She had planned to leave later that night and drive through morning, until she reached the extreme western range of the North Carolina mountains, a needed break from the insane schedule she was juggling, but the steady rain all afternoon and forecasted for the next three days, impelled her to throw a few necessities into an overnight bag, cram dishes into the washer, and back her efficient compact car up the steep drive onto the street leading out of the golf club community she called home. Finally, at one thirty in the morning, when the normal five hour drive had already turned into six due to the nasty weather and excruciating darkness, Taylor pulled off of the treacherous, only partially visible mountain road, into a Hampton Inn, no longer able to fight off the drowsiness she had been wrestling for the last two hours. As she stood in the cold foyer with house phone in hand, the deceptive glass doors locked for the evening, she waited for the absent clerk to hear the insistent phone ringing at the empty desk and tried to convince herself that the laborious drive had been necessary, and the extra bill she was about to add to her sparkling collection was completely unavoidable. Shivering from exhaustion and the soul sapping chill of the merciless foyer, Taylor was about to pick up her Blackberry when a energetic blonde hair five year old boy in Spiderman pajamas with footies skittered up to the glass doors and waved. Desperate not to lose this small link to a warm room and soft bed, Taylor only wavered a moment between the propriety of a five year old opening the door for a stranger and asking him to press the necessary button to let her inside, when the thirty year old barefoot mother/clerk appeared . The doors slid open, welcoming arms of heat pulled Taylor into the lobby and suddenly the drive, the hotel bill, the rain no longer mattered. At that moment, her vacation had truly begun.
After five and a half hours of sleep, just enough to put an end to the burden of exhaustion she had been carrying, Taylor woke up alone, just as she had done for the last three weeks. Her husband, Nick, was away, working. His job as a mortgage field inspector, took him all over the state. With the economic downturn, Nick's work load was heavier than Taylor's. He had been away from home most of the year. When she could manage a few days away from her own job, they tried to meet for a weekend, and occasionally a long weekend if she had thoroughly prepped her employees and her office to handle things during her absence. It wasn't that they were incapable, but getting the office in order, just to take a four day weekend involved so much extra work on her end, that the additional stress seemed hardly worth the effort. Then, one day, Taylor realized she was the one making all the arrangements, no matter who called whom, she was always the one organizing, where was Nick this weekend, when could he make time, how much time would they have together, what would be the best arrangement. It had begun to feel like part of her secular job, and Nick was always the same, tired when they met, happy to see her, trying to catch up from the weeks of separation, but as she would talk about their home, their family and friends, he was distracted, looking like he was asleep while his cool blue eyes were open. Taylor tried different moods with him, flirty, silly, sexy, business, friendly, nurturing, domestic, wifely, and even anger. Nick teased her when she was being flirty, he became aggravated when she was silly, he would reject her sexual advances only to eventually come around, he was bored when she was all business, she always came up lacking as just a friend, the nurturer almost ended their sexual relationship, he laughed at her being domestic, the role of the good wife almost led him into a depression, and when she was angry, he was angrier. Taylor was out of ideas. Three weeks of phone conversations, and neither one of them brought up trying to meet for a weekend. It had been Taylor's most painful realization that perhaps her husband, was not interested in keeping their marriage together, that she was trying to keep a strangle hold on something that really wanted to be set free. And so at the end of three weeks, when ordinarily she would have found Nick, and tried to make the calendar of their life work just as well with two days as with seven, Taylor, instead, was headed to their house in the mountains, alone.
North Carolina November mornings had a slight chill, the wet bright red, orange, and yellow brown leaves littered the mountain roads like the remnants of a big city parade. The sun, the crisp air, the clean, fresh feel after a heavy rainstorm, and the clearest, brightest cerulean sky all combined to encourage Taylor on her adventure. As she shifted her manual transmission around the twisting roads, up and around entire mountains, by small lopsided frame houses built right on the shoulder of the old, cramped road, Taylor felt her mind finally drift away from the anxiety of her marriage, the stress of her job, the responsibility of her employees. Taylor had not been up to the mountain house since the early summer, when the lake was still too cold for swimming. She loved the Outer Banks in any season, but the mountain house had been a friend's who had lost a life's income with poorly timed investments when the market fell. When Robert came to them with an offer solely based on Nick's long standing joke that he would buy it from him one day, it didn't take a genius to realize why Robert was selling to them at such a good price. He needed cash, and he needed it fast. Nick and Taylor had not planned on buying property in the mountains, but they had been semi-frequent guests two years ago who understood all the selling points, and total property value. Robert's offer was one of desperation, and he made it clear, that he hoped to buy back the house from them one day. Once the legalities were finalized, Robert left for Florida and Nick and Taylor had their own personal mountain retreat. Nick used the house as a home base during weeks his field work kept him in the mountains, so in a way, the unplanned purchase had been more useful than they could have imagined. Taylor thought about the changes she and Nick had made in the house, before both of their jobs began demanding so much of their life, and she felt the bubbling of excitement she usually felt the closer she got to the ocean.