Chapter 4

The next morning, I got up and only saw Callie in the kitchen. “Where’s Mom?” I asked.

“She must be sleeping in,” she said.

After breakfast, we headed off to school.

Two more tests, 98% on both, I am finally retaining information long enough to be tested.

“Robert Shore, please report to administration?”

That doesn’t sound good. As I got there as quickly as I could, I saw Callie, who was crying, and she embraced me so hard, saying “Mom has died, Bobby!”

I ... couldn’t believe it, and I began to sob as well. We stayed in our embrace for too long, so we finally stopped.

Apparently, a good friend of Moms came over, and she didn’t respond to the knocking. The friend knew where the outdoor hidden key was.

She ended up going upstairs finding her naked, smiling ... and dead!

Fortunately, an autopsy wasn’t necessary, and she had been declared ‘dead by natural causes,’ at 44!

Services were two days later, and the toughest thing that ever happened to me was watching her coffin being lowered into the hole!

Thank god Callie was 21, so we weren’t headed to different foster homes.

We stayed in the house, but moved our things to the master bedroom, after moving out moms’ personal things.

We made three stacks: clothes that Callie could wear, clothes that were worn or out of date, and everything else.

We expected a visit from somebody about our living conditions, but they never came.

My birthday came along, and Callie took me to the DMV to take the tests necessary.

I missed one on the written test, and I inadvertently rolled through a stop sigh. I knew I passed, but the DMV person was very stoic.

I got back in line, nervously waiting my turn, and finally got to the counter. She told me I did well on the driving test, giving me a temp 2026 license and saying that the license with my picture should take two to three weeks. I thanked her, also thanking my driving companion with a nice handshake.

On the way home, with Callie driving, she surprised me by saying, “How do you feel about moving out of the house?”

“You mean somewhere else in Athens (Georgia), or off to another town?” I countered.

“I actually was thinking of moving north to Indiana or Ohio. How do you feel about that?”

“Wherever you want to go, I want to go, Callie.”

We got back to the house, and I had Ohio and she took Indiana and we researched.

We each have a laptop, Apple of course, and we had three hours to make a list of no more than five cities in our state to present to the other.

Her list of Indiana included:

Vincennes

Indianapolis

Fort Wayne

Bloomington

Terre Haute

My list of Ohio included:

Columbus

Cincinnati

Alliance

Beavercreek

Canton

We asked one another why our first choice was our first choice? I began, “Columbus, the Capital of Ohio, is known as ‘The Discovery City.’ With a short drive to access the ‘Honeycomb’ national monorail that goes from Columbus to Denver but will eventually go from south of Washington DC to Central California.”

“Springfield, only 50 miles away, is the home of Charles and Claire, those amazing dancers we saw on TV. Claire had passed on, but apparently, Charles is now dancing with his oldest daughter.”

I went on in more detail for about ten minutes, including making a point that the city had a 255,000 people, easy for us to get lost in! We could also take classes at The Ohio State.

Next, she gave her strongest reasons for us going to Vincennes:

“It was a former small town that has grown to the third largest city in the state of Indiana, with only Indianapolis and Fort Wayne with larger populations. Vincennes is at 199,250 persons. What has caused this? Singlehandedly, it was Michael Thomas, a 26-year-old is who not only a Billionaire but is getting close to adding three more zeros to his wealth.”