Things continued on this way for a few months until August when Lily’s mother became horribly ill. Lily’s mom, Catherine Wright, was 73 and lived in La Veta, a little town on the outskirts of Utah. Lily’s father died a few years prior to her becoming a part of our family, and she had no siblings. So, when Lily’s mom died in early August the few possessions she had and a store, were passed along to Lily. The store that Lily inherited was a tiny hardware store that had been in her family for over 80 years so, naturally, she felt obliged to take the small, barely profitable, hardware store under her wing. Her heroic deed however, proved extremely consequential for me.

My dad was tormented by the decision he had to make, either move to La Veta or stay here in Denver, apart from Lily. As horrible as it was, I knew that I was the deciding factor in his decision to move or stay so once again I bit my tongue in sake of his happiness. My brother was on his own now, consumed by his own life in college. So, we moved on August 23 to La Veta, Utah, and this is where my story really begins.

The Bad Lands, I learned about them when I took a class on western literature. The Bad Lands are a place where cowboys and outlaws alike go to die. The never ending heat, the encompassing dust, the lonesomeness, are all parts of the scenery. Today though, in various corners of the infamous Bad Lands, are fragments of civilization, small towns that know less of the outside world, than Columbus knew of Native Americans. It was in one of these awkwardly placed, towns where I was to reside for at least the next two years.

La Veta, Utah, is where I was placed and it was exactly as I expected. The wind itself was torture, but it was unseasonably wet and rained almost constantly.

La Veta was small, very small. It was also shockingly wet in result of the unseasonable rain. So wet, that with every step you would take you would hear a kind of muffled crunch as if you were stepping on a thoroughly dampened sponge. As we drove through the town I sat in the backseat of my dad’s old black Range Rover with my head pressed lightly against the window. This was my life, this is what I left behind all my friends, my house, my school for, this is what I did for Lily and my dad. The more I thought about what I had given up the more evident it became that the heroic one in this situation was less Lily and more me, to put things bluntly. The reality of the situation, as I said, was actually quite tragic and as I looked around for some sort of hint at advanced civilization like a mall or movie theater, I was less than shocked when I found none.

We drove through the town until we hit a small dirt road that led roughly half a mile into a deeply wooded area; behind the trees stood a white picket fence, which unnecessarily guarded a house. Our house.