Nina and the highway

Nina had not driven on a highway in eight years. It had started with a single frightening overtaking: a truck too close, a heart pounding so hard that she had to leave at the next exit. She had stood at a rest stop for twenty minutes before daring to continue home on smaller roads. Since then: always the detour. Always the country road, even when it took forty minutes longer and went through three villages she had no real reason to visit.

No one in her life really knew how big it had become. She had become skilled at explaining it away: 'I like the country road, it's prettier', she said, and most people bought it without asking more. Until the day her sister called in tears from the hospital, and Nina realized that the quickest way there went via exactly the highway she had avoided for eight years. She drove the country road anyway and arrived eighteen minutes later than she could have.