“The timing is right, Carter. The stars are aligned. I guess you can say it was meant to be.”
“It was meant to be,” said Carter.
Brenda gave him that sideways darting glance as if his joke quota was more than filled. “Oh, turn down Adeline Street. My street is just off of that.”
Carter did as instructed, and they soon were slowly creeping the car down Horse Wagon Road. The car was merely rolling. Carter had pushed cars faster. However, they needed to do the slow movement before they got to the house, so they could get a good eyeful from a distance. They wanted to know if anyone was home. Maybe they could see some stirring. Maybe her mother was weeding the garden in the front or back yard. Maybe dad was cutting the grass, or maybe they could just see her parents inside the house.
What they saw was a big fat nothing. It was a weekday, so perhaps her parents were at work. Actually, perhaps they didn’t even live there anymore. The houses were far enough apart where the neighbors hardly knew each other. They were never really close with their neighbors, but Brenda always recalled the neighbors being weird. This weirdness worked hand-in-hand with unfriendliness. They wanted no part of them, but Brenda was paying for it now, because she needed to first find out if her parents still lived there.
“Pull the car over once you pass the house,” Brenda said.
Carter did as Brenda directed. They both got out of the car and walked around to the back of the house. The back of the blue ranch style house had a small back yard with woods beyond the yard. They shuffled from window to window, peeking in to see if they noticed any identifiers. They saw nothing to identify her family… not even a family photo. The inside was as neat as a pin, which was an indicator to Brenda that her parents still lived there. She did remember her mother constantly cleaning.
Carter began checking the windows to see if any were left unlocked, but all of them were locked. The sliding glass door also was locked.
“Hold on,” said Brenda. She had a recollection. “They used to keep the spare key in the shed.” They made their way to the shed in the backyard, but it was locked with a padlock. Carter was able to pry open the window of the shed, and crawl into it. “Make your way to the back shelf and feel around for a key. They always kept it under a coffee can.”
Carter made his way blindly through the dark shed. He felt around the back shelf and found the coffee can. He lifted it up with one hand and discovered a key with his other hand. “Got it!”
“Yes,” said Brenda. “Hand it over to me and be careful not to drop it.”
Carter reached his hand out the window and Brenda retrieved the key, and then helped balance Carter as he made his way back out of the shed window. They moved to the back of the house, but the key did not work. Brenda tried every which way, but to no avail.
“Try the front,” said Carter.
They hustled around to the front of the house, and Brenda stuck the key into the door handle. The key did not fit, but when she turned it upside down, the door opened and they were staring at the inside of the house. Once inside, Brenda led the way on this silent tour, still unaware if the house was occupied at this time. It very much seemed to be unoccupied, but they didn’t care to throw caution to the wind.
Carter followed Brenda as they made their way from room to room. The smell of the home was the smell Brenda remembered growing up. If another family was living there, then that family would import their own smell, and Brenda would know immediately that her family did not live there anymore.
Into the kitchen they went, and Brenda began poking around the drawers of the kitchen, while Carter was less intrusive, eyeballing the message board on the wall, and noticing loose papers on the counter. “Paul and Phyllis Raycroft,” Carter read aloud. “Well, we certainly have the right place.”
“Yes… we sure do! I want to see what they’ve been up to the last few years. They kept a file drawer in their bedroom. Follow me.”
Carter followed Brenda into the master bedroom, and the metal file cabinet next to their bed still sat in the same place. Brenda ran over to the cabinet and ripped open the top drawer. Carter watched as her fingers worked through the tabs looking for a heading to pique her interest. “Here’s a tab labelled Brenda and it’s the thickest file in here.” She extracted the file folder with two hands and brought it to the bed. “Let’s see what we have here. They used to forbid me from looking in this file, so I never did.”
She grabbed the top document and noticed that it was an old report card. She had no interest in past grades, so she flipped it over and moved on to the next document. The next couple of items were old school papers that her mother had saved. Flip and flip. This might be something that would interest her much further down the road, but it had no use for her now. She began flipping faster, since they needed to get out before her parents got home.
She found an old doctor’s report. Apparently her parents brought her to a psychiatrist when she was eight years old. She vaguely remembered, scanned it with her eyes, and flipped it over before Carter saw it. She just thought it wasn’t something he needed to know. Hell, she barely knew. Then came the police reports. Those she distinctly remembered. All the times her parents called the cops on her. She was surprised that the folder was not thicker than it was.
“I certainly was a handful for my parents. I can’t say that I wasn’t. It’s no wonder they wanted me out.”
Carter had heard the history many times over, and could only smile at Brenda’s reminiscing. He wasn’t there, but Brenda agreed that it was as bad as her parents made it out to be. Brenda read under her breath about the reasons for all of the police visits, but Carter could hear her. The bottom line is that Brenda was unruly and disrespectful because she didn’t want to pretend that she was not a woman named Shirley, who lived in Boulder, Colorado. She was ready to burst, and that she did, several times, until she got her wish, and found herself on the outside. She was going to show them, though. She was going to go to Boulder, Colorado to find out who she really was… find herself.
She slowed down with the next document. Brenda pulled a letter out from the folder. “Odd,” she said. “This is a letter from my father to my mother and it’s dated last year.”
“What’s it say?”
Brenda pulled the handwritten letter out of the envelope and began to read:
Dear Phyllis,
I miss you. I know we’ve had a tough time of it and have not been getting along since Brenda left, but I still wanted to let you know that I miss you terribly. Losing our daughter was the worst thing we’ve ever had to go through as a couple, and I know as well as you do that it is the root cause of our problems. I haven’t been the same since, and you haven’t been the same since, and therefore our marriage hasn’t been the same since. I’m sitting here in my little studio apartment missing you. I’ve been here for about four months now, but it seems like an eternity. I miss our home. I miss our lives together. I miss our family. I don’t remember what it’s like to be single. I don’t like it. All I do is think of you. I just want our family back.
Carter could see the raw emotions taking a toll on Brenda’s face as she wiped both eyes with her thumb. Then she continued to read the letter her father wrote to her mother:
I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve been awake over the loss of our daughter. Brenda was apparently possessed, or something. That lady may have been a lunatic, but a lot of what she said seemed right on. It was like a scary reality check for us regarding our daughter. Everything Brenda had claimed as a child is what that psychic mentioned. She was so dead on that it scared me. It was our daughter she was talking about. That’s why I threatened her. I was angry. I didn’t mean for that psychic to skip town. She may have been scared, but you know that I would never have hurt her. She was just doing
her job. I only said those things out of anger and frustration. Ever since Brenda was a little girl, she had this obsession with some lady she claimed to have been many moons ago. I was just expecting the psychic to set the record straight, not confirm it! Damn her! I just wanted our daughter back. Instead, it backfired. I lost my daughter, then I lost my wife. Please call or write back soon. Goodnight my sweet Phyllis. Goodnight.
Love,
Paul
Brenda put the letter slowly back into its container, and broke down. Carter rushed to her aid as he wrapped his arms around her. “Brenda, it’s not your fault. You were a child. You apparently had memories of a past life since you were a child. That’s not something you did wrong. You can’t beat yourself up over that.”
“My parents are now divorce over it.” Her voice was breaking.
“But they’re not divorced because of something you did wrong. They are divorced because they were unable to come to grips with the reality of their child. Nobody is really at fault here. It’s just one of those things.”
Brenda reached back into the file and grabbed another letter, written about a week later:
Dear Phyllis,
I’m still missing you, but I’m working a lot and that helps me cope. I keep having a dream that Brenda one day returns. I know we had to kick her out of the house. At the time, we thought it was the right thing to do. Maybe we are second guessing that move, but I got to the point where I did not know my daughter anymore. She was acting out so much, pretending to be so much older. She needed to see if she could really make it on her own in Colorado like she claimed so many times since childhood. It really got to the point where we needed to let her go. We just forced the issue when we set her free. I remember that day when I told her that she cannot come back to our house if she felt strongly enough that she needed to go and find herself in Colorado. I told her that she could not come back until she did so. She never did come back. Maybe she didn’t know that we would have taken her back no matter what. Then that damn psychic confirmed that everything Brenda had claimed was true. By then it was too late to get her back, and we never heard from her again. It breaks my heart every day. Goodnight my sweet Phyllis. Goodnight.
Love,
Paul
Brenda reinserted the letter into the envelope and grabbed another.
Dear Phyllis,
I have some bad news to deliver to you. I did not want to call you to tell you this because it’s something that would be easier for me to write. I wanted to let you know that I am sick. I found out this morning that I have cancer of the pancreas. The doctor has given me four months to live. I don’t want you to worry, although I’m not sure that you would, but I wanted to at least let you know what happened to me in case Brenda ever returned and asked about me.
Brenda threw the letter down onto the bed and covered her face with her hands, crying out loud in anguish. After a couple of minutes, she began to speak through tears. “I never thought that I would never see my father again. I can envision him now when I think about the fishing trip he took me on with what he called a father-daughter outing. I remember him mowing the lawn and fixing everything that needed fixing around the house. He was always smiling. Everybody liked him, but I always remember my mother yelling at him, and he would make a goofy face at me when she was yelling. He was the easier of the two, but I know that I was not the easiest child to raise. Then in my teens… oh my God… my teens… I know that I turned angry, and I think it may have been me turning into my mother… as if it was a learned behavior. Unfortunately, I took it out on my father too, and at that time, we grew apart. I thought that I knew everything… much more than my parents ever did.”
“Brenda, that’s normal teenage angst. Every teenager goes through that. Don’t think you’re special.” Carter grinned and raised his eyebrows as a way to convey that she did not do anything out of the ordinary.
Brenda stopped sulking for a split second to squeeze out a quick laugh. “I know, Carter, but I think that I had a little extra angst in me. I just feel awful about it, and now I’m too late, and I’m more like my father now.”
Carter took the initiative and grabbed the next letter in the stack. He began reading in silence while Brenda pushed the tears off her face with both hands. “Brenda, you’ve got to see this letter.”
Brenda stopped wiping her tears and lifted her head up. She grabbed the letter from Carter’s hand and began reading:
Dear Phyllis,
I’m sorry that I caused you great concern over my health. I just wanted to get your attention. I know that it was a little over the top, but it was nice to finally get a letter back from you. The phone call was even better. I’ll always love you and hope you’ll forgive me. I was so desperate to be in touch with you that I went to these uncalled-for extremes, and I don’t blame you for never wanting to talk to me again. I know that you probably just get these letters from me and rip them up before or after reading them. Makes a good fire starter for the fireplace. Anyway, hope you have a good life and maybe our paths will cross again someday, even though we no longer have any ties.
Brenda put the letter down to her lap and her mouth remained open. “Oh my God! He’s still alive! I’m happy and I’m pissed at the same time. He is probably still out there.”
“He must have really loved your mother.”
“But she was so mean to him.”
“But I’m sure there were good times to go along with the bad times. That’s what a relationship is. There’s no such thing as all good. If it’s all good… then it’s not all honest.”
For the first time since arriving in that room, Brenda found her smile. “Look at you, Carter… Mr. Relationship expert. Wow… I’m impressed!”
Carter smiled proudly, yet he was a bit embarrassed, feeling sappy and very much in touch with his feminine side. At least he knew that he had earned a few points for bedtime. They got the rest of the papers back into the file and returned them to the file cabinet. They had the right home and the right family, and it appeared that her parents were alive and well.
She wanted to see her parents, but after breaking into their home, which was apparently her mother’s home now, she thought that maybe it was best if they moved on out of there and returned another time. She got gun-shy and suddenly wanted to leave, before they were caught. Everything was put back where it belonged, including the key. It was as if nobody had been to the house while her mother was out… nobody at all. They returned to the car and got the hell out of Dodge.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The last leg of their journey took them back to Boulder, Colorado. It was a trip of ups and downs, but mostly downs. They needed to get back to their lives, since their leash was two weeks for both of their jobs. They needed a progress report on Angie, and they were curious if Charlie would pay them any future visits at Carter’s bedside.
Through Nebraska they sailed, and back into Colorado under the cloak of darkness, but lit up by a bright moon. The cool spring evening was good for keeping them awake through the long stretches of highway. It was Thursday afternoon by the time they made it back to Boulder, and they were ready to sleep until Saturday.
They almost made good on their exhaustion prediction when they awoke on Friday afternoon. It was nearly twelve hours of slumber, but at least they did not have to return to work until Monday. There were no Blankenship’s in the house. The first thing they did was shower, and then they thought it would be a good idea to check on Angie in the hospital. After a quick tuna sandwich on stale bread, which they toasted to compensate for the staleness, they were en route to the hospital.
As they walked into the ICU, they made their way down the usual path to Angie’s room. It seemed as if they had walked out of the room and walked right back in, becau
se nothing had changed. Angie hadn’t moved, the monitors continued blipping away, and the ventilator kept her on earth, somewhat.
“Hello Angie,” said Carter.
“Angie, we’re back to check on you,” Brenda said.
Carter grabbed a large, tan wooden chair from the side of the room and pulled up a seat on the left side of Angie. He scooted in close and reached for her hand, careful not to dislodge any of the tubes that were passing through the top of it. He thought that he felt a slight squeeze in return.
“I think she responded,” he said.
“Are you certain?”
“I don’t know for sure, but it felt like she responded to my touch.” He looked back at Angie and said, “Angie, squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”
Carter waited for a few solid minutes for a hand movement, but he got nothing. “Angie… can you hear me?”
“Angie,” Brenda called from the other side. “Angie, please give us a sign if you can hear us.”
When nothing happened, Carter and Brenda assumed that nothing happened the first time. Perhaps it was wishful thinking on behalf of Carter. Then the light flickered ever so slightly above them. Carter and Brenda’s bewildered eyes connected.
“Angie, do that again,” said Brenda.
The lights flickered a second time.
“What do you think, Brenda?”
“It’s hard to say.”
Carter looked at Angie. He saw nothing in her facial expression. The monitors blipped at the same steady pace that they did two weeks prior. Nothing had changed. It seemed that nothing ever would change, and Carter began to feel hopeless and desperate. “Angie, I just lost a close friend of mine named Charlie. He was killed last week, but right after he passed… he visited me while I was sleeping and had a message for me. I didn’t get the complete message, Angie… but I got more out of him than I can get out of you. Maybe you can hear me, but just can’t give me what I’m looking for.”
Desert Son Trilogy: Desert Son, Wayward Soul, Spiritual Intervention (Books 1-3) Page 33
