...chapters of my life... musings of my mind...: David Morgan was fourteen years old, when his parents got killed in front of him. He's trying to live on... He's trying to forget... But these nightmares are always there. Why did his parents got kill...
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It was Monday, my first day at home, from my first week of being expelled from school. I was out on the deck, coming back from my daily laps around the lake. It was September, but it was still warm outside. I was pretty sweaty from the run, so I pulled my sweater and my t-shirt over my head and threw them on a chair on the deck.
I was standing on the deck, jumping up to grab the metal bar, like I did every day now. I had already done my fifth chin-up, when I noticed a blond woman coming around the house. She sauntered towards me and stopped right in front of me.
"Hello. Is Kathy there?"
I did four more chin-ups before letting my feet fall down on the deck again.
The woman was staring at me. I could tell her eyes went from my face to my bare upper body a few times. Just for split seconds, but I recognized it.
I grabbed my t-shirt from the chair next to me and started to wipe off the sweat from my face.
I shook my head.
"Oh... Well... I'm Mrs. Johnson. I'm Brian's Mom. Are you David?"
I just nodded. I leaned against a wooden post of the deck. I was still topless. My sweat pants down inches below my hip bone.
Mrs. Johnson looked like she was about to speak, but it took a few seconds and even then she was stuttering a little bit.
"Oh, good. I wanted to talk to you. Brian told me what happened in class on Thursday. Of course he told me about Jim and these guys for quite some time. I told him to ignore them. And that they would, at some point, loose interest in picking on him. I didn't know what else to tell him. I didn't want him to get hurt."
I just stood there quietly and listened to her. She was quite good looking. She had long blond hair and a nice figure. Of course, she was just wearing an old pair of pants and a sweater, but I thought she looked really young for being the mother of a fourteen-year-old boy.
"He's so quiet since his father left us. He didn't handle it very well. Well, neither did I. That pig."
I laughed.
I mean, I wasn't guffawing. It was just a ripple of laughter, but it was a big deal for me. I hadn't laughed since the incident about fifteen months earlier.
Mrs. Johnson laughed too.
"I'm sorry. But he really is a pig. He left us for a younger woman. Apparently I look like a bitter old woman."
I was smiling. She didn't look like that to me.
"I'm only thirty-three, but I guess I cannot compete with a twenty-one-year-old. It's not like it's a big difference for us. That pig was never home anyway. But of course Brian is really hurt."
I didn't know why that woman poured her heart out in front of me. I didn't know why she was telling me all this. I guess she couldn't tell her girlfriends that her husband left with a younger girl. She probably needed someone to talk to. And I guess, a stranger often is the best choice there, if you don't have anyone else.
