Road to Nowhere Read Online Free PDF

like a tree, her arms lifted up like branches and her hair spread out wild. Her magnificent hair!
    “Of course I came!”
    Eliza’s hands were still in the air and it seemed just right for them to be. Then she brought them together up against her cheek, so filled with excitement, like the salon was such a wonderful new place to see.
    “Thank you so much for your invitation,” she said, just as grand as a queen would say it.
    Louise ran right over to her—she couldn’t help it! “I’m so glad you did.” And she was even more taken as she got up close. “And what a beautiful coat! I wanted to see it after the meeting, but I couldn’t in the dark.”
    “Thank you.”
    It was so beautiful. It was pieced and quilted, every color and pattern and shape and size there was, but altogether just wonderful, like a spring flower garden. “Did you make it?”
    “I did.”
    “I’ve never seen such a thing!” And here, up close, she could also finally see Eliza herself.
    Her face was thin, buried under the mound of hair, older than she looked from a distance. But the wrinkles looked more like they came from laughing and crying and feeling than from age.
    And that hair! It was about the thickest that Louise had seen, mostly gray but streaked with pure black in places and pure white in other places, and long enough to be more than halfway to her waist if it were hanging straight. It wasn’t, though. It puffed and teased and curled itself out in every direction, like a thundercloud.
    “Well, just sit for a minute and get warm. I know you’re not meaning to have anything done.”
    “Oh . . .” She smiled, a little surprised schoolgirl smile. “I hadn’t even thought.”
    Louise put her hand up to the cloud and touched it softly. “I’m not even sure what I’d do.”
    “I’d be thrilled to find out!” Eliza said. “It would be splendid.” And then a look, one side to the other, and her shoulders hunched up a little, like she was telling a secret. “But not extravagant. I wouldn’t have money.”
    “Don’t you worry about that. And I don’t know what I’d do with it all.” She had her hands in it, feeling the texture. “I’ll have to think about it. I just really don’t know.” She didn’t, either. But she would. “And Eliza, I know we weren’t very friendly at your first meeting, but I want to welcome you to the board.”
    “Thank you.”
    “You’ll have to put up with Joe. And with Randy and Wade and their wrangling. The most important thing is not to mind anything that anyone says, because they’ll say just anything. And I know it might be scary to vote about things you don’t understand.”
    Eliza smiled. “Voting isn’t frightening to me.” She smiled more. “Not much is.”
    “Just use your common sense and that’s good enough. Most things we all vote yes.”
    “When I vote, I listen.”
    What could that mean? “What do you listen to?”
    “If I hear, I’ll vote yes. When it’s time.”
    “When you hear?”
    “I do hear!”
    Louise had to stop and think. “Hear what?”
    Eliza sighed. “And we just follow.”
    Louise sighed right along with her. “Dear, I don’t know what you’re going to make of us for four years, and I sure don’t know what to make of you.”
    January 14, Saturday
    The sun wasn’t up, and Randy didn’t feel much awake, either. This was taking a chance but he didn’t see a better way, and he might as well get up at six o’clock on a frigid Saturday morning. The only other thing to be doing was sleeping in a warm bed, and he’d have missed the opportunity to scrape ice off his windshield, too, in that nice howling arctic wind with all those little bits of sleet in it.
    But here he was sneaking into Marker at not even seven o’clock. And there was his destination, the Imperial Diner, bright fluorescent glare from inside the plate glass shining on all those pickups rowed up outside. Right in the middle was the one he was looking for. At least he was not