It ain't the road, it's just the map ...

I led her and F_ to D_ and Tracy and Bets and we gave them our thanks and said our goodbyes.  Outside in the Saturn, all three of us were grateful for the quiet after the growing din of the Laird.  I backed out and rolled through the gravel toward the exit.  It was then that I saw M_’s Charger parked at the far end of the crowded lot and M_ coming around the rear.  As we drove slowly past, M_ opened the passenger door and B_ climbed out and stood up on her tip-toes to kiss him.  They only had eyes for each other and didn’t notice us.  I saw the glint then and it sent shivers rolling up my back because I knew what the business was that M_ said they had to attend to.

They both wore wedding bands on their left ring fingers, and it was as though another small piece of fate snapped into place like the clicking of a tarot card being laid down on a wrought iron table.

I could sense it coming like you can sense a freight train throbbing in the distance by the inaudible vibrations in the earth beneath your feet long before it breaks the horizon.  But I didn’t want to believe it was an inexorable future laid out before us.  Fortunes told are at best a map toward a murky future but weren’t the road to it by my reckoning.  I wanted to believe we could steer our own course and avoid the storm of change the Grim Sisters had foretold.

I wanted to believe that more than anything.

"__&__"