Distant Shores

"Yes. " She smiled, maybe to take the sting out of her answer. "That question cuts to the heart of me, is all. Im not goin to answer it as idle chitchat at midnight two days after my husbands death. "

Elizabeth understood. Theyd missed their chance for intimacy. Now they were simply two grown women, connected by the barest strand of relation, who would go their separate ways. "Im sorry," she said at last, choosing the sentence she herself had heard a hundred times in the past few days. "You call me if youre feeling too alone. "

"There are worse things in life than being alone. "

Elizabeth sensed that Anita had chosen those words carefully. She felt transparent suddenly, as if unhappiness ran through her veins, showed in the tiny blue lines that came from her heart.

Anita took a step closer.

Elizabeth stepped backward, needing space between them. "I better get to bed now. Six will come awfully early. " She walked away, forcing herself to keep a steady pace. It was difficult.

She went inside the house and slammed the door, then peered cautiously out the window.

Anita was still standing there, shivering, her white hair twined around a dozen pink curlers. Even in the fading moonlight, Elizabeth could make out the glittering tear tracks on her face. Anita was standing alone, crying.

She was looking at the roses.

Elizabeth paid the cabdriver and stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of the Nashville airport.

It was cold out today. The air smelled of incipient snow; the skies were gray and bloated.

She wheeled her carry-on bag behind her. It bumped over the threshold as the electronic doors whooshed open. The United Airlines ticket counter was crowded with travelers, so she went instead to the bank of computers along the wall. It took a few minutes to find the departures terminal. She scanned through the flight numbers.

She found hers--989, Nashville to Detroit to Kennedy. While she was reading the gate number, the information changed.

The flight was delayed by two hours.

Groaning, she got in line, inched her way forward amid a chattering crowd. Finally, she reached the counter. The agent checked her ticket and confirmed that the flight was delayed; then she gave Elizabeth a meal voucher.

As if you could eat lunch in an airport for five dollars.

Thanking the agent, she left the counter. She dragged her suitcase behind her as she wandered up and down the aisles. In the bookstore, she bought a copy of the newest novel by Anne Rivers Siddons and the latest House and Garden magazine.

Finally, shed seen everything there was to see, so she went into one of the restaurants, found a table by the window, and sat down. She stared out across the runway, watching the planes take off and land.

Theres a place in Costa Rica, sugar beet, called Cloud Mountain--or some damned thing--that speaks right to m heart.

When was the last time you traveled someplace exotic? Or scared yourself silly? Or took up some crazy thing, like hang gliding or skydiving?

Shed been working to keep the memories at bay, but now they flooded her. She couldnt forget . . .

Youre missin out on your own life. Its passin you by.

Just cause my glasses are thick as Coke bottles doesnt mean I cant still see my little girls heart. I hear the way you talk to Jack . . . and the way you dont talk to him. I know an unhappy marriage when I see one.

If only she could do something to change it. Maybe get on a plane and go wherever it took her. Land in a strange country and be someone else.

But where would she go? Machu Picchu, Paris, Nepal? She didnt even have a passport.

She wasnt that kind of woman. Unlike her father, she didnt dream of scaling Mount Everest or hang gliding down cliffs. There was only one place on earth she longed to go.

Home.

Her place by the sea. She remembered the night shed gone down to the beach at midnight and seen the whales swim past. Their haunting, elegiac cry had seemed drawn out of her, pulled from that sad, hidden place in her heart where she stored the dreams shed set aside.

Shed done so much of that in her life, put her dreams aside.

. . . your own life . . . its passin you by.