He jogged every morning, through the undulating mist that blanketed the suburban, provincial style neighborhood. He jogged between manicured lawns and city maintained curbs. The strip of sidewalk he crossed before he reached the asphalt path through the park, was untarnished by idly tossed trash, litter or cracks. His was an affluent neighborhood. Every time his foot left the ground he considered it a subdued jump for joy.

His whole person oozed the privileged existence he lived. The exceptionally fit body which pumped him across the concrete reflected the generally healthy state of his lifestyle. Attractive CEO, gorgeous trophy wife, his was the perfect family picture. His modes of transportation were suited to his every whim; The Land Rover for when he was active, the Ducati for when he was possessed of a rebellious whim. There was also the M3. He had genuinely never let go of his high school affinity with Bavarian Motor Works.

Even his clothes reflected his position, though he wore only running gear. It had the carefully planned "casual" look to it; all the right symbols and logos, iconography for a generation. This too had been a high school fixation, that being a time where a name could raise the price of nothing into an expensive something.

He jogged through the curtain of haze that had settled over the community, entering the park in the assumption that life would continue to be without peril or confusion. He had done well in convincing himself for over twenty years that life was as it should be. He had all he deserved and more, and nothing could take away his sense of entitlement. Nothing ever had, well, there was the girl.

The steady rhythm of his exercise faltered for a moment. Thoughts of the girl always made him falter. He stopped and bent over to rest his hands on his knees, exhaling heavily from his rigorous activity. He shook his head, inhaled deeply, and stood straight again. He stretched himself, arms out, pulling his arms forward at the wrist to loosen his shoulder joints.

Thoughts of the girl occurred occasionally to him. He allowed them no more time than the subconscious allows a fleeting glimpse of horror into a beautiful dream. Even now, he took up his run again, a little more energy thrown into it; a little extra speed motivating his travel.

He followed his usual track, three times around the park and along the canal, then retraced his steps back to his home. He ran up the driveway and through the door under the carport. He grabbed the sweat cloth off the hook by the door, conveniently left there by his wife, Michelle. Michelle was a trophy wife, literally, he'd won her. It had cost him assorted bundles of cash, but when he had envisioned the perfect wife, he had seen Michelle.

As he scrubbed the towel across his dripping head, her voice came through from another room of the house. With all the mismatched doorways of his very modern home, the direction her voice came from was nearly impossible to locate.

"Steff, are you logging on before your shower? I wanted to order a few things before we start getting ready."

Shopping, the only thing she loved more than her inflated bank account. "Yes, I need to check Email before I head into the office."

"I thought you weren't going in today. You need time to get ready." Michelle called.

"I never said that. I don't need time, it's a reunion. I'm not wasting valuable minutes on the decaying wreckage, who will be vainly searching out their lost youth at this pathetic event."

"You've been looking forward to seeing your friend again, admit it." Michelle said, as she entered the room through the opposing door.

"Yes, this is true. I have been looking forward to seeing him again." Steff responded, as he turned towards the stairs, up which his computer waited in his functionally perfect home office.

"What was his name again, honey? Bryce, Brad, something...Bri-"

As she asked, a face floated into the view of his mind's eye and stopped him at the foot of the stairs. He saw a young impetuous boy, with a fluff of strawberry absurdness floating at his arm, on the edge of a dance floor. A few bars of a long forgotten song wafted through his memory and his carelessly placed hand squeezed tightly on the bannister. He cut her off, "Blane, Blane McDonough."

The verdant blanket of grass across the yard declined slightly at the starkly shaped edges where the deep brown of richly fed soil held the trunks of several fruit bearing trees. The yard was large for the neighborhood of high end tract housing that Tonapah Hills claimed to not to be. The house behind him was a lightly toned shade of salmon pink with purple-grey slate roof tiles, which made him think of a thick skinned marine animal. The home of his ex-wife had such sharp cut lines, it reminded him of a slaughtered whale.

The effect on him may likely have been latent feelings caused by his personal slaughter in the divorce. His heart bled out for the two boys who frolicked around the brightly colored playground set. Kenyon, aged 4 and Cameron, aged 7 had been infant and toddler respectively when Kristina had come to him with the last words he'd expected from their shiningly brilliant marriage; "I am not happy, and I want a divorce." He and Kristina had waited nearly ten years to have Cam, and he still hadn't been ready really.

When he asked her why she wanted a divorce, she'd said one word. It wasn't a bad word, there was no malice in her voice when she said it, and it wasn't cruel in itself. The connotations of the word were bad though, it wasn't an ugly word. In his opinion, it was a beautiful word, or to be correct, a beautiful name. Kristina had answered, "Andie."

He and Andie had walked away from their senior year hopeful, excited and ready to battle anything. They'd already gone up against their own fears. He loved Andie in a way that was no idle high school sweetheart love. Nothing could part them, so he'd thought.

Andie was strong, he wasn't. When his parents warned him not to see her, he'd been strong. When they'd refused to give him any money, he'd worked for the summer so they could go out and do things together. When August came, his parents and Grandparents put their partnered feet down. He would go to an Ivy League university, or he was on his own. When his inheritance and future were threatened, he'd folded like the coward he now knew himself to be. Andie hadn't cried, or yelled at him. She'd simply looked into his eyes and right through to his soul, then turned and walked away and out of his life.

Cambridge had been a blur until the day Kristina happened into the bar he was drowning himself in. She swept him out of his focused concentration on course work, and the downward spiral of his cluttered thoughts, and pulled him into the sunshine. By the time he'd graduated, they were engaged. Nothing held him back, nothing stopped him.

One guest at the wedding gave him his only moment of doubt; "Blane, I think you've chosen a perfect girl. I mean she's beautiful, bright and everything you deserve and need. I simply see it as the first chapter in a tragedy, because it's a damn shame that she isn't the girl you really want, and you will destroy it." Steff had spoken those words in the quiet of Blane's fathers' study, his new wife Michelle stood by his side saying nothing, but berating him silently with her eyes. He'd denied it then, but he couldn't deny it now. Steff had been absolutely right. And Blane had truly devastated the marriage. You can't give something away to anyone when it belongs to someone else, most particularly, your heart.

He watched as Keny reached the top of the climbing wall on the playground set. He watched in a daze of old memories as Cam climbed up the first few grips on the wall and grabbed his brother's foot and began pulling. There was a sliding sound to his left, and a voice called out over his left shoulder.

"Cam, don't pull on Keny's foot, unless you plan on breaking his fall for him. You can you come in now if you can't behave." Kristina called from the kitchen window. The window began sliding shut, then suddenly slid open again. "Blane?" she inquired.

Blane stood up, and turned around to look in the window at her. "Hi Kris, I'm sorry, I just missed the guys, I hope you don't mind." His discomfort was apparent in the way he shifted his weight and tugged here and there to straighten his clothing.

"You could have called." now over her initial surprise, Kristina looked mildly annoyed at his presence. "You should have."

"I would have if it had been a conscious decision. I was driving home from work, and I just sort of...ended up...here." he finished with a stutter.

Kristina exhaled, and looked down with a very slight shake of her head. "It wasn't where you really wanted to go, but they'll be glad this is where you decided to come."

Blane opened his mouth to argue, but as usual, realized he didn't have any defense. Instead he just turned around again, and resumed his seat. About this time, the boys realized their Dad was over and ran toward him.

"Dad" Cam called, while Keny followed with the less formal, but more heart warming; "Daddy!"

The boys ran across the grassy lawn to the concrete patio area where their father waited. He knelt onto one knee in preparation for the hugs that were quickly approaching, wearing the smile that belongs to fathers when they look at their sons. A sliding glass door opened as he embraced both boys at once. The exclamations of joy and surprise from his sons momentarily drowned out the tinkling sound of ice cubes dancing inside a glass container.

As he kindly evaded direct answers to his sons simple questions about why he was there, he turned his head to see what Kristina had brought out.

It was a tray of lemonade, finger foods and a large bunch of green grapes. Blane's joy-filled heart was brought back to reality by his sons equally exuberant response to the snacks their Mom carried.

As Kristina poured each boy a glass of lemonade, and finally one for Blane as well, he stood staring off into space. He held the glass in his hand carelessly, his eyes focused on a long past memory. Kristina watched his glazed expression for a moment before frowning and saying;

"What time will it start?"

He drew his attention away from the bright white clouds on which he'd been focusing. "Hmm?" He replied.

"I said, what time will it start?" she repeated.

"What time will what start?" he answered in confusion.

"I know you, Blane. You love your kids, but they don't bring you here randomly. You're worried about something, and I'm fairly sure I know what it is. So, what time does the reunion start?" she asked.

"Oh, that, well..." Blane shifted his weight and ran his hand through his short cropped hair, "dinner's served at seven. Cocktails start at 5:30."

"You should go." Kristina said, pulling a string off his shirt.

"I don't know, I can't think of any reason I should." he said, frowning darkly at the hose he was rolling under his foot.

"Blane, you know exactly the reason you should go. You also know why you came by here, so I would remind you of that reason. Seeing me reminds you of the one you do want and-"

Blane cut her off, "No, that's not why I-"

Kristina cut in on him in return, "You don't know yourself as well as I do, and you know it. Do you want her to think of you as the same coward you were twenty years ago?" she answered as she opened the last package of string cheese for Keny, who took it and ran headlong for the playground again.

Blane stood regarding her with a slight smirk on his face. "It's frightening you know, no one should be this transparent."

She chuckled softly, "You're not transparent, Blane. I just...I know you too damned well not to see you for what you are. I also happen to be smart enough not to be offended by it the way she was, or I'm not strong enough to be." she said, looking out across the yard.

Blane stood with his hands in his pockets, but as she spoke the last words, he pulled them out and raised his arms to reach out to Kristina. She saw what he was doing and stopped him cold with a look.

"You have to do this. You have to either lay this to rest, or you need to go after what you've always wanted. Even your Mother says you're a shell of who you once were. Your cousin Whitney said 'Blane, he used to have a twinkle in his eye. He rarely looked serious, and he seemed to always be on the verge of getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar. When he lost Andie, he lost that twinkle. Now his eyes are just haunted.' She actually said she wished I could have met you then, as if I'd have had any better chance then, than I did four years later. Blane, go...go to your reunion and find your...self-respect." she laid her hand on his chest as she spoke the last words, and they both knew that her gesture was more indicative of what she meant than her words were.

He covered her hand with his own, "On our wedding day, Steff said you were everything I deserved. He was wrong, I never deserved you, few could."

She smiled playfully and softened the act of pulling her hand out from under his, by saying in a joking tone, "You're finally getting wise in your old age."