A New Start

by Morris Fenris

  She’d made a trip back to Cathedral Hills three months after Trey had taken her to the Four Corners Women’s Shelter, calling her father from a pay phone in Ridgway to see if he could come get her. The response had been…

  “I’m really sorry about all of this,” Trey told Jenna, disturbing her thoughts as he took a seat on the couch once again.

  “I’m sorry?” Jenna asked him, bringing her thoughts back to the present and focusing on the man sitting next to her. He was tall, well over 6’ tall, with gorgeous dark hair and warm brown eyes. He’d changed since high school, losing his boyish appearance in favor of the handsomeness that only came with maturity. He still had an athletic physique and Jenna quickly brought her eyes back up to his face, lest he discovered her checking him out.

  “It seems there was a small mix up with the paperwork when it arrived. The clerk who handles the mail, read the attached letter and sent it off to the Denver deceased accounts office. That employee thought the entire life insurance check was to be deposited in an account under your name, since the check was made out to you, and she didn’t find any open loans under your name. The life insurance company included the customary form with your information on it, asking for any excess funds to be deposited in an interest bearing account and held for you, so there was no reason for her to question those directions. The entire life insurance check was placed in such an account under your name.

  “The mortgage was under your parents’ names and with the insurance check being handled in Denver, no one made the connection between the two.”

  “But I called and spoke to someone in your mortgage department and they told me they didn’t have an open account under my parent’s names,” Jenna told him in confusion.

  Trey nodded, “Unfortunately, once the will was read giving you the house, the mortgage paperwork was placed on someone else’s desk that handles accounts of the deceased. It was simply a miscommunication within the bank. I’m so sorry for the mix-up.”

  Jenna nodded her head, “So, the money is all sitting here in your bank?”

  “For all intents and purposes – Yes! The Denver branch is holding the account paperwork, as well as the mortgage papers for the deceased.”

  “So, what? I have to go to Denver to pay off my parents’ estate?” Jenna asked, growing angry at having made this trip for nothing. I left Denver to come here! It had taken everything she had in her to come back to Cathedral Hills and now she was finding out it might have been for naught?

  “No. That’s not what I’m saying at all. Look, it might take me a day or two to get the required paperwork sent over to clear this mess up, but that shouldn’t be a problem since you just arrived. Right?”

  Jenna shook her head, “It will be very much a problem. I wasn’t planning on staying in Cathedral Hills beyond this afternoon.”

  “What?!” Trey asked, confused as to why she would come to town and then leave again so quickly. “I don’t understand. Does Michelle know you’re in town?”

  Jenna looked up at the man sitting across from her and tried to come up with the words to explain how much she dreaded sticking around. “Look, I wasn’t planning on staying, but I could manage a few days if it meant I wouldn’t have to come back again in the future. And no, Michelle doesn’t know I’m here. At least, I don’t think she does.” I bet Missy has already called everyone!

  Trey was confused at the change he saw come over Jenna. She was very agitated at the thought of sticking around Cathedral Hills, but that made no sense. This was her home. She’d been born and raised here. She was the owner of property here. Why would she throw all of that away?

  Jenna gathered up her stuff and headed for his office door, “Call me when the paperwork arrives and I’ll come by and sign it.”

  Trey stood up as she walked towards the door, “Jenna, where are you going?”

  “Truthfully, I don’t know. I wasn’t prepared for this. I guess maybe I’ll see if Mrs. Thomas has a room I can rent for a few days.”

  “Why not just go home?” Trey asked, confused as to why she would stay in the old boarding house when she owned a perfectly good house at the edge of town. Trey had been present at the reading of the will and the house and all of its belongings had been given to Jenna. “I know the electricity and water have been kept on. The bank’s been paying the bills…”

  “Be sure to have your bookkeepers total up everything the bank spent. I’ll make sure you get paid back every cent.”

  “Jenna,” Trey began, an edge of exasperation in his voice, “that’s not why I told you. I just wanted you to know you can stay at the house while you’re here.”

  Jenna shook her head, trying to still the feelings of unease and fear that rushed her, “I don’t think so. In fact, if you know of a good real estate agent, I’ll be headed there next. I want the house sold as quickly as possible.”

  Trey watched her for several long moments and then asked, “What are you so afraid of?”

  Jenna huffed out a breath, “You have to ask? You must have a pretty short memory. Let’s just say that I’m not a big fan of reliving the past. I’ll be at Mrs. Thomas’s…” She broke off when Trey started shaking his head. Placing her hands on her hips, she inquired, “And why not?”

  “Jenna, Mrs. Thomas passed away three years ago. Her daughter and family moved back to Cathedral Hills and now live in the house with their five children.”

  Jenna hung her head and closed her eyes as she struggled to figure out her next move. She could walk back to Ridgway and get a room at the motel there. It was only 11 o’clock, so if she got started right away, she could probably be back in town before dark.

  “Fine. I’ll call you and let your secretary know how to get ahold of me.”

  Trey reached out and stopped her from leaving the office, “Jenna, talk to me. Are you headed over to your house?”

  “Don’t call it that. It’s not my house. Not anymore.” Jenna pulled her arm away and headed towards the front of the bank. Trey watched her push through the glass doors and then he watched her reach behind one of the tall pillars and pull out a battered suitcase. When she headed down the sidewalk, away from the parked cars, Trey found himself following her progress.

  Approaching the security guard at the front of the bank, he asked, “Charles, how did that young lady arrive this morning?”

  “Why, she was walking, sir. She asked if she could leave her case out here and I told her I would keep an eye on it. Is there a problem?”

  Trey looked after Jenna and shook his head, “No, I don’t think so. Would you let Mrs. Withers know I’ve stepped out for a bit? I have my cell with me if she should need to contact me.”

  “Certainly, sir.” The security guard smiled at him and followed his progress down the sidewalk as he went in pursuit of Jenna.

  * * *

  Chapter 4

  “Jenna! Jenna, wait up,” Trey called after her.

  Jenna heard her name called and stopped to wait for Trey to catch up to her. “I’m sorry, did you have something else you needed me to sign?”

  Trey stopped and caught his breath, “No. Where are you going?” He put his hands on his hips and bent over slightly as his breathing started to slow down.

  Jenna thought about lying to him, but then decided why bother? “I going back to Ridgway. I’ll get a room at the motel there and once you have the paperwork organized, I’ll come back up here and sign on the dotted line.”

  Ridgway? What on earth was she thinking? Trey shook his head, “Why are you being so stubborn about staying here? In Cathedral Hills?”

  “Why indeed? Let’s think about this. I left almost seven years ago, and save for the one time I called my dad, not one person from this town ever tried to contact me. Not one!” Jenna felt tears fill her eyes and strove to find the control to hold them back. She hated when her emotions got the best of her, and she’d promised herself on the bus trip across the mountains that whatever happened, she’d never let the fine people of Cathedral Hills
know they could make her cry!

  “What do you mean, no one ever tried to contact you? The morning after I dropped you off at that shelter, Michelle made me drive her and your other friends all the way back down there to see that you were all right. They wouldn’t tell her anything over the phone, but when we got there, they wouldn’t talk to her either.”

  Jenna was shocked speechless. “They didn’t tell you that they flew me to the hospital in Denver, a few hours after you dropped me off?”

  It was now Trey’s turn to be shocked speechless, “Hospital? No! No one said anything about that.”

  Jenna looked at him and suddenly wished they weren’t standing on the sidewalk. She had the sudden urge to spill forth all of the questions she had about that time around her arrival at the shelter and what had happened in the months after that. She’d never had that urge before, even though all of her counselors had advised of the need to do so if she ever wanted to truly put the past behind her.

  “Jenna, you have to know I would have never left you there if I had known you were injured seriously. Michelle is going to be really upset when she finds this out. She had me take her back to that shelter a half dozen times, trying to get someone to tell us where you had gone.”

  “Really?” Jenna asked, so badly wanting to believe him, she was almost afraid to find out any more.

  “Listen, let’s go grab a cup of coffee and I’ll fill you in on what you might not know, and maybe you can answer some questions for me.”

  Jenna shook her head, “No! Not the Diner. Missy works there and is already planning this huge get together with the girls tonight.”

  “Yet, you were planning on going back to Ridgway? How? By walking?”

  Jenna slowly nodded, “It’s not that far.”

  “You are not going anywhere. If you don’t want to talk in the Diner, come along with me then.” Trey turned and started walking down the sidewalk. “I bet Michelle is already headed into town right now.”

  Jenna watched him for a moment and then called after him, “Where are we going?”

  “The bridge, of course. Where else?”

  Jenna laughed, something she hadn’t done in a long time. The bridge was an old wooden structure that had been her and her girlfriends’ refuge since they were little girls. They learned to skip rocks there, practiced braiding each other’s hair, and planned elaborate weddings there on the stained wooden boards.

  “You know about the bridge?” Jenna asked Trey.

  Trey came back towards her and leaned down to whisper in her ear, “All of the boys knew about the bridge. We used to sneak along the river bank until we were hidden underneath the boards and sit there for hours listening to you girls talk.”

  “You spied on us?” Jenna pretended to be outraged.

  “We didn’t consider it spying, just making sure we were well informed. It came in rather handy through the years.” Trey gave her a smile filled with secrets and she couldn’t help but respond.

  The boys had been listening to their crazy bridge conversations? I wonder if the other girls know about that. How embarrassing! Jenna shook her head as she briefly recalled some of the conversations they’d had on that bridge. One conversation came rushing back to her mind and she felt herself blush beneath Trey’s warm gaze.

  “If you could kiss anybody in the world, who would it be?” Michelle asked.

  “When you say kiss, do you mean on the lips and all that mushy stuff?” asked twelve-year-old Jenna.

  “Yep! Come on, now. Who would you kiss?”

  “I know who I’d kiss,” piped in Michelle as she lowered her voice and softly whispered, “Tyler.”

  “What?!” exclaimed Brooke. “Why on earth would you want to kiss my brother? Ewww!”

  Tyler and Trey were both two years older and in high school, making them perfect targets for the crushes of the pre-teen girls. Brooke seemed upset that Michelle would be interested in kissing her brother, and Jenna watched and listened as the two bantered back and forth for a few moments.

  “Okay, Jenna. Who would you want to kiss, and please don’t say my brother?” Brooke pleaded.

  Jenna shook her head, “Okay, I won’t. I want to kiss Michelle’s brother.” She’d said it partly in jest, just to see the reaction she’d get from her friends, but as the next few years flew by, the idea took on more merit. Up until the time her mother died, and all thoughts of boys and her future shriveled up and died with her.

  “Jenna?” Trey asked, having watched her become lost in her memories and enthralled with the way her emotions played out across her face. She still had a soft smile upon her face, and it did Trey’s heart good to see that a little part of the Jenna he remembered growing up with still existed.

  He let his eyes take a closer inspection of her, frowning slightly at how slim she was. Has she been getting enough to eat? Where has she been living? What has she been up to these last seven years and why didn’t she ever come home? Shaking his head, he reached out and touched her shoulder slightly, “Jenna?”

  She lifted her eyes and blinked up at him for a moment before she realized they were still standing on the sidewalk. The suitcase in her hand made its presence known and she shrugged her shoulder to try and alleviate the strain of holding it all this time.

  “Jenna, we don’t have to go to the bridge…”

  Jenna shook her head, effectively cutting him off. “No. Sorry. I guess I kind of drifted off there for a moment.” She took a breath, looked him straight in the eyes, and then smiled, “Okay. The bridge it is.”

  Trey reached over and took her suitcase from her hands, transferring it to his right hand and offering her his left one. “Come on then.”

  Jenna looked at his hand for a moment before gingerly placing her own in his light grip. She hadn’t held hands with a boy since she was fourteen and Billy Ryan had asked to walk her home from the school dance. That had been before her mother’s death and her father’s defection. Life had been perfect and she had been a perfectly normal teenager.

  They walked in silence as they crossed the last intersection of downtown and then headed for the dirt path that led down to the river and the bridge. Jenna glanced around, noticing how everything looked the same, and yet different. This was the first time she was seeing the bridge from the eyes of an adult, and the bridge looked somehow smaller and more decrepit than she remembered.

  “Is it safe to walk on?” she asked, as she surveyed the stained and rotting wood.

  Trey looked at the bridge and then chuckled, “Safe as ever. I guess it probably looks much worse if you haven’t seen it in years.”

  “Much,” Jenna agreed, following behind him as he walked across the boards to the covered portion where the girls had placed logs years before. The logs had been replaced over the years, and she smiled fondly as she remembered the hours she’d spent in this exact location – happy and content with her life. Where did those days go and how do I get them back?

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  Trey looked at the beautiful woman sitting in the shadows of the bridge, her large blue eyes still having an injured look about them, and the light of moments ago only lingering in their depths. She had her light brown hair pulled up into a half-ponytail, loose strands falling over her forehead and framing her face in soft curls. She hadn’t gained much height since she was sixteen, the top of her head barely coming up to the bottom of his chin.

  “So, where to begin?” Jenna asked Trey, losing some of her confidence now that a little time had passed.

  “How about why you never came back? There were people here who loved you and missed you.”

  “It didn’t feel that way. After you left, one of the staff members started doing a physical assessment of my injuries. She discovered that I had several broken ribs. At some point during the exam, I turned the wrong way and ended up puncturing one of my lungs. They called for the air life helicopter and took me to the hospital.”

  Jenna heard Trey’s exclamation upon heari
ng of her injuries but she didn’t stop or give him time to interject anything. Now that she had started, she needed to finish telling him everything.

  “I spent three weeks there healing. When I was discharged from the hospital, the Four Corner’s shelter didn’t have any free beds, so they put me up in a local Denver shelter for teens.” Jenna grew silent remembering how scared and alone she’d felt during those days. “I would have given anything to get a phone call from someone back home.”

  “They tried, Jenna. Believe me. They kept running into the same roadblock at every turn. You were an underaged minor in protective custody of the state. No one could tell us anything.”

  Jenna slowly nodded and wished she’d known. It might have saved her years of destructive behavior.

  Trey watched her as she sat there and felt sorry for the young girl who had found herself virtually abandoned, injured, and away from home. “You must have been terrified.”

  “I was.”

  “Why didn’t you call one of the girls? I would have driven them to Denver!”

  Jenna shook her head, remembering all of the rules she’d been suddenly faced with and the depression that had descended over her in giant rolling waves she couldn’t escape. “Phone calls were for good kids. You had to earn the right to use the phone, and then the counselor’s had to approve who you wanted to talk to.”

  “What?!” Trey questioned, outraged to hear that she had been treated so poorly. “How…”

  Jenna continued as if she hadn’t heard him, “I finally figured out how to play by the facility’s rules, and after being in the local shelter for two months, I ran away. Being good also got you day passes to leave the shelter without being constantly watched. I hitchhiked my way to Ridgway and then used the payphone at the motel to call my dad. Collect.”

  “You spoke to your father?” Trey asked, wondering why the man had never said anything about that. Michelle had been sure Jenna would try to reconcile with her father, and had stopped by their home after school every day for the first few months to inquire if Jenna had called yet. The answer had always been a resounding “No” followed closely by the slamming of the front door in her face!