
Cottage Terrace Inn, Room 105
You take your glasses off and rub your eyes. Days are seeming longer and longer even though they are shorter and shorter. You haven't been able to drive as long as you need to and you haven't been able to get the rest you need. Maybe you can read a little and relax enough to fall off to sleep.
"Let's see," you say.
It's not like you carry books with you. You know that people are reading on their phones now, and you have one of those fancy phones just like everyone else, but you want to hold something in your hands, something with no lights. Thankfully, you can still count on an old motel Bible in the drawer of the night desk. You snicker. It is probably the only thing clean and untouched in the entire room.
You wouldn't normally touch one either, despite the comfort they've brought you over the years during those random nights in random motels. You let your finger slide between pages without looking and you open to that page.
You grunt softly. You begin to read aloud.
"For the children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children."
You groan at that. You close your eyes again. You feel your shoulders begin to shake.
Rebecca Denman, your estranged daughter, lives across the country. How much more estranged could you be with the entire lay of the land between you? But you are racing there to be with her now. Not really much of a race. More like an old man's run.
You are too tired to safely make this drive. You are too poor to use any other form of transportation. You are too guilty to admit that this trip is too hard for you. You are too scared to risk taking it easy and taking your time.
Your daughter is pregnant with your fourth grandchild. You haven't met any of them. The only reason you are getting to meet them now relates to one sad, simple fact. Your daughter is dying. Diagnosed with some rare and unpronounceable condition, something you neither understand nor could ever even find in a word search, doctors have given her weeks to live.
"I have to get there," you sob as you squeeze your eyes shut.
I have to sleep, is what you think to yourself. If you don't get enough rest to get back on the road, you might as well not bother getting out of the squeaky motel bed at all.
You hear a knock at motel room door. You gulp. You look at the clock.
It is one hour later than you meant to go to sleep. You wonder why anyone is knocking at that time of night.
You decide to:
or
.
We would also love your feedback!
Contact FDP News
By email
By Text message
(Phone required to send a text message. Standard text rates apply)