As we begin this exciting journey together, I’m thrilled to share a special treat to kick things off: the prologue for Flying Without Wings, book one in The Boy Band Saga. This story holds a special place in my heart, and I can’t wait for you to meet the characters and world you’ll soon come to love.
In this prologue, we’re introduced to a pivotal character, a woman whose life has been shaped by love, loss, and resilience. Through her story, we glimpse the enduring power of love and the importance of cherishing the memories that define us.
I hope this glimpse into Flying Without Wings sparks your curiosity and leaves you eager to explore what’s to come. Without further ado, here is the prologue for Flying Without Wings, book one in The Boy Band Saga.
Saturday, March 25, 2045–Hollywood Hills, California
“And did they all live happily ever after, Oma?” Noelle asked. She was seated at my feet, the coveted best spot for story time. While her chin rested on the blond ringlets of her favorite baby doll, she looked up with hope shining from the beautiful icy blue eyes she’d inherited from her father. “They did, right?”
“Of course they did,” her 10-year-old cousin, Lance, said, an air of disgust in his voice. Lance kept his brown hair long so that the waves fell over eyes that were nearly identical to his younger cousin. But I didn’t need to see his eyes to know his bored and slightly annoyed expression. How many times had I seen the same one over the years? “Don’t they always live happily ever after in Oma’s stories?”
“And just what is wrong with happily ever after?” I asked, reaching over to tousle his hair, hoping to move enough out of his face so I could see his eyes. Anticipating my move, he leaned his head back out of my reach. I could only laugh. “All good love stories end with a happily ever after.”
“But not every love story is a good one,” my grandson said. “It doesn’t seem right to let her think they are.”
I felt my smile falter. How well I knew that not every love story was a good one. And I knew something that even young Lance didn’t know yet…even the best of love stories could have the happily ever after turn into a nightmare–sometimes with a single moment that changes everything.
But that was not something I needed or wanted my grandchildren to learn from me.
I looked at my grandchildren—Lance and Bridgette from Cassidy, and Noelle, Niklas, and Abigayle from JJ—and saw only the best of my love story. Those precious angels and their parents would always be a reminder to me of what was possible, of what could be if only the heart were left open to the possibility of love.
No matter how my happily ever after had changed, I was not going to forget that.
“All right, everyone,” Cassidy, the oldest of my two children, came smiling into the room. “Story time is over.” She picked up her three-year-old daughter Bridgette from off the floor by my feet.
Bridgette–or Birdie, as I liked to call the youngest member of our family due to her delicately small size–immediately reached out for me. “No want Mama,” she said. “Want Oma!” I tried not to let her see my smile. As much as it warmed my heart to hear my granddaughter’s love for me, I knew that seeing my smile would not help Cassidy get her daughter to follow her directions.
“But what about ice cream?” Cassidy asked. “Daddy and Uncle JJ have ice cream sundaes in the kitchen.”
Birdie clapped her tiny little hands with glee. “Ice cream!” she screamed, with her cousins’ excitement joining in. “Want Daddy and ice cream!”
Cassidy set her daughter back on the floor and placed her hand inside Lance’s. “You see that your sister makes it to the kitchen, with no stopping for toys along the way,” Lance mumbled some sort of agreement as he led all of the children out of the room. “And make sure your dad puts her in her high chair!” Cassidy called after them. She set about picking up toys the kids had left behind. “I swear, Luke will just plop her on the floor with a bowl of ice cream and clean her up later.”
I laughed. “That’s what your father did with you,” I reminded her. “You turned out OK.”
“True,” she told me, pausing in her work to look up at me with a smile. “But as I recall, we had a few small cats I had to fend off, not a herd of hungry Labrador retrievers.”
“Two dogs is hardly a herd,” I said.
“It’s two more dogs than I ever had as a child,” Cassidy reminded me. “With Daddy, it was always cats or nothing.”
“And if I hadn’t loved the man so much, we’d have nothing,” I told her.
I learned back in my recliner and closed my eyes, enjoying the feel of the comfortable chair around my back and shoulders. Or maybe it was the moment of memory that I was enjoying.
When did I become so old that escaping into moments of the past was so precious and peaceful to me?
“Mom?” I didn’t respond until I felt Cassidy’s hand on my knee. Only then did I open my eyes just to find her kneeling in front of me. “Are you okay? Are you cold? Do you need anything?”
I smiled at her, my head still resting against the back of the chair. “I’m alright,” I said. “Just…thinking.”
“About what?” she asked me. “Anything special?”
“Everything special,” I told her. “Time, and how it changes everything, yet so much stays the same.”
“Like what?”
“Like this,” I told her. “Story time. I remember when it was you and JJ fighting to be close to me to hear all of my stories. And now it’s your kids.”
“And you are still telling the wrong story,” my daughter said.
“I am not telling the story wrong,” I insisted. “I tell each story the same way I did when you and your brother were my audience.”
“I didn’t say you are telling the stories wrong, Mom. I said you are telling the wrong story. You are still telling everyone else’s story. When are you going to tell your own?”
“I don’t have a story to tell,” I said.
Her eyes, big and brown and so like my own I felt as if I were looking into a mirror every time I looked into her face, grew wide as Cassidy said, “You are joking, right? You have the most beautiful story to tell, Mom.”
“Eh.” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “I’m nothing special. I lived, I loved, and I worked. I raised two kids. Nothing different from what many women have done for years.”
“Only you would say it’s nothing special.” She stood up and waved her hand toward a shelf of books behind me. I didn’t have to turn to know exactly what books in my library she was pointing out. “You made a career out of writing, or helping to write, the life and love stories of more celebrities than I can count. But you’ve never written the one celebrity love story that matters the most. Your own.”
“Cassidy, I would hardly call myself a celebrity.” At the incredulous look she gave me, I amended my statement to, “Fine, celebrity adjacent. Does that work for you?”
“Why haven’t you ever written your story? It can’t be because you don’t think it is special enough.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but the words tangled in my throat.
Not special enough?
The thought echoed bitterly. On my own, of course, it wasn’t. Looking back on my life, I could not think of one thing I had done alone that was remarkable.
But the love I’d found…that was something else.
“With each of those stories, I was asked to write them. All of those people wanted their stories told. But my story…”
“Is not just your story,” Cassidy finished for me. “It’s Dad’s, too, and he wouldn’t want it shared.”
“No,” I said. “He was always too private for that.” In my mind, I could still see him as he was, the way he’d smile, just for me, when the world wasn’t looking.
“But, Mom,” she said, again kneeling so that we were eye to eye, “what if it is time to tell the story? I know parts of it, but not everything.”
I patted her hand. “You know enough, Cass.”
“Do I? Or do I only know what you want me to know?” She sighed. “I’m not a little girl anymore, Mom.”
“Really?” I said, my sense of sarcasm still fully intact. “So glad you told me that. The big boobs and the mini humans calling you ‘Mama’ were not enough to clue me into that.”
She chose to ignore my remarks. “I know that life isn’t perfect. I know that love isn’t perfect. Heaven knows I love Luke to the moon and back, but we have had our share of Apollo 13 moments through our relationship. I’m sure you did, too, because you always knew just what to say to me. You never let on that your marriage was anything other than perfect, but for you to give me such good advice, I know there must have been something that you didn’t want me to know about.”
“You don’t need to know all that,” I said. “All we ever wanted you to see was the good in life.”
“That’s not realistic, Mom. I figured that out when I wasn’t much older than Lance is now when I first read one of your books.”
“Lance is ten!” I said. “You read one of my books when you were his age?”
She shrugged. “More like twelve,” she told me.
“How did you–? Which one? We were so careful to keep them away from you at that age!”
“Which one doesn’t matter.” A sly grin spread across her face. “And since Grandma gave it to me when I visited her house, that was my first clue that things weren’t always perfect for you.”
“Oh, that woman,” I muttered. Even from the grave, she was finding ways to torment me. “Your grandmother never did think I was good enough for your father,” I said, my voice tinged with a trace of that old bitterness. “We learned to co-exist, but I’m not sure her initial feelings ever truly went away.”
I sighed, feeling the weight of those early years pressing on my chest. “No matter what I said or did, no matter how happy he was with me–and, oh, Cass, he was happy; we made each other so happy–she had a way of making me feel like she was just waiting for me to prove she was right.”
“I’ve never understood why you two didn’t like each other,” Cassidy said.
“It’s a long story.”
“So tell it,” she said. My daughter leaned closer to me, gently clasping my hands in hers. Her touch was warm, holding me in the present, even as the past loomed heavily on my mind. “I know it’s hard for you to think this way, Mom. It’s hard for me to think this way. But there may not be a lot of storytelling time left. You told the stories of so many others so beautifully. You showed the triumphs and the tragedies of their lives in such vivid detail. Why not do the same with your own life? Do you want to let your truth disappear when you do?”
Cassidy’s words refused to leave my mind. They made their way into my dreams and woke me every morning for the next week. Much as I hated it, I had to admit that she had a point. Maybe it was time to share my story. If Cassidy and JJ didn’t know it, they couldn’t pass it along to their children. And the children were, after all, the ones who deserved to know the story. They were the ones who needed to know Oma and Opa, and just what we meant to each other.
And so, with the help of my daughter, I settled into my recliner with a laptop and a voice recorder. I turned on some old boy band music, closed my eyes, and allowed myself to get lost in my memories…
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