A Good Place to Be

                                      KANSAS CITY, NEXT EXIT
                      And that was it. More than nine hundred miles, twenty hours , and one bad motel room later, that sign told her she was here.  Although she was almost a thousand miles away from her past and everything in it, as she put on her turn signal and got onto the exit, Callie couldn’t help but remember the night she left.
                    Her mother didn’t want her to leave. Or, more precisely, couldn’t understand why she wanted to. Callie had always been a grounded, practical girl. Every decision she made was carefully thought out, analyzed, and properly planned. She always went with her gut instinct, and never did anything reckless. So when Callie pulled out a map, pointed to Kansas City, Missouri, and announced that she was leaving, her mother was less than pleasantly surprised.
                    “This is not something we ever planned, Callie.”
                    “I’m nineteen, mom. This is my decision.”
                    “You don’t just make decisions like this for no reason. Did something happen? I just don’t understand...”
                    “Nothing happened. I just decided it.”

There was desperation in her mother’s face that Callie had never seen before. Desperation for her daughter to stay, and to understand why she wouldn’t.
         “Kansas City? We’ve never even been there.” Her mother spoke, her lip quivering.
         “I hear they have good barbeque.”
         “You hate barbeque.”
         “I could learn to like it.” Callie replied, staring at a burn mark on the kitchen table.
         Her mother’s final attempt took Callie by surprise. It was a vicious stab, not a question. A last ditch effort meant to break her daughter into submission.
         “What will your father say.”
         “I don’t know, mother.” Callie responded venomously. “Why don’t I call his office, talk to his less than virtuous secretary, and see if I can get an appointment for a week from Tuesday? If I’m lucky, he’ll only postpone it twice.”
         That was harsh. She had intended it to be so, but now regretted it and could see that her mother regretted her own jab as well. But Callie was done apologizing. For nineteen years, she had done everything to gain her father’s respect; each decision she made was planned to please him, to make him love her. She wanted so much to be enough for him. The calm, cruel realization that she never would had driven her to leave, and never look back. So, she picked a place where she’d never been, and where she would know no one. A perfect place for a fresh start.
         And here she was. A new beginning and… a flat tire.
         Callie pulled over on the side of the road and began to analyze the situation, like she always did when faced with a problem. She knew there was a spare tire in her trunk, and tools to fix it; the only dilemma was she had no idea how.
         She was trying to figure out how to get the tire out of her trunk, when a car pulled up behind hers. A tall man got out and walked toward her.
         “Need any help?”
         Callie waited for her gut feeling to tell her this man was a serial killer, or a stalker, but it never came. The “No thanks, I’m fine.”  She had planned in her head turned into,
         “Yeah, I have no idea what to do.”
         Fifteen minutes later, Callie had a perfectly inflated tire. The man introduced himself as Austin, and asked if she lived around here.
         “I guess I do now.” She replied.
         “Where are you from?”
         “Oh, not from around here. I’m from… somewhere else. This just seemed like the right place to start over.” She said, quietly.
         "Well,” he countered, with a smile and kind eyes, “this is a good place to be.”
         “That’s what I hoped.”
         They stood together on the side of the road for a moment, each looking at the ground and then back at the others face; two people, not knowing, but understanding each other. There was something comforting in that. Austin broke the moment by suddenly clearing his throat and speaking.
         “If you’d like, I could show you around. There’s not a whole lot to do here, but being a local has its perks.” He said with a grin.
         Callie began to say no, there was no reason to go with him. She didn’t know this man; he had fixed her tire and that was it. Here is where things of this nature should end, she thought. Just thank him for his kindness and go your own way. However,
         “Sure, I’d like that.” Is what came out.  So much for caution.
         “It’s not very classy, but there’s a little café just a few miles from here. They make a pretty good cheeseburger, to be honest. I don’t know if you’re a burger kind of girl, but-”
         “I am definitely a burger kind of girl,” Callie interrupted. “and that sounds perfect.”
         “Well, we better get going then.” Austin grinned. Callie smiled back.
Yeah, she thought, this is a good place to be.