The What

1

The little girl in the yellow dress skipped down the gravel lane, her auburn hair bouncing behind her. It was a beautiful day, all sun and baby blue skies. She looked up as she skipped along, with the careless confidence only a child can possess, distracted by the cotton candy shaped clouds in the sky. As she neared the next corner she tripped and crashed into the bushes, skinning her knees badly. As she sat up and pulled her knee to her chest, tears threatened to spill from her grey eyes before her ears caught the sound of unfamiliar voices from around the bend. She sucked in the sobs bubbling up from her chest and crawled quietly to a gap in the bush to catch a glimpse of the strangers. She could just barely see the head of a blonde little boy with a big toothy grin setting up what looked like the hog traps her father liked to use.

"Is that good, Dad?" the boy asked, looking up to a man out of her sight.

"Yes Chase. Now let's go so as not to startle anything."

The little boy nodded and got up, brushed dirt from his blue jeans, and followed his dad out of sight.

Just as the little girl was about to get up and run to her parents, a hand clasped her shoulder and-

Kat awoke with a start, her breath coming in fast gasps. She took in a few deep breaths to try and slow her breathing, looking around to assess her surroundings and found nothing amiss. She was still in her perfectly ordinary bed in her perfectly ordinary room and the strange little boy wasn't there. The little boy who had been plaguing her dreams since she was a child.

The young woman ran her hands through her copper hair, ruffling out the bad memories with a sigh before lowering her bare feet to the sinfully cold floor and making her way down her normal, ordinary hallway to the kitchen. As she set about making herself coffee, she pondered over the dream.

Her parents owned a plot of land in South Texas, which had been neglected after her father's death. She used to play on the trails as a child, making daisy chains and hoping for glimpses of fairy life while her parents hunted wild hogs or fixed a malfunction in the cabin. Pouring herself a cup of the freshly brewed joe, she smiled softly. There had always been something to fix.

The Getaway, as they called it, had been on her mind a lot lately since her mother's talk that weekend. She had asked to meet Kat at a local Starbucks, where she told Kat of her new engagement. "He's so nice, you'll love him I'm sure." her mother had assured her, "and he makes me so very happy.... There's just one problem. We're going to be moving to Austin because his daughter lives there with a severe medical condition. Therefore, I'm giving you The Getaway to do with as you wish."

Her mother then proceeded to gush over her new fiancee. "I didn't think I would ever find another man after your father, you know that, but Mark..... he's just so different. I'm not a widow to him, I'm just Marleene and it's so nice to be reminded that I'm not just a dead man's wife. It's so nice to be respected and seen."

While her mother explained every detail of how they met, Kat zoned out, sipping her latte and trying to collect her thoughts. The Getaway?? What am I gonna do with that??? I'm going back to college in a month, I have no use for 300 acres!

The get together had ended with an enthusiastic hug from her mother, one of those hugs where you can feel the happiness and the hope for their predicted future radiating off their chest, but it doesn't quite affect you. As strong as her embrace was, the hope and the happiness didn't sink into Kat like it should've. She was too full of confusion, at a complete loss of what to think.

It'd been years since she'd been back. One day while they had been visiting, her father had gone out hunting and just hadn't come back. They'd looked everywhere, called the police, professional trackers, the CIA, anyone whose job was to find missing persons. No luck. No one had been able to even find a body, and ever since then, they hadn't visited again. It hadn't even been a conscious decision between the two women, they'd just never gotten up and went back. They didn't talk about it, and they probably never would.

But now it was hers. Just before sophomore year of college too, she wouldn't have time to tend the place, much less have the money to have people tend it for her.

I could always sell it she thought as she flipped on the tv and took a sip of her coffee. Ya I'll sell it. I'll go look at it tomorrow, for closure I guess. Figure out a price and then sell the thing. Perfect.

The little boy's face was the last thing that crossed her mind before she drifted off to sleep with the sounds of Jeopardy playing in the background.