The Trip We Kept for After

"We will go after," Hattie used to say.

By Neil Solomon · 3 min read

"We will go after," Hattie used to say. Her sister Roslyn would answer, "After, yes."

They said it for twenty-eight years. They were not careless people.

Jasper died three years ago, in the year Hattie turned 67. Hattie is 70 now, a widow, and Roslyn is 73. Hattie found a manila folder in his desk drawer marked SOMEDAY. It held brochures for a seaside town in Portugal, a train through the Alps, and a lake with a hotel that had a green door. The prices in the Portugal brochure were in escudos.

She brought the folder to Roslyn's kitchen. They spread the pages on the table.

Roslyn picked up the lake brochure. "That hotel is probably gone."

"Probably," Hattie said. She laughed, then stopped. "Roz, I have been planning this trip for twenty-eight years, and I have never once booked it."

"I know. I was there. I said after too."

Neither of them blamed the other. The children did need school paid for, and the mortgage did need paying. Hattie's feet now hurt on stairs. Roslyn's knees ask for an elevator. The trip they planned at 42 was a walking trip. The one they can take now has a bench in it.

Then Hattie said the hard thing. "I am afraid it was his money. His someday. I am afraid I am spending what he saved, and that it ought to be him in the photo, not me."

Roslyn put her hand over Hattie's. "He saved it so somebody would go."

Hattie did not answer. She turned the Portugal brochure over, then back again. She read the phone number on the back.

"Which one is closest to what we are able to do now?" Roslyn asked.

"The seaside town. Ten days. A hotel with an elevator." Hattie got her phone. She had to look up the new number, because the old one was dead.

They booked it for April. It cost less than either had guessed, and neither said so aloud. After the call Roslyn found a pencil, wrote the dates on the front of the folder and crossed out SOMEDAY.