I was not going.
Nathan had made arrangements for a trip. The trip had a confirmed booking for his mother, an adjusted itinerary oriented around her needs and pace, and a general shape that was a family vacation rather than an anniversary trip. He was welcome to take that trip. I was not going to take it with him.
I called the inn and explained that I needed to cancel my place in the reservation. The room was in Nathan’s name; I was listed as an additional guest. The cancellation policy was strict — within seven days of arrival, no refund — and I had already accounted for this. I was not getting the money back, which was about two hundred dollars for my share of the room deposit. I absorbed this and moved on. There was no magical chargeback, no customer-service miracle, no sympathetic innkeeper who broke policy. The two hundred dollars was gone, and that was the cost of the situation.
I then looked at my leave. I had two weeks approved. The first week was designated for the trip; the second week was the recovery time I’d built in afterward. I called my manager and asked about restructuring the leave into one continuous two-week block with a different start date, or keeping the first week and using it locally. She said either worked.
I kept the first week. I made a list of things I wanted to do within a two-hour radius of home.
Then I told Nathan.
## What I Told Nathan