When Dreams Do Come True

By Florence Witkop

What if you had a dream so real you couldn't ignore it? A dream of a lost child you alone could save? And what if everyone around you would laugh if you acknowledged your dream? What would you do? What should you do? This novelette by veteran romance writer Florence Witkop tells what happens when one woman has that dream and makes a choice that changes her entire life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Florence Witkop
• Release date: Jul 2, 2012
• ISBN: 9780985385415

Florence Witkop

FLORENCE WITKOP, STORYTELLER Florence’s stories begin as simple tales of contemporary life, often in small towns or the wilderness she knows so well. Where they go from there is what makes them special. There is always the strong sense of place that brands them as eco-fiction. Sometimes they cross genres and contain paranormal, sci/fi, or fantasy elements. There is usually a romance and characters her readers like and would enjoy having as friends. Most of all, there is a story because what Florence does best is tell stories. Well plotted stories that carry the characters towards a logical conclusion that always includes a happy ending. Stories that shine light on the human condition while they celebrate the world we live in. Stories that her readers relate to and remember long after the reading is over. She writes about people who are as normal as apple pie (most of them, anyway) who unexpectedly find themselves in the middle of situations ranging from the heartwarming through the difficult and all the way to the horrendous. But Florence’s characters choose to act instead of running away. In the process, they survive, thrive, overcome whatever obstacles large or small are thrown in front of them, and while they are at it, they find time to fall in love. Florence was born in the city and has lived in the suburbs, small towns, the country and the wilderness, where she still lives with her husband and a cowardly cat named Smoke. At various times in her career she’s been a confession writer, a copywriter, a ghost writer and an editor. She writes short stories, novellas and novels. Her work has been categorized as romance, science-fiction, fantasy, mainstream and eco-fiction, to name a few genres that it fits beautifully into.

Book preview

WHEN DREAMS COME TRUE

By

Florence Witkop

Published by Florence Witkop

Copyright 2012 Florence Witkop

I had the dream while wide awake. Sitting on the grass in the park across from my apartment watching my cousin handle first base with his usual finesse, putting runners out with ease while I yelled encouragement. Yelled instead of playing because I can’t catch a ball if someone hands one to me. But I can cheer with the best of them, so that’s what I do. It’s what I do every Saturday, every summer.

My normal routine is to show up shortly after noon and lay out a blanket on the sidelines, then hand out pop and potato chips to any kid who happens to be passing by even while I yell encouragement to my cousin and the rest of the team. By the time the game is done and I wrap up the blanket and head off to do my week’s grocery shopping, I’m hoarse and the neighborhood kids are so full of pop and potato chips that they don’t eat dinner and I hear about it later from their parents. I am definitely not popular with parents on Saturday nights.

So that’s my usual Saturday schedule. That afternoon was no different at first, just another afternoon at the ball game. Until it suddenly got weird.

As my cousin Joe prepared to tag still another runner out and I opened my mouth to let out my usual scream of triumph, a picture flashed before my eyes that was so vivid, so real, that the sound died unuttered and all I could do was sit there with my mouth frozen in a cheer that never materialized as a scene appeared before my eyes that was every bit as real as the park, as solid as the blanket beneath me. A scene as familiar to me as the dogs and kids and parents who were yelling and screaming even as I went mute but that couldn’t possibly be real because it belonged two hours away in the wilderness where I grew up.

It wasn’t real, of course. It couldn’t be real because it wasn’t blocking out the baseball game, rather it was superimposed upon it, a ghost image with colors that were vivid and true to the colors that I knew belonged in that remembered place.

Didn’t matter that I could see that dream place as clearly as the baseball game that I saw through it. Couldn’t be real, though I could actually feel the tall bluestem grass of my childhood waving about my body and the gentle breeze that moved through it. Bluestem doesn’t grow in the park and there was no breeze to cool the baseball players. I knew that, knew I shouldn’t feel it. There was a breeze, though, in that far away clearing, a slight wind slipping through a place I’d loved long ago that was surrounded by the Jackpine trees of my childhood home in the forest. I felt it, I felt that breeze, and was grateful for the way it cooled my heated skin because it was a hot day, too hot, really, for baseball.

I stared at the mirage, willing it to disappear but it didn’t and the more I looked, the more I admitted that I knew those trees as well as I knew my own name. I saw them so clearly that I felt I could reach out and run my hands over the bluestem even as I also saw the game with my cousin on first base.

I knew it wasn’t real and that if I reached out, my fingers would touch nothing. Which meant it was a dream. A waking dream.

I’d heard of people having dreams while wide awake though it had never happened to me. But that had to be what I was experiencing. There was no other explanation. The trees, weeds, wind, all of it, even the little girl in the middle of that clearing surrounded by bluestem taller than she was and sobbing her heart out was nothing more than a dream. It wasn’t real. She wasn’t real. Couldn’t be.

She seemed real, though.. Four or five years old, with blond braids, tear-filled eyes, a dirty face with tear streaks that were the