It was a good idea. At least, they all thought it was a good idea at the time.
Hindsight would reveal that in reality, it was an unbelievably terrible idea, but
it would take another week for them to understand that. Right now, at this very
moment. they all agreed that it was the perfect course of action for the current
situation.
Barbara had been waiting at the table for twenty minutes. it had been twenty long
and excruciating minutes. David had promised that he would be on time today. He
never was, but he had promised this one time. She had made him repeat the promise
multiple times over the last week until she'd believed his promise. Now she was
paying the price.
All he wanted was a candy bar. It didn't seem like a difficult request to
comprehend, but the clerk remained frozen and didn't seem to want to honor the
request. It might have had something to do with the gun pointed at his face.
The cab arrived late. The inside was in as bad of shape as the outside which was
concerning, and it didn't appear that it had been cleaned in months. The green tree
air-freshener hanging from the rearview mirror was either exhausted of its scent or
not strong enough to overcome the other odors emitting from the cab. The correct
decision, in this case, was to get the hell out of it and to call another cab, but
she was late and didn't have a choice.
It had been a simple realization that had changed Debra's life perspective. It was
really so simple that she was embarrassed that she had lived the previous five
years with the way she measured her worth. Now that she saw what she had been
doing, she could see how sad it was. That made her all the more relieved she had
made the change. The number of hearts her Instagram posts received wasn't any
longer the indication of her own self-worth.
The water rush down the wash and into the slot canyon below. Two hikers had started
the day to sunny weather without a cloud in the sky, but they hadn't thought to
check the weather north of the canyon. Huge thunderstorms had brought a deluge o
rain and produced flash floods heading their way. The two hikers had no idea what
was coming.
She had been told time and time again that the most important steps were the first
and the last. It was something that she carried within her in everything she did,
but then he showed up and disrupted everything. He told her that she had it wrong.
The first step wasn't the most important. The last step wasn't the most important.
It was the next step that was the most important.
Twenty-five hours had passed since the incident. It seemed to be a lot longer than
that. That twenty-five hours seemed more like a week in her mind. The fact that she
still was having trouble comprehending exactly what took place wasn't helping the
matter. She thought if she could just get a little rest the entire incident might
make a little more sense.
