Destiny Road

On the first day of November Emma Johnson was called in to her managers office and informed that a rumor had spread about her stealing money from the company. He assured her that while he personally didn’t believe she was capable of such a thing, there would have to be an inquiry and in the interest of keeping their clients minds at ease they were going to have to let her go.

She made her way home in a daze and sat at her kitchen table so long that she watched the sunset from the shadow on her plain white wall.

On the second day of November Emma Johnson decided that she had plenty going for herself. She would find a new job and carry on. It was a lovely day and she was going to make the most of it, beginning with a cup of coffee. She had just made her way down to her favorite shop when she saw the familiar profile of her fiance Matt, and she knew that this was a sign that things were looking up. He was sitting with a beautiful blonde woman she had never met before but she eagerly began to walk towards them to introduce herself.

She wondered if he could feel her eyes burning into his skull or if the sound of her heart shattering was simply loud enough to reach him in the busy cafe but after leaning in for a long and tender kiss with the mystery woman Matt leaned back and turned his head in Emma’s direction. Their eyes met. Hers completely glossed over. His in panic.

She couldn’t remember gathering the strength to tear her eyes away or even to move. She was just running down the street. The cold November wind made the tear tracks feel like tiny blades cutting across her cheeks but she hardly felt it.

That evening she was laying on the floor in front of the door staring patterns into the ceiling as if it might suddenly light up with answers and guidance. Patrick, her war torn street cat, decided that kindness was in order and curled in to her side.

They watched the unmarked envelope slide through the mail slot together and he stayed by her side when she sat up to retrieve it.

Matt had been brief, and there were no apologies. If that made it better or worse was undetermined. He loved the blonde woman, he saw more potential in that relationship, and he would appreciate it if she could mail her engagement ring back to him.

She fell asleep sobbing on the floor that night with only the feeling of Patrick’s fur clenched between her fingers to keep her anchored.

On the third day of November Emma Johnson woke up alone at noon with aches and pains in her back, throat, heart, and spirit. She called out for Patrick and searched the entire apartment for an hour before finding him wedged under the sofa. He wouldn’t come out for anything and she tried not to take it personally before filling his food and water bowls and deciding to go get some groceries for herself. It was a relatively uneventful day aside from two of her prefered stores being closed, the heel of her shoe snapping off and dropping her key down a drain.

By the time she finally made it back in she went straight back to bed. Patrick joined her, curling up on the pillow beside her head. It was unusual behavior for the normally stoic and independant guy but she was too grateful for the company to think too hard on it. She didn’t notice the untouched bowls still in the kitchen.

On the fourth day of November Emma Johnson woke up early and decided to make the most of her day. She took a shower, made breakfast, cleaned the kitchen, and by noon she had decided to clean her bedroom when she noticed that Patrick still hadn’t shifted from his deep sleep on her pillow.

On the fourth day of November Emma placed Patricks body in a tote bag and walked him to the vet for the last time.

And on the fourth day of November Emma found herself crying on a park bench utterly alone. For the first time in her life she had no idea what to do. She didn’t know what she wanted to do other than curl under her duvet and melt into nothing.

Out of nowhere she wandered her way into an old memory.

She recalled being 7 or maybe 8 the first time she inquired about purpose. Which was an awfully big question for the small girl perched on the kitchen counter rolling dough into tiny balls.

Her mother said that purpose was what you were meant to leave behind from your time on earth. It was your destiny, and no one had a destiny that was too small. She said that destiny was like a cloth, everyone needed to be woven together to make it work.

Emma was 10 and she marched home from career day with utter determination demanding to know just how exactly she was supposed to find this so called destiny.

Her mother smiled and said that destiny was a path we all follow no matter what. There are forks in the path and distractions on either side, there are steep sections and flat sections but that as long as she kept making good decisions and searching for what made her happy she would find it.

On that cold park bench in November Emma wanted to shout at the sky and rage against the advice she had so willingly accepted. She had made good decisions, she had been happy, was her destiny one big joke?

Reaching into her bag she began to fiddle with the contents, searching for anything to give her a momentary respite from her thoughts. Her fingertips brushed against the smooth edge of an envelope and she remembered the blank card. It was meant to be a thank you card for one of her former coworkers. She had bought it the morning of November first and forgotten to fill it out. That felt like a lifetime ago.

Suddenly inspiration.

She let out a desperate chuckle, her throat gravelly from days of crying.

Pulling out the envelope she dug for a pen and then began her masterpiece with the words ‘Dear Destiny, I have a few complaints’.

She spent a total of 15 minutes perfectly sculpting her pain out onto she cheap card stock before sealing the envelope and even slapping a stamp she knew she was never going to use on it. The idea of dropping it in the mail was too funny to bear so she addressed it to 100 Destiny Road and promptly forgot about it.

A week later and Emma found herself in roughly the same position she had been in. Her search for work in any menial office position anywhere was rough without a reference from the company she had spent the last two years with. Her friends were still recovering from how uncomfortable her break up was for them. It was an inconvenience for them to decide between her and Matt and they needed time to themselves to sort it out. The apartment was deathly quiet without Patrick.

She desperately wanted to remember what it felt like to be happy.

On the fourteenth day of November Emma Johnson received a letter in the mail from 100 Destiny Road.

An address that apparently existed in Colorado.

It began, Dear Emma, I’m sorry for the terrible time you’ve been having and I’d like to offer some advice.

The letter went on to offer council and words of comfort. The stranger insisted that there was hope and promise in these moments. While she had been insisting that she had been thrust into pain, the stranger insisted instead that she had been gifted opportunity.

They asked if she had been truly satisfied with her work. If she was passionate about it. If the answer was anything other than yes then there was already a silver lining. The verdict on Matt was that she dodged a major bullet and that she should pawn the ring and save up to go on vacation. They offered condolences for Patrick but reminded her that he passed sleeping in a warm bed when he was old and happy and loved which is the most that any of us can ask for.

For what felt like the first time in years Emma smiled.

The letter was simply signed H, and so the correspondence began.

Her next letter was a thank you, she offered answers to some of the questions along with questions of her own.

She really wasn't passionate about her work. She wanted to know where she should be travelling with the money from the ring. And the sun shined a little brighter with every passing day. The letters rejuvenated her.

She told H that she didn’t enjoy life behind a desk. She wanted to be free. But freedom is uncertain and frightening. She said her dream was to travel, which is what made the prospect of pawning the ring so intriguing.

Emma missed warmth. She wanted to escape the oppressive winter that surrounded her. Ice cold air filled her thoughts and her lungs and she was overwhelmed and drowning.

She wrote one week about how she dreamed of the ocean more frequently than ever before. She wondered what the warm sand would feel like under her body. She wanted to float on her back and smell the salt in the air.

H asked her why she didn’t go. With Patrick gone there was nothing tying her to that city anymore. Emma knew that was true. Which made the idea all the more frightening.

She certainly had the money saved up. She had been months away from getting married. And she had taken a receptionist job that she was highly overqualified for just to keep busy.

The week after that H admitted that traveling was no longer a personal option and that Emma should travel for both of them so that their friendship wouldn’t be one with mutual missed opportunities.

“I always wanted to see Greece. Do you think you could go for me? Maybe you could send me some of the sand and I can feel like I went there too” were the exact words that finally pushed Emma in to action.

After quitting her job and selling her apartment Emma was finally ready to step out of the miserable safety she had created and back on to the path.

On the fourteenth day of April Emma Johnson boarded a plane to Morocco five months after her letters to destiny began. Then on to Spain, France, Germany, Hungary, Egypt. She went anywhere and everywhere and wrote about it all in letters addressed to Colorado about reaching her destiny.

By June she wandered her way onto a beach in Greece and sat sifting sand through her fingers gently and thinking about how she finally felt at peace. This was meant to be her final stop but as she poured some sand in an envelope she knew there was one more place to go.

On the sixteenth day of June Emma Johnson stepped off the plane and made her way out of the airport with nothing but a duffle bag of memories and a goal.

She slid in to the back of the taxi with complete determination and told him her destination.

At 100 Destiny Road stood a modestly sized, tan, two story house with a porch swing and a few childrens toys in the front yard. The mailbox read Helen Marquez.

She walked up to the front and for the first time in her life Emma felt beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was exactly where she was meant to be.

She only had to wait a few moments after she knocked before the sound of the lock sliding out of place and the dented old knob to begin to turn.

Helen Marquez stood at roughly 5’1, her short hair had long since turned white with age, and her tanned skin was covered in freckles and a few tiny scars, her eyes were lightly misted over but bright and alert and filled with mischievous passion. It only took a second for her to put the pieces together.

“Hello Emma,” she smiled “come in and tell me about your journey.”