held up a finger. “Now, I don’t want you thinking I wasn’t happy, because I was. I loved Leroy. I still love that man — even though he broke our pact to let me die first, the bastard.”
I chuckled, eyes glossing over.
“But, aside from his love, I never fulfilled myself. And that’s one area where Leroy couldn’t help me. He would have supported me, if I would have stood up for myself and said out loud what I wanted. But, I never did. Instead, I found my adventure by watching movies and living through other people — through celebrities. I waited until Leroy was gone from my life, until my legs were too old and tired, my lungs not capable of feeding me enough oxygen, my heart not steady enough to pump enough blood into my brain. It took me too long to speak up for myself, and I regret it. Truly, I do. I could have seen the world, could have experienced so much more with the man I loved, if I only would have stood up and spoke.”
I sighed. “And that’s what you want me to do.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I want you to do what you want to do — regardless of if I agree with it or not. Like I said, you’re my daughter in my eyes, and I will support you through anything.” She paused, running her bony, silky finger over my wrist. “But, let’s just say I’m speaking to you on behalf of future Ruby Grace. I’m speaking as Ruby Grace at seventy-four, in a nursing home of her own.”
My heart kicked up a notch as I tried to imagine it — an older version of me, looking back on my life, on what I’d built, what I’d leave behind.
What hurt the most was that I couldn’t even picture it.
“All I’m saying is that I know it feels like you’re tied to a railroad track with a train coming straight at you. It feels like it’s this or nothing. But, I’m telling you, you have a giant pair of scissors in your hands that you can cut that rope with.”
“Betty…”
“It may be difficult,” she said, cutting me off. “You might get rope burn and you may cut yourself and bleed a little. You may let some people down. Hell, you may uproot everything you knew about your life before, about what you thought it’d be, and you may walk into something completely different, something you never expected.” A smile bloomed on her pale lips, then. “But, my dear, isn’t that the best part of being young? The possibilities are endless, the paths limitless, and you have so many different directions you can walk.” She shrugged. “You just have to decide if you want to walk the path of least resistance, the one where you are merely another traveler on the road. Or, if you want to forge a new path with those scissors, bit by bit, limb by limb, and discover something you never could have imagined.”
“It sounds selfish.”
She scoffed. “Selfish. What a silly word. Should you give to the ones you love? Absolutely. But should you lose yourself in order to better their lives at the expense of your own? Never.”
With that, she stood, stretching her arms above her head with a yawn before she started walking.
I frowned. “You’re leaving?”
“I’m going to take a nap, like an old woman should,” she said, glancing back at me over her shoulder. “And I’m going to leave you alone to think. To really think — without your mom in your ear, or your sister, or Noah, or Annie, or me. I just want you to sit here, on this bench, in this garden, and I want you to ask yourself the tough questions.”
“I know the questions,” I said on a sigh. “It’s the answers I’m having trouble with.”
She smiled knowingly. “Well, then, sit here until they come.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Then you didn’t sit long enough,” she tossed over her shoulder.
Then she rounded an old oak tree, and she was gone.
Later that night, I knocked on my father’s office door before letting myself inside.
He looked up at me from where he sat at his desk, his reading glasses low on his nose and hands still typing away on his keyboard. “Hey, pumpkin.”
I swallowed, letting myself in and closing the door behind me with trembling hands. Anthony and Mom were out on the front porch, drinking sweet tea like Mama loved to do after dinner, but