On the day her sister died, at the instant Joy swerved the Plymouth to avoid the oncoming car and drove off the highway, Joy’s life flashed before her eyes.

She tasted the Kermit-green Popsicle Taryn shared with her the day they met. She felt Judy’s silliness when she made it fun to eat broccoli. She felt her parents’ frustration when she rebelled against the rules. She also tasted her own fear as she sat behind the wheel of Judy’s car, scared witless to drive, but more afraid of her punishment should they not get home before their parents.

Joy isn’t in a life-threatening situation and she didn’t have a near-death experience. But her life flashed before her eyes again when Dylan walked into the airport terminal and the glass doors closed behind him. Only this time she didn’t see her past. She saw her future: her wedding with Mark, their anniversaries, and the miscarriages that would follow. She saw years of heartache and unhappiness because she’d been determined to fulfill Judy’s goals and live out her sister’s dreams before her own. And she saw Dylan, the pain of his demise palpable.

Joy didn’t like anything she saw.

I don’t want that life.

With the scenes still at the forefront of her mind, Joy trembles with emotion from events that have yet to happen. Her knees almost buckle onto the concrete sidewalk outside the airport terminal because that future feels so real.

In the first vignette that flashed in her head, she’d seen herself getting into her car and driving away from JFK. Dylan had just left for his flight to London, and she already desperately missed him, regretting the decision she’d made. Hating the deal they’d struck in the heat of the moment—meet at the diner in ten years—a deal she suspects will affect every decision she makes going forward. It will ripple through her future, wreaking havoc with her relationships, influencing her choices because she will never learn to let go of the past until it’s too late.

Joy fists her hands, willing her body to stop shaking. Determination and resolve flow through her veins, igniting a fresh fire. No more regrets. No more overanalyzing the past. No more living someone else’s life.

She needs to live her best life.

She doesn’t want to move to New York. She doesn’t want to work in a lab making products she doesn’t believe in. And while she loves Mark, he’ll make a fabulous husband and devoted father to a wonderful woman who’ll love him back in kind. That woman isn’t her.

Joy’s best life is back in California. And the person she wants in that life just walked out of it.

Do something spontaneous.

The last item on Judy’s Route 66 Bucket List rips through her head.