When I asked about the summer vacation in Hawaii that I had paid $22,000 for the whole family, my parents replied: “We already went last week. Only for family.”

Then, two weeks before I was supposed to fly out and meet them in Maui after a work conference in Seattle, I called my mother to ask if they needed me to bring anything for the kids.

There was a pause.

Then she said, far too casually, “Oh. We already went last week.”
I thought I must have misheard.

“What?”

“We already took the trip,” she said. “It worked better for everyone.”

I was standing in my office in Denver with a pen in one hand and a contract draft open on my laptop, staring through the glass wall at a city that suddenly blurred.

“You already went,” I repeated.

“Yes.”