Betty & Howard's Excellent Adventure (A Dream Series story) Read online

  “This is it, Betty. You got it. That is genuine, four-thousand-year-old Beaker pottery, lady. You did good.” He clapped me on the back, and I felt a surge of pride – I’m still feeling it now.

  My find opened the floodgates – about half the group found something in those last couple of hours (but none of them were as big, or as nice, as mine!). So Bill was in the best mood we’d seen him in this whole time – and that’s saying something, because he’s never not in a good mood, as far as I can tell.

  That really capped off the trip. I think we did pretty darned good for our first ever vacation out of the country!

  ***

  We had quite the celebration last night at dinner. I was handed a bottle of champagne to open – it was my honor because I made the best find of the trip. I couldn’t quite manage it, so I gave it to Howard and – my hero! – he had it open in an instant. As a group, we went through four bottles toasting one another. Poor Megan had the first hangover of her life this morning, but it has to happen to all of us sometime, right?

  We all shared phone numbers and emails. When Claudia gave Howard hers, I laughed and said, “I’ll be tearing that up later.”

  She smiled at me, and with a perfectly straight face, she said, “Please don’t. I want to keep in touch with you. I need to know how you still look like that at forty-five.”

  She said it without even the slightest wink or roll of the eyes. She really is a sweetheart. I hugged her and kissed her cheek. What else could I do? “Claudia,” I said, “if my son wasn’t already married, I’d have to follow you home and kidnap you for him.”

  Her last words to me were, “Yeah, I get that a lot.” I’ll bet she does!

  So we went upstairs to our room on a high note, and we finished the evening on an even higher one. And right now we’re waiting for Jane to arrive so she can drive us to the airport.

  ***

  Nothing’s perfect, I suppose. We had to have a bad day, right? I’m glad it didn’t come until we were on our way home. Everything was fine right up until we got to the airport. Since we had the earliest flight out, it was just Howard and I in the car with Jane. The drive wasn’t bad, and we heard more old college stories that we’ll have to ask Sara about, so that was entertaining.

  We said good-bye to her and I promised to email her once we got home, and then we checked in. That’s when things started to go downhill. One of our suitcases was too heavy, and we had to open it up right there in the check-in line. We had bought four bottles of wine to give as gifts, but now we only have one. One of them fell on the floor and shattered, and two more “disappeared” in the confusion.

  After all that trouble, we had to run to make our flight, and we did, barely. We had to squeeze our way up the aisle, and Howard banged his thigh on an armrest (don’t ask) which he complained about for twenty minutes. Then we hit turbulence, and he had to literally run to the bathroom. He spent the next ninety minutes in there. When he came out, he looked pale as a ghost. It was too late to get him something to drink – the flight attendants were starting to get ready for landing. So he suffered for the remainder of the flight. As soon as we landed and got off the plane, he went straight for a bar. He had three shots of scotch, a can of Coke and two bottles of water in the space of five minutes.

  You can guess what happened next. We had an hour before our flight back home was supposed to board, and Howard spent most of that time in the bathroom. We barely made it to our gate – we were the very last people on the plane. And we hit more turbulence, and we ended up circling Dulles Airport for an hour due to –I don’t know why. The pilot never actually said.

  This time, Howard was clever – he squirreled away three bottles of water from the drinks cart, so he was set even though the flight was an hour longer than we expected.

  He spent another twenty minutes in the bathroom before we went through the customs line, and I think that helped; his color was slightly better by the time we made it through the line and saw Sara waiting for us.

  Seeing her brought home just how much I missed my daughter and my grandchildren and my home. And Howard looked like he was about ready to drop to his knees and kiss the ground. It really was a wonderful – an excellent - adventure, but like Dorothy said (it always comes back to movies with me, doesn’t it?), there’s no place like home.

  All my love,

  Betty

  The End

  https://www.writingdreams.net

  Acknowledgements

  Everyone who’s helped me out with my novels deserves thanks, and there are FAR too many people to list here. So I’ll start with a big THANK YOU to everyone who’s had anything to do with my books so far – family and friends and even strangers who have encouraged and supported me in countless ways.

  I do need to single out a few specific people:

  Cathey, my beautiful wife, first and always for her tireless support.

  All my wonderful beta readers, including Fran, Sharon, Parvati.

  Tim Woods, who helped make it possible for me to connect with Nicola Bryant – and of course the amazingly talented and generous and all-around-cool Nicola herself, who has lent her voice to the audiobook edition of this story. I cannot believe that I was able to work with Peri from “Doctor Who!” If the Dream Series books are ever made into movies, she is my first and only choice to play Betty.

  Bill and Jackie Waldren, his children, Jaime, Bill and Ellen Newby, and everyone else I met on my three Earthwatch trips to Mallorca (the same exact trip that Betty and Howard go on in this story). Those three trips were among the best experiences of my life, and I hope that I captured at least a tiny bit of them in this story. And Bill Waldren is, hands-down, the most incredible human being I have ever met; it was a privilege to work on his project and live in his house and learn from him, one for which I will always be grateful.

  My cover designer, Leanore Elliott, who stepped in to help me out due to the designer of all the other Dream Series covers, the wonderful Ami Low, being unavailable.

  Thanks to all of you, and to everyone else who has touched me or my books; I appreciate everything you’ve done for me!

  About the Author

  J.J. (James) DiBenedetto is a marketing professional by day and novelist by night. He lives in lovely Arlington, Virginia with his beautiful wife and a tortoise-shell cat who runs the house. He is the author of five published novels, to date.