So, as Gram and Mimi dug their phones out of their purses, Brandon and I headed over to the carnival rides, and we

had

a

blast!

We rode the Zipper and the Tilt-a-Whirl.

We drove go-carts and played carnival games.

We jumped in the bounce house and raced down the inflatable slides.

And when we had done it all, I wished we could start over and do it all again, but it was almost time to go to the airport to pick up Mom.

“Well, the only thing left is for us to settle our bet,” Brandon said, and we both looked at each other and smiled.

“To the Ferris wheel!” Brandon said as he put his hand up in the air and pointed in that direction.

And as we stood in line, sharing the box of Lemonheads we’d won playing Skee-Ball, I felt about as awesome as a person can feel.

We were both wearing our Team Road Trip shirts. Mimi had washed them out in the bathroom sink for us the night before. She thought we should wear them on our last day of the trip, and she was right.

And just like the secondhand-store bowling shirts were the perfect thing to wear on the last day of our trip, the Ferris wheel was the perfect way to end our time at the Borlandsville Fun in the Sun County Fair and conclude this out-of-control, widow’s bucket list karaoke Bible-delivery road trip.

As I enjoyed the view while the Ferris wheel circled, I thought about how funny it was that it took a trip like the one we’d just been on to:

Have the chocolate chip cookies that came from all my failures win a prize.

Discover something Mom and I can do together that we can both feel proud of.

Find out how cool my grandma really is.

And the bonus part of the trip was meeting someone like Brandon and realizing that the people I so quickly label as “just a little too cool” can actually make pretty great friends.

Now, I don’t know if you’re thinking this or not. But I sort of wonder, that at this point, in this collection of letters, because this is the last one, and I’ve set you up with this really sentimental ride on the Ferris wheel, that you might be thinking that I’m going to finish with sort of a semi-surprising bang.

(And no, I don’t mean that you’re thinking something really bad happened, like the Ferris wheel malfunctioned, and Brandon and I got stuck at the top for hours and hours or maybe even days and days. Although with all the things that have happened to us so far, I guess something like that would not necessarily be out of the question.)

But that’s not the kind of thing I’m talking about.