Living Without Dreams

Chapter 1 - A Walk on the Beach

Susan woke early on Sunday morning, following their welcome home party at Richard’s. It was wonderful to be home … to be back in California, back to the place where life felt real. But being here, married to Greg, and without a home to go to felt surreal; and so it might be more accurate to say Susan gave up on trying to sleep. Dreams from all that had occurred over the past four years … indeed over the past four days kept her awake far into the night … and that was after turning in late.

Turning over for the third time in the past hour, the clock beside their bed read 5:45 am. From the look of the sky outside, Susan knew it would be getting light soon and she finally gave up on the idea of sleeping. If she kept tossing and turning as she had been, she was going to wake her husband, if not their entire family. And so, Susan got out of bed, dressed in a pair of navy blue calf length pants and a light weight white blouse over sleeveless white knit shirt, put on a pair of sandals and headed out to the deck behind Richard’s guest house. It was a level lower than the one attached to the main house Richard and his wife Marion shared, and the two were attached by a set of stairs.

It was quiet out on the deck, with only the sound of waves and the occasional cry of gulls reaching Susan through the early morning fog. Dim light lit the sky, turning it from black to distinctly gray. Susan leaned against the rail breathing deeply, looking out at the waves, feeling the damp air reaching her from the ocean beyond the strip of white sand that separated Richard’s beachside Malibu home from the Pacific Ocean beyond.

“Good morning,” someone called softly and Susan turned to see Richard looking down on her from the higher level deck of the main house.

“Good morning,” Susan answered, just as quietly as she went to join him.

“What are you doing up so early?” Richard asked. “You can’t be used to California time just yet.”

“No, I’m not,” Susan agreed. “But I can’t sleep. I still can’t quite convince myself that we’re here … that it’s real.”

“Well, it is real,” Richard assured her. “It’s over Susan. You’re home.”

Susan smiled. “I wish that were true. But in some ways, everything else we’ve been through feels like it’s just been practice for coming here.”

“In what way?” Richard asked curiously.

“In every way, more or less,” Susan said. “Except for the friends and family we have here … and that is priceless … I do know that, and I also know it can’t be replaced … we are starting over, Richard. We have brought some things with us from Australia, but it’s not really all that much, when boiled down to the dozen or so boxes we had to ship.”

“What about all your furniture?” Richard asked curiously. “Isn’t that what the movers are bringing?”

Susan shook her head. “We rented that … so we just returned everything … and the car, which we leased.”

“I didn’t know you had a car,” Richard told her.

“That’s right … we didn’t have one at Christmas last year when you were there. I took driving lessons this past January so we were able to lease a car in March. We took that back to the dealer last Monday, the day before we flew out,” Susan said.

Richard arched his brow. “I see what you mean. No car, no place to live, no jobs as of yet … you are beginning again, aren’t you?”

“Pretty much,” Susan agreed. “I suppose we should be used to it,” she mused as she turned to look out at the ocean again. “We’ve done that a lot over the past few years.”