Patricia and Linda walked ahead until they reached a snowy overlook.
Mountains disappeared into the clouds beyond the valley.
Patricia asked:
“What are you going to do when you get home?”
Linda frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“With your life.”
Patricia looked at her.
“Are you going back to exactly what you were doing before?”
Linda imagined the house.
The decorations.
The holidays where she had gradually become an extra person inside other people’s plans.
Eight years of being useful without asking whether she was fulfilled.
“No,” Linda said.
“What will you do instead?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She looked toward the mountains.
“But it will be different.”
Patricia nodded.
“I started over at sixty-eight.”
Linda looked at her.
“I thought it was too late.”
“Was it?”
“No.”
“What changed?”
Patricia smiled.
“I started saying yes.”
“To what?”
“This.”
She gestured toward the valley.
“Trips. Conversations. Learning things I didn’t need to learn. Being interested in the world instead of only being useful to one tiny part of it.”
Linda repeated the phrase quietly.
“Useful to one tiny part of it.”
“That’s what I was.”
“And?”
“It wasn’t enough.”
Linda nodded.
“No. It wasn’t.”
Patricia didn’t explain what she meant by *us*, but Linda understood anyway.
Women who had spent decades organizing themselves around everyone else.
Good wives.
Good mothers.
Reliable employees.
Dependable friends.
Always useful.
Rarely asking what they wanted.
“I’m going to travel again,” Linda said.
“Good.”
“I’m going to call people instead of waiting for them to remember me.”
“Good.”
“And I’m going to decorate for Christmas only because I want to.”
Patricia laughed.
“You love decorating.”
“I do.”
“Then decorate.”
