Page 1 of Family Bonds: Carson & Laine

PROLOGUE

“Ithink I’m going to love it here,” Laine Connors said to her father when she got out of the van at Cornell University. She’d be here for the next several years studying Fine Arts and she couldn’t wait for this journey to begin.

Ithaca, New York, was five and a half hours from Providence, Rhode Island, where she grew up.

The Northeast was in her blood and she wanted to stay in that region. She wanted to see the changing of the seasons and feel and breathe in the fresh clear air for inspiration and creativity.

Not to mention it made her father proud to go to an Ivy League school. Yale and Harvard were too big in terms of city living for her. Nope, this was where she wanted to be even if it was further away.

“You love it anywhere you are,” her father said.

Her gaze dropped from the campus she was looking around at and the rolling hills in the distance to her father sitting in his wheelchair. She was going to miss him the most.

Though she split her time with both of her parents, there was that Daddy-Daughter bond that had a stronghold on her heart. She often wished it wasn’t so strong because it almost felt one-sided at times.

“I do,” she said. “Life is about living it, not wishing, hoping or looking off somewhere else. Didn’t you teach me that?”

“I did,” her father said. “Looks like your mother and Stewart found a parking spot.”

She turned to see her mother and stepfather making their way closer. They’d have to get a dolly to move her luggage in. The mini fridge she had with her TV too.

“There is my little girl,” Madelyn Connors-Ringer said and gave her a big hug. You’d think she hadn’t seen her mother in years with the way there was a death grip on her. Nope, last night she was there packing up the rest of her things, but she’d said she would ride with her father for this trip.

“You can let go before you squeeze the oxygen out of her,” her father told her mother.

Her mother laughed. “Caleb. You know how hard this is going to be. And why.”

Stewart ran his hands over her mother’s shoulder.

“It’s going to be fine,” Laine argued. “I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

Her parents passed a look to each other. One of fond memories and laughter. Of a time before...the accident.

Her parents would always love each other. She knew that.

Now they were best of friends it seemed. In her heart, she knew if her father hadn’t done what he had, they might still be together. The fact they co-parented her for years proved it. Her mother had even lived on the same property as her father, but in a smaller house, for years.

Yeah, it was an odd relationship and most judged, but she didn’t care. To her, it was all about being loved.

She got plenty of that.

“You better not,” Stewart said. “I’m going to be calming your mother the whole way home tomorrow.”

“You’re up for it,” she told her stepfather of eight years. He was a good guy. Married her mother when Laine was ten. He wasn’t so comfortable living in the small house on the property with her father, but he’d done it for a few years until he could get her mother to move a few miles away.

“I am,” Stewart said. “Why don’t I find a dolly and we can load everything up to get to your room? Second floor, right?”

“That’s right,” she said. Stewart and she went in to see if they could locate one and left her parents out in the parking lot.

When they returned pushing the dolly, the smile was gone from her face. “They don’t have an elevator,” Stewart said.

“What?” her mother asked. “We’ve got to carry this all up the stairs?”

“Stewart and I can handle the fridge,” Laine said. “It’s not that heavy. Neither is my luggage or TV.” This had more to do with the fact her father wouldn’t be able to see her room.

“I’ll find some young strong men that want to earn money,” her father said and wheeled off before she could stop him.

That’s what he always did. Flashed his money and got things done.

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