Starting of a new book.

Tweet

The cool summer night’s breeze rustled the leaves of the old trees as Stella gazed out over the river. She had sat in the exact same spot many a night before. But tonight it was different. Tonight was the first night she had been back in the small town of Smith, Tennessee since she had graduated college, nearly ten years earlier. With her head resting in her hand and her elbow on her knee she watched as leaves daned in the setting sun. She could never exact pinpoint what it was, but water had always calmed her, and that was exactly what she needed tonight, to be calmed. She had never expected to return to Smith. It wasn’t that she had anything against the five hundred person town, she just didn’t have anything there that called for a visit. Sure her mother lived there, or at least she had until the night before when Stella recieved a phone call from her father. Her and her mother hadn’t talked in nearly two years when she got the news that she had passed on, so it took her several minutes to even process the words “Your momma died”. Once she let those words set in she came to the realization that they really had no effect on her. Her and her mother had never been close, and so hearing that she had died had not had the same effect on her that it would on someone who had had a proper relationship with their mother. In fact the reason she had come back when her father told her the news had nothing to do with her mother and everything to do with him. Unlike the strained and near nonexistant relationship she shared with her mother, she was close to her dad and had been since the day she was born- the only girl with five brothers she had a special bond with her dad. He had asked her to come home and be in charge of the funeral and other arrangements because he knew she was the only one that could handle it- partially because of her lack of relationship. She could distance herself from the situation and handle it without emotions gettting in the way. She had driven straight from her condo in Malibu, California to Tennessee and had decided she needed a couple of minutes at the river before she headed to the house. Even though her relationship had been strained with her mother, she had five brothers, and countless other family members that were going to drop by and come see her the second they knew she was in town, and she needed to clear her mind and get as relaxed as she could before that happened. Taking a deep breath she raised her head out of her hand, clasped her hands together, stretched and got up from her perch on the boulder before giving the lake one more look and walking to her car. She had left her phone in the Jeep so she could have a few minutes of peace and sure enough when she slid into the SUV and grabbed her phone off the dashboard, she had three missed calls and about a dozen text messages. Scrolling through the list of alerts she thought it was safe to say that her dad had told family members that she was in town. Aunts, Uncles and a couple cousins had texted her to ask when they could see her and send their condolsences. She cleared the notification list, she didn’t really want to deal with all that at this exact moment. Instead she scrolled through her recent calls list and hit the redial button when she reached her dad’s number. While it rang she started the car and headed for the house, deciding that she had probably put it off for long enough. “Hola.” her dad’s voice came across the speaker of the phone. “Hi yourself. I’m here, just left the river and headed to the house.” She paused as she turned down the side street that led her to the street she had grown up on. “Are you there?” “I will be in about ten minutes.”