“Just hold on. You’ll be fine. Keep your hands here.”
“Uh…like this?”
“Yes. Just remember, hands on fabric, not on metal.”
Great, now there were instructions.
“Hands on fabric.”
“Keep your feet up so when you get to the other side, you don’t hit the platform. But don’t hold them out. You don’t want to kick your other guide.”
That was when she knew. She would never be ready. She just had to go. She lifted her feet and launched off the platform. Then she went flying. At first it was terrifying. She was weaving through the trees, clearing them easily, picking up speed as she went.
Then terror turned to joy.
It was like flying.
She slowed when the other platform came into view and stepped onto the landing pad there.
The other instructor unhooked her, one clasp at a time, moving her over to him.
“That was amazing,” she said, looking up at Logan.
“Yeah,” Logan agreed. “It’s pretty amazing.”
She loved it. The whole experience. Maybe she was a thrill seeker. She never had been. Everything she had ever done had been about being safe. She had worked so very hard to be safe.
Now she’d done something sort of daring and had enjoyed herself. When they finished, they went back to the resort and sat on the expansive deck overlooking a field and mountains.
She ordered a beer, which she never did, because she felt like maybe it paired well with zip-lining and facing fears.
It didn’t. She ended up ordering a Diet Coke and letting Logan finish the rest of the beer.
“So,” she said. “Honest question. Since you’d never tried zip-lining before…why did we do it?”
He looked out over the field. The mountains. “Because. I figure I have a lot of life left to live too.”
EIGHTEEN
They headed down south toward Idaho the next day, yet further proof that route had nothing to do with efficiency and everything to do with whatever this was.
This exploration of life she had to live. That he had to live.
They followed the Oregon Trail route, and she couldn’t help but get lost in thought pondering the people that had chosen to come out West. They had left everything behind. Uprooted everything they had ever known in order to start a life somewhere with opportunity. Maybe. There was no way they could have known if the life that they would find out West would actually be better than the one they had left back East. She marveled at that kind of bravery. She wasn’t sure she had it. Sure, she had started the new life. Well, a new season of her life. But it wasn’t something she had really chosen.
You have to stop thinking that way. Will didn’t decide that you should go zip-lining. Or any of the other things that you’re going to do.
No. He hadn’t.Shewas out driving a Ferrari in the middle of nowhere in Idaho. She had never seen that coming. She really liked driving the Ferrari. They stopped in Idaho for dinner, going to a restaurant that billed itself as a french fry place, serving them as the main course with burgers on the side. Famous potatoes and all. Then they spent the night in a rather nondescript hotel—nothing like the kind they’d found on Route 66—and headed out to Wyoming the next morning.
She was overawed with Wyoming. The expanse of it. The scope of the mountains.
One thing she liked most about seeing all these different places was that it made her feel like she had a different perspective. Or maybe it was just a different view. Trying to imagine herself as a pioneer, as someone who chose to be brave. As someone who took the risk…to try something new, not knowing how it would turn out.
She hadn’t been able to do that. All these years, she hadn’t been able to do that. She had wanted to be a good daughter, a good wife, a good mother. Those things had come before everything else.
“Want do you want to do?”
“Probably find a burger soon?”
