The Sole Survivors' Club

Chapter 10

The car and the occupants of Monica’s dream changed, but the stretch of endless road felt familiar to her. Monica drove the Neon while Bernice sat in the passenger seat. Checking the rearview mirror, she saw her mother behind her, while her grandmother Clarissa sat behind Bernice.

Lorraine and Clarissa Harper wore matching outfits, simple white dresses with cobalt coats. Both wore the same pearl necklace with gold links between each of the gemstones, and the only difference in their appearance aside form age was their hairstyles.

Clarissa’s white hair was set in a short perm much like Bernice’s, while Lorraine looked like a tribute to 80s big hair. Her uber-moussed locks rose up to touch the ceiling, and the sides poofed out halfway to her shoulders, making her head look smaller.

They looked so similar to each other, and Monica shared many of the same similarities, though she was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt.

Still, the degree of similarity was so strong that Monica wondered if the women were conjured from real memories of what her mother and grandmother had looked like. It was also possible that her mind was aging her own face to cover for gaps in her memory, and that she no longer recalled what her mother and grandmother looked like.

But the outfit was something she did remember, and Lorraine’s hairstyle was the right look for her. What she wore had been her typical work outfit for many years. She’d worked part-time as a CPA from the time that Monica had started school. She’d always gotten off work in time to pick up Monica and drive her home.

And yet, for all the time they’d spent together, they’d never really talked.

Now Lorraine sat in the back seat, less than three feet away. Monica still felt an emotional distance between them, a yawning chasm that she’d never attempted to cross because the task felt impossible.

Monica’s gaze drifted from the mirror, rising to the sky. A wide patch above the car was blue and bright, but in every direction storm clouds churned on the horizon. Lighting arced through the black cloud banks, and no matter which way she looked, she could see violent storms building.

The car neared an intersection. A single traffic light with a yellow bulb blinked on and off.

There was no other traffic, but Monica began to slow the car down while she glanced at Bernice. “Which way should I go?”

“You’re the one driving, dear,” Bernice said. “Shouldn’t you already know where you want to go?”

“I don’t even know where I am now.” Monica gestured at the windshield. “No matter which way I go, I’ll be driving into a storm.”

“You probably will,” Lorraine said. “But then, that’s life, as they say, and into every life, a little rain must fall.”

“But I feel like I’ve been living in a storm my whole life. I don’t want to deal with another storm.”

Lorraine smiled and shook her head. “Life doesn’t work that way. Even if you stay here, the storm will still come to you.”

“But what do I gain by driving into the storm?”

“The journey itself,” Clarissa answered.

Monica stopped the car at the intersection and turned in her seat to stare at her grandmother. “I don’t understand.”

“Life is a journey, Monica. You’ve got to make a choice about what the destination of your journey is. Obviously, you don’t want to just be a waitress for your entire life, but you haven’t given much thought to what you want to do, or even to who you want to be. Instead, you’ve hidden yourself and put off all these decisions until later.”