“Yes, she was! With her doll.” The word doll was said with as much disdain and disgust as a seven-year-old could muster.
“Dolly was not touching you! You have cooties!”
“Yes, she was!”
“Was not!”
“Eww, gross! Mom, she’s sticking her tongue out at me, and she was eating Goldfish!”
“Then just don’t look at her, Trevor.”
Sara’s knuckles turned white as she grasped the steering wheel tighter and attempted to tune her children out.
What am I doing?
The first answer that came to mind was that she must be having a mid-life crisis, but since she was way too young for that, she tried to come up with another explanation.
As she looked out over the rolling green hills that seemed to go on forever, she mentally backtracked her steps over the past week. Everything that had happened in the last seven days was a blur. Since she’d received a certain large manila envelope by certified mail, her life had taken a Fresh Prince of Bel Air flipped-turned-upside-down twist.
She’d been served with her final divorce papers last Friday and had her house listed and on the market within three hours. Yep. On a whim, she’d decided to sell her house and move away from the only home her children had ever known.
Okay, so that definitely landed in the impetuous column, but not anywhere close to men-with-a-straitjacket-coming-to-get-her territory.
Then, after she’d received a no-contingency, all-cash offer within twenty-four hours, she’d realized she needed to figure out where she planned on moving. It had taken less than ten minutes to decide she was going to relocate to California to be close to her younger brother and sister, whom she’d practically raised.
That was actually a very responsible and mature decision. Not an ounce of koo koo kachoo in it. The kids missed their Uncle Matt and Auntie Shelby, who had both moved, within the past three years, to Hope Falls, California a small town in the Sierra Nevadas. They’d also started their own families. Thanks to Matt and his wife, Amy, her kids had cousins, twin baby girls, Peyton and Paige. Sara wanted the cousins to grow up together.
So far, she was still firmly planted in sane soil.
The break in rational thinking occurred when Sara was packing and came across a picture of her Grandma Betty, who had passed over fifteen years ago. It had been taken when Betty was a teenager. She was sitting in a boat in the middle of a lake with a large castle behind her. Seeing the picture reminded Sara of how her grandma had fixated on that photograph in her final few months. She’d even slept with the picture under her pillow. When she was awake, she’d had it in her hand.
Grandma Betty had told Sara over and over again that the summer she spent in Whisper Lake when she was just sixteen had been the best summer of her life. She’d said Whisper Lake held a special kind of magic that she hoped Sara would experience someday. The magic of love.
Sara had completely forgotten about the photo and the stories, mainly because, at the time, her grandma’s deteriorating health had been so devastating. Not to mention she’d been busy raising Matt and Shelby while trying to grow up herself. Her parents had technically been in the picture. Sara had never had to worry about her and her siblings having a roof over their heads. It was just that they were much more interested in their social lives than the day-to-day care of their three children. So Sara had been the one that made sure homework was done, teeth were brushed, dinner was on the table, lunches were packed, and everyone got to school on time.
Grandma Betty had helped out when she could, and she was more of a support to Sara, Matt, and Shelby than their parents had ever been. That was why losing her had felt more like losing a parent than a grandparent.
When Sara discovered the photograph two days ago, something inside of her had snapped. She’d hired a moving company to pack the rest of her house and move the contents to California. Then, she’d packed their suitcases, picked Trevor up from his last day of school, and set off for Whisper Lake, Illinois. After a stop for Happy Meals, of course.
Sure, she could blame her momentary insanity on the divorce, or the fact that her ex was getting remarried, which she’d known about for months. But deep down, she didn’t believe that was the root cause—the catalyst to her current unstable mental state, maybe, but not solely to blame.
“I gotta go potty,” Charlotte whined as she squirmed in her car seat.
“We’re almost there.” At least according to her navigation. But it was the same navigation that had taken her on a service road and had instructed her to drive across an out-of-service bridge, so she wasn’t putting all her faith in it.
Please, God, let us almost be there.
There was a very good argument to be made that it was because Sara had never gotten to experience a real childhood because she’d had to raise her younger siblings, or a young adulthood thanks to getting pregnant with Trevor the very day that her baby sister had graduated high school. One could conclude this spur-of-the-moment road trip was, in some way, her attempt to reclaim her youth. If that was the case, she was failing miserably.
“Look, a sign!” Trevor shouted.
For the entire trip, he’d announced every sign and big rig they’d driven past. Apparently, signs and trucks were a big deal when you were seven. It had been kind of cute the first day. Now, it was wearing a little thin.
When they were close enough that Sara could read what was written on the sign her son had pointed out, she wanted to stop the car, get out, and do a victory dance. “The Hallelujah Chorus” played in her head. Her prayer had been answered.
“What does it say, Mommy?” Charlotte—who didn’t like to be left out of anything, and who was not at all happy about the fact her brother could read and she couldn’t—asked.
“It says welcome to Whisper Lake.”