Winter Awakening by Elizabeth Lennox
Chapter 1
Returning home.
Some say it never works out. One could never go back and we should leave the past behind us, so that we can keep moving forward. But for Kate, coming home to Cheyenne felt like…slipping into a comfortable sweater and taking a deep breath. One that fit perfectly and warmed the soul.
It was time. Time to come home and deal with the issues from her past. Staring at the two story craftsman house where she’d grown up, and where her mother had fallen and broken her leg in several places, resulting in a trip to the hospital and then the rehab center, she acknowledged that it was past time.
Getting out of her car, Kate looked around, memories from her past flooding over her. Some good. Some bad. When her eyes lit on the refinished Victorian house on the corner, a few of those memories caused a surprising shiver to race down her spine. Delicious shivers. Smiling at some of those memories, she pulled her eyes away with a sigh. Those days of happy, blissful summers, sneaking into that old house on the corner and dreaming about what the future would hold…well, unfortunately, that beautiful fantasy hadn’t materialized.
“Get on with it,” she whispered into the dusky light.
Forcing her feet forward, she flipped the key ring on her finger in a circle, expertly catching the keys on the flip side in the palm of her hand, then repeating the process as she walked up the broken concrete sidewalk towards the house.
Her mother’s house. Her mother had asked her to clean out the house, pack up whatever Kate wanted to keep, and donate everything else. Her mother was “starting over” in Colorado after she got out of the rehab center. New life, new ideas, new surroundings, her mother had said.
The lock to the front door still needed that extra little wiggle before the key could release the lock. And the heavy wood door still squeaked as it swung open. There was no sneaking out through the front door, she’d learned. The hard way, Kate thought with a smile as she reached out and flipped on the lights.
There wasn’t a sudden shock of bright light filling the room. Instead, the surrounding lights emitted a dull, hazy glow. Sixty watt bulbs couldn’t penetrate all the way into the corners of this room. They merely warmed the room, almost humming as the light brushed over the worn, plaid sofa and matching recliner, now fuzzy from use, but still sturdy. The nineteen-seventies style furniture had been made to last, she thought with a sigh. And her mother hadn’t wasted money on replacing something that still “held my body”.
There was a thin layer of dust over the small room as well as her mother’s most recent cross-stitch project resting on the arm of the chair, right where she’d left it every night for as long as Kate could remember.
She pushed the front door closed, the heavy wood groaning in protest, but Kate ignored it. The house was too small to have both a family room and living room, but there was a formal dining room, with her grandmother’s heavy wooden table as well as the cumbersome china cabinet filled with the ugliest china set ever created. Kate had always hated the thick, ugly furniture, preferring cleaner lines and more modern designs. But she acknowledged that the furniture “fit” in the room. The heavy furniture seemed to sigh with acknowledgement that “Yes, we’re still here” and Kate shook her head at her imagination as she moved into the kitchen.
The “earwax gold” walls and dark kitchen cabinets were truly a sight to behold! Gold walls, gold curtains and heavy, dark brown cabinets with the curves and curlicues that had been so “avant guard” back in the seventies. Then her eyes landed on the avocado green fridge. Ugh!
Her mother had even loved the brown dishes with the tan edging! She’d matched those dishes with gold glasses. Pulling open the cabinet, Kate smiled at the neatly stacked glasses. They were made with some sort of weird material that never broke. The military should investigate those gold drinking glasses. Surely the material could be used as a weapon somehow.
In the bottom drawer was…Kate shuddered at the stacks of old plastic containers shoved haphazardly on top of one another. Her mother hadn’t bothered with stackable containers for food storage. She’d used old cool whip or margarine containers. Another way to save money.
Turning away from the memories, she walked up the stairs and peeked into her childhood bedroom. The pink décor was cringe-worthy. The walls and synthetic comforter were bright pink. Her mother had cross-stitched several pillows to match the pink, all of them perfectly lined up on the bed.
That’s when the old Victorian house on the corner caught her eye through the sheer pink curtains.
It had been empty during her high school years. Something had happened to the owner. One day, the elderly man was tending his garden and the next day, he was gone. The house had stood silent and lonely during her high school days, slowly decaying as the weather chipped away at the paint and old, dry wood trim.
Oh, the memories she had of that house! Because it had gone empty for so long, it had been the perfect sanctuary for two teenagers who were…well, looking for some alone time!
What was Mack doing now? Was he still in the Army? Was he still as handsome as he was then? Okay, no, that wasn’t right. Mack had never been handsome. He’d been ruggedly attractive. She’d loved running her fingers over his cheek, feeling the raw scruff of his new beard. Mack had been so irritated when he’d had to start shaving in high school, way ahead of the other guys in their class.
Or was he doing something else? Goodness, how she’d adored him! How she’d ached when she’d gone away to college! And she’d been shattered when he’d told her that he wouldn’t be here when she came home from college. Her heart had broken when she’d gotten that letter. She’d been a sophomore and Mack had been a senior. From the moment they’d looked at each other, he’d been it for her. Mack had been “the one”.
“Stupid dreams,” she hissed, firmly turning her back on that old Victorian house. The memories were bittersweet now, she told herself. Both the good and the bad.
Turning, she left the pink room, refusing to sleep here. Not because the room had a perfect view of the Victorian house, but because…well, because she just didn’t want to sleep in here.
The guest room would be better. It had a bigger bed and she wouldn’t have to see the old house. Not that the memories of that house bothered her anymore. She was over Mack. Had been for a long time!
