Everything Has Changed by Darrell Maloney

Author:Darrell Maloney
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2019-11-19T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26

“I’ll let you take your trip back to Yellowstone,” Julie continued. “You said you want to go for six weeks, and I’ll give them to you.

“But I won’t be going with you. I won’t be trapped at a place I don’t care to be just because you can’t pull yourself away from it. You’ve done that to me too many times in the past and I’ve had enough.

“I’ll be staying here.

“And for those six weeks I’ll stay here and wait for you.

“If you come back after six weeks like you’re promising, things will be as they were the day you left.

“If you’re so much as one day late, though, I’ll not wait for you.

“I’m getting too old to put my own life and dreams on hold.”

“But honey… I thought your life and dreams were the same as mine. I thought we had the same goals and bucket list.”

She laughed. But it wasn’t a laugh borne of humor, for there was nothing humorous about this situation.

It was an ironic laugh.

“You should know better than that, Wayne Hamlin.

“I’ve been telling you for years about things I wanted to do before I died.

“You always said there would be plenty of time for that after we retired. But that date… that retirement… became a big pie in the sky event that we kept pushing forward in front of us.

“I’m tired of waiting, honey.

“I’ll give you your six weeks.

“But if you’re a day late you’re going to have to catch up with me.”

“Catch up with you? But where will you be?”

“I don’t know, honey. I might be skiing in the Alps. I might be backpacking across Europe with a bunch of college kids, living in hostels or sleeping on park benches.

“Hell, I might not even be in Europe anymore. I might be in Asia or on a safari in Africa. You’ll have to hunt me down. Are you willing to do that?”

Julie thought she knew everything there was to know about her husband.

Granted, she had a right to. And really, almost an obligation to. Since his parents died several years before, she knew him longer than anyone else on earth.

She knew his habits, his attributes, his flaws.

She knew his tendencies, his idiosyncrasies, his beliefs and his fears.

In ninety nine times out of a hundred she knew what he was going to say before he said it; what he was going to do before he did it.

She knew him that well.

One of the most wonderful things about being human, though, is that we have the freedom and ability to change ourselves on a whim.

A lion can’t change himself just because he has a change of heart.

He can’t say to himself one day, “I don’t think I’m gonna chase down that gazelle and eat him after all. I think this is the day I give up meat and become a vegetarian. I’ll start eating in fine restaurants and order up green salads and veggie smoothies.

“Eating the salads won’t be easy for me, because I don’t have opposing thumbs.

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