John A. Heldt - The Journey

THE JOURNEY

A novel by

John A. Heldt

Copyright 2012 by John A. Heldt

Edited by Aaron Yost

Cover art by LLPix Designs

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, with the exception of brief quotes used in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

NOVELS BY JOHN A. HELDT

Northwest Passage Series

The Mine

The Journey

The Show

The Fire

The Mirror

American Journey Series

September Sky

Mercer Street

Indiana Belle

Class of '59

Hannah's Moon

Carson Chronicles Series

River Rising

Boxed Sets

Northwest Passage: The First Three Novels

American Journey: The First Three Novels

Audiobooks

The Mine

The Journey

The Show

The Fire

The Mirror

September Sky

Mercer Street

Indiana Belle

Class of '59

Follow John A. Heldt online at:

johnheldt.blogspot.com

To Mom and Dad

We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance . Harrison Ford

Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies . Aristotle

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: MICHELLE

Bellevue, Washington Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Michelle stared at the marble memorial and saw dead things.

The dead husband went without saying. The man she had known more than half of her life was literally six feet beneath her designer flats. Or at least his body was. Where his enterprising mind was at the moment was anyone's guess.

But when she looked at the ornate gravestone, the handiwork of a celebrated local artisan and long-time friend, she also saw a dead marriage and dead dreams. She had expected as much. Gravesites, by nature, brought out memories and regret and this one, located atop a forested bluff, was no different. Once the site of many tears, it was now a place for deep reflection.

Scott Richardson hadn't been a bad husband. All things considered, he'd been a pretty good one. The founder of a wildly successful software company, he'd been a good companion and an even better provider for his wife of twenty-four years. But he hadn't been a good life choice .

Michelle "Shelly" Preston Richardson thought about life choices as she stood before the final resting place of the only man, besides her long deceased father, who had ever mattered. She thought about the college she never attended, the career she never pursued, the children she never had. The missed opportunities took on new and greater relevance given the stark reality that now confronted her. She was forty-eight, unfulfilled, and alone.

Michelle thought about the road she had taken and the road she had not. Thirty years earlier Shelly Preston had been happy, healthy, and full of life, a young woman with dreams of becoming a best-selling novelist. Salutatorian of the Class of 1980 at Unionville High School, she had earned a partial scholarship to Yale and an opportunity to participate in its prestigious creative writing program. But Scott had argued that amassing debt to fulfill pie-in-the-sky dreams was not a smart move and Shelly matriculated instead to Oregon State.

Scott had been happy with that decision, very happy. Valedictorian, science whiz, and arguably the brightest kid ever to walk the halls of Unionville High, he had long set his sights on OSU and a career in the promising new field of computer science. In his memorable commencement speech, he had exuded the confidence of a man who knew who he was, what he wanted, and where he was going.

He had been ready for life's great journey. But it was not a journey he had wanted to make without the free-spirited gymnast and clarinet player he had dated for nearly a year. Well-meaning but controlling and insecure, he had feared the possible consequences of their attending different colleges. Even nearby Oregon, Shelly's second-choice school, forty miles down Highway 99 in Eugene, had been too distant for Scott. So he had pressured her to join him in Corvallis.

Shelly had acceded to his wishes without a fight. Shattered and lost following the tragic, senseless death of her best friend, she had sought comfort, security, and direction and had found all three in her boyfriend's reassuring arms.

Michelle let her eyes drift, took in the snow-capped monolith to the south, and winced. Scott had never met a mountain he couldn't climb, whether breaking sales records, winning over boardroom skeptics, or scaling dormant volcanoes. But even the bold couldn't evade the odds forever, and in June 2010 the odds caught up with Mr. Can Do. Leading a group of four business acquaintances up the east face of Mount Rainier, Scott had taken a wrong step and fallen five hundred feet to his death.

More than two hundred people had attended his funeral, including a U.S. senator, six dot-com CEOs, and nearly every employee of a company he had started in a garage. But no children mourned a man a news magazine hailed as one of America's fifty most important people. Sterile and stridently opposed to adoption, Scott Richardson had never made parenthood a priority.

Michelle yanked a crumpled tissue from her purse, wiped away a solitary blemish on the impressive marker, and then stuffed the wad between two undelivered letters and a postcard that had arrived the previous day.

She had considered tossing the card more than once since pulling it from her mailbox but each time refrained. An invitation, after all, was an opportunity. What was the harm of thinking it over? As a teacher, she did not have to report to work for another three weeks. And, as a widow, she now had no one else's needs to consider.

Michelle looked at the card and sighed. It had been a long time since she had seen most of them twenty years, at least. Some of her classmates would be grandparents now. Some might be retired. A few, like Scott, would have more permanent situations. But those who attended would almost certainly be happy to see her. And why wouldn't they? Shelly Irene Preston hadn't been a stuck-up bitch in high school. She could be a drama queen at times and as prissy as a Jane Austen heroine, but she hadn't been stuck-up. She would have a good time. She needed a good time. And for a lonely, directionless woman from Seattle, a thirtieth class reunion in a small eastern Oregon town was as good as it got.

CHAPTER 2: MICHELLE

Unionville, Oregon Friday, August 13, 2010

Michelle sipped her Hefeweizen and gazed at the building beyond her umbrella-topped table for four. The red bricks had been scrubbed and the paned windows redone, but it was still the same place she had so often caught a westbound Amtrak to Portland.

"My Sharona" by the Knack blared through four speakers that had been strategically placed along the perimeter of the outside dining area. A short wrought iron fence separated patrons from a paved bike path and railroad tracks that ran along the Mission River.

"So when did the train station morph into a brewpub?" Michelle asked. She directed the question to the heavy-set classmate sitting directly across the table.

"Oh, Shelly," Cass Stevens said, eyes sparkling. "You have been gone a while. The pub has been here ten years. The new station is on the east end of town, near the drive-in. The entire downtown has been made over since the last reunion. There's even a new shoe store where your dad's barbershop used to be. I can show you tomorrow."

"I'd like that," Michelle said, returning her attention to her surroundings. About fifty 48-year-olds had crowded onto the patio of the Little Red Caboose, official meet-and-greet headquarters for the Unionville High School Class of 1980's thirtieth reunion.