It couldn't have been a crisp and prettier late Autumn day. It was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and 43 year old Colleen Follett had made the short, three block drive over to visit her friend, Destiny McCullough.
Dressed in her black exercise spandex along with a pair of black leggings, it had been such a lovely day, Colleen decided to leave her coat in the car figuring even when it turned off cooler, she'd be so fired up from her workout session, the last thing she need was a coat for the drive back home.
For most of her life, Colleen would have never envisioned being friends with someone like Destiny. First off, people in Colleen's social circle rarely named their kids Destiny. The typical suburban housewife who was the spawn of several generations of waspy suburban housewives, Colleen had very little contact with people who were as liberal, artsy and somewhat Bohemian as Destiny McCullough.
If it wasn't for the fact that they both found themselves on the same PTA committee at the local high school, Destiny and Colleen would have probably never met. At that point two years earlier, Colleen had been going through a few things and had gained 15-20 unwanted pounds. Colleen had always been too modest, and used the excuse of being too busy, to join a gym, and pretty much every diet she tried had eventually petered out. When Destiny had spoken during a meeting of her long devotion to Pilates and Yoga, Colleen's curiosity was certainly piqued when she assessed the shape the slightly younger, auburnish-brunette was in.
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Destiny McCullough had grown into one of the most energetic, ingenuitive, prudent and passionate people God had graced the world with. The second of four children, Destiny's father had been a folk singer, and she spent most of her summers growing up traveling with her brothers and sisters around the country in the family camper to his various gigs.
While she hadn't been born with her father's ability to carry a tune, Destiny had developed a deep love for dance from the time she could walk. She'd actually been studying dance at college in hopes of possibly finding her way to Broadway when she found herself pregnant following her Sophomore year. Around the time Murphy Brown was making national news, with the help of Dan Quayle, for defiantly raising a child without a dad in the picture, Destiny found herself having to drop out of school to do it for real.
At 39, Destiny was beginning to harvest the fruits of her labor. Four years earlier, she'd opened what was now a very successful dance studio in the quant, suburban Denver town she called home, where she taught everything from ballet, tap, modern to ballroom. It was certainly a far cry from the exotic dancing she'd done on and off after dropping out of college to keep a roof over her and her son's head all those years earlier.
Brennen McCullough was now 20 and halfway through his second year at Colorado St. The one goal Destiny was now focused on was seeing Brennen finish what she'd started two decades earlier. In fact, she'd even promised him that after he got his sheepskin, she'd go back to school herself and steadily finish off the five semesters she had remaining.
Even though Colleen Follett wouldn't have traded her family, or lot in life, for the world, she'd developed quite the keen appreciation for Destiny, and how she'd raised a son and built a business all on her own.
The depth and texture of that appreciation was about to take on a far more significant meaning.
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The first hint something may have been amiss was the absence of Destiny's car in the driveway when Colleen pulled up. They'd met nearly every Tuesday for the past six months at Destiny's, doing a joint Pilates routine together then working out on some of the equipment in Destiny's home gym.
It didn't dawn on Colleen until she recognized the car currently parked in the driveway as her son, Brennen's, that he was home from college on Thanksgiving break.
"Now did she say we would skip this week's workout?" Colleen tried racking her brain as she slowed her advance up the McCullough's front walk.
Colleen was 15 feet or so from the front door when it clicked in her mind that Destiny did, in fact, mention Brennen was coming home and they'd catch back up with their exercise schedule after the holiday.
The second foreboding wave to ripple through Colleen occurred when she noticed the blinds in Destiny's living room window were closed on such a beautiful and unseasonably warm Fall day. Destiny's entire house was full of lovingly tended plants and greenery, and this was the first time Colleen could every remember coming over in the middle of the day and the curtains not being open.
"Her son's home...maybe he just closed them to take a nap on the sofa while she's out running errands," Colleen thought to herself before a shrill, muffled shriek snapped her from her malaise.
"Did that come from inside the house or next door?" she mumbled under her breath, craning her head back and forth between the McCullough home and the one to the left to figure out where that lone, cat-like wail had come from.
Destiny lived on a relatively quiet street, and at two in the afternoon, most of her neighbors were likely still at work. The only sound, as she stood on the walk, was the crunchy echo of the already fallen leaves, dancing past her feet in the light breeze. Standing there allowing her heartbeat to settle, Colleen held her breath long enough until she could hear the faint, grinding rhythm coming from the other side of the picture window in front of her. Clasping her right hand against the smooth and silky material of her leggings and taking a long deep breath, Colleen gradually recognized the sounds as something that was as old as time itself.
Stifling an embarrassed chuckle, Colleen was able to piece together what she thought was happening. Brennen was home from college, his mom had stepped out to run some errands, perhaps maybe even teaching a class at her studio, and he'd used the opportunity to sneak a girlfriend of his over.
The flesh on flesh vibrations growing louder coming from inside the house, Colleen continued to stand in the center of Destiny's front yard for several more seconds, knowing she should just turn and go. Before she could, yet another high pitched cry, this one followed by several hearty masculine grunts, tripped through Colleen's senses.
Like a lit and sizzling fuse, the symphonic interplay between Brennen and the girl he was with burned Colleen's ears as she slowly stepped away from the house.
"At least somebody's getting some," she told herself, blissfully re-calling her younger days when things were far more serendipitous.
Turning back towards her car, Colleen visibly dragged her feet, coyly trying to absorb every sound she could until prudence pulled her far enough away she could no longer hear what was going on inside the house. Folding herself back into her car, Colleen startled herself by just how moist her thighs had gotten when she settled into the seat and quietly tried backing her car out to leave.
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Colleen spent the next few hours as fidgety as a cat with a bad case of fleas. In a completely innocent attempt to visit a friend and share an afternoon workout session, Colleen had stumbled into something that had indelibly etched itself into her mind.
