An Excerpt from DRIVING WITH THE TOP DOWN

            With her eyes scrunched shut against the blinding late-afternoon sun, Gwen Stanhope walked out of the Medical Arts Building in downtown Minneapolis and told herself that turning forty was no big deal. Just another adventure in that glorious journey called life.

            A moment later, she tripped on the sidewalk.

            Her eyes, freshly dilated from a visit to her eye doctor, stung and kept tearing up. And she’d forgotten to bring sunglasses. Nearly blind in the sunlight, she used one hand to shade her eyes and took several tentative steps, finally turning the corner from 9th Street onto Nicollet. She kept picturing herself careening off the sidewalk and straight into some bus hurtling down the Nicollet Mall. The driver likely wouldn’t stop. Maybe wouldn’t hear the thud as he creamed her. She’d end her life impaled on some dental office’s “Get a Brighter Smile TODAY!” sign on the front of the bus.

            But who cared? In three months, three days, and—her watery, blurry eyes squinted to make out the time on her watch—just under seven hours, she’d be forty.

            As if the looming milestone didn’t already annoy her, Dr. Renfrew had added insult to injury when he prescribed reading glasses. Reading glasses! She might as well tattoo the words “Shoot Me Now” on her forehead.

            Remembering another tattoo, another time, she felt her lips curve into a silly, daydreamy smile . . . before she jerked herself back to reality.

            A block later, she squinted at one of the display windows at Dayton’s—and it really was Dayton’s again, at least in some small way, after they’d changed the name to Marshall Field’s the year she graduated from high school and to Macy’s five years after that. Several huge yellow butterflies fluttered around a couple of waxy bridesmaid-looking mannequins dolled up in rainbow colors. She sighed, wishing the butterflies in the window didn’t remind her of his tattoo. Wishing the waxy bridesmaids didn’t make her think of stupid what-ifs.

            Lately, almost everything reminded her of him.

            No wonder she was so depressed.

            A boy who couldn’t be more than seven or eight gawked up at Gwen through tousled blond bangs. Maybe he’d never seen a woman with alien-size pupils who breathed a little hard as she stood like yet another mannequin in front of the display window. Gwen ignored the boy; it was just the sunshine hitting her dilated eyes that made her look like a train wreck. It couldn’t be the wedding-like display, or the butterflies, or a few pathetic memories of a man she thought she’d long since forgotten.

            The boy continued to stare, drawing onlookers. Really? Today of all days? If only someone would cart the kid away, she could pretend that the thought of some silly tattoo hadn’t just unnerved the hell out of her. Who did this kid belong to?

            “What’sa matter? Are you crying?” The boy took a step closer, forcing Gwen to back into an elderly woman, who slugged her with a purse the size of a microwave.

            “Sorry!” Gwen held up her hands, trying to calm the woman and shield herself, then turned back to the boy and shook her head. Pointing at her eyes, she forced a smile. “I’m not crying. My eyes just hurt a little bit.”

            “You look like you’re crying.”

            “Cody!” A woman grabbed the boy’s arm and shot Gwen a nasty look as she yanked him away. “What have I told you about talking to strangers?”

            “But Mom, she looks so—”

            As heat crept up her neck and fanned across her cheeks, Gwen declared defeat and hurried away. Head down, blindly seeking refuge from the boy and his mom, from a Dayton’s that wasn’t what it used to be, from butterflies and tattoos. From being foolish and self-pitying and almost forty.

            In her rush, she didn’t see the man until she plowed head-first into his chest.