Out here would look like nothing but dense rows of corn far into the distance. No one ventured this far. No one would see her. The crops would grow up around her, and she would be nothing.
Chapter One Now
Summer has officially set in. The battle with spring was pretty impressive there for a few weeks. I thought my jacket wearing might get a chance to trickle on a bit longer than usual. But the calendar page flipped over to June, and Mother Nature cranked up her thermostat.
That was a couple of weeks ago, and now just the thought of a sweater makes my skin prickle and sweat bead up on the back of my neck. Spring was particularly rainy and cool this year, but summer has shown up to kick its ass. That would be why I'm sitting on my front porch with a glass of iced tea tucked into my cleavage as I stare past my feet, propped up on the railing, and will the mail to float to me.
Unfortunately, it seems my training in The Force hasn't quite reached mastery yet. I'm actually going to have to get up and walk all the way down the sidewalk. With this much humidity in the air, it's possible I could just jump off the top step and swim my way there, but I’m not going to try that. I'm not up for risking face-planting onto the searing concrete sidewalk.
I finally will myself to get up and put my glass down on the table beside my wicker couch. Sam insists that thing is called a loveseat, but I refuse to call it that. After some of the stuff I've seen, referring to anything I use on a regular basis as a “loveseat” icks me out a bit. And, no, the completely ridiculous nature of that aversion isn't lost on me. It's just one of the many fun after-effects of the years of service in my line of work. I can sit down and sip a cup of coffee next to a corpse without flinching, but start throwing around phrases like “loveseat” or “Tickle Me Elmo”, and I start feeling twitchy.
Maybe that's what I'll put on my new business cards.
Emma Griffin, FBI. Hunter of serial killers. Defender of justice. Uncomfortable with innuendoes that aren’t really innuendoes.
Now that I’m actually standing up, I take a second to look down at the tiny couch and its accompanying chair and table. They are recent additions to my daily life, like the broad wooden porch they occupy, and I'm still trying to get used to them. After getting home from Windsor Island a few months ago, I had the nagging need for change. That stuck and stagnant feeling I’ve had for the last year or so had finally started to crack. Everything that happened at that resort woke me up and reminded me of who I was and why I did what I did.
When I came home, the feeling hadn't changed. But neither had anything else. It was still the same life, the same surroundings, the same everything. In a lot of ways, that was fine. I still love living in Sherwood. I knew I was eventually going to figure out how to juggle this life and my career. But I needed a kick in the right direction. I had to have a change. Not the kind that found me chopping off all my hair and starving myself down to nothingness so I could pretend to be twenty again, or some spiritual quest that required filling my back room with crystals and tiny bottles of herbs.
No, I needed a change to mark the break in the different sections of my life. I’ve come to the realization that my life isn't just a normal progression of chapters in which one closes and the next begins. Instead, I've adopted a choose-your-own-adventure style. My choices keep bringing me down different paths, but along many of the same types of journeys. I've learned from them, and I’ve been able to move on.
Part of moving on was making the house more my own. Ever since moving back into it, I've found myself thinking about it as my grandparents’ house. Technically, that's what it is. They're the ones who bought it and lived here for decades. When this was my home as a child, it was because we were living with my grandparents. But now it's mine.
Before my father left to go deep undercover in an effort to track down his brother and unravel the terrorist group Leviathan, he signed the deed over to me in full. It's mine, and when I came back from the island, I realized I wanted it to really feel like that. The changes I’d made inside were trivial. I’d consigned decorations from the rental management company to the attic. I’d painted a few walls. But for the most part, the overall look was still exactly as it had always been. The house needed a complete makeover, to include it as a distinct part of this new path.
Which is where the porch came in, as a first step. I've always had a thing for big verandas. There's nothing quite like being able to sit out on the porch in the evening and watch life go by. The original porch on the house was small, but I had big dreams, and fortunately, a boyfriend with power tools and the ability to use them. It took a few weeks, but the fresh wood is now curing in the summer sun, and I have been putting the couch through its paces.
Next up will be the backyard. I haven't settled on exactly what I'm going to do with it. Sam
