no longer working, and wearing a falling alarm. It made me suddenly question everything I’ve done, and where I’m heading. It’s premature, but she seems to think I belong there now. I need to take control of my life again, and I just wanted to double back and make sure I had made the right decisions. I’ve been fine with being alone for all these years because I assumed that I could work forever, do what I wanted, live where I wanted, and take care of myself. Deanna is sure I can’t. It was a pretty horrifying realization. I needed to be alone to think about it and decide what I believe and what I want to do about it.”
“And what are you thinking now?” His heart ached while he listened to her, and he felt sick at what his sister had done, and how she’d handled it. Maddie hadn’t had a stroke, she had broken her ankle. She wasn’t dying, and she certainly wasn’t senile or feeble and failing in any way, but Deanna had made their mother feel that way, and doubt herself and fear for her future. It was almost abusive, and his sister had the delicacy of a bull elephant.
“I calmed down while I was driving,” Maddie said, “and I realized that I’m still me and she can’t make me do what I don’t want to. I’m still of sound mind and body. I’m fifty-eight years old, not a hundred. There are plenty of photographers who have worked into their nineties, and I want to be one of them. I love my house and I’m not moving. If I need assisted living one day, I’ll figure it out then, but I hope I won’t. I know lots of old people who still live in their homes. And I’m not old yet, or not as old and helpless as Dee thinks, or wants to believe. I’m not falling apart because I broke my ankle. She had me running scared for a while, but I’m not scared anymore. Yes, I’ll get old one day, but I’m not there yet. And I’m not afraid to be alone. I made the right decisions for me.
“When I saw the men I had cared about, I realized I’d been right all along. I don’t need a man with no soul or integrity who’d sell himself for a plane, or a guy who can’t keep his hands off every woman who walks past him. And as much as I loved Andy, he was never the right man for me. Even if he’d been alive when I got to the ranch, he doesn’t belong in New York any more than I belong in Wyoming, and neither of us ever did. If I get old alone, it’s okay. It’s a choice I made because the right situation never came along, and the one I have works well for me.
“I’m not moving into assisted living just because I’m not married, or selling my house because Deanna doesn’t like my stairs and her high heels get caught in them. It’s my life and my house, I’ve made my own decisions. I’m not going to give up my work, or sit around waiting to die wearing an alarm now, because I’m going to get old one day. When I do, I’ll deal with it, but I hope it’s a long time off. And I’m not going to grab the nearest man so I don’t end my life alone. If I am alone, then that’s okay. It took me a while to figure it all out again. She had me panicked, but now I’m fine.”
She had come full circle back to where she’d been at the beginning, only her resolve had been strengthened. “I haven’t spoken to Deanna since I left New York two weeks ago, and I didn’t want to. She had me on the run. And none of these decisions are hers to make, they’re mine, until I truly can’t make them anymore. She even suggested I had Alzheimer’s. Your sister is not the most tactful person I know.” She still looked upset about her older daughter, and Ben agreed with her. His mother’s thinking processes and the conclusions she’d come to were entirely reasonable. The one who wasn’t was Deanna, and Ben intended to point that out to her again, after listening to his mother work her way through it. The trip had done her a world of good, and he was glad for her,