If you aren’t laughing, you’re crying. Now, which would you rather be doing?
My grandmother’s soft encouragement prodded at my consciousness, and I could almost feel the pad of her thumb brushing across my cheek.
I drew in a deep breath, hoping it might give me clarity, guidance, the words a chorus of convoluted whispers that tumbled from my tongue. “I don’t know if I know the difference anymore, Gramma. Things are getting complicated. So complicated, and I don’t know how to handle them all. I don’t know if I can do this. It feels like I’m going to fail.”
God. What if I failed?
The thought made that gulp of air in my lungs throb and threaten to burst. It was a complete rejection of the idea.
Needing to pull myself together, I lifted my head and started to climb to my feet. A frown pulled across my brow when my sight latched on an envelope I’d never noticed before. It was tucked in a small cubby on the dressing table.
“Oh, Gramma.”
I sat up on my knees, fingers trembling with affection and grief. I reached out and pulled the envelope free. I was quick to turn it over, rip open the flap, and tear out the card.
I devoured the words.
Obstacles are everywhere. They often feel insurmountable. Impossible. Sometimes they are nothing but stepping-stones. Other times, they are a diversion. A distraction. More often than not, they are there with the simple purpose of showing you that you can.
But every now and again, they are a redirection. A deviation. A repurposing. And this detour? It will guide you to a destination you never imagined you’d go but where you belonged the whole time.
“What are you trying to tell me, Gramma?” I whispered into the nothingness. That nothingness echoed back. Crushing me with affection. With loss. With the memories of her voice and her reason and everything she’d given up for me.
I clutched the letter to my chest. Cherishing her words. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t decipher them. All that mattered was that they were meant for me. Given in a moment I needed them most.
My grandmother always had that way about her. Insight. The uncanny ability to know when I needed a kind word or a soft prod.
Resolved, I pushed to my feet, tore off the ruined pantyhose, and shoved my feet back into the shoes. I dusted a little powder on my nose and ran some shimmery nude gloss across my lips.
I looked at myself in the mirror. “You can do this, Rynna Dayne. You wanted this. Now, go and get it.”
I rushed downstairs and through the living room, grabbing my leather bag and the portfolio I’d prepared that waited inside. Silently, I went through the details in my head. The things I would say, employing some of the strategy tools I’d learned back in San Francisco.
Maybe I was supposed to have gone there. Maybe that experience had been preparing me for this day all along.
I didn’t mean to falter a step when I strode outside and into the morning light.
But I did.
Because Rex Gunner was there, just backing out of the backseat of his truck where I knew he had just gotten done strapping his daughter into her booster seat. His care for her was nearly as breathtaking as his presence.
Regretful eyes moved my direction. I thought maybe he didn’t have the power to stop them. Just the same way as I couldn’t stop my own. My gaze drank him in as if he were forbidden fruit. Something—someone—I wanted so desperately I was willing to try to pluck him free from all the thorny barbs and spindly spines that kept him bound.
That destination perilous.
Hazardous to my health.
Sucking in a stealing breath, I shook off the reaction and forced myself to walk down the steps and to my SUV, barely glancing back when I pulled out of my drive and headed down the road.
But in that barest glimpse I saw him.
I saw his pain. I saw his fear. I saw his regret. And I swore I saw him standing there, held back by that gnarl of branches, wishing I could reach him, too.
But sometimes we have to admit when those obstacles just run too deep.
Spine stiff and straight, I shifted anxiously in the hard plastic chair. My legs were perfectly pressed together, from my thighs to my knees to my ankles, the portfolio neatly placed on my lap as I waited.
Each second that passed was excruciating, my heart thundering so loud I kept expecting someone to lean my direction and shush me. To tell me to rein in the riot of nerves that stampeded out ahead of me, only to do laps around the small waiting room of the bank.
My gaze darted everywhere, to the tellers, then to the few clerks who were opening and managing accounts in the grouping of cubicle offices that took up the right front side of the bank.