The Promise of Tomorrow

by Mary Ellen Taylor

Take it. You’ll need it to keep going forward. Backwards is for the lost.

I’d developed an obsession with the sun because in the ruins of my life, its cycle reminded me that this very consistent earth would keep turning in space despite the unexplainable chaos on the surface.

Maybe it would’ve been easier if we’d met in private. But was there a smooth way to reconnect with your estranged husband? I doubted it.

Do angels wear beehives?

Instead, Olympia smiled, tried to sip from a now empty glass of champagne, and then frowned slightly into the void.

I was still alive. I was not lost. Tomorrow was another day. A miracle.

“Were you scared?” I took another bite of the cookie. “All the time. I thought a few times my head was going to explode from the stress.” Sarah laughed. “Looks intact to me.” I was warming up to the kid. “I pieced it back together and kept on going. If you’re on the road, you’ll have to learn how to adapt.”

he realized he preferred the scent of sunshine over Chanel.

But wasn’t that the way it was with disasters? Easy to trigger, but a bitch to repair the wreckage.

I’m a hostage freshly escaped from captivity. I hated where I was, but it was at least familiar. Without confinement I’m a little lost.

“You must give in to temptation more often. Find that inner teenager who never got to live.”

What I discovered was that grief could be tricky. It was mobile and could track me for thousands of miles. The faster I drove, the quicker my grief moved. Each time I thought I’d lost it around the last curve in the road, I found it in the passenger seat, weeping. No matter how many days or months I logged on the road, it kept pace.

“People might notice it at first, but then they won’t see it at all. It’ll become invisible again.”

All you do, eat, or say can destroy you from within. You are out of balance.

“I am more comfortable with anger than fear. The anger permits moral outrage, and I can get a lot of work done when I’m juicing on fury. But fear is a different beast. It consumes and paralyzes me.”

He pulled back. His eyes were wild with desire and too many unnamed emotions. If I was expecting a reasonable thought from him to end this, I didn’t see one. Neither one of us was going to save the other.

I hadn’t been on vacation. I’d been running for my life.

Like it or not, there was no magic riding to my rescue. If anyone was going to save me, it was going to be me.

“Life has already taken too much from you.” My paychecks made me solvent for a little while. I’d had a good man for a little while. I’d had a baby growing in my belly for a little while. I’d traveled the country for a little while. And for the first time, I was tired of having the good stuff for just a little while.

“You make it sound easy.” “Death simplifies everything. You will or you won’t.”

Dreams come true, second chances, and other lies.

“I admire you.” “Don’t. I’m making it up as I go along.”

He said loving her was like trying to cup water in his hands. No matter how hard he squeezed his fingers, she slipped away.

I’d accepted the fact that he didn’t want me enough to try.