Learning to Live Again

It is another Friday evening at the Hertford Bay Taphouse.

The discussion started out over the correct method of washing your car and ended with a story about loss and redemption, about the families we're born into and the ones we choose, about the lies we tell ourselves (and others) as well as the truths that set us free.

It's a story about a girl who learned to dream again, and an old man who remembered how to hope.

This one begins with a trailer park in Mississippi, a woman who had given up on dreaming, and a mysterious silver trailer which appeared overnight in the empty lot next door.

Gabby Sinclair had learned to expect very little from life. After losing her parents, she had tucked her ambitions into a small box and stored them away, trading adventure for survival and hope for a steady paycheck at a hotel where the biggest excitement was a complaint about the ice machine.

She tried not to think about the future. It was easier that way.

Then Jason Nicler arrived.

With his pink golf shirt, his grilled hamburgers, and his infuriating habit of answering questions with more questions or answering them even before the question was asked,

Jason seemed like nothing more than a friendly old man with too much time on his hands.

But beneath the easy smile and the fishing stories, was he was something else entirely?

Only time would tell.