But she’d slipped.
She had always been so careful. Everything had been simple and clear. She’d always known what was one step ahead of her. In that one, single moment, she’d detoured. She hadn’t known it was happening. She hadn’t realized how far it was going to take her. It was nothing more than a blink. A breath. But that was all it took.
She let out a sigh, dropped her shoulders, and smiled. Maybe they wouldn’t notice she was late. It was only by a few minutes. And she desperately wished she wasn’t. Of everything packed tightly into her schedule, this was what Julia enjoyed the most. The thing she hated to be late to more than anything.
This was a break, serenity in the chaos. It was fun and relaxing. Beyond that, it was a glimpse of a different life. It was a chance to see something else, to look past the slide to the top of a different hill. That helped her remember there could still be a future. Not the one she had once imagined, but a future, and that assurance was enough. She just had to keep clawing.
Julia knocked on the door and it opened almost instantly. The woman on the other side looked flustered, but happy to see her.
“You’re here,” she smiled.
Julia nodded. “There was traffic. I got stuck behind an accident.”
“Come on in,” Marissa said. “My husband has already left, so I need to hurry.”
She took off her coat and brought it to the closet hidden off to the side of the foyer, down a tight, dark hallway. That hallway always looked as if the people who lived in the house were trying to stop anyone from noticing it was there. She knew how that felt.
Julia followed Marissa through the house to the expansive room that curved along the back. Huge windows and glass doors let in the afternoon light. It would disappear soon. November shortened the days and lengthened the chill of the dark. She didn’t mind. But the little girl sitting in the middle of the floor did.
Iris hated when it got dark. She didn’t want to be anywhere near the big doors and tall windows when the sun went down. That meant they only had a short time in the room surrounded by her toys before they had to move further toward the middle of the house for the evening.
Julia didn’t mind that, either. She loved every second of being in that house with that little girl. When she was there, she didn’t have to think about anything else. None of it mattered. She could think just about playing with the tiny dolls and wooden blocks. Then eating dinner with Iris and putting her in her bath. Everything else could pause a little while.
It all came rushing back too soon, though. Marissa was always the one to usher her back to the front door, tell her to have a good night, and send her off into the evening. On the days when she came in the morning, she got more time with Iris in the playroom, then eased her into a nap. Somehow it was harder when she finished up during the day. Stepping out into the daylight made Julia feel off-kilter, as if she wasn’t sure where to go or what to do next.
She sat down on the floor next to Iris. Wide blue baby eyes turned to her. Just three years old, those eyes still had so much left to see. There was infinite possibility in them. Julia wondered about them. She wondered what they saw when they looked at her, and what they saw when they closed at night.
They would look out over the peak of a hill one day. They would see a future far out in the distance. Julia could only wonder what it was they would see and if there was a chance she might get to know.
Chapter Five Now
“The first time I came here, I had no idea my family had anything to do with this town. I had never even heard of Feathered Nest. To be honest, I thought it might be a joke when Creagan first mentioned it. He was so angry after I almost blew my last undercover assignment. He had been trying to bust a drug dealer for a really long time and in one night, I managed to almost destroy the entire plan. Not to mention almost get myself and a good portion of the team killed in the process,” I explain.
“Drug dealer?” Xavier asks. “Did that have anything to do with The Dragon?”
“No,” I shake my head. “Separate incident. But it did have to do with Greg. He had recently gone missing, and I still wasn’t coping with it very well. I felt as if it was my fault, and I was regretting a lot of things that happened between us. It put me in a really difficult place.”
“The cliffhanger credits montage,” he says.
“The what?” I ask.
“TV shows and movies that are part of a series always end with a relationship in a bleak moment. Everything is falling apart, and it seems as if the two people are never going to find each other again. Then the guy, for instance, goes through an emotional journey displayed with a montage. The audience sees him remember everything about the woman and their relationship, but it’s always the softened parts. The guy doesn’t remember how high-pitched and loud the woman laughed, just that she laughed. He doesn’t remember getting woken up by the woman’s snoring and glaring down at her, just how she looked while she was sleeping. He remembers eating takeout in bed together, not that they had to order it because the woman forgot to cook, or that it made them sick,” he says. “It causes all sorts of…”
He pauses, as if he’s trying to snatch
