Passing

Thank you for the reviews. In answer to the question, Claire is 18 and Peter is 16 going on 17. This chapter is PG-13 for violent imagery.

Memories

I slept fitfully that night waking frequently from dreams I couldn’t quite remember clearly. Finally they coalesced into a vivid nightmare of being chased through silvery woods by some great beast, screaming as I was flung to the ground, and then there was Kit over me. Coyote ears atop his head, he lowered his head to my shoulder and I felt pain as his fangs penetrated my flesh.
“Yes!” I cried as I jerked awake.

The clock showed 5:00; too late to go back to sleep, even if I could, and too early to rouse the kids. I got up and walked over to the dresser in my room. My makeup kit sat on the counter filled more with medications than makeup and next to that was my picture book. I picked the book up and opened it to Jeremy’s picture.
“What am I doing here, Jeremy?”
I sat staring at the picture. I missed him so much but despite what Peter whispered to this sister when he thought I wasn’t listening, I wasn’t looking to replace Jeremy. No one could ever replace him in my heart. Peter would never understand that there was another love in my heart, one that was there before his father.

I pulled out the pictures of me and Kit from the photo booth and looked at them. I had thought of this trip as the closing of a chapter, a last chance before I died to settle a part of my life torn asunder by my mother and aunt. But now with Michele’s revelation, I wasn’t sure what I was heading into.

~~~

We drove out into the mountains from Colorado Springs. Despite the years and the changes in the country side, I found the route was easier to remember than I thought. A couple of hours later, Spirit Peak loomed overhead and I found the county road that lead to the resort. It had been a combination of memory and luck. As soon as the Peak was in sight I had started asking directions at various stops along the way. The response had been more confusing than helpful. Half the people I talked to had no idea there was a resort and the other half provided conflicting directions on how to find it. But once I found the county road I didn’t need directions anymore, I knew exactly where I was. The road wound through the Spirit Peak State Park and it hadn’t changed a bit from when I was here before.

A short while later I slowed to a stop in the middle of the forest road.
“Mom?” Peter asked. “Is something wrong?”
I glanced at the stone formation just ahead and back at the wooden bridge we had just crossed.
“I don’t know.” I said quietly and started driving again.
A mile down the road, I turned around and drove back to the bridge very slowly. Then turning around again I drove back to the spot I had stopped at before. Turning off the engine I got out of the car and stared.
“Mom?”
“It’s gone.”
“What is?”
“The Resort.”
There in front of me, where my memory clearly recalled a culvert, road and wood framed gate was an unbroken ditch and solid wall of forest. A forest that looked like it hadn’t been disturbed in a hundred years.

~~~

We circled the area several more times with no result. My memories were not wrong, the resort entrance should be there but it wasn’t. Dejected I turned back towards Colorado Springs. We came out of the mountain passes just after noon and I took the exit into Manitou Springs for lunch. When I was here last the town was trying to start a tourist trade based on arts and crafts. It was obvious that they had wildly succeeded. We ate lunch at pizza place themed on Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. I was bothered a little since the window looked out on the Soda Springs Park bandstand and all the bad memories that went with it. The abandoned spa was still there too although it looked like it had been renovated into a storefront only to be abandoned again.

Having braced the bad memories, I decided to embrace the good ones too and took the kids down to the penny arcade. It had grown to encompass almost all the stores in the enclosed alleyway. Each store represented a different generation of arcade games. Claire and Peter went to explore with a roll of quarters each. I sat on the patio having some ice cream.

“Leave my sister alone!” I heard Peter cry and ran into the building housing the skeeball games.
Peter was facing off with a young sandy haired man and I could swear he had hackles raised. Then I saw the young man’s face.
“Kit!”

~~~

Author's Note: In a sense the last chapter seems sort of redundant since she was able to retrace the route to the resort but I needed that encounter. My thinking is Melody was really uncertain she could find it again so wanted to follow every lead and having found Michele wanted to see what happened to her too.