Prologue to my Novel The Heart Never Forgets

The orange maple leaves fluttered in the wind. The air whistled as it passed over the cracks in the bark on the tree. Although the clouds in the sky were dark and the air smelled damp, it was not suppose to rain. It was windier then average, many people had taken their outside patio furniture and dragged them right up to the side of there houses so that they wouldn't blow around and cause any damage. Along with the leaves, a pair of loose shutters on a garage window banged open and shut as the gusts of wind came and went. From within the garage, the air was still and calm. The only noise audible was the sound of swinging shutters of the detached garage as they clacked against a thin, dirty glass window and then the outside of the garage wall.

The garage had a thick layer of dust covering almost everything in site. Cobwebs hung from both the ceilings and from the bottom of the walls to the floor. Dust sat almost motionless in the air in the small beams of distorted light peaking into the garage from the one window with the agitated shutters. Old newspapers sat on a dirty work bench which was covered in paint can rings and dried spots of spilled varnished and stains. Above the bench on the wall hung a tool wall with various saws and wrenches resting upon it. Many of the tools had fallen off of the wall and hit the bench on the way down to the ground. On the cracked cement floor sat both empty and full paint cans, some of which were on there sides. In one of the empty paint cans that lay on its side, a spider had made its home inside. Spider webs linked most of the cans that were on the ground together.

The Mechanical system on the ceiling of the garage for the car's door although looked functional, was rusted, warped and covered in cobwebs. The inside color of the garage door, like the walls of the garage, once would have been white, but now sat dirty and stained in a brownish yellow color. The garage sat untouched by human hands for some time now, collecting the dust and dirt that had accumulated over the years.

As the wind picked up and the gusts came sooner and faster, the shutters while clancking back and forth began to squeak. The rusted hardware holding the un-kept wooden panel shutters were losing there grip on the rotted wall that they hung from. The swinging radius of the shutters grew larger and larger with every swing which caused the impact of the shutters against the glass and wall a little harder and more intense every time.

Suddenly, breaking the peace that sat in the garage and upsetting the motionless dust that floated in the beams of light in the air, one of the shutters finally swung hard enough breaking the left side of the dirty window. The glass shoot into the garage and began to fall to the ground in a rain of rainbow colored shards. Almost simultaneously as the glass hit the ground, shattering in all directions across it, the left shutter swung back into the broken glass window causing the rest of the cracked and separated glass to shoot into the garage which fell to the ground in another rain of small and large shards, hitting the ground and scattering pieces across the ground.

As soon as the window was broken, life seemed to fill the garage. Spiders wich had grown accustomed to the silence of the garage jumped and ran to protective parts of there webbed homes. A small lizard that had been sleeping under the discarded work bench sprang to alert and scurried across the floor leaving small prints in the thick layer of dust that sat upon it. The dust that had sat for so long motionless in the air danced around in whirls. As the wind from outside rushed into the stale aired garage, the dirt and dust that covered the ground joined the dust in the air creating a small self contained dust whirl that danced across everything. The ends of the papers on the desk rose and fluttered in the breeze but didn't fly away for they were stuck to the desk do to the stains they sat in. Dead leaves and small sticks rolled across the oil stained floor all rolling from the east to the west side of the small building.

In a corner of the garage a stale and stiff blue tarp fluttered for the first time in years. It seemed to bend more due to how still the dirt and dust on top of it had changed the texture of the tarp. Under the stained tarp, more tarps sat, all stacked upon one another. The air passed in between all of the cracks to the tarps spreading fresh air throughout causing them to grow and seem to almost flex as they rose in the breeze a foot taller then they originally sat. The breezes from outside continued to flutter into the garage threw the broken window, rushing dirt, dust, cobwebs and fresh air throughout.

A large gust came through the window and aimed itself at the tarps. Once again rising as the air passed between the layers, the tarps looked as if they were breathing. While the gust was rushing through the layers, yet another gust came before the previous had died down. The tarps started to slip to a side as they caught the air and moved with it like a sail of a ship. The tarps, as if all connected moved as one, slowly being pushed by the wind the tarps moved. Then, the wind gusts halted. The peace of the garage was seeping back in. The shutters that had broken the window had since fallen off and fell just on the outside of the window to the ground. Without the gusts of wind rolling over the cracks of the bark in the trees, the whistling subsided. Peace resumed its place in the garage. As soon as the peace returned, it was interrupted once again with a sound.

The stack of tarps that were pushed by the wind had been pushed too far. They began to inch slowly off of what they sat upon and covered. Shhhfftt, shhhffft, the sound of the tarps scrapping against the metal that they covered as they slid off echoed threw small garage's peace. Suddenly, as the tarps slid more and more, the ratio of weight form on there surface to what was falling was to great and they completely slid from there surface and fell to the floor. The tarp folded upon itself crunching and shuffling as it came to peace in a heap on the floor.

The tarps now sat still. They sat on the floor next to the old VW Beetle that they had once covered. It was the car of Louis, that he hadn't drove since the faithful day that his wife died in his hands. Immaculately clean compared to everything else in the garage, the VW Bug seemed to shine in the dusty air. The sun peeking through the window of the garage shined through the windshield of the car, lighting its interior for the first time in years. Fully restored with both a new engine and a nice coat of paint, the car had been parked here twelve years ago and had not been tended to or looked upon in a very long time.

Although Louis had kept both the car and his wife in his heart, he could not bear the pain that would come with looking upon the car without his wife at his side. Since the accident, Louis had raised his kids alone with a child sitter, never coming to terms with what had happened. He devoted his life to his two children working at all hours to make the income that he needed to just to support them. He had fallen into a deep depression and it was due to the fact that he never came to terms with what had happened. Trying to be there for his children, he never made time to try to help himself psychologically threw a hospital, though he did think about what had happened every day of his life since then and had fallen asleep every night with tears in his eyes because of it. Over the years, he grew apart from society. He worked in his home solitary as a residential architect. He was able to mail all of his work directly to his boss; he never had to leave the house for work.

Along with being the child sitter that lived in the house, GLEN was also in charge of buying the groceries since she was given free rent while living in the home with Louis and the children, due to this Louis never had to leave the house to buy groceries. The combination of depression and anti socialism that came from years of solitary self loathing had turned the fun loving young adult that Louis once was, into a mid aged man who although cared about his personal appearance, had no one to talk to besides his children, and Glen. Louis blamed himself for his wife's death, but never wanting to upset his children, always put on a fake smile and rose his voice to a sympathetic level when talking to them.

Both of Louis' children felt bad for there father, as did Glen. They wish that he could move on from his past and get over it, but were as supportive as they could be without directly crossing the issue of him moving on. They felt for him and realized his pain, having never really known there mother, there empty spot in there hearts that could only be fulfilled by a mothers love and compassion sat vacant, but not in pain. Neither Billy nor Felicia missed there mother for neither of the had any memory of her, unlike there father.

Throughout there house sat many photos on mantels, tables and counters, many of Louis and his children. Most of the photos were of Billy and Felicia by themselves from over the years at sports events, birthday parties and vacations with friend's families to the beach and camping. However, with all of the framed pictures in the house, none of them were of Delilah. Louis had taken all of the pictures down since the accident and put them away in boxes that were stacked in the locked room that once was Louis' and Delilah's bedroom. Louis had since then moved his stuff into one of the spare bedrooms next to the room where his children shared a room. Both Billy and Felicia knew what laid on the other side of the locked door, but neither of them ever brought it up to there dad to go inside and look at what lied within to there father not wanting to upset him.

Louis did not want to keep the children from knowing who there mother was as much as it might seem. Louis had often, when Billy and Felicia were young, told them stories of how great and fun loving there mother was. He told them how much she was in tune with nature and never frowned upon anything. Along with the stories, Louis would bring things out of the boxes just to show them. Pictures, along with there wedding photos, and some Christmas ordainments that had sentimental value to Delilah had come out, each on a different night, each with there own story. Louis would talk his children to sleep with the stories of there mother as there bedtime stories. Louis did this so they would always be able to remember there mother and love both who she was and what she stood for.

However, ever since Billy and Felicia were ten and eleven, it was too hard for Louis to keep taking the pictures out and tell them stories about her. He still kept the stories coming nightly but just refrained from getting the photos and other objects out to add to the stories. It grew too hard for him to do, as did the story telling. From a nightly story, Billy and Felicia by the age of 12 and 13 only had the privilege of hearing a story once to twice every few months, and by the age of 15 and 16, the stories had stopped completely and the name Delilah was not murmured in the house by either Louis or his Children for the rest of the time that they all lived there.