Tuesday Night Miracles
Read Tuesday Night Miracles Online
Authors: Kris Radish
Tags: #Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Sagas, #Humorous, #General
Readers Love Kris Radish!
——
“Each of your books has shown me a dozen new ways to appreciate myself, my relationships, my past, and my future. I truly thank you, Kris, for moving me beyond a cliché and into a life of my own making. You, Kris, are a gift.
—A
NN
W. A.
“Thank you for the amazing gift of words, which often give us the courage to find our wings and soar again. Thank you from the woman I am today … but deep gratitude from that little girl I lost when I left Cuba. I have given her a rightful place in the mosaic my life is now.”
—M
ARITZA
P.
“Your book has soothed my soul and helped me to feel so much better about needing and pursuing happiness and passion in my life. You named the dreams of my heart and helped me feel far less crazy! Here is to dancing in the moonlight.”
—P
ATRICIA
C.
“I have read all of your books and love, love, love each and every one of them. When I think of how I want to live my life (with joy), and how I don’t want to live my life (in fear), it’s the characters in your novels who speak to me. I can’t wait to read your next book.”
—D
EBBIE
S.
“Your books make me want to find myself and experience all that I’ve been afraid to challenge in the past. They inspire me to find the true me and the meaning of my life. And of course, they make me want to run naked in the middle of the day … which I did!”
—P
AT
M.
“I began reading your novels at a crossroads in my life and needless to say, I began on the road less traveled. Your inspiring words not only accumulate into fantastic books, but begin a lifestyle full of openness and joy. I encourage any woman regardless of her background to hop on this train.”
—S
AM
B.
Tuesday Night Miracles
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Bantam Books eBook Edition
Copyright © 2012 by Kris Radish
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
B
ANTAM
B
OOKS
and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-345-53241-1
Cover design: Olga Grlic
Cover images: esthAlto/Laurence Mouton/
PhotoAlto Agency RM Collection/Getty Images (woman),
Meg Takamura/IZA Stock/Getty Images (dog)
v3.1
Contents
Chapter 1 - Truth or Consequences
Chapter 2 - The Green Dot
Chapter 3 - The Red Dot
Chapter 4 - The Blue Dot
Chapter 5 - Hell to Pay
Chapter 6 - Truth or Dare
Chapter 7 - The Blue Dot
Chapter 8 - The Green Dot
Chapter 9 - The Red Dot
Chapter 10 - The First Assignment
Chapter 11 - Whiskey A-Go-Go
Chapter 12 - Just Deserts
Chapter 13 - The Black Dot
Chapter 14 - The Second Assignment
Chapter 15 - Displeasure on the Homework Highway
Chapter 16 - Writing It Down at Dinner
Chapter 17 - Touching the Edge of Dreams
Chapter 18 - The Intervention Convention
Chapter 19 - The Black Dot
Chapter 20 - The Blue Dot
Chapter 21 - The Green Dot
Chapter 22 - The Red Dot
Chapter 23 - A Shot in the Dark
Chapter 24 - Tales from the Anger Battlefield
Chapter 25 - The Challenges of Change
Chapter 26 - The Green Dot
Chapter 27 - The Black Dot
Chapter 28 - The Red Dot
Chapter 29 - The Blue Dot
Chapter 30 - The Third Assignment
Chapter 31 - Limping Toward the Exit
Chapter 32 - A Slight Explosion in the Happy Land
Chapter 33 - Just When You Think
Chapter 34 - Far from the End of the Journey
Chapter 35 - An Inch at a Time
Chapter 36 - A Roll of the Dice
Chapter 37 - Light in the Tunnel
Chapter 38 - A Life on Hold
Chapter 39 - Reflections of Change
Chapter 40 - It Ain’t Over Until
Chapter 41 - The Fourth Assignment
Chapter 42 - Courage to Be Real
Chapter 43 - Working on a Chain Gang
Chapter 44 - Sunday Night Serenades
Chapter 45 - Reckless Fury of the Scorned
Chapter 46 - Tie a Yellow Ribbon
Chapter 47 - Go Forth and Be Angry No More
Chapter 48 - Gobble Gobble
Chapter 49 - Reality Is a Piece of Cake
Chapter 50 - The Green Dot
Chapter 51 - The Red Dot
Chapter 52 - The Blue Dot
Chapter 53 - The Black Dot
Chapter 54 - The Last Tuesday Night Miracle
1
Truth or Consequences
T
he three manila files on Olivia’s dining-room table have been opened and closed so many times that the edges are stained with coffee, several varieties of pasta sauce, more than a few red-wine streaks, and the dark imprints of each one of her tiny fingers.
Before she grabs them this time she brushes her hands along her well-worn navy bathrobe, leaving a long white trail of pretzel salt down both sides. When she glances at herself in the hall mirror on the way to her favorite living-room chair, she laughs out loud, because the dark bathrobe that grazes her ankles and leaves her large white fluffy slippers exposed makes her look like a human-size blue penguin.
If Olivia Bayer could change one thing about herself, even this late in the game, it would be her stumpy legs. Forget about the bad knee, her inability to qualify for LASIK eye surgery, or the twenty other physical tragedies that manifest themselves pretty much 24/7. She wants gams long enough to let her reach the top shelf.
Tonight the top shelf is the least of her worries. Olivia hasn’t even met the three women whose words are waiting for her inside the thin files, but she has a veteran’s suspicion that this is not going to be a walk in the park. A naked run through a land-mined street is more like it.
“Come on, Phyllis,” she says to the gorgeous tan cocker spaniel sitting in the doorway. Phyllis would follow her mistress to the ends of the earth—and she does. “We’ve got work to do.”
She grabs the silver half-glasses that are held together by three rubber bands, pulls down the reading light above her head, turns it on, takes a breath to steady her thoughts, and picks up the first file:
It’s not like this happens every day. I’m sorry, okay? What gets me angry is people who don’t do what in the hell they say they’re going to do. Waiting for someone else to do something. Crooked lines that should be straight. I don’t have much time in my life to sit down and think about things like this. Obviously I’m also mad at the economy or this would never have happened
.
Good Lord.
As Olivia moves to the next file, she reaches down and runs her palm across Phyllis’s calm back. The three pieces of paper inside are written in handwriting so large and bold, and with a hand that pressed so hard, she sees holes when she holds the pages up to the light:
I’m really pissed at my mother, for starters. Why now? It doesn’t take a genius to know my brothers make me furious, and if there is a step beyond furious they push me there, too. Cheapskates. Deadlines. Empty wine bottles. The Vietnam War. Is this the kind of thing you mean?
Olivia can’t bring herself to move beyond page one in this file. She almost fears the file might rise up and slap the living hell out of her all by itself.
The third file, the last file, has been her favorite since the beginning of this interesting mess. When she’s not in her bathrobe, Olivia calls the mess “a challenge,” but here, in her home, it’s a
mess
. At least this file, with its five pages of lovely cursive writing, offers a glimmer of hope. Either that or the writer has this kind of exercise already figured out:
… so maybe it’s just that sometimes you simply forget and go too far. You know? Whoever you are, I bet you know—especially if you’re a woman. But that’s avoiding the question. I get that. So: Loud music, obviously. Men who cheat. Fad diets. Those things get me angry
.
This isn’t bad for starters. Olivia quickly reads through the other pages again until she comes to something she must have missed. How could this be? Is she reading this correctly or does she need new glasses again? Is all hope lost?
… that doesn’t give people younger than us the right to disobey us, to cross the lines we have drawn, to disrespect our generation. Sometimes these things work both ways. Sometimes someone has to make a stand
.
She drops the third file into her lap with the other two and then pushes them all to the floor. She watches as they land on top of one another like large playing cards.
Olivia’s done this so many times it would be impossible for her to count. Years and years of files. Years and years of the faces and then the blinding reality of the failures mixed in with the successes—sometimes too few successes.
And now this.
These three files and these three women and this chance—one last chance to take a moment, a series of moments, perhaps a lifetime of moments, and create a miracle. How many miracles are left? How many more times can Olivia risk it before her own miracle card expires? She thinks about all the years of white lies when she gave someone an extra chance, tried something no one had ever thought of trying before, scorched her own heart yet again when her professional skills came so close to crossing the boundary—a boundary that these three women in the files have obviously crossed. Is it even possible for a person to bring one kind of life to an end and finally start out in a new direction?
If only she knew the answers to her own questions.
Olivia hesitates before she touches the files again, and she makes what every colleague would call a rash decision. Maybe it’s time. Maybe it’s way past time. Retirement is waving its frightening hands in front of her face, and Dr. Olivia Bayer so wants to open up her secret bag of tricks and do something she has always dreamed of doing. This could be her last chance. But can she take that chance and make a real difference in the lives of these women? These women have been pushed over the edge, and what woman hasn’t been pushed over the edge the way they have? She’s already in trouble, and this pile of folders is like a blinking neon sign that is screaming, “Danger … danger!”
Then she bends down and randomly grabs the file with the blue dot on it. The blue dot and, yes, the red one and the green one, too, will have a name and a face tomorrow night.
She opens the file and her eyes land on the last paragraph. The blue dot is the smallest file, the one that has but a single page of writing, and she seizes one sentence.
“
It’s not like I even have a choice.
”
“Me, either,” she whispers to Phyllis, and then closes her eyes. With her eyes closed, she misses that absolutely glorious moment when day finally surrenders and the dark line of night marches swiftly across the horizon.