Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [127]
Immediately after checking in, I went to the hotel computer to e-mail Cat. I’d been e-mailing her regularly. Because of the time differences, it was often easier to reach her that way, and I typed out a letter, filling her in on what I’d been up to. Then, despite the mountains and cloud cover that would probably limit the use of the phone I’d brought, I attempted to call her, and found her at home. In the past three weeks, I’d been on the phone with her less than a dozen times, and we seldom spoke more than a few minutes. Though Cat had known it would be hard for her while I was gone, I don’t think either of us knew exactly how hard it was actually going to be. I could hear the exhaustion in her voice; she sounded completely spent.
When I got back to the room, Micah was lying in bed reading when he looked up at me.
“You were gone a long time.”
“Oh,” I said, “I just talked to Cat.”
“How’s she doing? Looking forward to having you home?”
“You can say that. It’s been horrible while I’ve been gone.”
“How so?”
“She’s been sick and the kids have been sick. Pretty much since the moment I left.”
“Really?”
“Between the five kids and her, she’s had to deal with seven colds, five flus, and three sinus infections. At any given moment over the last three weeks, there were three sick kids, all of them whining and crying. And get this—despite all that, she took them all on a ski trip. And they had to drive seven hours to get there, too.”
He winced. “Seven hours? In the car with sick kids?”
“Unbelievable.”
“I can’t even imagine it.” He was silent for a moment. “I’ll bet she wasn’t in the best of moods, huh?”
“Actually, she seemed to be in pretty good spirits.”
“Your wife is nuts. In a good way, of course. But she’s definitely nuts. I hate it when the kids whine. It’s like fingernails against a chalkboard.” Micah shook his head before grinning. “Gee, it’s just a shame that you were traveling the world and weren’t around to help her out.”
“Oh, definitely a shame.”
“If only you’d known, right?”
“Exactly. I probably wouldn’t have gone.”
He laughed. “Did you tell her to try to make sure they’re all better by the time you get home?”
“I didn’t want her to kill me.”
He laughed again. “Christine would kill me, too. You guys are going on vacation in a couple weeks? Just the two of you, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah. We’ll spend a few days relaxing at the beach.”
“You know she gets to decide what to do the entire vacation.”
“Oh, I know. I’ve already figured that out.”
“I mean, every bit of it,” he added for emphasis. “Instead of scuba diving, you’ll be browsing through stores for hours, looking at kid’s clothes. And she’ll ask you whether you like the shirt with the pink bunny or the yellow duck, and you have to act as if you’re giving the matter a lot of thought.”
“I know.”
“And you’ll have to treat her like a queen and pretend you’re enjoying yourself.”
“I know.”
“In fact, you’re pretty much going to have to grovel.”
“Believe me. I know.” I shrugged. “But it’s only fair.”
“Ah, the trade-offs we have to make.” He smiled. “Isn’t marriage great?”
In the evening, we rode a gondola up the side of one of the peaks near Tromsø.
At the top, we made our way to a lodge for a mountaintop cocktail party. With windows lining two walls, we could see the lights of Tromsø twinkling in the darkness. Outside the windows there were snow flurries. It seemed hard to believe that only a few days earlier we’d been sweating in places like Ethiopia, India, and Cambodia.
It was our second-to-last night on the tour, and people were beginning to exchange phone numbers and addresses. Everyone was tired but in good spirits; it was hard to believe that our trip was nearly over.
Instead of mingling, Micah and I went to sit by the windows. We were in a reflective mood, and, watching the snow flurries, we talked about the things we’d seen, the places we’d been. We talked about the places we would