Pike’s Island was among over two hundred islands that were scattered throughout the Gulf of Maine’s Casco Bay, a small area of water in the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean. Pike’s was located a few miles off the coast and was one of the four islands that was inhabited year-round. Pike’s Island was the largest and had a population of approximately two thousand people in the winter, but swelled to over six thousand residents during the summer.
Most people, including those living in New England, didn’t know that this small group of islands even existed, let alone that people lived on them and had to rely on boats to get to and from civilization.
My family and I ended up in this cold, remote place after a tragic set of circumstances drove us here. I was ten years old when my father, while on his way home from work, was killed instantly after he was hit, head on, by a drunken driver. The male driver was an illegal immigrant, had no license, no insurance and died a week later.
My father was a supervisor at a manufacturing plant that made engine parts for helicopters. The company was a small, family-owned business and after my father died, my family no longer received any of his benefits. Fortunately, my mom had a job as the head librarian at the local community college in our small Massachusetts town and we were able to get health insurance and other benefits through her.
I was lucky because, even though I was young when he died, I still had memories of my dad. My poor brother, James, however, who was not yet three when he passed, was too young to recall very much about him. My recollection of the accident and the night the policemen showed up on our doorstep remained somewhat foggy. I don’t know if I blocked out these terrible memories or if I, too, was not old enough to fully remember them.
What I can recall from the days following his death was that there seemed to be hundreds of people who filtered in and out of our home and even more who showed up at his funeral to pay their respects. My mother felt that James was too little and would be disruptive during the service, so he stayed back home with a sitter. Despite standing as close to my mother’s side as I could, even burying my face into the folds of her black woolen skirt, I still felt afraid in the big, cold cathedral as each of the mourners passed and expressed their deepest sympathies.
My father didn’t have any living relatives close by. He was an only child and both his mother and father had died long before I was born. That made my mom, brother and me his only survivors.
It was clear that everyone adored my father, especially me, his only daughter. He called me his princess all the time and when he really wanted to butter me up to help him with some unpleasant chore, he’d call me Willie.
“Willie? Where are you, sweetie?” he’d called. “Come and help your old man with the trash.”
Reluctantly I’d emerge from my hiding place feeling guilty if I didn’t pitch in.
“I don’t know how our family of four can generate so much garbage,” he’d say as he dragged the cans toward the curb. “Baby James barely eats at all, and what he does eat ends up in his diaper anyway.”
My father would roll his merry, blue eyes, slap the side of his head and act all surprised.
“That’s it,” he’d say with a smile as he plugged his nose. “I’ll betcha that half of this trash is your brother’s dirty, stinky diapers!”
We’d both laugh as we finished up our trash duty. Afterwards, my father, on cue, would stop and stoop forward. I’d take a running leap onto his back and wrap my skinny limbs around him before beginning our journey up the long driveway into our warm and cozy, trash-less home.
• • •
My mom and dad didn’t have a lot of money and the meager life insurance policy that my dad did have mostly went to pay for the cost of his burial. My mom was able to keep up with the mortgage payments, but sometimes there was little else to spend at the end of the month once food was bought and other bills were paid.
As hard as it was to have lost my dad, we were consoled by the fact that we were able to remain in the house he treasured so much. He’d renovated most of it with his own two, calloused hands after he and my mother purchased the three-bedroom Cape at a very low price. My mother was afraid the walls would cave in and fall down around us the moment we moved in, but my dad loved the fixer-upper and promised to make it as good as new for her.
My dad built beautiful oak bunk beds for James, even though he was still in a crib, and an ornate dollhouse, with a working chandelier and tiny drawbridge for me. It was no coincidence that my dollhouse resembled more of an elegant castle than a comfy home as he made it especially for me, his princess.
As comforting as it was to stay in our house, it wouldn’t be forever as I had hoped. Toward the end of my freshman year of high school, the community college where my mother worked downsized their staff due to a decline in enrollment. And because my mother was paid the most in her department, she was let go first.
I had never seen my mother cry so much except after my father had died and couldn’t have realized at the time that this would now be the norm for most days to follow. I didn’t know how to help or what I could do to comfort her. I gently patted her shoulder as she sat at the kitchen table and cried over her cup of coffee and the want-ad section of our local newspaper.
“Everything’s gonna be all right, Mom,” I tried to reassure her. I was only fifteen years old, but so desperately wanted to believe it, too. She touched my hand, but never looked up. I know she didn’t want me to see her tears.
After months of failed attempts at finding a job that would keep us in our house, my mother had no choice but to put it up for sale and make plans for moving out. The problem, however, was that we had no place to go. With no job, no income and very little coming in from unemployment, our choices were limited even if we wanted to rent a cheap apartment in our small town. My mother’s parents were older and couldn’t afford to support us. They already were on a fixed income living in their fifty-five and older community. We couldn’t have moved in with them even if we had wanted to. No children were allowed.
After tearful meetings and endless phone calls with my mother’s older brother, Ron, my grandmother arranged for our family to sell our beloved house. Before we knew what hit us, we found ourselves packing up our lives and saying good-bye to everything we knew and loved before relocating to my uncle’s summerhouse, far away, on an island, in the middle of nowhere.
CHAPTER
THREE
In the Middle of Nowhere (Willow's Journey #1) Page 2
