Time Flies (36 page)

I reached over and gave her a hug. She may have hugged me back a little bit.

She didn’t walk me to the door, so I opened it myself.

“I love you,” I yelled.

I closed the door without waiting around to find out if she answered. Whether she did or not, I was going to call her in a week or two. And maybe some day I’d even cop to switching our jewelry boxes all those years ago.

It was a dorky thing to do, but I drove Mustang Sally to the beach and circled around a few times until I lucked out and scored a parking spot right across from the lighthouse that blinked 1–4–3.

Then I called Ted Brody again. He answered on the first ring.

“Hi,” I said, “it’s Melanie again. First of all, I want you to know that it is completely, one hundred percent over between my husband and me. That doesn’t guarantee that he won’t be a pain in the neck, but it’s the best I can do.”

“My daughters,” he said, “are a little bit overprotective.”

I rolled my window down so I could hear the sound of the waves breaking on the beach.

“The second thing is,” I said, “that I get lost in my work, a lot, but you could look at that as a good thing in a way, because half the time I don’t even notice when it’s the weekend anyway. But I have this weird highway driving phobia, and I’m working on it, but I feel that it’s only fair that I warn you I’ve got some issues.”

“I put garlic in everything I cook. Lots of it. So if you don’t
love garlic, that could be a big issue. But you could look at it that it’s a good thing, because if you hang out with me, you will never, ever be bothered by vampires.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Wait. Sometimes I wake up with recipe ideas in the middle of the night. I can also be a little bit too obsessed with the Cooking Channel, but I learn something new every damn time I watch. And just to be upfront, if I ever get a chance to be on one of those shows, I’m going. It’s not that I don’t watch the occasional movie, but I have to admit I spend far too much time checking out the set design in the restaurant scenes and I’ve been known to miss the occasional plot point. And I have to tell you, I’m really digging the idea of those chalkboard bottles.”

I smiled. “The only thing I remember from the opening ceremonies of the London Olympics was how cool it was that they actually forged the first Olympic ring to show the industrial revolution, and then the other four rings dropped down from the sky. Oh, and all those lighted copper petals that rose up to become the Olympic flame. I stayed up half the night making my own petals.”

“Maybe we could work a few in with the fireflies.”

“And finally, what I need right now is a guy who has Mondays off and might be able to pick me up at the airport tomorrow afternoon.”

He had a great laugh, a laugh I could get used to. “I could do that. I might even be able to rustle us up a nice Monday early-bird dinner, too.”

“Thank you, I’d like that. I’ll text you my flight info.”

“I’ll look for it.”

“Great, I’ll look for you when I get to the airport.”

“I’ll look forward to you looking for me.”

“Ha. Thanks. Okay, I have to go now. I have some driving to do.”

“You know that last scene in
Thelma and Louise
, when they drive off the cliff? Well, it’s always bothered me. I mean, I get that they choose their ending, that they
decide
to hold hands and go out in a blaze of glory. But think about it. Men go out in a blaze of glory; women are smarter than that. They don’t need the drama.”

B.J. looked up from trying to poke her finger with a needle from the sewing kit I’d found in my suitcase. “Do you remember back in elementary school when if you had a good friend you pricked holes in your fingers and pressed them together and became blood brothers? I spent half my time faking sick just to get out of it.”

I took a deep breath and started up Mustang Sally.

“Wait,” B.J. said. She opened the glove compartment and took out two scarves.

When I tied mine on, my hands were shaking.

“Come on, Thelma, you can do this.”

“Louise,” I said. “It’s my turn to be Louise.”

I worked my way out through the tree-lined back roads until we got to the highway. I put the blinker on. I placed my hands carefully at ten and two o’clock.

My mouth made a dry popping sound when I opened it. I cleared my throat. “Okay, let’s do it.”

The traffic roared. I tried to pretend it was the sound of the
waves breaking on the beach just a couple of miles away. It didn’t really work, but at least it distracted me from the anxiety that swam through my veins, invading every part of me.

As the ramp fed me to the highway, I tried to breathe my way through it. I looked in the rearview mirror, put on my blinker again, eased my way over into the next-to-slowest lane.

“Hang in there,” B.J. said. “You can do this.”

In front of us, the highway stretched out endlessly, flanked by marshes and scrub pines and the occasional glimpse of a fast-food restaurant. If I didn’t think about having to get off again, it wasn’t so bad. Entrances and exits were always the worst.

Life was like that, too. It was the transitions that wreaked havoc on your nerves, your heart, your home. But once you made it through to the open stretches, it was pretty smooth sailing, at least for a while. So maybe the trick was to make the most of those times. Maybe The Rolling Stones were right and you had to get it while you can.

Time flies. Time flies faster every year. Time flies whether you’re having fun or not, whether you’re living your life big or small, whether you surround yourself with fear or with laughter. It might have been just a dream, but Corita Kent and Sister Bertrille were right—there were only two choices, afraid and boring.

I wasn’t going to play it safe anymore.

It seemed to me that maybe I’d needed to dabble in my past to recognize my future, and who didn’t love a good stroll down memory lane, but life was way too short to get stuck there.

My heart filled with hope and promise. Okay, and a little bit of anxiety.

I took a deep breath and pressed my foot down on the accelerator
until I was actually going the speed limit. Maybe I was a little bit better. Or maybe the baby elephant would show up any minute. But, easy or hard, I wasn’t going to let it get in the way of having a life anymore. A totally amazing life. I was going to lick this thing, and someday I’d be so comfortable driving I’d even name my own car. Ellie the Element? Eleanor Rigby? Ooh, maybe Elenore, from that old song by The Turtles. I couldn’t wait to download it. I couldn’t wait to get on with my life.

“Where do you think we should go?” I asked B.J.

“Don’t think about it,” my best friend said. “Just drive.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, I thank you for reading
Time Flies
. If you enjoyed it, I hope you’ll take a moment to tell a friend or write a nice review—truly the biggest gifts you can give an author.

Whenever I needed a detail for this novel, it was only a Facebook post or a Tweet away. A huge thank-you to my fabulous readers for taking a stroll down memory lane and helping me remember feelings, songs, clothes, bad makeup, and more. Thanks for always making me feel that I’m writing my books for all of us.

I Skyped and chatted with lots of book clubs while writing and rewriting this book, and I thank you all for choosing my books and for never failing to surprise me with fresh insight. And, of course, for the many laughs.

Alphabetical, but no less heartfelt, thanks to Karin Beyer, Jackie Blem, Joanne and Caitlin Doggart, Beth Hoffman, Robin Kall, Joan Lang, Allie Larkin, Mary Marken, Jill Miner, Karen Vail, and Wendy Wax for support and inspiration. Thanks to the artists kind enough to chat with me at fairs and shows and festivals. Thanks to the friends who shared fears and phobias. Thanks to the bloggers, booksellers, librarians, and members of the media who continue to give me the gift of this midlife career of mine. You all rock.

Thanks to Jake, Garet, Kaden, and the rest of my family for always being there, and to Daisy Mei for literally always being there with the steady sound of her snoring while I work.

Thank you once again to my incomparable literary agent, Lisa Bankoff, and to ICM’s Dan Kirschen, Josie Freedman, Lisa Farrell, and Katie O’Connor, as well as to Helen Manders and Sheila Crowley at Curtis Brown, UK. You’re simply the best.

Many thanks to the fabulous Sally Kim, editorial director at Touchstone, for her insight and energy, and to her wonderful assistant, Allegra Ben-Amotz. A big thank-you to my terrific publicist, Ashley Hewlett—it’s so nice to hear raves about you from everyone you reach out to—and to marketing dynamic duo Ana Paula De Lima and Meredith Vilarello for your creativity and talent. Thanks to Cherlynne Li for all your hard work and another brilliant cover design. A big thank-you to Stacy Creamer, David Falk, Shida Carr, Linda Sawicki, and the rest of Team Touchstone. More thanks to Simon & Schuster’s director of marketing, the amazing Wendy Sheanin, to Joy O’Meara and Claudia Martinez for interior-design perfection, and to Kristy Ojala for blog support.

Another big alphabetical thank-you to high school classmates Susan Baize, Eileen Casey, Liz Giacomozzi, Anna Holmes, Polly Kimmitt, Carol Donkin Lareau, Hollis MacArthur, Joni Padduck, Pamela Padley, Susan Priestman Perry, Barbara Rhind, Diane Ridley, Deb Stelzer, Lee Terzis, and Sheryl Trainor for sharing memories and photos, and thank you to all of my SHS classmates who’ve stayed in my life, as well as those I’ve been lucky enough to reconnect with. See you at the reunion!

PHOTO BY DIANE DILLON

CLAIRE COOK
wrote her first novel in her mini-van when she was forty-five. At fifty, she walked the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of the film adaptation of her second novel,
Must Love Dogs
, starring Diane Lane and John Cusack. She is the bestselling author of nine other novels and divides her time between the suburbs of Atlanta and Boston.