Right Turn

        We walk down the alley in the early morning, sidestepping puddles that lay like deformed polkadots on the wet asphalt. We need to turn left down the Speedway, but there’s a lagoon between us and the next street, smooth and uncrossable, reflecting the sky back at us like a taunt.
        “Guess we’ll have to take the long way around,” I say, and turn right.
        Behind me, she groans, knowing this will make her late for work. She follows my lead as I approach the next obstacle, a smaller puddle blocking the pathway we need to go down. I start maneuvering my way around it, and that’s when I find it, the rainbow in the puddle. I look up to see it reflected in the sky.
        “What?” she asks as she nearly runs into me. Then she sees it too, and says, “Oh. Oooooh.”
        We stand there for a long moment in the bright blue silence, staring at the double rainbow. I silently thank this leftover rain for reminding me that wrong turns often turn out to be the right ones. Then we carefully climb over the puddle and start down the pathway.