Brad Halstead had never heard of the band Fountains of Wayne, but when he heard their song "Stacey's Mom" playing in his teenage daughter's bedroom memories of a wonderful time in his life flooded back.
About fifteen years ago Stacey Keen was his best friend. There weren't many kids their age that lived close by, so they gravitated together much of the time. She was something of a tomboy and they played around the neighborhood together in the long, hot summers of their late teenage years. Stacey had short blonde hair and always wore torn jeans, worn tennis shoes and heavy metal t-shirts.
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"Thank god that's over," said Liz as we tidied away the presentation material.
"Hey, you were great," I said. "Never missed a beat." And she hadn't. Liz Morton, from head office. Fortyish, maybe ten or twelve years older than me, but slim and attractive in her tailored suit.
She smiled. "Nor did you, on the technical queries."
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It was hot as hell, and I still had three more lawns to mow. It was the drawback to making most of my summer money doing yardwork. Graduation was only a few weeks behind me, and college and its expenses loomed ominously over my head. Fortunately, I was going to a local school, but I still had a commute, and books were going to kill me.
Anyhow, I'd started early that morning, as soon as the dew was out of the grass, but after two yards already, it was just after noon and the sun pounded down.
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I was still getting used to being on my own. My wife and I had divorced almost a year ago and when she packed up and moved out, it was the first time in many years that I had no one else to think of as I planned whatever it is that I would be doing. I had been in a funk recently but could feel that time had begun to work its healing magic and I was getting ready to renter life amongst the living.
I had bought my wife out as part of the settlement and managed to keep the house but unfortunately since the divorce, I had lost interest in the yard and it showed.
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"So?" Jason asked as he rolled up at the bottom of the drive on his mountain bike.
Robert held up his phone, showing the message from his older brother with two specifically capitalized words in an otherwise innocuous message — care package.
"Sweet. Let's roll."
The pair set out on the gravel road, riding even deeper into the middle of nowhere. Living out in the country certainly had its disadvantages, but there were a few things that helped offset the boredom and inconvenience. One of them was the lack of prying eyes.
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I suppose you could say it all started just before I reached my 40th birthday. I knew that I still felt the same inside as I did in my early 20's, but now needed to prove it to myself, and the world!
I had recently called time on my marriage to a man who had constantly belittled me, refused to let me wear make-up, lose my baby weight, or wear fashionable clothes and worst of all had tried to cut me off from all my friends and family.
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Sandra shook her head and sighed as she listened to her daughter talking to her boyfriend in the next room.
"You have got to be kidding me, right?"
"C'mon Jen, it'll be fun. Ron and Angela and Wendy and Greg will be there."
"A stupid protest? Please."
"We could end up on T.V."
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"They are incorrigible."
Liz sighed as her sister, Mandy, started again on the same complaining track about Liz's twin sons.
"William and Benedict have no manners and I honestly think they're immoral, I said so to Donald last time we spoke and he agreed."
Donald was Mandy's quiet husband and it was difficult for Liz to picture him getting animated over such an issue.
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Not a soul in the long hallways of the University on a Saturday afternoon. I was trying to figure out where this office area had been. I opened doors on the sides, and found one leading to a cluster of offices which could have been the right place. I was probably going further than I should have, when I heard a voice behind me.
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The sound of crickets and cicadas sounded loud in the dark of the woods. An owl hooted and somewhere in the distance, a deer crashed through the bush. It was just past nightfall and Joshua Gardner was on his way home from his grandfather's farm after helping bale and put up hay. He was sweaty and itchy from the grass and hauling bales up into the old barn loft.
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