The Color of a Dream Read Free Page A

very left out. Without bothering to get dressed, I
hurried downstairs, pulled on a pair of rain boots and a jacket,
and ran out the back door.
    * * *
    It was not one of my finer moments. I will
admit that. When I reached my family, I shouted at all of them
accusingly.
    “What are you doing out here? Why didn’t you
wake me?”
    My mother turned and looked at me with
concern. “You seemed so tired last night, Jesse. I thought you
could use some extra sleep.”
    “If this is Francis’s funeral,” I said, “I
should be here.”
    “It’s not his funeral,” my father informed
me, impatiently. “Rick just got home and he wanted to see where we
buried Francis.”
    “He was my dog, too,” Rick said with a
frown, as if I was being selfish.
    Maybe I was, but I was only fourteen and I
was grief-stricken and angry.
    “Come here,” Rick said, holding out his hand
to wave me closer.
    I slowly approached.
    “I was thinking,” Rick said, “that we should
get some sort of monument. Maybe a small headstone. I have enough
in my savings account to pay for it.”
    “That would be a fine gesture, Rick,” my
father said, “but please let me cover the cost.”
    Rick laid a hand on my shoulder. “What do
you think we should have engraved on it?” he asked. “His name of
course, but maybe we should come up with some sort of epitaph.”
    I thought about it for a moment. “What
about: Here lies Francis, beloved dog and best friend?”
    My voice shook and I didn’t think I could
speak again without breaking down.
    “That sounds perfect,” Rick said. He looked
down at me meaningfully. “I’m really sorry, Jesse. I don’t think
I’ll ever be able to forgive myself.”
    He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of
his nose, as if he, too, could not speak about it anymore.
    My father squeezed his shoulder and patted
him on the back.

Chapter Eight
     
    Five years later
     
    “Hey, Bentley. Where’s your leash?”
    Bentley’s head lifted, his ears perked up
and he jumped off the sofa in the family room. I rose from my chair
at the kitchen table and headed for the laundry room. With tail
wagging, Bentley followed me in.
    Dad waited only a month after we lost
Francis before coming home one afternoon with a brand new puppy—an
adorable black lab I fell in love with at first sight.
    From that moment on, Bentley and I were best
pals. He formed a closer bond with me than anyone else because both
my parents worked and I was the first one home every afternoon to
take him for a walk. I made sure his food and water bowls were
always full in the mornings, and he slept on the floor in my room
on a large green pillow. I loved him dearly.
    After attaching the leash to Bentley’s
collar, I led him out the front door. While I stood there locking
the door behind me, I heard a car speed by on the road at the
bottom of the hill. A few years earlier, a crew had come in and
paved the road all the way to the next town, so we now had a
steadier stream of traffic moving at a faster clip in front of our
house. In addition to that, a number of new homes had gone up since
the paving project was announced. We were no longer the only house
between the main road and the bootlegger’s shack—which as far as I
knew was still there.
    There had been other changes to our lives as
well. Rick graduated from high school with honors and received a
scholarship to UCLA. He was still there, living out west, working
on an MBA.
    As for me, I was still living at home,
working at the airport as an operations assistant until I figured
out what to do with my life. My father wanted me to enroll in a
science program and go to dental or medical school. I certainly had
the grades for either of those options, but I just wasn’t that keen
on following in my father’s footsteps. We were different, he and I,
and I wanted to choose my own path. Maybe it would have something
to do with aviation. I’d always had an interest in that. I just
wasn’t sure yet.
    That’s when I