Page 36 of Having the Time of My Midlife

My daughter was perplexed for a beat. “I’m not sure. Will it bother you if I’m not?”

“Hell to the no,” I said quickly. “You could come back as a skunk and I’d love you to the end of time.”

“Lordy have mercy,” Gram choked out. “Don’t say things like that, baby girl. Words have power. Don’t you be forgettin’ that!”

Gram was right and I hoped hard that I hadn’t just accidently doomed my child for life. Heck, if I’d screwed up and turned my baby into a skunk, I’d have Gideon do some of his voodoo so I could take her place and she could live an odor-free life. Deciphering what-ifs was a waste of time and time was not a luxury that we had.

“Moving on,” I said, looking at how we were dressed. We were a hot mess other than Gram. “We look really bad.”

“You think?” Alana Catherine commented. “I’m wearing a onesie.”

“You looked cute in it this morning,” I pointed out.

“That was then, this is now,” she shot right back with a grin.

Without any fanfare or warning, she wiggled her nose and did her own version of voodoo.

“Wouldja look at that?” Gram gasped.

The three of us were now sporting black from head to toe—black pants, long-sleeved fitted black shirts and fabulous black combat boots.

“I figured we should look the part,” Alana Catherine said.

“Of?” I questioned, loving her choice.

“Badass Death Counselors,” she replied, pulling both Gram and me to our feet.

“The past, the present and the future,” I said with a nod of approval. “I say we go fix the tear in the Light and get back home.”

“How we gonna do that, Daisy child?” Gram asked.

“Only one way to find out,” I said, waving my hand and disintegrating the door to dust.

CHAPTER TEN

We walkedout of the 1960’s and right into the 1980’s.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Gram whispered in awe as we walked onto the empty set of a TV game show. The studio was cavernous. There was a lit-up stage and bleachers for the audience. Everything was clean, shiny and psychedelically colorful. It felt incredibly ominous.

This wasn’t just any game show it wasWheel of Fortune… or a bastardized version of it. A large spinning-wheel was on a platform stage, and the wheel was divided into multiple segments. Behind the wheel, a massive puzzle board composed of rectangular tiles, that, if this farce followed the actual game, would light up when correct guesses were made and the tiles were turned.

“The show will go on, and the wheels will turn,” Alana Catherine said, repeating what she’d communicated earlier through Pandora.

“Do you recall saying all of that?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “I do. It’s fuzzy, but I do.”

“Do you know what it means?” I questioned, hoping she could get us ahead of the game, so to speak.

“I wish I did, but I don’t. I’m sorry.”

“Ain’t nothin’ to be sorry for,” Gram told her, taking the words out of my mouth. “You’re mama’s a badass, just like you and me. She’s just looking for all the angles. We’re from deep in the south, where sushi’s called bait. We don’t leave no stone unturned.”

Amid a bad situation where things could get ugly fast, Gram made me smile. The woman always knew how to make me smile, and she always would.

“Do you think we’re the contestants or the audience?” my daughter asked as we crossed the sound stage and approached the wheel.

“Not sure,” I said. “But Steve said to start with the ending I desire and work my way back.”

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