Answering The Call

ANSWERINGTHE CALL PARRISAFTON BONDS Other Books byParris Afton Bonds Reluctant Rebel THE TEXICANS The Brigands •The Barons The Bravados •The Betrayers The Banshees Blue Bayou • Blue Moon The Calling of the Clan • The Captive Dancing with Crazy Woman • Dancing with Wild Woman Deep Purple • Dream Keeper • Dream Time • Dust Devil The Flash of the Firefly • For All Time Kingdom Come: Temptation • Kingdom Come: Trespass Lavender Blue • Love Tide Made For Each Other • Midsummer Midnight Mood Indigo • No Telling Renegade Man • Run To Me Savage Enchantment • The Savage Snow And Ice • Spinster’s Song Stardust • Sweet Enchantress Sweet Golden Sun • The Wildest Heart Wanted Woman • Widow Woman Windsong • When the Heart is Right This is a work of fiction. No part of the publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Text copyright © 2023 by Parris Afton BondsAll Rights Reserved. Printed in the United States of America Published by Motina Books, LLC, Van Alstyne, Texaswww.MotinaBooks.com Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: Names: Afton Bonds, ParrisTitle: Answering the CallDescription: First Edition. | Van Alstyne: Motina Books, 2023 Identifiers: LCCN: 2023934415 ISBN-13: 979-8-88784-013-0 (paperback)ISBN-13: 979-8-88784-012-3 (e-book) Subjects: BISAC: Fiction > Romance > SuspenseCover and Interior Design: Diane Windsor It’s always the friends we encounter, and not the sights, in our life’s travels who make the difference. For Linda Cudd, Sandy Bazinet, and Murray Pura You have made a difference in my life’s travels. AUTHOR’S NOTE I do not think I would deem this novel even semi-autobiographical; however, it does encapsulate a phase in this last part of my life, when, at seventy-eight and fifty novels more or less under my belt, I decided to answer the call to adventure and move to Mexico. I sold my household furniture and my car and kept only enough clothing to pack into two suitcases. A third one contained my laptop and miscellaneous financial documents. The items in my purse included the requisite passport and my COVID vaccinations card. During this year in Querétaro, Mexico, I wrote Answering the Call. I hope my novel enlightens and entertains—that it enlightens somewhat, at least, my approach to the aging process, as well as, living in a foreign country, but even more importantly I fervently hope it entertains the reader. CHAPTER 1 There has to be an easier way. The words slipped unbidden and aloud over Lauren Hillard’s lips. Each morning as she showered . . . or sometimes earlier, when groping to shut off the alarm . . . the phrase audaciously intruded. Still its daily surfacing never failed to take her by surprise. Naturally, her mind would be fixated on that day’s demands. They centered around a monotonous routine, dominated by her older daughter’s psychotherapist practice which Lauren managed: wake, go to work, return home, go to bed and read a while, go to sleep—or not, as was more often the case these days. Occasionally, lunch or an outing with friends or family interrupted the regimen. For how long now had the words There has to be an easier way leaked in and out of her consciousness first thing in the morning? Two or three years? Something within her insisted there had to be more meaning to life. She was aware that life was continuing around her; yet participate though she did, she in no way felt part of life. She was not clinically depressed, as her daughter Renita might label it, just apathetic. She tried Meetup’s book clubs, Spanish classes, hiking expeditions, choral groups, and more. Nevertheless, she invariably felt as if she did not belong . . . did not belong anywhere anymore. For over a year, she had volunteered a couple of evenings or weekends at Houston’s MD Anderson Cancer Center. In observing the magnitude of suffering and only occasional relief or remission for the patients, rather than feel fortunate for her circumstances, she felt burdened by guilt. Guilt, because she had so much—yet felt so alone, so bereft. This despite her good health at nearly seventy, her family and friends, and her relatively stable financial security. “Relatively stable financial security” only for so long as she continued to work for Renita. Lauren’s Social Security benefits were only one bump above being a bag lady. Her funds, frugally saved over the years, were overseen by Renita’s latest partner, a financial planner who successfully managed other people’s money. Of course, Lauren’s younger daughter Sylvie had offered recently for Lauren to live with her and her husband, to which Lauren amiably but adamantly refused. Her stomach knotted with the thought of her daughters tucking her away like a precious heirloom on a shelf. Yet, if she wished to live off her social security benefits and abstain from dipping into her savings, her options were zero. Her condo lease would expire in two months. Either she renewed the lease now and continued working for yet another year—or give her two-month notice to vacate, resign herself to shelf life with Sylvie and her husband, and tell Renita that she would be retiring from Behavioral Health Solutions. Naturally, Renita would go off into one of her fits. Her authoritarian approach to muddled patients was mollified by Lauren’s coddling them before and after appointments. Renita and Lauren’s polar but complimenting personalities were probably the reason the clinic’s balance sheet stayed in the black over the years, although just barely. Nineteen years before, Lauren had quit her lucrative position as advertising manager for Pepsico International to help jumpstart her daughter’s burgeoning psychotherapist practice. Lauren toweled off, swiftly dressed in appropriate muted colors with low heels, and for a more subdued appearance clipped up her dark, shoulder-length hair, shot full with gray. Lastly, she lightly swiped on the requisite makeup for the working woman of a certain age—mascara, a deft brushing of rouge, and