The Road Trip

• Twelve •

"Your surprise is a drug store?" I asked Luke when he pulled into the parking lot.

Luke nodded. "In case you needed vitamins or chocolate or tampons. I wanted to be thoughtful."

"I do need some knock off perfume."

Luke disappeared when we were browsing the candy aisle, and when he met me back at the self checkout, I had loaded up.

I looked him up and down. He was empty-handed. "You got what you needed?"

"Yeah," he said nonchalantly.

"Are you shoplifting?"

Luke rolled his eyes and relieved me of half the candy.

"I swear you're more mysterious than me," I told him.

Back on the road, we tore open the sour gummy worms first, and our fingers kept touching inside the huge bag like teenagers sharing popcorn at the movies. I ignored it. I could get through this for one more day... and then another week. Maybe whenever the strike ended I could book a flight home from whatever city we were in. I'd checked the news on my phone twice an hour that day, but still no luck.

When we both started to feel candy sick, Luke pointed up through his windshield. "There is your surprise."

I ducked my head to follow his finger. "What is that?" I said in awe. All I could make out was a shape of a person high on the top of a mountain.

"The fourth largest statue in the country."

"Some surprise," I murmured and smirked. "Why didn't you bring me to the first?"

Luke caught my thigh and dug his fingers into me, making me squirm.

"Is it a woman?" I asked, squinting my eyes up at the figure.

"She's called Our Lady of the Rockies."

"What's special about her?" I asked because I knew that it wasn't just a statue.

"You'll see."

We boarded a school bus at the base of the mountain and traveled up a bumpy road until we reached the top. When I stepped out, I read a rock taller than me, notched into the ground, that said she was dedicated to all women and mothers. My heart spun in my chest. How could he be this thoughtful?

"This is beautiful." My voice caught. I smiled at Luke. I felt the tears behind my eyes, but I tried to stifle them when he stepped up and put his arm around my shoulders.

I looked around, surprised I couldn't see the statue. We were on rocky terrain with trees lining the road that curved around the edge of the mountain.

We walked through the Women's Memorial with thousands of names lining the walls. I ran my finger over a couple of names as I read them before we went inside the chapel above it. On one side of the room, a large white steel heart sat on a pedestal.

"You can write someone's name on it and put it inside the heart," Luke said, extending a piece of paper and a pen out toward me. "When it's full, it'll be sealed."

I slowly took the pen from his hand as he placed the paper down on the table in front of us.
I scribbled my mother's name, Helen Adler, down on the small white piece of paper and stuffed it into the slot in the base. I stepped back into him.

"That'll be here forever," Luke whispered in my ear. He let me lean on him as I stood in silence, trying to relive every faded memory I had of her and wishing my twelve-year-old brain had been able to retain more.

Then we made the short walk up to the statue between the black gate at the edge of the mountain and the trees planted in dedication to women. Each one with a tiny plaque in front of it.