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She took a steeling breath, because she didn’t want to go back to the life she’d had with Norton.She didn’t want to go back to the woman she’d been before the divorce papers.The woman who always dressed right, who always had dinner on the table at six-thirty, who had literally never cut her hair shorter than her shoulders, even when she’d had children and it had turned dry and brittle and should’ve probably been shorter to preserve the health of it.
Norton liked showing her off in her clothes.He liked eating right when he returned home, so he could spend evenings in his office.He liked her long hair.
Mae switched on the clippers, and the buzzing, rumbling noise of them suddenly represented a brand-new day for Beatrice Callahan.
The hair on the back of her head fell away and though she couldn’t quite see it, Bea could definitely feel it.
And it felt amazing.
When she returned home a couple of hours later, she stopped by the mailbox first.After gathering all the mail—which seemed like an unusually large load, though she supposed they had just come out of a holiday weekend—she sat behind the wheel again, the air conditioning blowing softly and the radio volume low.
She put everything else aside, keeping the legal-sized envelope in her hands.It couldn’t be more than a centimeter thick, and most of that was probably the cardboard envelope.The seal for the State of Texas sat on it, and Bea took a deep breath.
“It has to be the finalized divorce,” she said to herself.Norton hadn’t contacted her for some weeks now, and neither had his lawyer.Her lawyer hadn’t either, and when Bea had inquired about it, Vera had said he’d most likely agreed to their terms—finally—and would be signing soon.
“Watch your mail,” she’d said, and that had started the afternoon vigils in Bea’s beautiful farmhouse.She lived out in the middle of nowhere, her closest neighbors one-point-nine miles away.Everyone out here had a farm or a ranch, even Bea, though she didn’t use her land the way the other families did.
Norton had wanted to “move to the country” once he’d gotten more well-known in the area.He had always existed on the wrong side of paranoid, and since Bea loved the more wild parts of Texas, she hadn’t protested.She could get to town easily, and sometimes the drive actually soothed her.
She found the courage to open the envelope, and sure enough, the front page on the packet of papers she pulled out told her that her divorce from Norton Bailey Callahan was now final.
Bea sighed as she sagged into the seat behind her.“Finally,” she said, more relief and…happiness than she’d expected flowing through her.She pressed her eyes closed and thanked the Good Lord above for releasing her from this burden, and then she pressed the papers back into the envelope and tossed it over to the passenger seat along with the rest of the junk mail.
After trundling down the dirt lane to the house, she parked in the garage, gathered all the mail, and went inside.She stepped through the mudroom, saying, “Wouldn’t it be nice if I had a little dog to greet me when I got home?”and deposited the mail on her kitchen counter.
Without another glance at it, she turned to the fridge and got down her list.
It wasn’t a to-do list.Not really.
“It’s a bucket list,” she said, her eyes catching on the top item.
Finalize divorce.
She didn’t know anyone in their right mind who would actually add that to a bucket list, so she amended her thoughts.
“No,” she said, hating how loud her voice sounded in her quiet, empty house.She and Nort had raised three children, all of them having lived in this house for at least a decade before they’d grown up, graduated from high school, and gone on their own adventures.
“It’s not a to-do list.”She opened the drawer on the end of the bank of cabinets and pulled out a pen.Lord knew she had plenty of to-do lists—the fridge did too, as it practically groaned under the weight of the many and varied lists she kept there.
She needed one for the front yard, one for the backyard, one for the schedule of when the town services came out into the county to collect recycling and trash.
She needed a list of what she had in the fridge that would expire soon, and items she needed at the grocery store that she was currently out of.
A list for Monday, one for Tuesday, and one for what she needed to take to church that week so she could talk to the pastor’s wife about their upcoming Summer Faire.
So she had a lot of lists.Over the years, her husband and children had teased her about them, but no one minded when Bea had every single thing they needed when the family took trips to the beach.She even remembered the ice packs and the aloe vera for her youngest son, who always thought he didn’t need to wear sunscreen.
“Not a to-do list,” she mused.“Not a bucket list.”
She crossed off the top item, another dose of comfort, of satisfaction, of pure respite making her feel warm and sleepy.She’d done it.She’d endured, and she’d won.Maybe not everything she’d wanted to keep, but she hadn’t been beaten, and that alone felt like a victory.
She scanned the items on the list.
Go for a walk and get lost.
Visit the beach and listen to the ocean.
Fly a kite you don’t think you can control.
