Phyllis Bourne - Every Road to You

Carol reached across the table and touched her free hand. “Not one of those stale-cake-and-fruit-punch events at the senior citizens’ center, where everyone treats us like two-year-olds, or the boring law-firm affairs I endured when my husband was alive, but a genuine party, where everyone was actually having a good time,” she said. “I ate. I drank. I danced. It was wonderful. I hadn’t had that much fun in years. Decades, even.”

Tia’s slumped shoulders perked up, along with her interest.

Carol’s brown eyes sparkled with merriment. “I even won eight hundred bucks in a poker game.”

“Really? I didn’t know you played.”

“Unbeknownst to my mother, my dad taught me when I was a little girl, and by college I was paying for my nursing textbooks with my winnings,” she said.

Tia’s own eyes widened at hearing about this other side to the staid nurse she’d met years ago.

Carol sighed. “I hadn’t played in decades. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed it.”

“So why did you stop?”

The other woman shrugged. “Life, I guess. Marriage, motherhood, a full-time job, my daughter’s death and then raising my grandson,” she said. “I was always busy juggling so many balls. By the time Ethan was out of law school and I’d retired, my husband was dead and I’d lost sight of the things I truly liked doing.”

Carol smiled and patted her hand. “I owe you a thank-you,” she said. “Somehow you and your team looked past my dowdy exterior and brought out the person I’d shut away for years. The true me.”

Pride swelled in Tia’s heart. Max had been right. Her job was done.

Ethan Wright had it all wrong. She wasn’t the one who needed to talk to his grandmother. He did. If Carol told him what she’d just told her, even her stubborn grandson would undoubtedly see her happiness and be thrilled for her.

Still, Tia was curious about one thing.

“So how does a trip to the slammer fit into this story?

Carol pulled her hand back and reached for her coffee cup. “Well, in all the fun, the party may have gotten a little loud. My friend Edna’s neighbors called the cops, who asked us to hold it down,” she said. “And we tried. We really did.”

“The police had to come back,” Tia surmised.

Carol nodded. “But it was a different officer the second time, and he wasn’t so nice. In fact, he was rude and condescending.”

She put her a fist on her hip and wagged the index finger of her other hand. “‘Isn’t it past you Q-tips’ bedtime?’” Carol mimicked the officer. “‘Time to break it up and head back to the old-folks’ home.’”

“Uh-oh,” Tia said.

“Uh-oh is right,” Carol huffed. “I consider myself an easygoing woman, but I wasn’t having it. Especially off a kid I assisted the doctor in bringing into the world. I don’t care if he was all grown up and wearing a blue uniform.”

Tia sipped her cooling tea as she listened. At this point, Carol’s story was more interesting than her breakfast.

“I told him to watch his tone, and he said to me, ‘Settle down. I’m warning you,’” Carol mimicked again. “He’s warning me, after I fished broken crayons out of his snotty little nose when he was two,” she said. “Long story short, we argued. He got hot around the collar and hauled me downtown on some bogus charge of breaching the peace.”

Again, Tia wondered if Ethan had sat down and really talked to his grandmother, and gotten her side of the story. Carol may have been in the wrong for back-talking the law, but it was completely understandable.

“Still, I can’t believe he arrested you.”

Carol shook her head. “He didn’t. Not really. I was detained a couple of hours, and then he called Ethan, my thirty-one-year-old grandson, to come get me,” she said. “As if I were senile or a brat whose parent had been summoned to the principal’s office. I swear, I nearly lit into him all over again.”

Only pausing to take a breath, Carol continued, “Instead of Ethan reading him the riot act, he basically thanked the officer for seeing to his senile old granny.” She fixed her gaze on Tia. “Then he runs straight to you, and for what? Last time I checked, I was seventy-four, not four.”

Tia cleared her throat. “He blames me. He believes I’m the evil puppet master behind the changes you’ve made lately.”

Carol nodded at the waitress, who then topped up her coffee, and Carol turned back to Tia. “That’s a load of bull. You made me look amazing and feel good about my appearance again. However, I was the one who decided to start living the life I want to lead, and there’s not a thing my grandson can do about it.”

Tia watched the older woman open a sleek cross-body bag and pull out a folded sheet of paper. She opened it and slid it across the table.

“What’s this?” Tia asked, skimming what appeared to be some kind of list.

“My bucket list,” Carol answered proudly.

“Oh, my God, you actually did it,” Tia said. “I’m impressed.”

“When you first suggested it, I wasn’t so sure. The idea made me feel like I had one foot in the grave,” she said. “But the more I thought about it, I realized I’d been living like I’d had both my feet planted in one for years. It’s time for me to stop putting off things I really want to try. No matter how frivolous or downright silly.”

Tia could feel her chest practically expanding with pride as she smiled across the table at Carol. This was the real reason she’d started the spa division of the company. She’d wanted to use beauty and outward changes to give women the courage to take bigger, bolder steps toward their dreams.

Tia took a closer look at the typed list. It contained nearly a hundred bullet points, including skydiving, riding a Harley and playing poker in a national tournament.

“‘Pub crawling the honky-tonks on Broadway,’” Tia read, noting the red line scratching it off the list.

“Done.” Carol winked.

“‘Ride one of the biggest, baddest roller coasters of the summer,’” Tia continued to read.

Carol nodded. “When my daughter was young, we’d take her to amusement parks, and I wanted to go on the roller coasters with her, but I was just too chicken,” she said. “I’d end up sitting on a bench like a stick-in-the-mud watching everybody else have fun. I did the same thing when I took Ethan as a boy.”

Tia had no memories of amusement parks or roller coasters as a kid. There were no family vacations. Any childhood trips, like everything in her parents’ lives, revolved around Espresso company business.

She pushed the errant memory from her head, not wanting to go down that road. Still, she couldn’t help appreciate the irony. The business she once resented, she was now rallying to save.

“Are you sure you don’t want to start off with something smaller and not so bad?” Tia asked, focusing instead on her friend.

Carol shook her head. “Nope. No wussy coasters,” she said. “I read about one called Outlaw Run in Missouri on the web. Along with being one of the few wooden coasters in the country, it has a sixteen-story drop and double-barrel roll.”

Tia laughed and held up her hands. “Stop. You’re making my stomach drop and roll just talking about it.”

“I plan to ride that baby at least twice before the end of the summer,” Carol said.

“Ambitious list.” Tia was about to return the paper to her friend when a handwritten item caught her eye.

The one who got away.

She pointed it out to Carol. “What’s this?”

“Nothing.” The older woman shook her head and her brown skin flushed red.

“Are you blushing?” Tia asked, intrigued.

“Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.” Carol hurriedly snatched the list from her hand. “I was just doodling.”