Let It Snow(98)
She had always credited the fact that she didn’t miss him terribly to how full her life had been, how utterly surrounded she was by people who loved her. Although, she would sometimes get lonely in Aunt Wendy’s house. Aunt Wendy had a full-time job and Katie’s mom usually held down two jobs just to make ends meet, so there was a lot of time that Katie had been alone with just her imagination and books to keep her occupied.
As she made her way down the highway, a smile crept across her face because, oh boy, how that changed the summer before Katie’s seventh grade year!
That was the summer that Sophie Hunter (aka Sophiebell) had moved into the house next door to Aunt Wendy. And right away—literally, starting immediately on moving day—Sophie had become Katie’s shadow. Not that she’d minded! Katie had loved finally having someone, anyone other than a doll, to dress up and play tea party with.
Sophie’s dad, Mike, was a fireman and her mom, Grace, was a nurse. Katie had babysat Sophie when Mike’s and Grace’s shifts overlapped. Katie’s house felt a lot less lonely with a bouncing, laughing, full-of-life four-year-old in it. But Sophiebell wasn’t the only distraction the Hunters had brought with them when they moved to Harper’s Crossing. They also brought Nick, Sophie’s older brother and Katie’s first love.
Nicholas Hunter was three months older than Katie and he had never let her forget it. He had sandy blond hair and the most beautiful green eyes Katie had ever seen.
The day before school started in seventh grade, two weeks after the Hunters had moved in, Nick came to Katie’s door to get Sophie for dinner. She’d never forget that day. Before he left the porch, he looked over his shoulder, his green eyes sparkling in the sun. They were even extra green due to the fact that he was wearing his favorite Fighting Irish t-shirt. Swoon!
He asked, “Hey, do you think you would want to be my girlfriend? It’s a lot easier to start a new school when you already have a girlfriend.”
He then proceeded to shoot her a smile she would later come to know had gotten him anything he’d wanted since he was an infant. And with good reason—it was one helluva doozy of a smile!
As much as Katie had wanted to act like the smile didn’t affect her, she knew the heat she felt in her cheeks meant they were bright red. No way could she hide the evidence.
Still, that didn’t mean she had to acknowledge it. So she did what any super-cool eleven-year-old girl would have done when faced with Nick Hunter’s dreamy proposal.
She shrugged and said, “Yeah, whatever.”
“Sweet,” he smiled. “I’ll be here at 7:45 so we can walk to school together tomorrow.”
He then jumped off her porch before she could say another word. She slowly closed her front door and, once it shut, started to scream and run around in circles until she fell on her couch in utter exhaustion. Katie always did lean towards the dramatic.
Katie had no way of knowing then that the relationship she had just entered would last for the next six years of her life and end in tragedy.
As she drove past the sign marking Harper’s Crossing city limits, Katie’s chest constricted tightly and tears stung her eyes at the thought of the senseless tragedy. The summer after Nick and Katie’s senior year of high school, Nick had been out late one night joyriding and had tragically driven his truck off Spencer Point.
Hours later, when the police pulled the truck out of the steep embankment, they found a nearly lifeless body inside. Nick lay in a hospital bed in a deep coma for three weeks following the accident. Katie and his family were by his side every moment the hospital staff would allow them to be.
Finally, his parents, Mike and Grace, made the most horrific decision any parent could ever have to make. They took Nick off life support.
His funeral was held three days later, and Katie left that very same night to go stay with her grandmother in Chicago. She’d needed to escape. That was the last time she had set foot in Harper’s Crossing.
Until today.
Driving through the town as she took in her surroundings, Katie barely recognized it. The last time she had been in Harper’s Crossing, it contained two traffic lights and one four-way stop. Today there seemed to be a traffic light or four-way stop at every intersection!
Katie’s eyes scanned the area where Picklers’ field had been. She was shocked to see that the field she had learned to ride her bike in when she was five, played tag in, attempted and failed to smoke a cigarette in when she was thirteen, and spent almost every Friday and Saturday night parking in with Nick after he turned sixteen and got his black Chevy truck was now a strip mall.
Coming up to yet another stop light, Katie did a double take. The quaint, one-story hospital she had been admitted to when she had suffered from chicken pox and had a temperature of 104 at age six, had her tonsils removed when she was eight, and spent three weeks practically living in when she was eighteen, keeping her vigil beside Nick’s motionless body as he lay in a coma was now a four-story hospital that looked to be straight out of the pages of Architectural Digest. And if the exterior was any indication, it was now state-of-the-art.