Becoming April

Chapter One

(Author's note: Becoming April is nearly complete and is being edited and dropped here at about a rate of three chapters per week. When finished, it will be published as a serial on Amazon.)

Saturday morning I woke up with the ache of a new cold and sniffled my way through my workout regimen; thirty minutes cardio with free weights, thirty minutes on the stationary bike, sweat pouring by the time I was done, fantastic for a sixty-year-old with a damaged heart who'd dropped a hundred pounds in a year. The steam of the shower cleared my sinuses a bit and my nose stopped running, but the ache deepened enough that I rescheduled my barber's appointment-whatever I'd caught I didn't want to pass it to anyone else.

It was another excuse to not cut my hair. Last year we'd gone on a western movie kick on our Friday movie nights, and a teasing comment from May had put me onto a project to grow my already-long hair out to a Sam Elliott style length. That and grow a trim beard and handlebar mustache. I'd finally decided enough was enough and it needed some trimming around the shoulders, but wondered if just that extra inch . . .

And thinking of yesterday's movie night I texted Carl to let him and May know I'd caught something. I'd bounced baby Stephanie on my knee during the intermission and she'd sneezed in my face, but it had just been a nose-tickle; if there was any spreading of anything it would have been from me to them not them to me.

He texted right back. <Do you need May's chicken soup?>

<I'm good,> I replied. <Doesn't feel like a head cold, just aching. Watch Steph's temperature and stay on your side of the property line.>

<She'll leave it on your porch.> He added a winking emoji.

An hour later my doorbell rang and I opened the door to collect the Tupperware bowl full of Seever's Chicken Soup I'd known would be there.

I'd known the Seevers for two years, since the day they'd moved into the townhouse next door after the Grants retired and moved to Hawaii. Carl managed a successful startup cyber-security firm while May worked a home-based accounting practice and made most of the homemaking plans. Like the remodeling, half of which she did with her own hands.

Carl and May together had knocked on my door with a Hello Neighbor! plate of cookies before they'd even finished unpacking. They'd knocked on the door of the home on their right, too, but Mrs. Thompson hadn't answered and it had been left to me to tell them about the agoraphobic shut-in neighbor on their other side. That was fine; they'd cooky-knocked every other home on our street before the end of the week, thrown their first party just one month after their arrival, and then settled back to let whoever wanted to establish neighborly relations maintain the contact through their Facebook page, curbside conversations, and a dinner network.

Except for me and Mrs. Thompson. For some reason they decided to keep trying with both their next-door neighbors. Mrs. Thompson had held out against quarterly cookies left on her doorstep but May had caught her with a few targeted waves through her living room window where she watched the street (she'd proudly announced that "Mrs. T" had waved back only last week).

For myself, I'd been too easy; Carl had discovered my interest in genre movies (sci-fi, fantasy, and western) at the Hello Neighbor! party, and my love of chess. We'd had regular movie nights at their place ever since and he dropped by for a beer and a chess game nearly every Saturday (with me canceling today for health reasons, obviously). And somehow I'd become the non-family member emergency contact for both of them. I'd been there for the birth of little Stephanie, and they'd been with me through my massive heart attack (product of my former weight, hypertension, and undiagnosed depression, I'd been a mess) and subsequent surgery and recovery.