“Have we got the itinerary, guys?” Nancy asked.
Edison looked at her. The retired couple—he a former electronics engineer and she a former banker—could see the impending empty-nest syndrome in their friend.
“After we finish here,” Edison answered, “we’ll head on down the road. I think it shouldn’t take more than seven to eight hours to reach Richmond.
“As usual we’ve got two choices once we get to Harrisburg. We either head down Route 15 through Thurmont and Frederick, or we take I-83 through Towson and around Baltimore. Either way, we wind up on that damned Beltway and ultimately connect to I-95 south. Take your pick.”
Galen looked at his old friend. “How about the road less traveled?”
Nancy’s eyes twinkled. “Mr. Frost was a wise man.”
“Thurmont it is,” Edison agreed.
Edison turned to Tonio, his thick glasses and double hearing aids wobbling.
“Once we hit Richmond we’ll get you settled in your dorm room then bed down for the night at a local motel. I’m sure sourpuss here would like to revisit the city of his youthful escapades. I hope the State of Virginia has taken down all the wanted posters.”
Galen couldn’t help it. His face took on its customary scowl.
“No, no mad or sad face today, big brother. Come on, Pagliacci, play the clown.”
He cleared his throat and smiled—quite a rarity twice in one day—and shot a glance at Edison.
“Tonio, I believe what your more feeble-minded tio is trying to say is that I’d like to revisit some of the places that meant something to me. I haven’t been to Richmond in ages and I’m sure most of the school complex is new. Who knows? I might actually meet someone I know.”
“Only if we’re going to visit nursing homes or mental institutions,” Edison quipped.
Nancy unconsciously pressed her hand against the pacemaker in her left upper chest.
“Okay, you two, playtime’s over. Finish your breakfast. We have a long trip ahead.”
Tonio’s face split in a wide grin as his tios sheepishly resumed eating.
After breakfast the young man returned to his room, scanning it for forgotten items. The old man followed quietly, observing him. He saw Tonio’s startled face as the soft notes of “Lara’s Theme” echoed from the upper drawer of his clothes bureau. Tears welled up as he opened the drawer, picked up a little silver music box, and lovingly caressed it.
Galen heard him whisper, “I said we’d go to school together, Betty.”
He remained silent as his ward relived the life and death of his first love. Leukemia had snatched Betty Orth from him just four years ago.
Tonio kissed the little box. It would be his memento mori, just as Galen treasured his first wife Leni’s stuffed toy dog, and his second wife Cathy’s hand-knitted scarf.
He turned as he noticed his tio standing in the open doorway.
“She’ll always be with you, Tonio.”
It was dawn. The early lavender sky portended good weather that mid-August day.
Tonio sat beside Galen as Edison aimed the RV he affectionately called Wilma down the mountain road. He turned his head to look out the back window, watching the letters of the old oak sign receding in the distance. He was leaving Safehaven.
Tonio had fallen asleep; his head resting on Galen’s left shoulder as he had done so many times as a child.
“Tio, I can’t do it. I’m not like you. I can never be as good as you.”
The old doctor whispered in the young man’s ear, as he had done when the child Tonio had experienced his own share of nightmares.
“Easy, son, I’ll always be with you. You will succeed beyond your wildest dreams.”
Tonio’s body relaxed, a smile creasing his sleeping face.
Nancy pulled Wilma up to the entranceway of the main dormitory and stopped. She and Edison remained silent while their friend gazed at the unchanged portico he had first entered over 60 years before.
Galen reached over and gently nudged the sleeping young man.
Tonio stretched, yawned and made the three old timers laugh with the signature phrase of all his childhood car trips.
“Are we there yet?”
Edison and Nancy got out and waited as Galen slowly stepped down onto the sidewalk. He stood there a second before calling out, “Come on, boy, it’s time to leave the nest.”
The four entered the central lounge. A banner over the doorway read, WELCOME CLASS OF 2025. Inside, other parents and students stood in nervously animated clusters.
“My God, is that you, Galen?”
A female voice, tempered by time but strangely familiar, called out to him.
He turned and saw a slightly bent, gray-haired elderly woman standing next to a tall young woman. He stared myopically, trying to recognize the face.
“Bob Galen, don’t you remember me?”
“Sandy? Sandy McDevitt?”
“You do remember! I guess the two of us haven’t gone senile yet, eh, Bob?”
She smiled, the laughter lines crinkling a blue-eyed face with few wrinkles.
Sandy McDevitt, the elfin young junior med student who had dared question two brash guys that first day he and Dave strutted their stuff as fourth-year medical students. She had been friends with their girlfriends, Connie and June, so she was well aware of the two young men’s quirks. Even though she was a year behind, they often included her and her boyfriend, Josh Longan, on triple dates.
Galen turned to his friends and ward.
“Sandy graduated the year after I did. Sandy, these are my friends the Edisons, and my ward Antonio Hidalgo.”
She shook hands and looked appraisingly at Tonio. Sandy was never shy when it came to good-looking young men.
“You did know Josh and I married after graduation, didn’t you, Bob?”
“Yes, Sandy, I read about his passing in the alumni journal a few years back. You and he lived a storybook life as medical missionaries in Kenya.”
“It’s hard to believe he’s gone, Bob. I still feel him near me. I…”
Nancy moved forward and held Sandy’s hand.
The diminutive woman Galen remembered as a freckle-faced, pugnacious blonde shook her head to clear away the past. Then she looked up smiling once more.
“How foolish of me! Sarah, come over here. Folks, this is my granddaughter, Sarah Knowlton. She’s trying to follow in Meemaw’s footsteps.”
The girl towered over her doll-sized grandmother. She blushed.
“Grandma, I haven’t called you that since I was five!”
Tonio stepped forward confidently.
“I’m Tony, Tony Hidalgo. Guess we’re gonna be classmates.”
Four geriatrics, all of them in or nearing their 80s, watched approvingly as two tall, dark-haired 22 year olds looked intently into each other’s brown eyes and melded.
“Grandma, I need to get checked in. Tony, let me show you where the office is.”
Sarah was definitely a take-charge girl, just like her grandmother had been.
Tonio