Piece by Piece Chapter Two: The Big Move

After the fall of her Marriage, Staci makes a massive decision for her and the rest of her family.

“I can’t believe it,” Robin said as we turned off the interstate.

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t have a choice,” I said, looking at the passenger seat.

“Not you, mom,” Robin smiled back at me. “Cindy, she hooked up with that guy I was telling you about.”

“Oh,” I replied. “The guy with the tattoos and the piercings?” I shook my head as I remembered the photo Robin had shown me.

“Yes,” Robin nodded.

I looked in the back seat. Jack was fast asleep. Luckily, the medication his doctor had given us was still working. With him awake and alert, catching a plane and getting a rental would have been a disaster.

The two brothers had their heads in their phones while Robin sat up front with me. All of them had been so strong after I had told them their father had been cheating on me.

Robin and Robert were the first to see the full details online. It wasn’t how I wanted them to hear about their father, but I could only hide it for so long. Thomas was let in later by his older siblings. Jack, on the other hand. I looked back and looked at him comfortably sleeping. I didn’t know what to say to him. Even though his father hadn’t shown him much affection, sometimes Jack longed for his father’s presence.

“Turn up here mum,” Robin stated.

My navigator was the best; she knew the directions to her grandma’s house by heart. Teresa was Stan’s mother, and the moment she saw the news, she called me. Teresa wasn’t one to hold anything back.

First, she told me she was sorry and sent a text message to her son. I still didn’t know what was said, but Stan came by the house the next day, packed all of his stuff, and moved out without a word. After she said she was sorry, she berated me for how I had handled the whole thing. Her son’s face was all over the news, as was her family name.

I didn’t apologize; I knew that would make her even angrier. I told her it was the most humane thing I was thinking about at the time, and if I did the other things that I wanted to do, I would be in jail. We laughed for a few minutes, and then I broke down.

Stan was right about one thing. My salary would barely keep my head above water if I were single with no kids. Having two teenagers, less than a year from graduating, another child about to start high school, and another one with a severe mental illness, trying to keep them happy, plus a house and a mode of transportation, would have killed me.

Teresa had a perfect idea. Sonny, her husband, passed away last year after a long fight with cancer. She had a massive house on acres of land in the country, with no one to help her. She told me I could stay with her as long as I wanted, or at least until I got my feet firmly underneath me.

We had gone there many times throughout the years. The kids loved the house and the land it was on. So, here I was, fourteen minutes away from starting my life all over.

Teresa said to leave everything behind and to bring clothes. She had also put my mom in a beautiful retirement home. Well above what I could pay, Teresa had paid for six years, which I knew was more than enough time, seeing as my mother was in her last years due to her illness. She barely recognized me or anyone anymore. Going to see her every year caused everyone more pain and grief than I had intended. Still, seeing her smile when she saw the massive garden outside with different flowers was lovely.

“The last turn up ahead,” Robin said as she pointed the road out.

I loved it out here. The houses were enormous and so far apart from the neighboring house, unlike where we lived, where we could practically see into our neighbors’ homes from our bathroom.

“It’s Jack’s horse!” Thomas shouted.

Sure enough, Ferdinand, the dark black horse, was running along the fence.

“How does he know?” I laughed, watching as it ran alongside us. I slowed the rental to a slower speed so that it could keep pace.

“That’s why,” Robin laughed as we saw Jack waving at it. The medication had worn off, and he was sitting up in the back seat.

Up ahead, I saw a large house in the distance. Sonny had the house built after he had retired. Stan and I had got married there a few months after it was finished. Now, it brought back both happy and sad memories.

“We will be okay mom,” Robert said, leaning forward.

“Thanks, Robbie,” I smiled with tears on the verge of falling. “Thanks all of you. You have made this so much easier than I thought.”

“It’s what we do,” Thomas said with a grin.

He was the joker of the family. There wasn’t a thing he wouldn’t turn into a joke just to see us smile. I parked the car as I saw Teresa coming down the long stairs.

“You didn’t have to come down,” I said as I met her halfway.

“I am old, not crippled!” Teresa responded as she shooed me away.

“Where’s my Jack?” Teresa asked as she walked past the other kids.

They knew Jack was her favorite. Jack loved his grandmother. She was one of the only people who could take him anywhere without making him fuss.

“Well?” she asked as she looked at them.

They all stood in silence. “They have already been gassed up and taken out of the shed,” Teresa said as they ran back toward the shed to ride the snowmobiles.

“Love you Grandma!” they shouted as they turned the corner.

“Uh-huh,” Teresa nodded. “Teenagers!”

“You sure about this?” I asked as I walked by her side towards the long wooden fence. Ferdinand was already waiting there for his best friend.

“If I say no, do you have enough to get you a flight back?” Teresa asked as she bent down to pick up some carrots. No doubt she had already cut them in preparation for Jack’s arrival.

“No,” I replied.

“Then why ask a stupid question,” Teresa said as Jack held the carrot out. Ferdinand began to chomp away at it. “Look,” Teresa said as she looked back at me. “Neither of us are in a position where we can turn down the other one’s help. I need help with the house, the horses and everything else around here, or it will fall apart. You need to get away and start over. It’s simple as that.”