Watching Kindra and Wade, I already knew the answer.
Chapter 31
My luck ran out when the van overheated eight miles outside Ridley, still too far to easily walk. Kindra and I stood on the shoulder while Wade carted a scarred metal toolbox from beneath a pile in the back of the van and went to work on the engine.
“This happens every now and then. He always gets it running. Just a matter of what went wrong this time,” Kindra explained.
“You think so?” I asked, doubt coloring my words.
“Oh, sure. He’s a magician when it comes to things like this. We’ve had the van for fifteen…no, seventeen years, and it’s never let us down yet.”
I stared at the vehicle for a moment. “Looks older than that,” I observed.
Kindra laughed. “Of course it is. We bought it used. It’s more like thirty. But still has a lot of life left in it.” She lowered her voice. “I hope.”
I eyed the van. “What do you do the day it doesn’t?”
She sighed. “We cross that bridge when we come to it. Nothing lasts forever, but I have faith in Wade, and as long as we can scrape together enough to buy a part here and there, it should keep going as long as we do.”
I nodded and glanced down the road. “Do you ever think about settling down in one place?”
“Oh, we talk about it all the time. We love Sedona, in Arizona, and also Santa Cruz, out on the California coast, at least when it isn’t raining. Whenever we really think it through, though, we both say the same thing.”
“Which is?”
She gave me a wry grin. “Maybe next year.”
I thought for a moment. “No kids?”
Kindra shook her head. “Something’s wrong with my plumbing. The universe decided for me. I went to doctors, but there was nothing they could do. So I just made peace with the idea and kept pushing forward. Sometimes that solves a lot of problems – perseverance is really underrated.”
I thought about my own situation in light of Kindra’s philosophy, and if it was possible to feel even worse about my choice, I did. Was I deserving of the kind of love I wanted if at the first hint of doubt I walked away? Was I not doing exactly what I’d been afraid Jared was going to do if I couldn’t fit in with his glamorous lifestyle?
Most importantly, how could I reasonably expect to be treated any differently than I treated others? Especially Jared, who’d told me multiple times that his greatest fear was losing me again.
Kindra must have intuited my inner turmoil, because she regarded me silently for a long beat.
“Nothing’s ever as bad as it seems, Lacey,” she offered. “You learn that as you get older. Trust me.”
“I…I think I’ve made a big mistake,” I muttered sheepishly, avoiding meeting her gaze.
“That’s what landed you on the road?”
I nodded.
She smiled sympathetically. “I have yet to see mistakes that can’t be fixed with some honesty…and humility.”
I looked up at her. “How…how did you know?”
She laughed. “I was young once. Maybe a million years ago, but I still remember how it felt. Pride’s a strange thing – the more comfortable you are in your own skin, the less you need it to prop yourself up. Sometimes that just takes time to figure out. Nobody was around to tell me that when I was your age, but I wish there had been. It would have saved me a lot of trouble.” She paused. “There. That’s my good deed for the day.”
I shook my head. “Second one. You gave me a ride.”
Kindra chuckled. “You got me there. Anyhow, you seem like you’re a smart lady. You’ll figure out the right path. Mostly I do it by discarding the wrong ones. Whatever’s left is usually it.”
I sighed. “I wish it were that easy.”
“The way Wade keeps the van ticking along is, he breaks the problem down to something simple, and then he fixes it. Like now – he’s troubleshooting all the possible reasons it gave up the ghost. Eventually he’ll figure out what went wrong, and why – by the side of the road, with little more than a screwdriver and his wits. It’s a motor with hundreds of parts, all working together to achieve an end in a really complex way. But if he thought of it that way, he’d likely throw up his hands and never figure it out.” She kicked a pebble aside. “What’s that old saying about the way you eat an elephant is one bite at a time? There’s a lot of truth to that. Otherwise it seems too big to tackle. Whatever it is that’s bothering you – and I’d bet dollars to doughnuts it’s a boy – it isn’t too big. Break it down to what you really want and what needs to happen to get it, and whether it’s worth the price you’ll wind up paying. Because there’s always a price. If it isn’t worth it, then there’s your answer. If it is, then you’ll figure out what to do.”
I stood on the shoulder of the road, mulling over this kind stranger’s words of wisdom, and felt a pang of sudden loneliness. My father should have been the one to be telling me these truths, not some hippie artist. Or my mom – although she’d never known me at all.
Whatever the reason, Kindra’s advice struck a chord in me; it resonated with essential truth. What did I really want, and what was I willing to do to get it?
Wade cried out in triumph, and his bearded face appeared from the engine compartment. “I got it. Thermostat’s frozen. Gonna need a new one in Ridley.”
“Is that a big deal?” I asked.
“Shouldn’t be. Normally I’d nose around and see if I could find a wrecking yard that has a used one, but Ridley’s not that big, so might have to pay retail.” He shrugged. “That twenty will be
