“Oh, no! He moved down to Florida a few years back—his sister, too. They keep getting on me about moving down there or at least becoming a snowbird, but I like the change of the seasons. I’ve lived here my whole life and don’t plan to change it!”
“You have two children, then?”
“Four!” Jessie laughs heartily. “Can you believe that? Three with my husband. He was a package deal, so I was stepmom to the oldest, Richard. Being a stepmom is so difficult. You need them to follow all the rules and do what’s expected, and all you get for your troubles is, ‘You’re not my real mom!’ He’s in his late twenties now, and we get along just fine, but when he was a teenager—look out!”
I smile, wondering what it would have been like to grow up in a house full of people.
“Do you have brother and sisters?” Jessie asks.
“Me? Oh, no. It was just me and my aunt.”
“No cousins?”
“None.” I try to smile.
“Hmm.” She taps her finger against her chin, and then her eyes go wide. “Look at me, all up in your business and not giving you a chance to get your place in order.” Jessie sprints the ten feet from the kitchen to the living room and wraps me in a bear hug. “If you need anything at all, you just let me know!”
“Thanks! I’ll do that.”
“I’ll talk to you later,” Jessie says as she heads out the door and then suddenly stops. “Oh my lord, I didn’t even ask your name!”
“That’s okay,” I say with a chuckle. “It’s Cherry. Cherry Bay.”
“Well, it is a pleasure to be your neighbor, Cherry Bay!”
“It was great to meet you, Jessie.” I consider shaking her hand, but since we’ve already hugged, the point seems moot. “Thanks a bunch for the cookies!”
“More where those came from! I love to bake!” She pats her stomach and laughs. She heads across the hall, singing the lyrics to Mister Roger’s Neighborhood.
I shut the door and drop back down on the couch, carefully avoiding the armrest and feeling completely exhausted by the encounter. I take a long breath and grab myself a cookie. I nibble it slowly as I stare into space, trying to imagine growing up with brothers and sisters, a father, cousins—all of that. It seems like the house would constantly hum with activity, conversation, and laughter.
I had none of that.
Love and support I had, but only from Aunt Ginny. We occasionally had visitors come to the house, but they were mostly her friends. I never quite developed the knack for friend-making, and after Aunt Ginny passed, the visitors quickly vanished, leaving me alone.
I swallow hard, fighting back the tears.
“This is why I’m here,” I say softly. “I’m going to find my family—my real family.”
Chapter 2—Blocked
“Thank you very much, sir.”
I disconnect the call and enter the given address into my phone. I’m pleased to see the app indicating the office is only a fifteen-minute walk from my apartment. I’d much rather walk and not have to worry about parking in an unfamiliar area.
“It’s pretty cool out there today,” I say to Vee. “You keep yourself nice and warm in here!”
I grab my coat and head out the door.
Cascade Falls is huge compared to my tiny hometown, but geographically it doesn’t cover a large area, and I appreciate that. I prefer to walk to where I need to go and find I navigate better on foot than by car. Besides, this way I get to look at my new surroundings.
Turning to the left outside my apartment building, I head down the street, checking out another set of apartments—ones I inquired about, but no units were available—and then the single-family homes farther down. The houses are nice but not large. One neighborhood leads to another, and then to a few small shops in front of me. I recognize the hardware store where I’d purchased sandpaper to fix the arms of my couch.
I’m pleased to see the number of trees planted along the streets with their spring buds beginning to open into leaves and flowers. I recognize the birch trees from their trunks, but it’s hard to identify tress without leaves, and very few of them have buds on their branches in February. A few trees are unfamiliar to me, and I make a mental note to look them up later.
At one point in my life, I’d thought about going to school for botany. Despite my inability to keep houseplants alive—Vee being the only exception—I’ve always loved plants. Taking a walk through the woods has always been a favorite pastime, and I love watching the trees bloom in the summer and change color in the fall. I checked out books from the library that helped me identify plants and trees in my hometown, and it seems I’ll need to find a similar book about Ohio’s foliage.
I was good at learning on my own though college never worked out for me. About the time I was graduating high school, it was clear money wasn’t available for higher education. Even as I saved up working at both the library and the diner at home, I knew it would take years to earn enough for four whole years at a university, and my grades weren’t nearly good enough for a scholarship. I only managed to take a couple of natural resource classes at the local community college.
I walk a few more short blocks before I reach a large intersection and have to wait for the light to change before I can cross. I watch the traffic move by and notice that the street I’ve come to is Main Street. I’m about to walk from the east side of Cascade Falls to the west.
“Dangerous territory,” I mumble with a smile, then quickly look around to make sure no one else on the street heard me talking to myself.
Jessie has stopped by my apartment a couple of times in the past week, always with baked goods in her hands. Every time she would end up saying something about the differences between the Eastsiders and the Westsiders. A map showed me that Main Street, which divides the town of Cascade Falls, is also the county line. Aside from that, all the differences noted by Jessie boiled down to east being good and west being bad without a lot of specifics as to why.
Frankly, she sounded downright paranoid but was otherwise so friendly and kind, I’d just sort of ignored it.
As I cross the street, I watch the people and the buildings carefully. I expect to see a noticeable change that would explain Jessie’s obvious dislike of the west side, but no variances are immediately evident. The mix of ethnicities appears to be approximately the same. The clothing doesn’t seem either more or less expensive on one side of Main Street compared to the other, and the houses and shops are similar. I take notice of a Presbyterian church about three blocks from another, almost identical, Presbyterian church.
“Weird.”
I glance over my shoulder. The light hasn’t changed yet, and I expect to see other people crossing the street from east to west, but no one is. Not a single person is crossing Main Street. In fact, I seem to be the only person who isn’t traveling north or south by foot or by car.
“Extra weird.”
I shake my head and make a conscious decision not to worry about this whole division-of-town thing. For all I know, it’s just in Jessie’s head. Maybe it is as simple as a high school rivalry taken a little too seriously by some. Whatever it is, it doesn’t involve me, so I’m not going to worry about it. I have more personally important items to think about.