Leap - chapter one

                                        1


          It was Sunday afternoon, five days before Thanksgiving, and Grace was sure she’d made a mistake. Returning to this place, under the circumstances, and after she had fought to avoid the ‘tradition’ this year, was something she didn’t quite understand.  But she was here, and she knew she couldn’t really be anywhere else at the moment.  Not really, this was family week.
          Every since she was six years old, her family had spent the week of Thanksgiving in the Piney Woods of east Texas. For fourteen years they had made three-hour drive north from Kingwood to the Pine Creek Lodge, where they rented the Family House, a two-story, three-bedroom house set apart from the main lodge on a secluded hilltop. Equipped with a full kitchen, a laundry room and satellite television, it had all the convenient comforts of home, only cozier.
          As she maneuvered her car up the winding gravel drive leading from the lodge to the house, she thought about the magical effect this place had always had on her family. This was the only place where her father would give up his pager and cell phone and do nothing more stressful than channel surfing. At the Family House, he would play board games with his daughters, or lounge on the couch with a good mystery. Here he had been able to let go of the hectic demands of his profession and have fun. He stopped being Dr. Alfred Rockwell, Chief of Cardiology, and was just Dad.
          Grace got out of the car and faced the back of the Family House.  Same blue paint with white trim, concrete-slab patio, same green plastic lawn chairs bought from the local Wal-Mart and replaced every couple of years, and the same big gray trashcan.  She moved stiffly across the driveway, taking one hesitant step at a time, white chalky gravel crunching loudly under foot. She reached out and stirred the tin wind chime hanging from the patio awning as she walked by.  The sound was like laughter, playful and comforting, yet somehow out of place on this gray November day. 
          The Family House was the same, nothing had changed, it was constant and solid.  She remembered this place having a calming effect on her mother as well.  It was here that she tried to make up for working full-time and then some.  She would run herself ragged cooking lavish meals and performing the domestic tasks usually done by hired help at home. Here she took the time to teach her daughters to cook, sort laundry, and fold socks. There had been no late night meetings, no clients calling her away for the weekend.  She had no public relations to deal with, just family relations. When she was here she was no longer Delores Rockwell Entrepreneur, she was just Mom.
        The memories were flooding in now, as she had suspected they might, but the vividness with which they played across the screen of her mind caught her by surprise.  Then again it only made sense; The Family House was the place where most of her fondest memories had been born.  She loved this house, loved the magical way it had seemed to help them be a family.
Another memory surfaced and she saw herself leaning over a game of Monopoly laid out on the dining table, with Anna across from her, laughing so hard at their dad’s attempt to sing along with a Fuel video on TV, that Coke had spewed through her nose. 
          Even Grace was better here, a better sister, a better daughter.  This place had always been so good for them all, taking them away from the responsibilities and distractions of everyday life, and forcing them to really see one another.  Yet now, as she stood with the key in the door, she was scared to go inside. 
        This was a mistake, she thought for the hundredth time, I should have cancelled the reservation. When she had come across the confirmation last week, a postcard with an autumn view of the lodge, among a pile of mail at home, she had made an impulsive decision, and now she regretted it. She was afraid to go inside, afraid memories of her family would overtake her and melt away the control she had fought so hard to maintain.
          She took in a deep breath, turned the key in the lock, and pushed open the door. She could almost hear her dad call out “Honey we’re home,” just as he had done for the last 14 years.  She could hear her mom, “After we get the car unpacked, then we’ll be home.”  And Anna yelling, “I get the upstairs room,” a right she had claimed three years ago when Grace left home to attend Texas A&M. 
          She could not believe that they were gone. The Family House was empty, no family to fill it with warmth and laughter, no family to bring it to life.
        She was alone.