Trust And Hope

Chapter 22

"Girls," Dad said, smiling as he walked in. "It's that time of the year again."

I blinked obliviously. "What time?"

He exchanged a look with Mom. "They forgot."

"Forgot what?" Sadie demanded.

"Oh nothing," Dad said, a mischievous look on his face.

"Tell us, Daddy," Gabby begged. "What is it?"

"What do we always do this time of the year?" Dad prompted.

"What?" I asked.

"Richelle, come on," Mom smiled. "You, of all people, should know this. It's August. Where do we go?"

I blinked.

"California!" Mom and Dad said in unison.

Oh. That. We always spent the second to last week of Summer Vacation in a cabin in California with our cousins. It was a tradition we called, "Unplugged Cali Summer." It was "unplugged" because my family made us leave all electronics at home.

"When is it?" Gabby asked.

Mom shook her head disappointedly. "I thought you girls would remember. It's tomorrow, guys!"

My sisters and I exchanged looks with each other. "What?"

"Yes!" Mom prompted. "Gosh, we thought you'd remember and were just faking us out. Girls, we've got a lot of packing to do."

The rest of the night was spent washing clothes, pulling things out of the back of our closets, and dragging suitcases down from the garage.

I sat on Sadie's floor, watching everything go on. It looked like a tornado had struck. Clothes, shoes, everything. It was all strewn across Sadie's room as Mom, Dad, Gabby, and I tried to help her pack. We'd gotten Gabby packed already. I was next.

"Richelle, can you sit on this?" Sadie called. "Gabby's not heavy enough."

I never thought I would hear that sentence spoken in my life.

I sighed, walked over, and casually sat on top of Sadie's suitcase like a perfectly normal human being.

"Bounce," My mother told me.

I bounced. Eventually, they got her suitcase shut.

"Do we need to clean this up?" Dad muttered.

"That's an after-vacation problem to worry about," Sadie said.

"No," Mom said. "Girls, clean this up. Then we'll get to Richelle's packing."

So we sighed, and started picking up all of Sadie's stuff.

We trudged through the heat, up to the quaint little cabin in San Antonio, California. Sadie trudged beside me and Miles, who had come with us, picked his way on my other side.

My parents had made me leave my prosthetic leg in my suitcase, because apparently, I wouldn't need it to do the short amount of walking.

When we got inside I breathed in the warm pine smell and let the homey feeling of family surround me. This had to be my favorite place in the entire United States. Apart from my hometown, of course. It just felt so homey and inviting.

"Smells amazing," Miles said, taking a deep breath.

"Right?" I said.

"Cabin?" My cousin Andrea said, appearing beside us. "This place is bigger than my house!"

My lips twitched. "True."

"Lunch, everyone?" Mom asked.

It was tradition that, on the way over there, we went to a local Crest Foods and bought our lunches. We were each assigned a food item, then tasked with breaking out into groups when we got to the cabin, of who we were with on the road there, and organizing a picnic-type thing.