Lara leaned back in her chair and sipped her wine. Their online conversations had evolved into text messaging and quite often phone calls. The idea that they’d never met in person was nothing more than proof of how busy they both were. It would have been so easy before she’d come to Tennessee to take care of her mother’s final arrangements. She’d lived in New York all those years and he was in D.C.—a mere train ride away.
Just another downside to city living. Time slipped away so quickly. The next thing you knew five years had gone by.
He’d wanted so badly to come to her mom’s funeral, but he’d had that terrible flu that was going around over the summer. By the time he was fit for travel, Lara just needed to be alone for a while. It was a difficult time for her, and she’d wanted their first in-person meeting to be happy.
Pushing back her chair and standing once more, she considered that she and Nate would have to change that sad fact one of these days. Maybe over the Christmas holidays. She finished off her wine and returned to the kitchen for more. This time she would take it to the front porch. It was cold outside but there was a nice moon shining over the water. She could curl up in a quilt and enjoy the view for a bit. It soothed her. She sat on that porch almost every night.
Glass topped off, she grabbed her favorite well-worn quilt from the sofa back and headed outside. Her mother had worried, particularly the past few years, whether Lara would ever find her happily-ever-after in the big city. At thirty-two she still felt too young to worry about forever. Her mom had worried enough for the both of them.
Maybe it was because her mom never had a happily ever after of her own. Lara’s father had died when she was a baby and her mother never remarried. She hadn’t ever even attempted another romance as far as Lara knew. She didn’t raise the topic of grandkids, but she often mentioned how much she wanted Lara to find someone so she wouldn’t be alone in the world after she was gone. Mary Franklin had fretted a great deal about Lara having a partner in life. They had no other family, only each other.
Even in the city Lara always enjoyed plenty of friends, but her mother only had one that Lara had met. She had been far too much of a homebody—almost a recluse—to support more than one relationship at a time. She’d often said how glad she was that Lara hadn’t inherited her hermit ways.
Her mother’s homebody behavior hadn’t seemed strange to Lara. Growing up her life was plenty full. She’d never missed having a father or extended family.
She pulled the quilt closer around her and exhaled a big breath, shifting her mind from the past. She looked forward to Monday’s blog. The controversial crime solving technique on the agenda was sure to be a hit with her followers. Who would have guessed there were so many couch crime solvers out there?
Monday’s blog was particularly interesting to Lara. Genetic evidence and DNA profiling had always been at the top of her curiosity list. More recently the ancestry sites and their role in contributing to the discovery of criminals was mind-boggling. Everyone—even the worst of the worst killers—came from somewhere, had some person related by blood to him or her. The idea that the connection, even a fairly remote one, could haunt a killer with the fear of exposure was exhilarating. How could a killer protect him or herself from the genetic connection? He couldn’t. Because few people knew everyone with whom they were related in some way.
You might be able to conceal or destroy your paper trail and even your online existence, but you couldn’t hide from genetics. You could only hope to never leave any behind at a crime scene.
Lara herself, for example. She had no known family beyond her mother. If her father had extended family beyond his adopted parents, who died not long after his death, her mother hadn’t known. But there would almost certainly be someone out there. To prove her theory, Lara used one of the public ancestry sites to look for her own genetic relatives. The results would be available for review on Monday morning, and Monday evening she would share them with the world.
She sipped her wine, shivered as the cold invaded the thick cotton swaddled around her. Her mom wouldn’t have approved of the idea. She insisted that family was the people around you who loved and took care of you, not some person whose DNA pattern was like yours.
This was true, of course. A genetic connection didn’t make people family in the truest sense of the word.
Still, it was interesting in terms of solving crime. Her followers would love the personal aspect. In truth, she was vaguely curious as to whether she had any close genetic links out there.
Who wouldn’t be?
She’d also done some browsing on FamilySecrets.Life, a fairly new site touted for doling out advice and offering private counseling. The counseling options were slanted toward family issues. Lara was somewhat impressed with what the site brought to the table. The advice was often times blunt but on target, in her opinion.
She drank the last of her wine and leaned her head against the vintage wood of the ancient swing. Pushing off with a sock-clad foot she set the swing in motion then tucked her leg back into the warmth of the quilt. Closing her eyes, she allowed the quiet and the darkness to clear her mind. All the voices of tonight’s multitude of commenters faded into nothingness. She could sit here all night, just swaying gently back and forth. Except she might very well freeze to death. She’d caught a little of tonight’s weather news. Wasn’t the low supposed to be like thirty-five? Too cold for sleeping on the porch for sure.
She would get up and go inside eventually. But not just yet…
A crash shattered the silence.
Lara’s head came up. Cold had invaded the quilt. Had she fallen asleep? She shivered as she glanced around.
What the heck?
She blinked, clearing the fog of sleep from her eyes. Porch. She’d fallen asleep in the swing. It was still dark but judging by the cold she’d slept for a bit. Where was her cell phone? Her hands moved around her lap. Not in the quilt. Not in her pocket.
She shivered again and decided it was past time to go inside. Putting her foot down, something poked her. She yelped.
A shard of glass.
The wine glass.
She’d fallen asleep and dropped it. That was the crash that had awakened her.
Braced for the worst, she wiggled her toes and turned her foot in a circle. She relaxed. Luckily it felt like only a poke to her big toe.
Walking with her toe canted up until she could fully examine the damage, she went into the house, shrugged off the quilt and hurried to the bathroom. The small bathroom was circa the fifties with a single pink porcelain sink mounted to the wall and sporting two polished metal legs. The cross piece between the legs was a great place to hang a hand towel. The tub, too, was pink as was the toilet. Lara didn’t mind. She’d always liked pink. It had been her mother’s favorite color and splashes could be found all over the family home. The pink walls in this cottage, however, Lara’d had to paint. As much as she liked the color she could take only so much. The white tile the previous owner had added to the walls and floor was the perfect remedy for the overdose of pink in this bathroom.
She pulled off her sock and checked her toe. Not so bad. Shallow but a little bloody. Thankfully the sock had soaked it up preventing her from leaving a trail through the house. She cleaned the wound, added some antibiotic cream for good measure and applied a bandage. No big deal.