Ульяна Солнечная – Its Never Too Late - As Long As Youre Alive (страница 13)
Kate laughed.
Barbara had a gift for dissolving tension.
“You know what I want more than anything?” Kate asked suddenly.
“What?”
“I just want to sit in a café. Watch people. Drink coffee. Eat a croissant. A real one. And not be in a hurry. In my whole life, I’ve never gone anywhere slowly just for myself. I was always rushing for someone else.”
“You will,” Barbara said with absolute certainty. “You’ll sit there as long as you please. And no one will pull at you. Not a husband. Not children. Not grandkids. Just you and Paris.”
Kate closed her eyes and pictured it.
Sunlight.
A tiny table.
A cup of coffee.
And not a single obligation.
“Good,” she whispered. “That sounds very good.”
The evening before she left, everyone came by.
Cheryl and her husband.
The grandchildren — sixteen-year-old Tommy (named after his grandfather) and twelve-year-old Emma.
Even Mrs. Parker from next door stopped in, bringing a pie and saying, “I always knew you were special, Kate. Even when you planted flowers in your front yard — never like everyone else, always in your own way.”
Kate hugged everyone, accepted gifts (wool socks for the plane, a little notebook for writing, a French phrasebook with pictures), listened to all the advice, and felt something warm and full rising inside her.
“Grandma,” Emma said, coming up last. “I have something for you. For luck.”
She held out a small stuffed bear — old, worn, and missing one eye.
“It used to travel with me everywhere. In the car, on planes, when we flew to Florida. Now he can fly with you.”
Kate took the little bear and felt tears rush to her eyes.
“Thank you, sweetheart. I’ll take good care of him.”
“Don’t lose him,” Emma said sternly. “I’ve had him since I was three.”
“I won’t lose him. I promise.”
That night, after everyone had gone, Kate sat in the kitchen for a long time.
The suitcase stood by the door — silver and gleaming, like a spaceship.
Beside it sat the small bag with her documents and Emma’s bear.
She opened the notebook to the last page and wrote:
Tomorrow I am flying to Paris. I am afraid. I do not know the language. I have never been to Europe. My knees hurt, and sometimes my blood pressure acts up. But tomorrow I am flying to Paris. Because if not now, then never. Because that girl who used to dream is still alive. Because I promised Tom — for both of us. And because life does not end as long as you are still capable of longing for something. See you soon, Paris. I’m coming.
She closed the notebook, turned out the light, and went to bed.
Tomorrow, a new adventure would begin.
The Flight
Kate did not sleep all night.
Not from fear.
From a strange electric excitement running through her veins instead of blood.
She lay there with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling, replaying the route in her head:
Taxi to Oklahoma City airport.
Flight to Dallas.
Layover.
Then the long one — over the ocean.
Eight hours.
Eight hours above water.
She had never flown that long in her life.
At five in the morning she got up, took a shower (using the lavender-scented travel body wash Cheryl had bought her “because it’s calming”), and dressed in the most comfortable clothes she owned — black slacks, a soft gray sweater, sneakers.
At the last moment, she added a scarf.
Barbara had said scarves mattered.
The taxi arrived exactly at six.
Mrs. Parker was already out on her porch, waving goodbye.
Kate waved back and suddenly felt like the heroine of a movie.
The one who leaves a small town behind and heads toward adventure.
“Where you flying to?” the driver asked.
He was a young man with an earring in one ear.
“Paris,” Kate said, and the word sounded so unreal she laughed.
“Nice,” he said approvingly. “My grandma flew to Rome last year. First time in her life. Came back looking ten years younger.”
Kate smiled and looked out the window.
Oklahoma was waking up.
The familiar streets.
The familiar houses.
The little store where she had bought milk for forty years.
Everything stayed where it was.
Only she was leaving.
The airport was enormous.
Kate turned her head helplessly, trying to figure out where to go.
People rushed past with suitcases, talking loudly into phones, children crying, flight announcements blaring overhead — too fast, too loud, too impossible to understand.
“Need some help?”