The Secret Nook - Chapter 2 (The Crash)

Such questions were her companions as she boarded the public bus, work shoes stuffed in her large faded purse, and took the daily twenty-five-minute journey to Storm’s – an efficient, if dated, family diner that had survived eight economic recessions, countless community ups and downs, demographic fluctuations and who knew how many elections.  The favourite feeding spot, situated a mere block from the beautiful downtown college campus, had been her employer for the past fifteen years and provided her the only real community Meadow had known since the death of her mother over a decade ago. It had paid her bills, enabled her to live in a rundown but always immaculate apartment, and, thankfully, kept the tentacles of an encroaching community poverty from getting too close to her door – a kind of low-income penury that had eventually claimed many of her friends caught in similar situations.Meadow opened the door, beating the snow off her boots before entering, and moved to the back, where she hung up her frayed coat and donned her work shoes.“Morning M,” came a voice from beyond the closed kitchen door in front of her.“Any trouble getting out of your laneway this morning, Les?” she responded, eventually pushing the door and joining him in emptying the dishwasher.“No worries there,” he replied.  “Now that my son has a blade on the front of his pickup, he comes by first thing after a bad snowfall.  It’s a godsend.”Les (Leslie) had inherited Storm’s from his father almost a half-century before and had never been away from it for more than a few days at a time.“Where did the name ‘Storm’s’ come from?” she asked shortly after starting to work at the diner.“No idea,” Les answered. “He never told me and I was always too busy to ask?”Meadow had been his prime waitress for the last ten years, and the two of them had come to count on each other with a trust that was complete.The rest of her morning was filled with the usual routine of diner life - a regimen through which she had learned to pace herself with a kind of economy and expertise that kept her from getting worn down.   Yet every few minutes the memory of her dream the night before broke into her consciousness in a fashion that never interrupted her routine but filled her with a sense of mystery that no one would notice except for her.Once her shift had ended, she picked up a few groceries at the market and took the bus back home, thankful that the air had warmed and the snow was beginning its early melt.  She mixed a salad to go along with some pasta. The television news had little hopeful to offer, so she tidied up and succumbed to the urge to break out her old photo albums that remained in the possession of her mom until her end.Elizabeth Hartley had survived the horrific crash, but little of her true personality remained. The blow to her head had been of such force that her skull shattered into pieces, leaving her with such memory loss that she didn’t even recognize Meadow when she first came out of the coma. That changed eventually, but it devastated her daughter when she understood that, for all intents and purposes, she had lost both parents.The police report had originally stated that the five-ton truck likely never slowed down before the crash and the driver had been drunk.  Only later did it emerge the young man’s body was reeling from both booze and marijuana – a lethal combination behind the wheel.  Meadow had been only 15 when life as she knew it ended. She never knew nor cared what happened to the other driver.  All that mattered was that her Dad was gone and her mother’s mind was gone, her body a twisted version of her younger self. Meadow had been in the back with the family dog – Mr. Peabody – who, like her, survived the physical trauma with little physical damage to show for it.Her psychological frame of mind was a whole other story.  She didn’t want to get out of bed, go to school, or eat anything.  She remained heavily medicated for her mental trauma for a number of weeks until eventually her maternal grandmother signed her out of the facility and took Meadow home to live with her.  It was what made the difference for both of them. With her daughter firmly ensconced in a long-term care facility, “Nana” was enduring her own grief that, at times, had been crippling.  The arrival of her only granddaughter began their long road of recovery together.She looked at the grainy photo of Nana now – taken at some moment during World War Two when, on leave as a bomber pilot from America’s 8^thAirborne, her boyfriend of only a few months had become her husband and their joint adventure began.  Nana looked so young in the photo, not even 20 years-old, Meadow realized.  She had lived with her parents and two sisters in London, England when she found herself seated next to a handsome American in an underground bomb shelter. They listened to the explosions together without a word but joined in some of the songs the residents of the shelter sang as a way of fending off the demons of fear and holding tenuously to the hope they shared.A short while later, they were standing on the steps of the church – a moment bathed in sunshine in the photo.  And now she realized that if it hadn’t been for that particular day all those years ago she would never have been here.Following the war, they moved to a small town in Vermont and started their family, with her mother being the first child born.  The photos on the following pages told of a love story that spread from Vermont to Virginia – her Dad’s home state and the place destined to become their family home.They had met on the beautiful University of Virginia campus and became inseparable. Mom had majored in English, while the love of her life buried himself in history.  The day after graduation, they married and settled into a small town near Charlottesville.  Mom taught school, while Dad was hired by the federal government and was tasked with preserving, or rebuilding, some of the noted national heritage sites that told of America’s revolutionary history.Meadow felt the tear cascade down her cheeks as she looked at a colour photo of her parents as they stood by a small trailer on the shore of some lake.  They were deliriously happy, she could tell, living in a time when the middle-class were stretching their muscles and leaving their optimistic footprint in a more hopeful age.Taking one final look before she closed the faded album, Meadow realized that she didn’t even know the name of that lake or where the family had journeyed for summer vacations. Weary from a day of hard work, she nevertheless sauntered to her bed with the understanding that she had a lot of research to do if she was to figure out where her father had placed that piece of paper.