I spotted Pamela halfway up the rows on the right side.
Time slowed almost to a standstill.
I discarded the past and future.
It was one of those moments when you’ve been coasting for far too long and you realize you’ve got to get some fresh momentum. A reboot, you might call it.
I stepped up to the podium and performed the reading without trepidation, word by word and sentence by sentence.
I can’t even remember how the audience reacted.
Afterwards, I sat down and signed my name in book after book, without concern about who might show up in line.
When I finished, she was waiting for me. We sat down together on the bottom row in the near-empty room.
She looked at me expectantly.
“I’m not going to take the blood test,” I said.
She looked as if she were going to respond but then thought better of it.
“Don’t try to get me to change my mind. It won’t work, and it will only spoil any chance we have for communication in the future.”
“Do you want to keep in touch?”
“Sure. Why not? I’d like to know how things work out for you. But you want some advice? Forget your mother’s old boyfriend. He obviously didn’t want to be found, and that’s why he took off so long ago. With that frame of mind, he’s not going to agree to a blood test either, and your search will have been a waste of time. Instead of the past, focus on the future.”
“That sounds like a cliché.”
“I know. I would never use it in a story.”
She emitted a short, grief-tinged chuckle.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“If I give this up, I have nothing left. This has been the focus of my life since Mom died.”
“She was a wonderful woman.”
“Was she? Do you really think so?”
“Look,” I said, “I’ve had a good go of it with my late second career. It’s been fun. But sometimes when I can’t sleep and it’s just me in the small hours of the morning, I go back through my life and question the decisions I made. When I think of your mother, I wonder if I should have pushed harder for the marriage – perhaps even gone to Idaho to work it out. And then I wonder how we would have gotten along together. I think we could have made a go of it.”