ONE
PAX
The GPS was melting down.
“Turn left,” it insisted, and I’d ended up in someone’s driveway with a large dog leaping at my windshield.
“Turn right,” and I headed for a ditch and slammed on the brakes at the last minute.
After that near miss, I pulled over where the highway narrowed to two lanes. The spring air billowed over me when I rolled down the window, and the aroma of damp earth had me thinking of new beginnings, even ones that might be a huge mistake. That was appropriate, considering the decisions I’d made and where I was headed.
“Should I continue or turn back?” The wildflowers hadn’t committed to poking through the earth yet and couldn’t say, so I answered the question. “Spring’s the best time for new adventures.”
That was what I’d been telling myself for the past however many miles.
It was too late to change my mind, so I continued along the narrow road, lined by mostly bare trees, though there was a hint of green at the tips. That promise of things to come gave me hopethat what lay at the end of my journey was better than what I’d left behind.
I passed a gas station with rusted pumps that I assumed was abandoned, but a car pulled in. I had a lot to learn about small towns.
It was almost five, and I had to push on and get to my destination before everything closed. In a town of five thousand, “open late” was six thirty if I was lucky.
I could have played it safe and booked a motel, but Aunt June’s lawyer said her house was livable. But it was no longerherhouse.
My great-aunt died three months ago and left the place to me. Not to my folks but to me. She was my grandfather’s sister, and she’d always turned up to a family gathering with crystals that had good energy and read our palms whether we wanted our fortunes told or not. My friends and I adored her, but our parents called it “woo-woo.”
But thinking of her in the past tense felt wrong. I loved her, and I always would. The love we shared we'd put out into the universe, and it was guiding me now, better than the damned GPS. I blinked away tears.
The town appeared all of a sudden, and I drove along what was must have been Main Street, passing a post office, grocery store, hardware store, and café that was still open. The street was lined with parked cars, and I wondered where everyone was.
I’d probably be a regular at the hardware store. The lawyer said the house was livable, but that could mean anything ranging from there were four walls and a roof to needing a touch-up of paint.
The GPS decided to behave and directed me to Beacon Street. Here the houses were bigger and older and set back from the road, as if they were standoffish and didn’t want to chat to any passersby.
And suddenly, thinking of Aunt June, I was transported back eight years to when I was eighteen.
It wasthe summer after my first year of college. I was on the porch sprawled on a sofa staring at my phone as if it held the answers to the meaning of the universe.
Aunt June’s ancient car pulled up, covered in stickers for crystal shops and tarot card readings. She didn’t go inside or yell to my folks that she’d arrived but sat beside me as if we’d always planned on meeting like this.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?”
In hindsight, I probably should have said, “Nothing much,” or made a joke. Instead I told her I was trying to figure out what I wanted from life. “Where do I belong?”
I’d never said as much to my folks or friends, but Aunt June was someone I could share stuff with. She was the aunt who didn’t just join in my childhood adventures. She created them. We’d built blanket forts, battled imaginary armies, and camped out in the backyard and stared at the stars.
“Everything feels so temporary. The seasons come and go, people get older, and in a few years I’ll be done with college and working.” I was scared the world was moving too fast. “I need something permanent.” I had so many dreams, but I didn’t know what to do with them.
“Hmmm.” She’d pulled a smooth stone from her bag and rubbed her fingers over it. “Perhaps you could get a tattoo.”
Huh? Where had that come from? “What?”
“A tattoo. That’s permanent. That’s something that will stay with you forever.”
“I don’t think so, Aunt June.”
My parents emerged from the house, so we didn’t discuss it again. My aunt was savvy enough to know they wouldn’t approve, but I was eighteen, so any decision about a permanent mark on my body was mine. But getting a tattoo was such an out-there decision, one I wasn’t ready to make.
But that night when I was in bed, I searched tattoos online. The typical hearts, flowers, anchors, and stars didn’t feel right, so I gave up and tossed my phone aside.
