Don’t Make Me Turn This Life Around by Pagán, Camille (top novels of all time txt) 📗

“I’m sorry,” he added.

“Don’t be sorry.” Just say you’ll go. “Will you at least see if Kasey will give you the time off?”

He came and sat beside me on the bed. “Sure, I’ll ask. August is probably the least busy we’ve been all year, so I might be able to switch shifts with a few people if there’s an issue with my schedule.” He brushed a stray curl from my cheek and I felt my spirits rise. Just the mention of Vieques and we were already headed in the right direction. I could only imagine what might happen once we were actually on the island. “What about the tickets?”

“I haven’t searched yet,” I admitted. “But it’s off-season and we have a million miles on our credit card.”

“You sure about this?” Shiloh was looking at me like he couldn’t figure out if I was a lunatic or a genius.

“Yes,” I said, even though I was well aware that I’d just made major plans in the time it took to pack a suitcase. It was half-baked and impulsive—but hadn’t my first visit to Vieques been, as well? Even if this vacation were only a fraction as successful, I’d still end up becoming reacquainted with my enthusiasm for life.

And if my husband and I had a chance to relax and remember how we came together—rekindling our spark in the process—who was I to complain about that?

NINE

As it turned out, the cheapest tickets had been the ones that required us to leave a week and a half later. Shiloh wasn’t sure he’d be able to get the time off on such short notice, but apparently all the extra hours he’d been putting in had bought a whole lot of goodwill with his boss. Meanwhile, I’d left Rupi in charge in my absence, and though I could tell she was disappointed that we’d have to delay our meeting about the camp, she’d told me she was excited to hear the fresh new ideas she was sure I’d come up with the minute I wasn’t glued to my desk.

I’d sooner volunteer for a colonoscopy than devote precious brain cells to “fresh” and “new”; I just wanted to get out of there. I’d hoped my mood would lift at the prospect of visiting my favorite place—and I had been momentarily elated after calling Milagros to tell her we were coming. What I hadn’t anticipated was that instead of making normal life more tolerable, it immediately felt like twice the drag. Had there always been so much laundry to do, so many emails to answer, so many people to weave through just to make it to the subway?

A week in paradise couldn’t come soon enough.

But as our plane descended over San Juan, I was reminded of the beating our paradise had taken. We usually visited Shiloh’s father, who lived outside of Fajardo, at least once a year. After Hurricane Maria hit in September of 2017, though, he’d urged us to stay home. Even after the airports had reopened, many of the roads had remained torn up from the floods, and some hotels and restaurants were shuttered indefinitely. The island slowly began to recover, so we thought we’d visit the following summer, but then came Charlotte’s diagnosis, and seven months later, my father’s death. So it had been two and a half years since our last trip, which had been over winter break. And as it happened, a lot had changed since then.

My stomach sank as I peered through the small plane window and saw one building after another with a bright blue tarp for a roof.

“Why do the houses look like that?” whispered Isa, leaning over my lap to look down at San Juan.

I wasn’t sure how to answer. Puerto Rico as a whole had been given a fraction of the assistance other hurricane-stricken areas in the continental US had received for similar natural disasters, and the little they had been granted had been shamefully slow in arriving. On top of that, the island itself was still struggling from decades of debt, and since the economy relied so heavily on tourism, that debt had only grown after Maria. “Puerto Rico didn’t get the help it needed after the hurricane,” I told her. “So they’ve still got a long way to go. But it’s good for us to be here. The more visitors, the more money people on the island can make, and that can help them make repairs.”

She was frowning as she turned to me. “I hope it looks better once we’re on the ground.”

“I do, too,” I agreed.

But after we landed, gathered our suitcases, and got in a taxi, I saw that “better” was relative. Some buildings were fully intact. As we sped down the highway, however, we saw many others that were missing their facades or had windows blown out; sometimes whole walls had caved in. Equally jarring, it was clear that people were still living in some of those buildings. And for every one tree that was green and flourishing, another was still stripped of its leaves and either dead or dormant. “I can’t believe how much destruction there is, even two years later,” I said quietly to Shiloh.

“It’s hard to see,” he said, staring out the taxi window forlornly. “The island has always had its problems, like anywhere else. But you have to wonder how long it will take to recover from this.”

If it does at all, I thought, only to cringe at the thought—where were my rose-colored glasses when I needed them? After all, this was my husband’s birthplace; though he’d shuttled back and forth between Puerto Rico and the states for several years after his parents divorced, it had been home for most of his life, right up until he moved to the East Coast to be with me. “It’ll recover,” I said, as much to myself as him as my eyes landed on another swath of land that had once been lush and verdant but