CHAPTER 18 -

Chapter 18

The nearest town to the prison is a small village called “Dunlap.” That’s where Jake and his brother, Kar, had grown up and where they still lived. Dunlap was the type of place that looked like it had been frozen in time a few decades back.

Everything is just old enough to be outdated but not quite old enough to be antique. Nothing is hustled. There is absolutely no bustle. The roads are two lanes – no lines necessary.

Having been raised in New York City and L.A., I grew up accustomed to busy streets, expensive cars, loud people and an excess of just about everything. Every luxury was at the tip of my fingers.

In Dunlap, there are two restaurants and three banks. They have a grocery store and a gas station. The pawn shop is on Main Street but whether or not it is open is hit or miss – depending on the mood of the owners – Jane and Kai Danners.

It’s hard to make Jake understand just how much I adore this town. I love the old buildings, the junkyard, the houses with chipping paint on the shutters. I love the little old ladies shuffling into the diner for breakfast.

To me, this is a place straight out of a storybook.

Jake finds this very amusing. “One man’s trash…” he says and laughs every time I point out some new, small, odd, old, thing about the town.

When I discover the library, I never want to leave. It smells just the way that an old library should. The books are all dusty and the shelves are piled high with titles varying from how-to and horror. I love the order of the Dewey decimal system and the way that the scratchy rug rubs my calves when I sit down in my shorts. I love absolutely everything about it.

Jake and I spend hours wandering around the area in the car or taking strolls. We go on date nights into the bigger towns in the area sometimes. But, most of our courtship happens right there in that dingy little town.

My ability to see the beauty in just about everything is a gift born of the tragedies of my life. I also love all things old and quaint and small because my mother had been from a town just like this. She spoke of it often and showed me photos. Durham, Virginia – that was her hometown - with a population of about 250 when she was growing up.

“There is nothing at all wrong,” she used to say very seriously and almost sternly, “with being small or unknown.” Of course, hearing this come from Alice de Gaulle seemed counterintuitive but no one who knew her would have been surprised to hear her teach me such a thing.

My mother’s star had simply been too bright for Durham. She had never planned on leaving. Her high school sweetheart had proposed senior year and by the following autumn, while the rest of the girls were getting ready for college, my mom was awaiting her first child.

“I was disappointed that I would be becoming a wife and a mom before all of my friends. I was sad to think that I had embarrassed my family by getting pregnant out of wedlock but I was always excited about my baby.”

The shotgun wedding was held one week exactly from the day that they found out. She was married before senior year was over.

At 10 years younger than I am now, she was preparing a home and a life for a family in the tiny town of Durham. To imagine that she was destined for something else so incredibly grand is almost hard to imagine when you look at the old black and white photos.

I am 28 years old and often feel both like an old woman and a child. Somehow, I have seen too much and not enough all at once. I still eat cereal for dinner, but I always brush my teeth before bed.

Jake loves to hear stories about my mother’s childhood and early life in Virginia. “It is so hard to even think of Alice de Gaulle in an apron, barefoot and pregnant, in a tiny house in Virginia.” He shakes his head in amazement.

“My mother was – is – a fascinating woman.” I get so angry at myself when I talk about her in the past tense lately. She is not dead. Yet. But, the mom that I knew is gone.

Jake is a nice guy. He can tell I seem a bit upset so he changes the subject. This is one of the many things that I like about him.

By the time I realize who he really is, I’ll see his charisma and chivalry for what it is but, in those first months, all was a dream.