Every Road to You

by Phyllis Bourne

  Jeffrey lifted his head and stared at Ethan with eyes that appeared on the brink of tearing.

  “Because I’m surrounded by people who all want something from me, and I don’t know which ones I can trust,” Jeffrey said. “But I do trust you. I should have taken your advice, man. You don’t know how sorry I am for acting the way I did.”

  The young man pulled what looked like a copy of his contract from the back pocket of his baggy jeans. “I need your help.”

  “Whoa.” Ethan held up his hands in a halting gesture. “Even if I wanted to take you on as my client again, I doubt there’s anything I can do,” he said. “As I tried to explain to you before you went against my advice and signed it, that contract was full of gotcha clauses.”

  Jeffrey exhaled a defeated breath. “What am I supposed to do now?”

  “I told you I’d hear you out, and I did.” Ethan stood to indicate their meeting was over.

  The kid opened his mouth to protest, but Ethan silenced him with a shake of the head. “Good luck finding another attorney, Jeffrey.”

  Finally, the superstar known as Wangs hefted his gangly frame from the chair and moved toward the door. The young man had brought his current problems upon himself, but it simply wasn’t right for him to make millions for a company and have next to nothing to show for it.

  Ethan sighed. So much for his vow not to let Jeffrey’s sob story get to him. “Leave the contract,” he said. “I’ll be on vacation the next two weeks, but I’ll take another look at it when I return.”

  Jeffrey looked up at him, a grin overtaking the sadness marking his features.

  “That’s cool. I’m in the middle of my U.S. tour, and I’ll be on the road for the rest of the summer.” He grabbed Ethan’s hand and gave it a vigorous shake. “And thank you, Mr. Wright.”

  “I can’t make any promises,” Ethan said. “Like I told you before, I’m not sure if I can help.”

  Jeffrey gave him a signed copy of his latest CD, which Ethan accepted, although he doubted he’d be listening to Wang-It anytime soon. Or ever.

  “I appreciate anything you can do,” he said. “And if you need anything from me, tickets to my show, backstage passes, you just say the word.”

  A few hours later, Ethan steered his Audi TT down his grandmother’s street. He spotted her in her front yard, and the results of Tia Gray’s handiwork still threw him. His grandmother had eschewed her familiar pastel dresses for jeans, T-shirt and red Converse sneakers.

  He parked his car at the curb in front of the wood-framed cottage. A closer look revealed the words Recycled Teenager emblazoned across the front of his grandmother’s T-shirt.

  At least she appeared to be acting like her old self, Ethan thought. He was relieved to see her watering the vibrant blooms of the well-tended garden and gabbing with her friend and next-door neighbor Alice Fenton. He hoped it was a sign that Tia Gray had done as he’d asked and his grandmother was slowly returning to normal.

  “Hello, Warden. Thought you’d be packing for Hawaii.” A smirk accompanied his grandmother’s greeting. “I didn’t realize you’d be making evening rounds.”

  Ethan ignored his grandmother’s sarcasm. Instead, he leaned over to plant a kiss on Miss Alice’s upturned cheek. “Don’t you look pretty today,” he said.

  His grandmother’s friend smiled broadly and smoothed the yellow housedress, similar to the ones his grandmother preferred until Tia Gray’s disastrous makeover, with a wrinkled hand. “This old thing. I’ve had it forever.”

  “You have a similar dress, don’t you?” Ethan asked his grandmother.

  “Not anymore,” she replied. “I donated it, and every dress in my closet that looked like it, to the church clothing drive. Why? Considering instituting a dress code here at Shawshank?”

  Ethan sighed. “I’m merely checking on you.”

  “Humph,” she grunted. “More like checking up on me.”

  “After the other night, can you blame me?”

  “Well, you can relax. After I finish tending my flowers, Alice and I are going to make popcorn and watch a DVD.”

  Alice frowned. “But what about the motorcycle...” she began.

  His grandmother turned to Ethan. “We’re watching Easy Rider,” she said by way of explanation.

  Ethan shoved his hands into his pants pockets. There was no way to bring up the topic of Tia casually. He might as well just come out with it.

  “Have you talked to your friend Tia, from the spa, lately?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I have. She’s invited me out for breakfast tomorrow.”

  Ethan felt some of his unease ebb. It appeared Tia had taken the matter as seriously as he’d hoped and was indeed on the case. Maybe he’d be able to relax and enjoy his vacation after all.

  His grandmother raised a suspicious brow. “Why?”

  Ethan shrugged and diverted his eyes.

  “I hope you didn’t track her down and bully her into it,” his grandmother said sternly.

  “We just had a chat.”

  “Oh, Ethan, you’re becoming more like your grandfather every day.” She rolled her eyes. “Bless his heart. He’s no doubt in heaven right now exasperating the good Lord with his bossy ways.”

  “I’m not bossy. It’s just all these sudden changes since your spa visit. I’m worried about you.”

  His grandmother groaned. “I swear, I wish you’d get back together with Britney or Tiffany or whichever one of your dull, fill-in-the-blanks girlfriends you were supposed to take on this vacation with you.”

  “Heather?” Ethan asked, slightly taken aback. “But you said she was all wrong for me.”

  “The women you go out with usually are. They’re like those obedient, bland robots on that old movie we watched last night.” She turned to Alice. “What was the name of it again?”

  “The Stepford Wives?” Alice asked, unsure of her memory.

  “That’s it,” his grandmother confirmed. “‘Yes, Ethan.’ ‘Great, Ethan.’ ‘Whatever Ethan thinks is best.’ ‘I’d better ask Ethan,’” she mimicked before she and Alice burst into a fit of laughter.

  There was nothing wrong with dating an agreeable woman, Ethan thought, but he didn’t bother pointing that out to his grandmother.

  However, with Heather, sweet and easygoing had morphed into pushy and demanding once she discovered their relationship wasn’t moving any closer to marriage, motherhood and a suburban mini mansion.

  Finally, the cackling subsided, and his grandmother turned her attention back to him.

  “At least those bubbleheads kept you occupied. You didn’t have so much time to stick your nose in my business.” She brandished her index finger in the vicinity of his chest. “Go talk to the last one. Maybe y’all can kiss and make up before your flight in the morning. You’ll have a life of your own again, and then you can stop riding my ass, and—”

  “Grandma!” he cut her off. This had to be more of Tia’s handiwork, he thought, because his grandmother had rarely sworn before her mess of a makeover.

  Alice covered her mouth to stifle a giggle.

  Ethan captured the hand of his grandmother’s wagging finger with his own and kissed it. “You know full well why I worry.”

  She patted his cheek. “As you can see, I’m fine now.”

  Ethan watched her check her wristwatch on what she thought was the sly. What was she up to now?

  “I’ll be out with Tia in the morning, so I won’t see you before you leave,” she said, the words coming out in a rush. “Give me a hug now, and enjoy your vacation. Think about giving what’s-her-name a call.”

  As Ethan hugged his grandma, he made a mental note to change his morning flight to one leaving tomorrow evening.

  His grandmother was up to something—and until he was assured she wa
s back on track, he wasn’t going anywhere.

  * * *

  Tia smiled when she saw Carol walk through the restaurant entrance the following morning.

  Although her friend’s grandson had been the impetus behind asking her to breakfast, Tia looked forward to chatting with the woman who’d helped her get through the most difficult period of her life.

  After yesterday’s blowup with her dad over Espresso’s financial woes, she was especially glad to meet with her.

  The two women greeted each other with a hug, and Tia was gratified to once again see the expertise of the spa’s staff in action.

  Carol had done an excellent job of re-creating her new look on her own. She’d applied her makeup with near-expert finesse and even customized the pixie haircut they’d given her with a few gelled spikes. She wore a denim skirt, a black T-shirt emblazoned with the name of a sixties band and a pair of wedge sandals.

  Tia glanced down at her own linen-blend shift dress. It had seemed chic and summery when she’d donned it this morning, but now it felt positively frumpy.

  She echoed Carol’s order of the restaurant’s breakfast specialty, sweet-potato pancakes, to the busy waitress and studied her friend across the red checkerboard tablecloth.

  There was something different about Carol, she observed as the waitress returned with their drinks, and it had nothing to do with her makeover.

  “This is a nice treat,” Tia said. “Usually, breakfast for me is a bowl of instant oatmeal eaten over the kitchen sink before rushing off to work.”

  “Hmm,” Carol said.

  “So how’s it going?” Tia blew on her hot tea and took a tiny sip. “We haven’t had a chance to talk since your big makeover.”

  Carol tore open a packet of sugar substitute and slowly stirred it into her coffee. “You can stop with the small talk. I already know my grandson put you up to this.”

  “He came to my office yesterday,” Tia said, not bothering to deny it.

  “More like pushed his way in.”

  Tia lifted a brow. “How’d you know?”

  “I raised him,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong. He’s a fine man, but he also inherited his late grandfather’s bossy streak, and it’s currently driving me bonkers.”

  So that was where he got it. Tia remembered the way Ethan strode into her office looking like Prince Charming but acting like Attila the Hun.

  Still, a part of her understood his point.

  “He’s worried,” Tia said. “And although it’s none of my business, I was concerned myself when he mentioned having to pick you up from jail.”

  “Oh, that.” Carol waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “It wasn’t a big deal. Ethan blew it all out of proportion. You’d think I was a bank robber.”

  “Then you weren’t arrested?”

  The waitress returned with two plates piled high with pancakes and bacon and a decanter of maple syrup. “Anything else, ladies?” she asked.

  “We’re good,” Tia said with a smile, eager to hear what had actually gone down.

  Carol soaked her pancakes with syrup before cutting into them with her fork and taking a huge bite. Tia waited as she chewed and swallowed, but after her friend went in for a third bite, she couldn’t wait any longer.

  “So what really happened?” Tia squirmed in her chair, her initial concern having morphed into downright nosiness.

  Carol put down her fork. She glanced from side to side in a conspiratorial fashion before leaning in. “Well, I went to a party.”

  “Oh.” Tia shoulders slumped and she took her first bite of her own pancakes.

  Carol reached across the table and touched her free hand. “Not one of those stale-cake-and-fruit-punch events at the senior citizens’ center, where everyone treats us like two-year-olds, or the boring law-firm affairs I endured when my husband was alive, but a genuine party, where everyone was actually having a good time,” she said. “I ate. I drank. I danced. It was wonderful. I hadn’t had that much fun in years. Decades, even.”

  Tia’s slumped shoulders perked up, along with her interest.

  Carol’s brown eyes sparkled with merriment. “I even won eight hundred bucks in a poker game.”

  “Really? I didn’t know you played.”

  “Unbeknownst to my mother, my dad taught me when I was a little girl, and by college I was paying for my nursing textbooks with my winnings,” she said.

  Tia’s own eyes widened at hearing about this other side to the staid nurse she’d met years ago.

  Carol sighed. “I hadn’t played in decades. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed it.”

  “So why did you stop?”

  The other woman shrugged. “Life, I guess. Marriage, motherhood, a full-time job, my daughter’s death and then raising my grandson,” she said. “I was always busy juggling so many balls. By the time Ethan was out of law school and I’d retired, my husband was dead and I’d lost sight of the things I truly liked doing.”

  Carol smiled and patted her hand. “I owe you a thank-you,” she said. “Somehow you and your team looked past my dowdy exterior and brought out the person I’d shut away for years. The true me.”

  Pride swelled in Tia’s heart. Max had been right. Her job was done.

  Ethan Wright had it all wrong. She wasn’t the one who needed to talk to his grandmother. He did. If Carol told him what she’d just told her, even her stubborn grandson would undoubtedly see her happiness and be thrilled for her.

  Still, Tia was curious about one thing.

  “So how does a trip to the slammer fit into this story?

  Carol pulled her hand back and reached for her coffee cup. “Well, in all the fun, the party may have gotten a little loud. My friend Edna’s neighbors called the cops, who asked us to hold it down,” she said. “And we tried. We really did.”

  “The police had to come back,” Tia surmised.

  Carol nodded. “But it was a different officer the second time, and he wasn’t so nice. In fact, he was rude and condescending.”

  She put her a fist on her hip and wagged the index finger of her other hand. “‘Isn’t it past you Q-tips’ bedtime?’” Carol mimicked the officer. “‘Time to break it up and head back to the old-folks’ home.’”

  “Uh-oh,” Tia said.

  “Uh-oh is right,” Carol huffed. “I consider myself an easygoing woman, but I wasn’t having it. Especially off a kid I assisted the doctor in bringing into the world. I don’t care if he was all grown up and wearing a blue uniform.”

  Tia sipped her cooling tea as she listened. At this point, Carol’s story was more interesting than her breakfast.

  “I told him to watch his tone, and he said to me, ‘Settle down. I’m warning you,’” Carol mimicked again. “He’s warning me, after I fished broken crayons out of his snotty little nose when he was two,” she said. “Long story short, we argued. He got hot around the collar and hauled me downtown on some bogus charge of breaching the peace.”

  Again, Tia wondered if Ethan had sat down and really talked to his grandmother, and gotten her side of the story. Carol may have been in the wrong for back-talking the law, but it was completely understandable.

  “Still, I can’t believe he arrested you.”

  Carol shook her head. “He didn’t. Not really. I was detained a couple of hours, and then he called Ethan, my thirty-one-year-old grandson, to come get me,” she said. “As if I were senile or a brat whose parent had been summoned to the principal’s office. I swear, I nearly lit into him all over again.”

  Only pausing to take a breath, Carol continued, “Instead of Ethan reading him the riot act, he basically thanked the officer for seeing to his senile old granny.” She fixed her gaze on Tia. “Then he runs straight to you, and for what? Last time I checked, I was seventy-four, not four.”

&
nbsp; Tia cleared her throat. “He blames me. He believes I’m the evil puppet master behind the changes you’ve made lately.”

  Carol nodded at the waitress, who then topped up her coffee, and Carol turned back to Tia. “That’s a load of bull. You made me look amazing and feel good about my appearance again. However, I was the one who decided to start living the life I want to lead, and there’s not a thing my grandson can do about it.”

  Tia watched the older woman open a sleek cross-body bag and pull out a folded sheet of paper. She opened it and slid it across the table.

  “What’s this?” Tia asked, skimming what appeared to be some kind of list.

  “My bucket list,” Carol answered proudly.

  “Oh, my God, you actually did it,” Tia said. “I’m impressed.”

  “When you first suggested it, I wasn’t so sure. The idea made me feel like I had one foot in the grave,” she said. “But the more I thought about it, I realized I’d been living like I’d had both my feet planted in one for years. It’s time for me to stop putting off things I really want to try. No matter how frivolous or downright silly.”

  Tia could feel her chest practically expanding with pride as she smiled across the table at Carol. This was the real reason she’d started the spa division of the company. She’d wanted to use beauty and outward changes to give women the courage to take bigger, bolder steps toward their dreams.

  Tia took a closer look at the typed list. It contained nearly a hundred bullet points, including skydiving, riding a Harley and playing poker in a national tournament.

  “‘Pub crawling the honky-tonks on Broadway,’” Tia read, noting the red line scratching it off the list.

  “Done.” Carol winked.

  “‘Ride one of the biggest, baddest roller coasters of the summer,’” Tia continued to read.

  Carol nodded. “When my daughter was young, we’d take her to amusement parks, and I wanted to go on the roller coasters with her, but I was just too chicken,” she said. “I’d end up sitting on a bench like a stick-in-the-mud watching everybody else have fun. I did the same thing when I took Ethan as a boy.”