“Last night I dreamed we left town on a horse drawn carriage,” my sister said from the backseat of my minivan. I hated driving the old beat-up rust bucket, but if I wanted any life at all, it was in this minivan. And if Gina was to get anywhere, I was most often responsible for getting her there.
My dad had left shortly after Gina was born and I haven’t seen or heard from him since. Not that it bothered me, he wasn’t much of a father when he was around. My mom was now working two, sometimes three jobs so that we could stay in our tiny apartment and not have to move again. Gina and I were just getting settled into our new schools and it was nice to have some normalcy back.
“A horse drawn carriage? What colors were the horses and where were they taking you?” I asked over my shoulder.
Gina was the world’s biggest storyteller and was just starting to read, but fairy tales were her all-time favorites. The librarians at the local public library knew us by sight and had a running list of what fairy tales she had already checked out.
As Gina prattled on about the horses and her dream, I drove into the parking lot behind our apartment complex. A feeling of dread hit me when I saw the U-Haul parked in the lot. I found mom in the apartment with her face drawn tight.
“He found us.”
Standing Room Only 