Silver Currents of Change

Chapter 39

Traveling on the book tour with Ash meant Zarah had to juggle her school work and her work for WPI. The next several months flew by very quickly, and soon it was late November, just one day before Harvey's birthday. Sean Carlos was staying with Yvette and her two-week-old twins in Malibu, but it was still hard to leave her friends and their babies when Harvey sent an invitation—and his jet, to bring her to what he said was "a very special celebration." Thinking either he or Dinah had finally filed for divorce, after making arrangements with her professors to turn assignments in early, assignments due the next week, Zarah got home early for the Thanksgiving holiday.

She wasn't sure they'd be celebrating their birthdays together, but she missed him. So she was willing to talk, willing to hear what he wanted to tell her. 

The invitation he sent contained a special note, and that note said he'd started construction of their dream home ten months ago, right after they got the results of her home pregnancy test. That meant while she was absorbed in everything she was doing in the first year of her doctoral studies at UCLA, and while working on and finishing the book she was writing with Ash, he had been busy building their home—a home he said was now complete. It also meant that no matter who or what had come against them, he trusted in the love they had for one another and had never doubted, for eve one minute, they would be together forever.

In the limo Harvey sent to the airport to pick her up, as it headed to South Jackson, Zarah remembered how, last year, before she left to start working on her doctorate, they  chose the exact spot on his property where the main house would sit. They dreamed it all up; the home  they would share. Every room, every nook, and every cranny. They planned it from top to bottom, the place they would live and love, the place that would nurture and help to sustain their life together. It was where they would live before and after they were married, where their love would make babies, and where they would raise their children. In the community of Lake Bellwood, it was where he was coming from the first day they met. When her car broke down and a mysterious, heavily bearded man helped her. 

The location combined a special memory with the seclusion and peace of a private enclave; one with close-by conveniences of the city of Jackson. The centerpiece of the community was a twenty-four mile long man-made lake. Located next to his parents' estate, across the lake from his brother's ranch, his ten-acre property was now a wooded, seven-acre home site. Like all the other large and meticulously maintained estates in the area, it was surrounded by beautifully landscaped settings. Residents of Lake Bellwood enjoyed the best of country and city living, pastoral subdivision charm that included miles of walking paths, lush parks, and the peace of the rural country. It was all presented under a lush green canopy of oak, peach, pine, and pecan trees, and the development had all the amenities of any city, set in serene countryside environments. Rows of white dogwood trees lined the driveway leading up to the H. E. Wilson estate. In the spring, the dogwood trees would offer a breathtaking display of creamy white flowers, but since it was fall, their deep green leaves had turned scarlet. 

The closer they got to the home, the quarter-acre front yard offered plush vegetation, including deep green, tall, luxuriant hedges; several proud and regal one-hundred-year-old oak trees; throngs of flowering trees like Southern magnolia, graceful maple, and aromatic pecan. It was after eight at night, and the landscape was not eclipsed by scores of lights—outdoor and indoor, and lights gleaming through a thick mask, a beautiful natural façade separating the view of Harvey's estate from his dad's.

As the limo traveled up the driveway toward the home, Zarah felt surprise registering on her face as a smile played on her lips. Everything looked exactly the way she and Harvey planned it. As their dream kept unfolding right before her eyes, tears welled up and stung at her eyes, making it hard for her to see. Harvey Evan Wilson had built their dream home, on Lake Bellwood.