Come September

ELISE STANFORD SURVEYED the veritable mountain of cardboard moving boxes stacked in what would, after the unpacking, be the family room, and inhaled what felt like her first easy breath in months. Finally, after all the pain, she was ready to start over. A fresh beginning. Exactly what she and the kids needed.Not that this change wasn't fraught with uncertainty. She now had an unfamiliar house that needed to be turned into a cozy home, new friends to make, a new environment to grow accustomed to, and a new job to settle into. But at least those uncertainties were of her own choosing and hadn't been thrust upon her by the sometimes unkind hands of fate.Picking her way through the boxes, she walked into the kitchen then leaned her shoulder against the backdoor jamb. A gentle breeze, scented with a slight whiff of salt courtesy of the Long Island sound, ruffled her hair through the screen door. Bright, early-summer sunshine warmed her skin and she lifted her face, catching the golden rays.Before deciding to buy this house, she hadn't been to Gateshead in fifteen years, yet Elise knew, in her heart, she washome. She'd always felt safe and happy, warm and loved in this sleepy town on the northeast end of Long Island where her family had vacationed for two weeks every summer when she was a kid. And home was now this outwardly unremarkable house whose kitchen and bathrooms and floors were thirty years outof-date. It in no way resembled the executive house in the upscale gated community she'd sold in Westchester--a beautiful house, yet one too filled with ghosts of the past. Of happy times that would never be again. Even after almost five years, every corner of that house reminded her of Ian. Of what they'd had. And what they'd lost.An image of Ian, the one she carried in her heart, of him smiling, laughing, handsome, robust, before illness had robbed him of his vitality, flashed through her mind. Ian's death had not only taken his life, but seemingly hers as well, leaving numbness where her heart used to beat. Cancer had stolen the man with whom she'd fallen in love twenty years earlier. The man who'd captivated her with his intelligence and infectious sense of humor. A man who had left behind a heartbroken son and a baby daughter he'd never see take her first steps. But if not for Jamie and Maggie, the fact that they needed her, that she was all they had left, she would have sunk into an abyss of grief from which she doubted she'd ever have emerged.Over the past five years shehadslowly emerged, at a rate some of her friends considered a snail's pace, but her grief support group had taught her that mourning was different for everyone, and required different amounts of time for everyone. That magic "one year" time period after Ian's death simply hadn't worked for her. But after five years of living nearly exclusively for her children, she was finally ready to start living for herself again. She'd made a few strides in that direction, had attempted several dates, and knew, in her heart, that this move, this change, was what she needed to move forward.A shriek of childish laughter drew her attention and her gaze cut to Maggie, running across the backyard in pursuit of a soccer ball, her honey-colored curls flying behind her as Jamie chased her, purposely slowing his steps so as not to overtake his younger sister.A smile curved her lips even as a lump lodged in her throat. Jamie seemed to have grown six inches since his eleventh birthday last month. Clearly he'd be tall, like Ian, yet he didn't just resemble his father in looks. He possessed Ian's intelligence and patience. His compassion. She watched him scoop up his sister and twirl her around twice before setting her back on her feet with a laugh. His glasses slid down his nose and he pushed them up with an unconscious gesture. He caught sight of her in the doorway and waved with one hand while executing a gentle pass kick to Maggie whose eyes shoneYardley, Cathy is the author of 'Come September ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373837236 and ISBN 0373837232.