Читать книгу The Bernice L. McFadden Collection - Bernice L. McFadden - Страница 44

Chapter Thirty-Four

Peak conditions. That’s what the weatherman said. Peak conditions and no rain for at least seven days.

Tass took that uninterrupted perfection as confirmation that it was time to go.

The children pouted.

Of course it was going to be difficult for them—her leaving so soon after Fish had died.

“We’re going to feel like orphans,” Sonny half-joked.

Tass patted his hand. “You’ll be okay. You will all be okay.”

She pulled out at sunrise. All twelve children came to see her off. They hugged and kissed her and reminded her not to talk on her cell phone while she was driving.

Sonny typed in the destination on the GPS. The digital numbers stated that she would travel 2,345 miles from point A to point B. When Tass looked at that long number, it took her breath away.

Seat belt in place, she threw the almost-new Toyota into drive and forced a confident smile as she pulled away from the curb.

After twenty miles or so, Tass thought she would turn the car around and head back home. What was she thinking? Who was she fooling? She was a sixty-six-year-old woman who had never spent a night alone in her entire life. This adventure was for a woman half her age, not someone collecting a Social Security check.

Tass began to shake.

Who had put such a silly thought in her mind?

Her eyes filled with tears.

That’s it, she belittled herself, I’ve lost my mind and not one of my children noticed.

She frantically searched the overhead signs for the next highway exit. Too nervous and distraught to take her hand off of the steering wheel to turn on the radio, Tass forced herself to think warm and happy thoughts.

She started with the day in the attic, worked her way backward to family barbecues, the birth of her first grandchild, her fortieth anniversary party, the day she and Fish made the final payment on the mortgage, the hour when she first realized she was pregnant, her wedding, summer days at the river, her first kiss …

Time slipped by, and before Tass realized it she had traveled fifty miles.

There was still time to turn back, but she no longer felt the urgent need to. Easing her hand from the steering wheel, she fiddled with the buttons until the radio came on. Otis Redding’s “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” washed over her.

Tass began to sing along.

It was August 22, 2005.

It took her four days to travel the 2,345 miles. She kept to the speed limit, and stopped often, and called Sonny to give him her exact location.

Sonny would always end the phone call with, “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

And Tass would respond, “I can’t believe it either.”

She always started driving at dawn, and by sunset she was pulling into a motel to bed down for the night. The rooms at the motels were small, the walls thin, and the cleanliness of the sheets suspect. So Tass slept in her clothes and kept the television on for company.