Back to Serendipity

By Douglas Basile

Synopsis
No one knows where life takes you, yet everyone has a path. For Kevin McGregor, a seminal moment that alters his course is the night he meets Liz Hampton. Their meeting is truly episodic as neither are searching to find someone. Nevertheless, they quickly begin dating and eventually get married and start a family. However, after a few years, the externalities of life encroach upon their happiness severing their communication and creating distance between them. Even worse, Kevin is struggling to find his stride in his new career and the McGregor's are under financial duress.
Their relationship gets even more strained when Kevin tells Liz at the last minute that he is staying home from a family trip to finish a paper for graduate school. In an exasperated state, Liz quickly finishes packing the car and pulls down the driveway with tearful eyes leaving Kevin and their dog Rigby behind.
The next day, a despondent Kevin stumbles upon a book about the journey of two people that fortuitously meet but are forced apart by a random event. After several years, the two eventually find their way back to each other as fate gives them a second chance. The relatable story prompts Kevin to reflect on his own life which ultimately sends him back to serendipity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667842875

Book preview

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Back to Serendipity

©2022, Douglas Basile

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN: 978-1-66784-286-8

ISBN eBook: 978-1-66784-287-5

Disclaimer

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and merely coincidental.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Epilogue

Chapter 1

It was a blistering hot day in late August. The dog days of summer were in full force and the sultry weather was not helping the tenor of our conversation. My wife and I were having a spirited discussion common to most married couples. It was the classic husband and wife miscommunication versus expectations conversation. Oh my God, Kevin! You have got to be kidding me! When did you decide that you are not going with us? I told my family you were going to spend the week at the cottage with us. Tim and Janie are dying to see you. What am I going to tell my sister? My husband is too busy with grad school to spend time with them and his goddaughter? Liz shouted with a rhetorical quiver in her voice. Liz, I am sorry, but I have way too much to do. I told you yesterday that there was a good chance I wouldn’t be able to come. I have a final paper due next week and haven’t been able to study because I have been super busy at work, I said. Every time, Kevin. Every time, she said in an exasperated tone. Sometimes I think you secretly do this because you truly detest my family, Liz uttered. Liz, you know that is not true. I love your family, I retorted back. No, you love to be alone—off doing your own thing. Any excuse for another day to live in your own mind dreaming endlessly about I don’t know what! I don’t understand you, Kevin. Ever since you went back to school, you have become so disengaged from the kids and me. We never do anything together. Do you still want us in your life? she paused for a moment. Sadly, for the first time ever, I don’t think I know the answer to that question, she said. I gave her a blank look, the kind of mute expression that hinted that I did not want to talk about it. I highly doubted that her sister Janie was dying to see me, but nonetheless, I wanted to convey that I genuinely wanted to be with her and the kids and that my decision to stay home was extremely difficult, but that is not what came out. I give up, she raised her hands above her head motioning like a football referee signaling a field goal. I hope you are happy staying back and studying here alone. By the way, I am leaving Rigby here with you. I can’t handle the kids and the dog all by myself for the next five days. She opened the car door and our dog Rigby, quickly ran toward me . She briskly handed me his dish and a large zip lock bag of dry dog food. Have fun by yourself, she said. She told our twins, Luke and Josie, to buckle their car seats and furiously finished packing the car. She closed the back door of the minivan, took a deep breath, paused for a second, and got in the driver’s seat. You know, Kevin, I try time and time again to be supportive of you, but you always seem to find a way to break my heart, she said. A surge of compunction filled my stomach after I heard those words. She glanced at me one last time with a look of melancholy and disappointment. I could see her eyes begin to water. I looked at Luke’s and Josie’s somber faces and immediately felt as if I was letting my family down. As she backed down the driveway, I couldn’t hold it in. A tear slowly ran down my cheek. I didn’t know what to do. For the most part, I genuinely liked being around Liz’s family and hated missing trips to their lake house in Glen Arbor, but I needed to get some studying done. As soon as she drove away, I knew I had made a rueful mistake.

She was right. I had used school as an excuse to miss out on a few family events in the past. As much as I would miss them and knew that I would have to deal with the aftermath of Liz’s family —likely exacerbated by subtle undertones from my sister-in-law Janie—I had to catch up on schoolwork and truthfully needed some time to myself. Maybe it was a selfish act, but between work, grad school, the kids’ activities, and the tribulations of life’s stresses, I needed some time of reclusion.

My name is Kevin McGregor. I am thirty-two years old and live in North Harbor, Michigan, a snow globe town located about fifteen miles outside of Detroit. On paper, I live the life of a stereotypical suburban husband and father—a young professional with an attractive wife and two great kids involved in soccer and gymnastics. Some would characterize my life as seemingly normal, but I have learned over the years that there is no normalcy, there is just life.

Ever since I can remember, I have always been a worrier. When I was a kid, my mother used to say that I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders. We needn’t agonize, she would say, because you worry enough for us all. No matter what the situation, I would revel in thinking of others’ feelings at the expense of my own happiness. My friends at work call me kindhearted Kev. A close friend once described me as having a huge heart with an unwavering sense of angst. I suppose for a good majority of my life, that is an accurate description of my personality and general disposition toward others. In some strange way though, I think that my worrisome nature has dampened my self-confidence over the years. My mom used to tell me that they broke the mold when you were born. Like many idioms of yore, I never quite knew what that meant other than I was different from most kids, but I have come to realize that being different has enabled me to cultivate my path on my own terms.

For much of my thirty-two years, my life has been a series of happy accidents or ill-fated misfortunes, depending on how you look at it. When I was nine, I quit baseball after breaking my finger on the playground at recess. Without the use of my right hand, which precluded me from playing baseball that season, I started playing soccer simply because it didn’t really require the use of my hands. At fourteen, I started writing short essays because my art teacher said that my creative vision could only be expressed in written narrative rather than the visual form. I later realized that expressed in written narrative is a euphemism for no artistic talent. In college, I became an English major because it was the area wherein I had unintentionally accumulated the most credits. After three semesters of being shut out of political science and business classes due to overwhelming demand for these courses coupled with a little self-complacency, I stuck with English mainly because it would enable me to graduate the fastest. Looking back, I think I subconsciously chose it because it naturally aligned with both my abilities and sensibilities. I have always fantasized about writing a book and have written several unpublished works that include a few short stories and what some would describe as novelettes. I used to scribble ideas into a little notebook hoping to one day have enough material to write something intriguing, but I stopped doing it after we had kids. For most liberal arts disciplines, the real world often has a peculiar way of influencing your vocational trajectory. After taking a circuitous career path, today I work as an associate financial advisor or AFA as it is called in the trade—a pejorative term for subordinates that have no clients or experience. This wouldn’t bother me except for the fact that my next-door neighbor, probably the haughtiest person that has ever walked planet Earth, is an uber-successful hedge fund manager. The guy two doors down owns a manufacturing plant, his neighbor is the president of international sales at Ford, and the guy across the street is a partner at one of the city’s most prestigious law firms.

The utopian society in North Harbor is a lot like Lake Wobegon—the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average. Ask any of the neighbors on my street or any of the parents at my kids’ school how great they are. Actually, you won’t have to ask them; they will tell you. Conventional wisdom in the area is that North Harbor is a great place to raise a family, but I am really starting to question that notion more and more every day. If it wasn’t for the good school system and all the benefits that come with living in a nice suburb, I would consider moving.

Our house is very modest relative to most of the homes in our neighborhood and is slowly becoming a money pit. It is a 2100 square foot red brick colonial built in 1944. It has decent curb appeal, but it is dwarfed by the 4000–6000 square foot monstrosities on the street with opulent additions bigger than their original footprints. Recently, we had a leak in the basement and the air conditioner imploded, costing us $4200—money that we greatly needed. To say that I am a little insecure at our neighborhood block party is a huge understatement. What makes it worse is that my wife Liz and I are struggling to make ends meet, living paycheck to paycheck. The only reason we can afford to live in our house is because my father-in-law gave us a very generous wedding present that we used for a down payment.

My wife’s name is Elizabeth McGregor (née Hampton) or Liz as she is affectionately known by most people. We met at a trade show in Minneapolis nine years ago when we were both selling medical device equipment for different companies. I worked for Siemens and she worked for Boston Scientific, but we were both fortuitously from Michigan. On the Sunday night before the trade show began, two of my colleagues and I went to a local craft brewery called Wild Hops a few blocks from the hotel. Shortly after we went in, I meandered toward the crowded bar so I could grab a pitcher for my table and felt a pull on my sleeve as I raised my hand to get the bartender’s attention. Excuse me, would you be able to get his attention the next time he looks this way? I am so short I don’t think he can see me, she said. The second that I looked at her, an overwhelming feeling invaded my stomach. Our eyes locked for a second or two, but it felt like we had been staring at each other for days. It felt as if a tug of war between nerves and euphoria was pulling in my solar plex. I nearly fell back onto the table behind me. Uh, er, I stumbled. Yeah, sure, I think I can wave him down after he makes this drink, I blushed. Her hand was still brushing against my sleeve and my palms began to sweat. I am not sure how someone wouldn’t notice you, I said in a pithy undertone to try and cover up my nerves. Awe, that is really sweet, but unfortunately for me, not true . . . I am vertically challenged, she replied with a slight chuckle. Struggling to find my next sentence, I muttered Hi, uh, my name is Kevin, with a slight stutter. "I am Elizabeth, but most people call me Liz,’’ she countered with a beaming smile. I ordered a pitcher of lager for my table and bought Liz and her cohort their drinks. For a brief moment, my nerves dissipated, and I garnered enough confidence to carry on a conversation. From that point on, our dialogue flowed naturally.

For the next few hours, it seemed as if no one else was in the bar. I had completely ditched my work friends, and she told her co-workers that she was going to stay back and talk to me. Her friend Katie gave her a discreet thumbs-up as her group left to go back to the hotel. Liz and I shared stories of life growing up in our respective families. She was from Grand Rapids and I was raised by my mother and stepfather in Bloomfield Hills. Liz’s real mother had died when she was three months old, and her father had remarried about a year after her passing. She had a very good upbringing as her father was a neurosurgeon and her step-mom, to whom she has always referred to as mom, was a stay-at-home mother to her and her sister before becoming a self-proclaimed philanthropist. She was raised in a nice upper-class home and had all the advantages a girl could ask for. My father died when I was four and my mother struggled for several years before meeting my step-father, Ned. Although Ned had a good job as an automotive engineer at General Motors, we lived a frugal lifestyle in a small three-bedroom house on the edge of town. We drove old cars and rarely spent money on anything dear. My mom, who never went to college, put herself through night school when my sister Caroline and I were young and worked for many years as a paralegal for a local law firm. Aside from the fact that we had both lost a parent, our upbringings couldn’t have been more different, yet I could sense early on that we shared the same values. I knew immediately that something was different about her compared to any of the girls that I had dated in the past. I felt a sense of elation that I hadn’t experienced in years. After that night, I accepted that life is truly episodic, and that fate is inexorable.

The next few years seemed like a blur. We began an intense long-distance relationship between Grand Rapids and Detroit, visiting each other on weekends. After about a year of back-and-forth, she moved to Detroit and found an apartment with some of her girlfriends. We got engaged the following summer and were married a year later. We made the cardinal mistake of planning a wedding and buying a house at the same time—a lesson we should have learned from watching numerous House Hunters episodes. Shortly after the twins were born, Liz quit working at Boston Scientific to stay home with the kids, and I got laid off from Siemens. I nearly had a nervous breakdown for a few weeks as we burned through my paltry severance package. Fortunately, Liz’s father knew someone at Morgan Edwards, an up-and-coming wealth management firm, and got me an entry-level job as an associate financial advisor. The speed at which life changed in just a few short years was hard to reconcile. I don’t think that I ever had time to process the vicissitudes. One day, I was a young single guy just out of college working in healthcare sales. The next day, I was married with six-year-old twins, living in the suburbs and starting a career as a financial advisor. When I look back, my most vivid memories are of extreme periods or key inflection points from the past, and I seem to forget the mundane moments. This has led me to believe that life is a series of non-linear experiences conflated into a compilation of both rhapsodic and discontented moments. The rest of the time we are coasting to the next scene.

Chapter 2

After Liz and the kids left for her parent’s lake house, I took Rigby, our four-year-old Boston terrier, for a walk around the block and then sulked around the house for the next hour. I was trying to remember the exact point where my life had taken such a sour turn. My job was so stressful, we were having money issues, and Liz and I seemed so disconnected from each other. Before we had kids, our communication was so fluid. We used to talk about everything under the sun at seemingly all times of the day. I remember feeling so bonded with her during hikes and long bike rides through the forest preserve by her apartment. One time on a walk, she completely melted down into my arms sharing a story about being diagnosed with dyslexia when she was a kid. She told me that she felt like her teachers and guidance counselor had all but given up on her in fourth and fifth grade, but eventually, she learned enough little tricks to help her get by. One of her teachers impudently told her parents that Liz was going to have a very rough life. That disparaging comment served as motivation for her to overcome her learning difference. With endless perseverance, the right tutors, and a great support system, she managed to win a merit scholarship to Tulane University. Liz has tremendous coping skills, and she proved that anything is possible if you work hard enough. Another time on one of our walks, I told her that one of the most vivid experiences that I could remember as a child was my dad’s funeral. At the end of the service, my sister and I raced out of our pews and jumped on the casket hoping to wake him up. Everyone at the service went silent. People have told me that you could hear a pin drop in the church. I barely remember my father, but that horrific memory will resonate with me forever. Sharing stories of our childhood