Sunday visits to see my parents now consisted of driving to an assisted living home. My father was scheduled to stay there until he could walk with a cane. The doctors explained that the severity of the trauma was such that it may be months before they could operate on his knee. They assured us until then, he was in good hands.

For the following months, my mother spent her evenings and nights with him. Despite being in her seventies, she continued to work doing what she loved – managing a safe house for battered women. Leaving him was difficult for her when the time came, and she often stayed much later than she should. Being separated from him wasn’t easy. In the fifty-eight years that they’d been married, she’d spent every day with him without fail. From the day they met – when she was sixteen – he had been her everything.

Her only man.

Her only love.

If anyone knew how to care for my father, she did.

The phone rang late one evening, three months after my father was admitted to the home. I cringed when I realized who it was. My sister rarely called me. When she did, it was always about one of my parents. She lived in Houston, Texas, and visited quite frequently, but she had never been one to want to talk on the phone.

Reluctantly, I answered.

“Mom’s in the hospital,” she said.

“Exhaustion?” I asked.

“She wrecked her car.”

“Fuck. Is she okay?”

“The car flipped end over end, and then slid for a hundred yards. She was on the highway between Augusta and El Dorado. It’s bad. They’ve towed the car to Cook’s Salvage. I need you to go see if you can find her purse and house keys. Oh, and don’t tell dad. She’s pretty insistent on that.”

“Jesus, Amy. Is she okay?”

“By the grace of God. She was tossed out the window, and the car rolled over her, but somehow it missed her. They found it about a hundred yards from where they found her.”

“Goddamn it. Is she at Susan B. Anthony?”

“She is. Room 724.”

“Thanks, Amy.”

“Keep me in the loop.”

“Will do.”

When I saw my mother’s car, I all but collapsed. It looked like it had been hit by a speeding train. None of the windows were intact. The top was crushed. All four doors were crushed. The front, the back – everything – was crushed.

How someone could live through such an accident was incomprehensible to me.

A thirty-minute search aided by a flashlight produced the key. An hour later, my mother was at home nursing a concussion.

That weekend, her face was plastered with extra makeup to hide her bruises. Luckily, my father was more interested in Charlee than anything else, and he didn’t notice.

“She’s what? Eight months now?” he asked.

“She will be in a few days.”

“She’s going to be tall. Like Alec,” he said.

“Every doctor’s visit, she’s off the charts,” I said. “One hundred percentile on height, and fifty on weight. Tall and skinny.”

He smiled. “Just like her granddad used to be.”

In his younger years, my father, like my sons, was an athlete. He played basketball and ran cross country. He grew up in Leon, Kansas, and my mother lived in El Dorado. He didn’t have a car at the time, and my mother wasn’t old enough to drive.

It didn’t diminish his desire to see her. Nor did it prevent him from doing so.

He’d lace up his Chuck Taylor’s, stretch his long legs, and then he’d run the thirteen miles that separated them. After their visits, he’d run home.

I often told myself I’d write a romance novel based on their experiences as lovers. Their love for one another would act as an inspiration for anyone with a heart. Far more inspirational than the motorcycle club romance novels I’d been writing, that much I was sure of.

“What’s the plan for the summer,” he asked Landon.

“We’re going on vacation,” Landon replied.

“Where?” my father asked.

“Florida. For a whole month.”

My father nodded. “I bet you’ll have a good time.”

“We’re going to the beach.”

My father’s eyes closed for a moment. When he opened them, he smiled. “Your dad used to love the beach. Tough dragging him away from it, that was for sure.”

Landon looked at me and grinned. “We’re going to surf.”

My farther pointed at his knee. “Be careful.”

“I will,” Landon assured him.

A week later, I stood on the beach and gazed out at the Gulf of Mexico. With my toes in the sand and my mind deep in a dream, I closed my eyes. I dreamed of my childhood, and the magic the beach caused me to believe in.

As a child, I struggled with the existence of God. Even then, my world was black and white. If I couldn’t see it, taste it, or touch it, it simply didn’t exist. One day, while playing along the area where the ocean met the land, I peered out at the vast blanket of water that stretched to the horizon.

I gazed up at the sky.

I tried to comprehend how it worked. What made it function. The waves. High tide. Low tide. It was unconceivable. As the Pacific Ocean’s waves crashed against my feet, I decided what was before me was nothing short of proof that God did, in fact, exist.

The ocean’s waves were confirmation that He was alive.

I convinced myself it was God breathing that caused them to wash ashore. As long as they continued, I was certain that He was watching over me. The closer I was to the waves that tickled my feet, the closer I was to God.

The Gulf’s warm water covered my feet each time the tide pulsed.

“What are you doing?” Jess asked.

I didn’t respond.

“Scott?”

I raised my index finger.

Then, I said a prayer.

We left the beach that day and drove from Marco Island, Florida to Naples, a city a few miles north. The streets were lined with palms for as far as the eye could see. The median that separated the eastern and western traffic ways was landscaped with lush tropical plants and flowers.

“This is beautiful,” Jess said.

I agreed. “It’s unbelievable.”

In my fifty-plus years on earth, I’d driven from one end of the United States to the other. I’d visited every body of water that touched its edges. I had never, however, seen anything as beautiful as the city we were driving through. Despite having prepaid for a condo on the island for a month, we decided to spend the remaining portion of our vacation in Naples.

While Charlee slept, Jess and the kids swam in the hotel’s pool. I Googled Naples, to find out more of the paradise-like city. A quick check of the statistics revealed the odds of being the victim of a crime were less than one-one-thousandth of one-percent.

The city was primarily occupied by seasonal visitors. The average age of the permanent residents, according to Wikipedia, was sixty-seven. I checked the school system. Federally, the schools throughout the nation are ranked on a scale of one through ten, with ten being the best.

The private schools in Wichita were the best the city had to offer. They were ranked a four. Even so, the cost of attending was fifteen thousand per student, per year.

The public schools in Naples were a ten.

When Jess returned from swimming, I put my phone away. “Do you like it here?” I asked.

“At this hotel? Yeah, it’s really nice.”

“No,” I said. “In Naples.”

“Oh my Gosh. I love it. It’s like paradise.”

“Would you want to live here?”

Her face lit up. “Could we?”

After Charlee’s birth, I decided I didn’t want Jess to work any longer. My career had advanced enough that she didn’t need to. I wanted to have both of us at home, playing an active part in raising our daughter.

She soon began designing book covers for other authors. Then, she began designing graphics. Building websites. Designing and publishing coloring books. Before I knew it, she had a full-time career, and could barely keep up with what was in front of her.

Thoughts of returning to the beach shot through me. Visions of playing in the sand with the kids, seeing them develop a love and respect for one of God’s greatest gifts, and watching Charlee hunt for sea shells ran through my mind.

My heart raced.

I straightened my posture and cleared my throat. “We both work from home,” I blurted. “We can live anywhere.”

“What about the big kids?” she asked.

They were all enrolled in college at Kansas State University. It would be Derek’s freshman year in the upcoming August.

“They’re all away in college. This is when parents often leave. When the last kid goes to school.”

“I’d love to live here,” she said. “Want to look at houses?”

We spent the next week looking at homes. Our criteria was difficult to meet. A bedroom for each of the children, a yard, an in-ground pool, and we preferred the home be in one of the city’s many gated neighborhoods.

During that week, we found not one home that qualified.

Two weeks after we arrived, and two weeks before we planned to leave, the realtor called. According to him, he’d found the perfect place.

We came to a stop at the manned guard shack. Thirty-foot palms lined either side of the professionally landscaped entrance. Two fresh water lakes were within view, complete with fountains.

“Good morning,” the guard said. “What can I do for you?”

“We’re here to look at a home.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’ll have to be accompanied by a realtor. When he or she gets here, I’ll gladly let you in.”

We moved our SUV to the side and waited.

“They’re not going to let us live in a place like this,” Jess said. “Look. There’s tennis courts and a clubhouse. This isn’t for tattooed authors that write smut.”

A few minutes later, when we pulled in the driveway of the home, Jessica’s jaw was in her lap. Upon walking through the entrance, she gasped.

I didn’t need to go any further. “Call her,” I said. “Tell her we’ll take it.”

Jess spun around. “Can we afford to live here?”

“Tell her we’ll take it,” I said. “Call her right now.”

“There’s only one more step that you’ll need to take,” the realtor said.

“What’s that?”

“The neighborhood association will need to do a background check. If you pass the check, they’ll let you move in.”

I glanced around the newly remodeled home. I was quite certain a background check wouldn’t produce favorable results.

If nothing else, it was nice to dream.