October to October

{Chapter One}

   There is someone moving into the big house down the street; the big, purple Victorian that a lot of neighbors openly wished would be torn down. There was even a petition, but still the house stood. It was past it's prime, they said, and no one wanted to take the time or money to fix it up. It was a waste of money as Lauren's parents said. 

  Lauren didn't agree. She thought the house was beautiful. She'd taken pictures of it ever since she was a kid. Season by season she clicked away, and she told herself that someday she would buy it. She didn't want to make it over and put in a designer kitchen and tear out all the character. She wanted it the way it was including the cob webs and the heavy front doors that creaked when they were opened. 

  She would sometimes go inside and sit in the living room where she imagined families on Christmas morning, children running out the door for the school bus, and wondered what happened to them. All that was left were a few pieces of broken furniture and garbage from kids that broke in for fun. 

  Now the old house would be home to a twenty something girl. She cut down the tall grass, and the broken windows were repaired. She hadn't done anything else from what Lauren could tell from down the street. Lauren hoped she wouldn't change the house too much.

  That wasn't the only change that summer. Lauren's sister Ruth came home from her vacation to Paris with her boyfriend Alex and his family with a diamond ring on her finger. Her boyfriend of nine months asked her at sunset on the top of the Eiffel tower. He was the youth minister of their church, and Ruth liked him from the moment she saw him. 

  Ruth had always been involved in youth group, but suddenly she was hosting bible studies at their house, and she joined the choir because he was in charge of it. He noticed her right away, and they were dating within two weeks. They went on group dates with other couples from their church that soon included Lauren and her boyfriend Jake. He was Alex's younger brother. Jake came home from college that summer, and Lauren became quick friends with him, and it turned romantic a few weeks later. Lauren really liked Jake. They made each other laugh. She thought he looked a lot like a young Matt Damon, but Ruth told her she was delusional.

  "It's too bad about that old house," Ruth commented as they stood out on the porch and watched a beat up Volkswagen van pull up in front of the purple Victorian house. "I thought when you and Jake got married you could buy it and live there with your spiders."

  "Funny," Lauren said as she watched the girl carry in boxes from her car; she'd been slowly moving in all week, and Lauren had been spying. Ruth said she was a busy-body.

  "I doubt Jake will ever settle down actually," Ruth mused. "You'll be doing missionary work with him the rest of your life. I think that's his real calling."

  "Probably," Lauren said as Jake was currently on a break from college as he did missionary work in Haiti.

  "He'll be home in only a week," Ruth said and squeezed her sister's arm. "So don't get sad on me."

  "I'm not sad," Lauren said as she followed her sister into the house. "You're the one who brought it up. I just said probably."

  "I know you're sad when become quiet, and what girl wouldn't be sad about their boyfriend being so far away all the time?"

  "I'm not sad, and I'm not being quiet. I was just thinking."

  "Okay."

  "And I know he'll be here in a week. I have a ton of stuff planned for us."

  "I hope you leave some time open. He's coming for the engagement party too."

  "No, that just happens to be at the same time. He's coming to see me.