When the coffee stopped dripping, she poured herself a mug and filled a bowl with fruity-flavored junk cereal. “It says fruit right there on the box, so it has to be good for me.” She remembered telling her mother that more than once, and every time, Ruth would just shake her head and laugh. While Steve ate, she opened her laptop and researched the small town where she would head up the vet clinic if she chose to go to the land down under. From what she could see, it didn’t look much different from the place on the television show. Leaving the actors out, she closed her eyes and thought about the countryside, the problems, and all the other factors that came from living so far away from a city.

“Am I ready for that kind of heat and living?” she asked herself. “But it would be the adventure of a lifetime, and if I didn’t like it, I could resign…”

She picked up her phone and called Rodney.

He answered with “Hey, did you already make up your mind? Which one are you taking? We’ve got a pot going in the office here, and I’ve got money on Australia.”

“I haven’t made up my mind, but tell me more about the position in Australia,” she said.

“Aha, so you are leaning that way. They’ll pay for your flight, and there’s a small apartment about forty yards behind the clinic that will be yours free of charge. You will have to sign a two-year contract. I had my lawyer look it over, and it can’t be broken. If you don’t stay two years, then you have to give all your salary back to them. That’s what made me decide on the job in Las Vegas. That and the fact that my wife took one look at that apartment and said there was no way she was raising our two daughters over there for two years. Other than that, it’s a good deal, especially for someone who is single and has no family,” Rodney said.

“Okay,” Stevie said. “I’m still weighing the pros and cons. I’ll let you know by Monday.”

“Fair enough,” Rodney said, “but I will tell you this. If Darlene had been willing to go, I would have taken the job. I’ve always been interested in that part of the world.”

“And besides all that, you really would like to win that bet they’ve got going at the office about which place I’m going to choose, wouldn’t you?” Stevie asked.

“How did you know?” Rodney laughed out loud.

“I know all of you,” Stevie answered.

Rodney chuckled again and said, “I’ll look to hear from you sometime over the weekend or Monday at the latest.”