset at this acknowledgment—that he does, in fact, know exactly what he’s done to us in these years of neglect of his emotional obligations.

But I’m not upset.

Because this is not news to me, and it’s not news to Wade, and now it’s not unspoken. There’s something exceptional about having this awful thing out in the open between us, and just like that, I can breathe again. I know it’s going to be hard to get on that plane. I can’t even imagine how I’m going to sleep tonight, knowing I’m so far away from them, knowing I’m all on my own.

But Wade is right. There’s a chance here for me. Somehow it’s simultaneously a chance he’s giving me and a chance I’m taking greedily all for myself, and that’s kind of how a partnership should work—we are both making this happen, for Babcia and for me.

I have no idea what waits for me in Poland. I have no idea how I’m going to find answers when I don’t even know the questions but the challenge of that goal suddenly seems divine.

“Go,” Wade says, and he kisses my forehead gently. “I love you. I won’t let you down. Go on your trip...and try to have some fun too, okay?”

I have to turn away before the tears overwhelm me, so I do—I spin away from him and I grasp my suitcase tightly in my hand and I march to the check-in counter.

CHAPTER 25

Alice

I’ve been worried about the language barrier, given the only Polish words I know are Jen dobry—hello—and, somehow during my many hours being babysat by Babcia as a toddler, I picked up the phrase Is´c´ potty—go potty—neither of which seem likely to be very useful in all of the steps I need to take before I meet with Zofia tomorrow. But as soon as I clear customs, I find the driver from the hotel waiting, holding an iPad that displays the logo of the hotel and my name. He introduces himself in lightly accented English.

“Nice to meet you,” he says. “I’m Martyn. Long trip? Let’s get you to the hotel.”

I settle into the back of the late-model luxury car and stare out the window as the city flies past. Everything is much more modern than I’d expected, with seemingly endless construction work and block after block of modern buildings as we move through the city. The traffic is heavily congested, worse even than the traffic I’m accustomed to when I drive at home. Some single-lane roads manage to house simultaneous modes of transport—cars and buses, a tramway and the surprisingly heavy foot and bicycle traffic. At the outskirts of the city, other than the plentiful advertising being in Polish, I could almost be at home. But as we get deeper in, the modernity fades from the facades of the buildings that line the streets—until I am surrounded by stone and brick buildings that wouldn’t have looked much different even a hundred years ago.