Page 12 of The Fall Classic

“Then maybe you should tell me your interpretation of ‘The Road Not Taken’ so we can even the score.”

Her eyes widen. “Whoa, you’re that sure you’re not gonna like my interpretation?”

“Not a hundred percent, but I have a feeling.”

She purses her lips, her hands wrapped around her mug of hot chocolate. It’s odd that Alma gave me my drink in a to-go cup and Georgiana’s in a mug. But then, if she’s here visiting her godmother a lot, maybe it makes sense she’d use a mug. I have this image in my mind of her sitting here, sipping and reading until her mug is empty, and then she keeps reading until she reaches that point where she tries to take another sip, realizes it’s empty, and then checks the time and races to … wherever she goes when she’s not here.

“I love the poem,” Georgiana is saying. “I think it’s a reminder of how powerful the stories we tell ourselves are.”

I feel my brow tug together. “You don’t think it’s about rugged individualism? Picking the road less traveled?”

“I don’t mind that reading⁠—”

“I hate it,” I blurt. “Sorry.”

Her dimples pop out again. “That’s fair.”

“It’s really not. It’s a valid interpretation.”

She shrugs. “I think it’s about finding peace with our choices. There’ll always be roads we can’t take. We can either choose to regret the one not taken or celebrate the one that was. Why not celebrate it?”

“But what if the other one would have been better?”

“Not knowing is hard, I agree. You can never know what the other road would have brought. You can only look for meaning in the one you took.”

I swirl my drink around in my cup.

“Frost meant it to be cynical,” I say. “He was making fun of his anxious friend for always belaboring pointless decisions like which path to take when they were going on walks together. ‘But as for that, the passing there had worn them really about the same.’”

“I’ve heard that,” she says. “But that doesn’t change my mind. Wouldn’t we all be happier if we planned to tell ourselves one day that we made the right choice? ‘I shall be telling this with a sigh, somewhere ages and ages hence; I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.’”

“So you think it’s a satisfied sigh? Him deciding now that he’ll look back at this moment one day and be satisfied with his choice?”

“I do. Maybe it’s not about being happy with the choice but being at peace knowing you made the best choice you could at the time. Accepting it. The whole poem is hopeful for me.”

“I think it’s the saddest poem in the world,” I say. “He already knows it’s futile to pick. Whatever he chooses, he’ll regret what he didn’t.”

Georgiana studies me. “If he’s going to regret his choice either way, what can he do?”

“Hold on too tight. Wait until the choice gets taken from him, and then regret that, too.”

A frown tugs at her brow. “That sounds hard.”

“Yeah. It does,” I say. “Frost said the choice was arbitrary. And I’m usually all for authorial intent, but he can’t actually know that.”

She cradles her mug between her hands. “No, he can’t.”

I nod. Tap my thumb against the table. Let my brain catch up. “So,” I say. “Who thinks what about the poem again, and does Robert Frost agree with either of us?”

The lights turn off—they must be on a timer—but it’s like a period marking the end of a sentence. The streetlights illuminate us inside the booth well enough that I can see Georgiana’s face at the same time that I hear her breathy chuckle.

“I guess that’s our sign,” I tell her, and she chuckles.

“I guess so.”

“Will you be here tomorrow?” I ask.

“Yes.”