for individuals and small businesses and, maybe if she was just a little lucky, maybe a small business or two would pick her up to run the accounting and finances in the Port Angeles area.
It seemed that moving day had snuck up on them fast. The house was completely packed up and in the process of being moved up to the cabin by the moving agency. One large truck held all their furniture and property, along with three men who would help to unload the truck and pack all their things into the cabin. Christina walked into the living room that was now bare and void of their furniture, their bookshelf, TV, and recliner—all packed into the moving truck that was halfway to Elwha, Washington, now. Matt came around the corner of the kitchen and wheeled himself in his wheelchair into the living room. Christina was standing by the living room window, looking out toward the highway traffic on the interstate, while Matt wheeled his chair up to her.
“What are you looking at, babe?” asked Matt.
“The traffic and interstate. Hard to believe when I look out a window I won’t see traffic like this anymore,” replied Christina.
“What does it look like out there? I can’t see,” said Matt, straining to look up from his seated position.
“Heavy and congested. As always,” replied Christina. “You ready to go, honey?”
“Yes, I’ll meet you out at the car.”
Matt wheeled himself out through the front door and down the cement ramp that they had installed for him. Christina started toward the front door and turned around, taking one last look inside the condo home, before turning around and walking out the front door, shutting it behind her. Matt was patiently waiting by the passenger side door, looking at the condo from the outside. Christina walked over to him and helped him up. Matt maneuvered his legs in a way that would help Christina help him easier into the passenger seat of the car. Once he was inside the car, Christina folded up his wheelchair and stored it in the back seat. Matt’s car was totaled in the accident that landed him in the hospital and the condition he’s in now, so now they were down to only one car for the two of them. The couple used the insurance money from the settlement to pay off the remainder of Matt’s car, but also to put a down payment onto the cabin to get started. Christina decided to head back inside and walk around the condo home one more time, double-checking to make sure that they hadn’t left anything behind. Christina was glad that she did. In the bedroom she found her cell phone charger still plugged into the wall. She walked over, unplugged the charger, wrapped it up, and stuck it in her jeans pocket. After she had finished walking through the condo, she turned and took one last look at the entryway of the home, then slowly backed up and shut the door.
Christina made her way down the ramp toward the car, her husband, Matt, smiling at her from inside the car as she walked down the ramp. Christina opened the driver’s side door to the car.
“Ready to go, baby?” asked Christina with a smile.
“Ready when you are,” replied Matt.
Christina sat in the driver’s seat, then leaned over and gave Matt a kiss. Starting the car, she put the car in gear and started to go. Christina pulled out onto the road and made her way onto the highway, heading toward Highway 101, north to Port Angeles.
“Do you want me to GPS the cabin address in Elwha, honey?” asked Matt.
“Yeah, you better. I know we have to hit the 101 going north to Port Angeles, but from there I can’t remember exactly how to get myself to the cabin,” replied Christina.
Matt searched the GPS coordinates of the cabin from his cell phone while Christina got on the interstate to go north until she reached the Highway 101 exit. There she exited I-5 onto the 101 to go north toward Port Angeles. Christina looked back in the rearview mirror to see the tall capital buildings of Olympia fading into the distance behind tall and lush pine trees along the sides of the highway. There was nowhere to go now but forward, toward a new life together. It took them nearly three hours driving the Highway 101 to make it to Port Angeles with all the traffic on the highway. The couple finally reached Port Angeles and decided to take a break and gas up their car. They found a gas station near Port Angeles, along the side of the road along Highway 101, and pulled into the station to park and gas up. It had rained the moment they had left Olympia and the whole way to Port Angeles. Christina got out of the car, opened an umbrella she kept under the seat of her car for such rainy days as this, and walked into the gas station market. She folded her umbrella up and walked up to the attendant at the counter and told him thirty dollars on pump one, handing the man a twenty-dollar and two five-dollar bills. The attendant took the money, rang up thirty dollars dollars’ worth of gas on pump one. The attendant told Christina that the pump was ready for operation and Christina turned around to leave and go pump the gas into her car. While she was walking out the door, four old men were jabbering away over their cups of coffee while sitting by the window at the long bar table that ran the length of the front window. Just before she walked out the front door of the station, she overheard the men talking about a man that went missing up by the Elwha River. One man told the story that he had read in the local newspaper, and the other men laughed at the end of each sentence the man told them. Christina heard the man talking about the newspaper story, speaking about the location of where the man had originally went missing. If she remembered right, the location sounded like it wasn’t too far away from the cabin where the man was last seen. Nevertheless though, Christina walked out the door, opening her umbrella back up, and went to pump gas into the car. She thought to herself that it was rather rude for grown older men to be having a good laugh about someone getting lost and going missing in the forest.
While walking through the parking lot and gas pumps back to her car, Christina thought to herself that the movers ought to be at the cabin by now. Hopefully by the time she and Matt got to the cabin they would be nearly finished in unloading the truck and ready to help move furniture. They had left before Matt and she did after all. They also had a key to the front door of the cabin so that when they got there they could immediately begin unloading and not waste any time waiting for Christian and Matt to arrive. Christina opened the gas cover to her gas tank, took the gas nozzle from the pump, and pumped gas into her Subaru. The thirty dollars filled her gas tank nearly to the top where Christina didn’t have to go back into the market to get change. She took the nozzle out of the gas tank, careful not to get any gas on the side of her car, and replaced the nozzle on the pump. She ran around the side of the car and got into the driver’s side, folding her umbrella up as she was getting into the driver’s seat and quickly shutting the door.
“Boy, it’s really coming down out there, huh?” asked Matt.
“Yes, it is. But what did we expect? This is the west side of Washington,” replied Christina. “Plus, we’re up closer to the mountain range and near the waterfront too. We’re bound to get something other than sunshine, honey.”
“That’s true. Remember the last time we came up this way?” asked Matt.
“Yes, I do.” Christina smiled. “We had driven over to Forks for vacation for a weekend to your family’s vacation home in the mountains. That was a fun weekend. How crazy it is we got away from doing that. So busy with our careers and our own lives. I miss the times where we would just get out of Olympia and just spend time together, you and me.”
“Well, we’re going to change that from now on. Love you, Chris.”
“Love you too, Matt.”
Christina leaned over and gave Matt a kiss. She then turned the keys in the ignition of her car and drove back onto Highway 101, heading west on the Olympic highway toward their road that would take them to the cabin—their new home. They reached a small road called Herrick Road just off the Olympic highway that took them straight through
