Back to the Scene of the Crime

As the Corolla sits stinking up my garage, Beloved is back in the Ozarks. And it's occuring to me I don't actually even know where. Have I learned nothing? I mean, I talked to him last night and this morning, and I forgot to ask both times. He was somewhere last night and he'll probably be somewhere different tonight, and after ten or twelve different times of him road warrioring his way across Missouri every week, I've grown more accustomed to this new life of ours. The only problem is my absent-mindedness. I have my head in my novel, and that means I forget to do stuff like turn on the coffee pot and ask my husband where he's sleeping.

There. I just texted him.

And printed my boarding pass for my flight tomorrow to Dad 2.0.

My parents will be here soon to be here for the little angel when she gets home from school because Beloved will get in late on Thursday.

I worry about my parents driving down here. I worry about Beloved driving around Missouri. I worry about me flying to Austin. But that's what people do. They move freely about, even though it's a dangerous world out there. It does no good to sit in your house and hide from that world.

When the worry comes, I try to imagine a big windshield wiper sweeping across my thoughts and pushing them away. Sometimes it helps.

Sometimes I just crawl back into the novel in my head, where I control whether or not there are tornadoes.