Join me during the month of April as I blog through the alphabet. My theme will be What’s In A Name. I will attempt to write up a short fictional character sketch beginning with a different letter of the alphabet each day. Remember that a place can also be a character.
Quintana Roo
She remembered hearing her father talk about it when she was a child. He had described it as a tropical jungle and a paradise. He had talked about how the weather was always warm there. Not too hot; just warm enough to enjoy being next to the ocean. He described the lush tropical plants and the clear blue skies that melted into the ocean.
That’s where she was going to go. She had always imagine it as the perfect place to live but had never had the opportunity. Now she did. Her husband was gone. Her children were gone. There was nothing but an empty house and a business that brought too much responsibility with it. There were memories. Lots and lots of happy memories. There were, of course, some bad ones but most of them were good. She had a pretty wonderful husband and marriage. They had three beautiful children. Her life had seemed perfect with all of the time she spent with her children and her volunteer activities. It had been as close to perfect as she could imagine but now it was all gone.
It hadn’t been anyone’s fault. It was an accident. Sure, there was always someone to blame; something to blame. But when it was all said and done, it had been a horrible accident. No drunk driver. No faulty vehicle. No pedestrian that got in the way. It had been a dog. A dog running out into the road. It had been the rain. It had been the place in the road where there was a blind curve. It had all converged at exactly the same time and so there had been a horrible accident and her family was gone. For a long time, her sanity had also been gone but she was now coming back to life. If that’s what you could call it.
She was taking off. She had left life long friends to run the business and had researched the world. She had thought she would just travel and she still might. But she had also remembered how that tropical and mysteriously named place had called to her as a child and so she had packed her bags and used an agency to rent a small home for her and she was on her way. She didn’t care that Quintana Roo was also in the perfect spot to sustain substantial damage in the event of a hurricane coming off the Caribbean or from the Gulf. They happened often enough and she figured that might be part of the charm; at least to her. She would be tempting fate; challenging nature; making a stand. If a hurricane came and wiped her out, so be it. But then again, maybe she would travel during the hurricane season. Who knew? She didn’t. She just knew where she was heading when she got off of the plane in Cancun–to a less touristy spot where she could have peace and quiet and solitude. At least until the winds called her name.
