#woman

“That’s my childhood house.” I wasn’t turning down the street I grew up in. I wasn’t standing near the large oak in the front yard of the house where I’d lost all my baby teeth. I wasn’t sitting inside the kitchen, where, on my fifteenth birthday, I accidentally dropped the cake my mom had baked, which made my family laugh so hard that we shed tears. No. I was holding an oil painting at a Goodwill on the other side of the country. “That can’t be possible,” my husband said.

Henry had always been a bit different. As a child, he was quiet, more interested in books and toys than in other children. He grew up alone, but he never seemed to mind. His mother, Grace, worried that her son wasn't making any friends, but Henry always reassured her that he was fine just the way he was.

“Jalen, you sell drugs?” “What? No.” “Family sell drugs?” I laughed. “You for real right now?” His stoic face answered for him. “Not that it should matter, but I don’t really have a family. So, no, they aren’t kingpins in the drug game.” “Consider yourself lucky. No family is the way to go. No hassles. No buying gifts for ungrateful nieces and nephews who think just because you own a coupla properties, you’re Diamond Jim Brady. Gives me heartburn just thinkin’ about it.”

It was a dark, foggy night, as it really should be whenever something eerie happens. I was walking from my dad’s house over to my mom’s. I’d had a fight with my dad about something, the topic of which I’ve since forgotten, and realized at 17 years old that I was old enough and capable enough to walk alone back to my mom’s house, instead of stewing in my room at dad’s. Besides, both of my sisters were asleep already, so I wasn’t worried about them not getting their homework done or needing help…

There is a fresh, blank page sitting in front of me, and as I stare at it it seems to stare back.

“Well, that was ominous!” I said putting the can back on the shelf. “Totally! Maybe we are haunted!” Rudy said jokingly. “That would be kind of awesome!” I jokingly said back. Oh, how right we were, and we did not even know it yet. So, we finally called it a night and went to sleep. The next morning, I got up like usual and hopped into the shower. The water pressure in this house was nice and the water got hot, and it always left fresh fog on the mirrors. I turned off the water and stepped out…

Let me guess, you clicked on this story because of the title? Yeah, you did! Well, hopefully this love story, and yes this is a love story, will catch your attention long enough for you to finish it. For starters, I am Mathew Connors, and I graduated from Texas Tech a few years ago. I met my beautiful wife, Angela, in college. We have 2 amazing kids, Jonah, and Abigail, they are 10 and 8. They say that when you find the one you are destined to be, it’s like “Love at first sight”, well in our…

Paramedics are incredibly superstitious. It’s surprising how much people will argue with me about this simple fact. “Oh, definitely not. They’re too reasonable, too smart, too calm in a crisis to engage with something as irrational as superstitions.”