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“Is that ominous about the backpack?” Mary asked, tucking the shoes under her arm to carry through the woods to the bog.
“Precautionary.” He was putting Max on a lead, and she hadn’t seen Max leashed anywhere else. What was that about?
Mary had hoped she’d have another excuse to ask Halo to offer a stabilizing hand, but as they moved onto the trail, she realized it was an easy hike.
They had moved far enough into the forest that Mary could no longer see the car. The trail she assumed he was leading her down wasn’t that apparent, and he didn’t have a GPS out. “This is the right way?”
“I’m following my shirt,” he said with a smile. “Here, feel the sleeve. Do you see how it's puffier on one side?”
“Yes.”
“The shirt wants me to veer to the right here.”
“Is that what Nutsbe was referring to when he said he’d programmed your shirt?”
“Exactly.”
“Very cool. It might be interesting to have something like that when I’m out on a rescue. Where the patient is isn’t always where the helicopter lands. Sometimes, we have to hike quite a distance, and then my hands are busy, and my attention is elsewhere.”
“Congratulations on becoming a flight nurse. I can’t imagine what it must be like for you to have gone through decades in a role then to suddenly need to reinvent yourself.”
“I’m touching on the basics of the job I’ve always done, caring for others.”
“Same but different is a nice challenge, hey? Tell me about your challenges.” He looked down at her as she came to a stop. “That’s such an interesting look on your face. What was that thought?”
“In all honesty?” Mary blinked, then turned to walk again. “Sure. I thought, what the heck is this man doing asking probing questions of value? He’s supposed to be regaling me with stories of how impressive he is—that’s been my experience with men until now. You’re throwing me off kilter.” She laughed a bit nervously. “What are my challenges? Give me a second. No one’s ever asked me that before.”
Continuing down the path, he waited patiently while she was silent for a long time, gathering her thoughts.
Finally, she said, “Okay. Here’s something. I’m no longer the coach. I’m the player. I used to look at my kids and try to find ways to expand their horizons. I wanted them to have no limits for themselves and the possibilities that existed for them in their lives—a deep departure from the way I was raised.”
“Small town Catholic. Yes, I heard your two-penis horror story as we came in last night. Hysterical in the retelling but baffling that you were put into that position. That’s kind of, what, eighteenth century?” When Mary didn’t respond, Halo said, “I interrupted you. My apologies.”
“Apologies?” she whispered, then shook her head. That, too, was new for her. When had a man in her life ever apologized for interrupting? “Uhm. Yes, I cheered the boys on through their first wobbly steps in whatever it was that they were trying. I encouraged them to try a lot of things so they could at least have some idea if they enjoyed it. I saw the world as a wide, exciting place for them.”
She stopped speaking to see if he wanted to change the subject. And he seemed to be waiting to see what she had to say next.
So very unusual.
Mary cleared her throat. “When my children were young, I watched their sense of discovery and the power of accomplishment, and I lived vicariously through them, giving my kids all of the opportunities I could afford or could create. And when they left, those sparks of curiosity and novelty were gone, no fire in the belly. I had to learn how to light that for myself. It was an evolution of thinking. Most of my friends are older than me by about a decade because I got pregnant so young. I saw them settling into their after-nest lives, feeling comfortable. And that’s lovely. I’m happy they’re content, but that isn’t what happened to me.” It was about five silent steps down the trail until she found the word and was willing to admit to it. “I felt trapped. Stifled. Like moldy bread.”
“Wow. Moldy bread,” Halo said. “Sounds terrible.”
“What I mean is that I needed something to make things fresh, thrust me out of my routine.”
“Okay. How did you do that?” He extended a hand for her to step over a fat trunk that lay across their path.
She held his hand a few beats longer than necessary, then forced herself to let go. She didn’t want to get him in trouble on her account. “These last four years, I’ve— no, this last year. The first three years out of my marriage, I was just learning how to work at a job and make decisions without considering other’s tastes. It’s this year that I’m trying to do things differently and see that I have endless opportunities. And that in and of itself is overwhelming.”
“I agree that it’s easier to order from a limited menu. And if you’ve sampled the lot, maybe head to a different restaurant.”
“I like that metaphor. Yes. So I set out to make a list of twenty things to try—that’s the breadth, and if I particularly like something, then I’d keep going to gain depth. As I set out on my twenty-things project, I told myself I could rearrange the hierarchy. But I had to follow through with the repetitions.”
“Like what?”
“Not skiing.”
“You said some of your bruises were from falling on the slopes.”