Relative Danger Read Free Page B

stopped. I needed to slow with them to find his restaurant.
    Gil was certain of everything he wanted from life. Sometimes he pushed too hard to press his assuredness down on me. I needed to find my own certainty. I’d mourned about life making me a widow long before those golden years that I had planned to spend comfortably alongside my husband. Without him, my house felt empty. Humongous. Like my friends, I’d started to become dowdy. That’s when I read about a woman’s speech called “Changing Your Inner Underwear.” Exactly what I needed! My inner panties and brassieres underwent a major upheaval. It was still okay to want to feel sexy. I could enjoy washing clothes for just one person. I wasn’t only my past, I was me—Cealie Gunther. I needed to tend to my spirit and rediscover myself.
    What made me happy? What did I like to do?
    That concept seemed foreign. Guilt popped up, that same guilt a mother experiences when she wants to do something for herself instead of putting everyone else first. But my husband had died and my family was grown. Nobody wanted me to cling to them anymore. I was inching toward my golden years alone.
    A while after I decided to make some attitude changes, my friend Jo Ellen made that momentous phone call to me. She was a few years older than I, but while she moaned about hoping her kids would call and when she’d start receiving retirement benefits, Jo Ellen made me realize I was heading down the same path. I had also often waited to hear from family members. And even though I hadn’t planned to retire any time soon, I was getting older, and more of my friends were choosing Social Security as their main topic for conversation. Was that all there was? My face developed more wrinkles, my eyesight worsened, and I could no longer hold in my stomach no matter how hard I tried—and that’s all I had to look forward to? Jo Ellen’s call made me aware that I’d been settling for routine existence and never considered what I really wanted from whatever time I had left. Well, I had thought about it just a little before I subscribed to those newsletters on sexual behavior. But her comments had made me determine my days were whittling away, influenced by anything or anyone except me. That’s when I took control.
    On that fateful day I chose to start a new search for me. I strode through my house shouting, “I am woman! Able to make my own way alone.” I took off from my house and started locating the path. I’d even begun to feel comfortable traveling without a partner. And then I met Gil.
    I couldn’t hand him the independence I’d worked so hard to achieve. I had told him I was leaving to continue searching for me, and he’d said, “Happy hunting. You’re mature enough to know what you want, Cealie. I’ll miss you.”
    Dammit, I finally got over missing Gil and didn’t want to run to him again. But Kat was in need. He might help.
    I pulled into his parking lot, assuring myself all I wanted from him was feedback. His thought-provoking insight. And if my stomach quit jumping, his chef’s food.
    The grand opening sign was out front, the paved lot next to the restaurant filled. A Jeep backed out, and I took its place. I walked alongside the building built like his others, tall in front and sloping to the rear, and couldn’t resist the urge to run my hand along its gray cypress to feel the rough texture. The tin roof would plunk-plunk during downpours, its extension in front sheltering guests when they walked underneath.
    I drifted across the bridge that crossed a pond and spied swimming ducks. Gil and I met on a bridge such as this. At his second restaurant, in Vicksburg. I was the one tossing crumbs to the ducks, and he stood near. Gil Thurman was a presence. He spoke in that husky tone, and with no hesitancy came close. Gil looked and sounded better than anything in that restaurant or anywhere else.
    We lost touch after I left Vicksburg. While I continued looking for me, he’d