Easy Love

Home Again

I can't remember my parents like my brothers can. The happy joyful faces that they've told me about for so many years don't come up in my mind when I think about them. In my mind, I see a man and a woman without faces looking down at me. My parents have been dead for a while. They died in a car crash in 1995 while coming home from college. My oldest brother Tanner took us in and raised us. My brother Kyle-James was 3 when mom and dad died; I was 2 and still in diapers.

Now Kyle-James is 18 and a senior in high school. I'm a junior and almost 17. The last week of school at Lincoln Memorial High we moved to somewhere in Florida called Riders Past. "Are we there yet Tanner?" I asked for the 7th time since we drove out of Caliridge, Ohio. "No Melody were not, just a few more miles. Why don't you find something to pass the time?" He suggested. "Hey Mel, want to play online poker with Jay and me?" Kyle-James asked.

Jay is our cousin who loves to gamble he's flat broke and has at least one warrant in every casino in America. "We're here!" Tanner said from the driver's side seat. Riders Past was beautiful. Open fields and lakes littered the landscape like a postcard. The sun gleamed in the sun spotted lake and the grass was a perfect height and angle to be swaying in the gentle breeze.

We went one mile out of town and drove up a long road. There sitting perfectly sided by fenced in fields of hay stood our old house from when I was young. "Mel, go up to your old room and check for rats and bugs." Tanner yelled at me even though I was two and a half feet away.

"Ok but I'm taking the bat." I yelled grabbing it out of the trunk. "Hey catch." He made a turning sign after I caught the key. I unlocked the door and went inside. Dust covered everything, even the stairs, as I slowly went up the stairs I fell through.

"Melody!" Tanner yelled as he galloped up the stairs like a horse. He reached into the hole and grabbed me, heaving me up to the surface. "Let's just use the 1st floor for now." I said. "Yeah but just until we fix the stairs." He nodded.

So they started working on the stairs at seven thirty. I saw that, with those idiots trying to hammer in nails with wrenches, it was gonna take a while. I went to the car to sleep, the horses started freaking out so I got out of the passenger seat to check it out. "Shit!" I yelled. Both my brothers came running with wrenches in their hands. "Who let them out?" Kyle-James asked. "I don't know I was taking a nap in the passenger seat."

We caught the horses and put them back in the pin. We slept in the car that night and woke up in the morning to rain. "Hey, Mel guess what?" "What Kyle-James?" "I scored a girl last night." "Yeah in your dreams." "Ha Ha Ha." "Ok, you two stop goofing off and grab a wrench, let's go finish fixing the stairs." "Are we able to walk up them now?" "If you walk carefully." He said. I ran to the house and walked carefully up the stairs. I made it without falling through. I went through all of the rooms before I went to the very last door and found my room.

It was creepy; my crib was still in the room. In it was a ducky baby blanket, rattle, a stuffed bear with a pink polka dotted ribbon around its neck with a name tag that said, Rodger. I had a little chair that had Minnie mouse on it and a shelf full of Winnie the pooh books, Pink and white walls, and my own bathroom.

The room was dusty from years of not being lived in.

"The stairs are done Mel, wow, I haven't seen this room in a long time. You know, me, dad, mom and Kyle-James took you to see that movie with Rodger the rabbit in it. That's what you named him after." Tanner said.

"Awe, that's so sweet." I said dusting off a picture of my family, not the broken one that existed not but the one that was filled with love and laughter, the one that was whole.

"Did you find any mice?" He teased.

"Nope, just a bunch of dust and old baby furniture."

"Well let's get the horses fed and settled in and then we can start cleaning this place up." Tanner turned and exited the dust covered room.

We fed ourselves and then the horses.

"I'm taking Cupid for a ride." I yelled jumping up and onto the horses back.

I rode through the run down fence and into the pasture.