The Road Trip

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Chapter 1

The road unspooled ahead, gray and endless under a bruised dawn sky. Sarah gripped the steering wheel, knuckles white, the old station wagon humming like a tired beast. Her father sat slumped in the passenger seat, breathing shallow through an oxygen tube, the bag of his ashes resting between them on the cracked vinyl. They were heading west, toward the ocean he’d always talked about but never seen.

He was a ghost already, his body hollowed by ALS. Sarah remembered him strong, hauling timber, shouting over sawmills, but now he was just bones and labored breaths. She’d promised to take him to the Pacific. A stupid promise made in a hospital room thick with antiseptic and denial. She didn’t know why she’d agreed. Maybe guilt. Maybe because he’d cried.

Chapter 2

The first stop was a gas station outside Reno. Fluorescent lights buzzed over dusty pumps. Sarah helped him shuffle inside, his cane tapping like a metronome counting down. He fumbled with his wallet, hands trembling. She snapped, "Just sit, Dad. I’ll handle it." His eyes flickered—hurt, but he said nothing. The cashier stared. Sarah felt her cheeks burn.

He’d been a drunk most of her childhood. Vanished for weeks, came back with hollow apologies and whiskey breath. Her mother buried herself in work, then in the ground. Sarah raised her younger brother alone. When the ALS diagnosis hit, he showed up at her door, sober and broken. She let him in. Now she wondered if she’d just wanted him to suffer slowly.

Chapter 3

At a roadside diner, he tried to eat soup. His spoon shook, splattering broth on the table. Sarah wiped it clean, sharp and fast. "You should’ve quit drinking years ago," she muttered. He looked at his hands. "I know." No excuses. Just those two words. The silence stretched, taut as a wire. She wanted him to fight, to rage. His quiet acceptance felt like another betrayal.

Night fell in the Nevada desert. He couldn’t walk to the motel room. Sarah carried him, his body light as kindling. His breath smelled of medicine and decay. In the dim room, he rasped, "I wished the cancer took you faster." Sarah froze. It wasn’t about her mother. It was about him—how he’d prayed for death during his worst binges, sparing her the sight of his ruin. She didn’t reply. Just stared at the ceiling’s water stain.

Chapter 4

Rain lashed the windshield near Sacramento. He started choking, oxygen mask fogging. Sarah pulled over, panic clawing her throat. She slapped his back until he spat phlegm onto the gravel. He gasped, "Keep driving." She saw the terror in his eyes—the fear of dying in some ditch, not the ocean. She drove through the storm, tears mixing with the downpour.

He slept most of the last day. Sarah played his old country tapes—Hank Williams, George Jones. Songs about lost love and whiskey. She hated them, but now the twang felt familiar. At a rest stop, she found a faded photo in his coat: her as a kid, pigtailed and grinning, riding his shoulders at a county fair. Before the drinking. Before everything.

Chapter 5

The Pacific appeared at Big Sur, violent and blue. Sarah helped him to the cliff edge. He stood unsteady, wind whipping his thin hair. "Throw them in," he said, nodding at the urn. But his legs buckled. She caught him, his weight collapsing against her. He whispered, "I’m sorry I wasn’t there." For the first time, she believed him.

She buried the urn at his feet as he sat on a blanket, too weak to stand. He watched the waves crash, tears cutting tracks through the wrinkles on his face. "It’s beautiful," he breathed. Sarah held his hand, cold and birdlike. She didn’t say she forgave him. She didn’t need to. The ocean roared loud enough for both of them.

Chapter 6

Sarah drove back alone. The urn was empty. The passenger seat was empty. The road stretched east now, toward her brother’s graduation, her job, her life. She didn’t feel lighter. Just raw. She turned up the radio, let the static fill the silence, and didn’t look in the mirror. The road kept unspooling. She kept driving.