Driving With the Top Down Read Online Free PDF Page A

Shore a few years ago. So far she hadn’t done anything with it, because she couldn’t decide on what to do. The window had been salvaged from an ancient Victorian house near Rehoboth Beach, and its panes of water glass were original. She couldn’t bear to ruin them and whatever past the piece might hold.
    Had a lonely wife looked out that window, waiting for a husband to return from sea? Had he ever returned?
    Or had it just been a dust-covered portal between a stuffy attic and the sky for decades before someone decided to upgrade the house and throw the window out in favor of something more modern?
    Maybe it had hung over the sink, looking out over a garden through the many sunrises and sunsets of one family’s life in the house.
    That was what Colleen loved most about what she did—everything had a story.
    Even if she had to make one up.
    So, filled with romantic notions, at Christmas she’d hung the portal window on an otherwise empty wall in her own house, with a tea light candle behind the glass—then got so nervous about Jay or Kevin knocking into it that she took it back out to the workshop to think of something else to do with it.
    She needed to begin living now, fully and honestly.
    She took another sip of the beer, pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, along with the reading glasses she couldn’t leave home without anymore, and sat down to start looking up auctions by state. There were more than she’d expected.
    One hour and four empty beer bottles later, she had a list of auctions, a list of B and Bs, and a solid determination to hit the road.
    *   *   *
    “YOU’RE GOING TO do what?”
    Kevin was generally supportive of Colleen, no matter what. Even when it came to what sitcoms in the ’70s would have called “harebrained schemes”—like the time she spent an unusually large amount of money on old Erector Sets and various tools, with the idea of making retro robot sculptures. Most of the items she’d purchased were still in their shipping boxes, torn open and then cast aside. Usually he would sigh deeply with a resigned smile and encourage her to do whatever it was until the next whatever it was came along. This reluctance from him now was an entirely new thing.
    Did he somehow sense her real mission? Was his resistance a sign she shouldn’t go through with it?
    “Kevin.” She was calm. She was always calm. “What is your objection to me taking the week you’re gone anyway to drive south and collect amazing things that I will make ten times more amazing?”
    He gave a small laugh. “What if the proprietress at one of those quaint little B and Bs has an ax hidden under her crinolines?”
    She had to laugh at the mental picture. It was exactly the sort of scenario she would have come up with herself. She liked that he teased her so familiarly. “Then I’m pretty sure I would, you know, leave . But don’t worry, I didn’t book the Bates Motel at all.”
    “Hm.”
    “Plus I saw this cool book once that has a list of places to stop along the way on I-95. All of them legit, and I can write off my travel expenses on our taxes.”
    “I want you to do what you want to do—I just want to make sure you don’t end up stranded somewhere, wishing I’d stopped you.”
    This was the right decision, and she knew it. “Kev … I’m so sick of not contributing. I’m so tired of trying to do this housewife thing and failing at it.”
    “You’re not—”
    “I am. I’m not great with the ‘handling’ of things. Finances and things like that. I know I asked to take over because I didn’t want you to have to do everything, but … I felt so much better when I was bringing in actual money and had something to do with my days. My life can’t be just failing at being an adult, failing at being a mom, and looking longingly at Pinterest all day, wishing I had anything to work on.”
    “Colleen”—he tilted his head a little at her—“none of that is true. You are a wonderful mom, and