Episode One
Josh
​
It’s strange… one day I’m behind the steering wheel, glancing back at my baby in his car seat, and then I blink. And that baby is twelve.
Tommy’s staring down at his phone, headphones on, and he must sense me watching him because he tears his stare away from his phone and looks up at me, his eyes narrowed to a glare. “What?” he mouths.
“Nothing.” I shrug. “I just love you, bud.”
He inhales a frustrated breath, shoving one headphone away from his ear. “What?”
“I said I love you,” I repeat, and I’m rewarded with an eye roll I’m positive he learned from my wife, Becca, all those years ago. He goes back to his phone, and I heave out a sigh, switching my gaze from my son to my daughter, sitting in her car seat beside him. “You love me, don’t you, Chaz?”
My daughter’s emerald eyes go wide as she looks at me, smiles from ear to ear. “Luh you, Daddy,” she says, kicking her chunky two-year-old legs out in front of her. I smile when she does and squeeze her ankle just as Becs opens the car door and slips into the passenger seat.
We’re sitting at a gas station in what I’m pretty sure is the middle of nowhere, North Carolina. Becs gets settled before unfolding the giant map she’d just purchased, her eyes narrowing as she tries to make sense of it all.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to just type in—” I shut my mouth the minute she turns to me, runs a finger across her neck—the universal threat for death.
Behind me, Tommy chuckles, and I turn to him. “What’s so funny?”
“How many times does she have to tell you she doesn’t want to use the GPS?”
Becca clicks her fingers to gain my attention, and of course, I give her all of it. She signs, “I want to do it just like—”
“Younger Me,” I finish for her, nodding. “I know. I’m sorry.”
She smiles now, and my chest warms at the sight of it. Turning slightly, she glances at Tommy and taps her nose, then her heart—their way of saying I love you. Tommy returns the gesture, and I can’t help but whine, “Where was my I love you two seconds ago?”
Becca laughs. It’s silent, but it’s there. “You know it’s our thing,” she signs.
“I know.”
Becs had found an Instagram account linked to a blog titled “Dear Younger Me.” It was basically a diary of a girl who wrote letters to her younger self, and it’s safe to say that Becca had connected so deeply with this girl’s words, with her world, that for a few days, maybe even weeks, she couldn’t stop thinking about it, sometimes even crying about it.
I read it too, for her, and I understood why she felt as strongly toward it as she did.
And when Tommy noticed her tears and asked what was wrong, she showed him what she’d been reading. I think, for Tommy, it was a small insight into Becca’s life and her feelings that she’d never opened up about, at least with him.
I’m not really sure what happened between them after that. All I know is that two days ago, Tommy found me at the indoor skate park in our backyard and asked to go visit “Younger Me.”
As far as I know, the girl/woman behind the words was anonymous and no longer updating her posts. I told him as much.
He replied, “I know who she is, and I know where she is.”
“And Becs?” I asked. “You think she’d want to see her?”
Tommy smiled, nodded, and now we’re here, on our way to…
I don’t even know where.
I’m just the guy driving the car and tapping the map. “Where to?” I ask my wife.