Typical, Erin thought miserably as she stepped out of the airplane. Just typical.

Rain was falling in a steady, grey drizzle. The metal handrail on the portable staircase was slick with water and icy cold, but Erin still clung tightly to it as she limped carefully down the stairs. Her left leg ached in protest at having to deal with stairs on top of staying in a sitting position for the last two hours. And it didn’t help that the other passengers jostled and crowded around her, eager to get down to the tarmac and into the shelter of the airport.

Erin was limping heavily by the time she finally reached level ground, which caused her to fall even further behind in the stream of people heading for the airport doors. Halfway there, she paused, partly to give her leg a momentary rest, and partly to look up at the sky, where a thick layer of stratus clouds hung low overhead, wrapping around the visible world like a wet, ragged blanket. Raindrops fell against Erin’s face, running down her cheeks like tears. It was a sensation she’d become all too familiar with in the last few months.

“You all right, hon?” a woman asked as she passed Erin. She had a southern accent and was wearing a pink plastic rain bonnet.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks,” Erin said in a low voice, dropping her gaze and quickly starting toward the airport again.

She was lying through her teeth, of course. Things had rarely been less fine. At least with the rain it was cool enough that she could wear a jacket and gloves to cover her arms. She couldn’t lie away the scars on her wrists, and the half-pitying, half-scandalized looks that people always gave her when they noticed and jumped to conclusions about them were enough to make her want to scream.

Erin was the last one to reach the airport. She pushed her way through the heavy glass doors, deliberately ignoring the automatic button with the handicapped sign on it. As she walked slowly down the short hallway leading into the waiting area, she pulled a rather crumpled piece of paper out of her jacket pocket and looked at it for what must have been the thousandth time. On it was printed a photo showing an attractive woman with dark brown hair standing next to Erin's parents on their wedding day. She also had violet eyes, according to Erin’s mother, although the color didn’t show up well in the picture, which was nearly seventeen years old but still the most recent one they had been able to find. Next to the photo was the name Kirchel Marin, along with an address and phone number.

Erin studied the paper intently, even though she knew it by heart already. With any luck, there would be a woman in the waiting room ahead who was recognizable as an older version of the one in the photo. And with any more luck, Erin would be able to get enough help from her to make it worth flying all the way here, but she wasn’t getting her hopes up too high on that one. The last few months had taught her not to depend on luck for much.

She paused at the entrance to the waiting area, looking around at the people inside it. A small girl in yellow overalls that she had seen on the plane was being hugged and kissed by an older couple who were presumably her grandparents. Several men with business suits and briefcases were shaking hands. The woman with the pink rain bonnet was chatting happily with another woman who looked like her sister. 

And there, standing slightly apart from the rest of the crowd, was Kirchel Marin.

Erin was a little taken aback. Kirchel didn’t just resemble her photo, she was her photo. The past two decades seemed to have hardly changed her at all. There wasn’t so much as a hint of grey in her satiny brown hair, as Erin had expected there would be, and she was slim and fit-looking. Her face wasn’t exactly young, but there was an ageless sort of look to it, as though she could have been twenty or two-hundred and it would make no difference. It really wasn’t what Erin had been expecting a woman more than thirty years her senior to look like.

Still, she thought to herself, at least her first piece of luck had come through. Kirchel was here to meet her, as promised, and had been very easy to recognize. Nothing to complain about so far.

Kirchel smiled and came forward when Erin caught her eye.

“Kirchel?” Erin asked hesitantly when they were within speaking distance.

“That’s right.” Kirchel’s smile was warm and encouraging. “It’s good to see you again. I’m sure you don’t even remember the last time we met.”

Erin shook her head. The last time had been more than fourteen years ago. She’d been only a few weeks old then and didn’t remember the occasion at all. She only knew about it because her parents had told her.

“You look so much like your mother,” Kirchel went on. She was still smiling, but a trace of wistfulness had crept into her eyes. Then she laughed. “I don’t know where you came up with that hair, though.” She nodded at Erin’s red-gold ponytail.

Erin shrugged and forced a smile of her own. She was surprised to find that it made her feel much better. “We blame Dad’s side of the family.”

Kirchel laughed again. Then she tilted her head toward the far end of the waiting area. “Why don’t we head over to the luggage claim? They should have the bags out soon.”

They started walking slowly in the direction Kirchel had indicated. Erin was still limping rather heavily, and she thought she saw Kirchel give her left leg a concerned, appraising glance. But she didn’t say anything about it and seemed perfectly content to stay with Erin’s slow pace. Fortunately, the airport was only a tiny one, so the baggage claim was just a short distance down the hall from the waiting area.

The first pieces of luggage had just started sliding out onto the circular conveyor belt when they arrived. Kirchel helped Erin find her two suitcases and heave them off the belt and over to the outside door.

“Why don’t you wait here while I go get the car?” Kirchel suggested. “It’s not that far, but it looks like it’s still raining pretty hard, and we don’t want your things to get soaked. I can pull up to the curb there and then come back in to help carry the bags out.”

“Okay.”

Erin didn’t mind having a moment alone to sort out her thoughts. She frowned slightly as she watched Kirchel walk through the outside doors, ducking underneath a small folding umbrella she had pulled out of her purse.

Aunt Martha had always talked about their cousin Kirchel like she was a raving lunatic. Erin’s mother, on the other hand, thought Kirchel was an angel—albeit an eccentric one. So far, it looked like the eccentric angel was a more accurate description. But they had the whole summer ahead of them, and Erin knew it was far too early to be sure that the raving lunatic wasn’t going to make an appearance.

Kirchel was back in a few minutes, and she and Erin loaded the two suitcases and Erin’s backpack into the trunk of Kirchel’s car.

“Now, how about some lunch?" Kirchel asked when they were both seated inside the car. "I thought it might be nice to go out someplace where we can talk and get to know each other a little better. Do you have any requests?”

“Not really. I’ll eat anything as long as it's not too weird.”

“All right, then.” Kirchel shifted the car out of park and began edging away from the curb. “I'll just pick one of my favorites. Don’t worry, this place isn’t metropolized enough to have any very weird restaurants.”

Not metropolized was right. As they turned from the airport’s parking lot out onto a narrow highway, Erin hoped that it was because of the thick fog that she couldn’t see another building in any direction. She was used to living in a somewhat rural area, but it was still within easy driving distance of the city, and she had no real desire to spend an entire summer in the complete middle of nowhere. 

She shivered slightly as she stared out the window, hoping her parents had known what they were doing when they decided to send her here. 

Kirchel took Erin to a cheerful little café that she said was run by a friend of hers. The decorations and furniture were done in white and yellow with daisy and sunflower motifs. It made an odd contrast with the rainy grey world still visible through the windows.

They sat in a small booth along one wall. Business was apparently slow—it was Wednesday afternoon—and they only had to wait a minute or two before a waitress, dressed in a yellow and white checked uniform, hurried over. She seemed to be a few years older than Erin and was blonde and rather giggly. She greeted Kirchel as 'Miss Marin,' said hello to Erin, and handed them both menus. Then she told them she would be back soon to take their orders and went over to a corner of the room to chatter to another waitress, who was cleaning a table.

“Erin,” Kirchel said quietly, bending over the table, “please don't ever call me ‘Miss Marin,’ unless it's a dire emergency. Got that?”

“Oh...sure,” Erin said, surprised. “Any special reason why? Or do you just not like it?” She added the last sentence hastily, realizing that Kirchel might not like her prying.

“Suffice it to say,” Kirchel said mildly, looking down at her menu, “that women of my age often don’t like being referred to as ‘miss’, even if they are. More especially if they are.” Her violet eyes met Erin’s green ones, and Kirchel gave a wry smile. “Will that do as a reason for now?”

Erin nodded, feeling awkward.

They both studied their menus in silence, and a few minutes later, the blonde waitress returned with notepad and pencil ready. Kirchel asked for chicken alfredo with garlic bread, and Erin ordered chicken strips and French fries. That was the only good thing about being crippled, Erin thought gloomily as the waitress wrote down her order—if you weren't going to dancing classes anymore, there was no reason to feel guilty about liking fried foods.

After the waitress had disappeared into the kitchen, the conversation turned to Erin’s family. Kirchel was technically Erin’s mother’s first cousin and thus Erin’s first-cousin-once-removed, but in practice, she really turned out to be more like an aunt. Kirchel’s mother had died when she was a baby, and her father had been killed in a car accident when she was nine, leaving her an orphan. She had then gone to live with her aunt and uncle—Erin’s grandparents. She and Beatrice, Erin’s mother, had lived together like sisters, and Kirchel was eager to hear what she and the rest of the family had been doing.

“Hasn’t Mom already told you all this?” Erin asked. Their meals had come and were mostly eaten now. Erin was engaged with some stubborn ketchup, trying to convince it to leave its bottle. “You two have certainly talked on the phone enough lately.”

“True,” Kirchel admitted. She eyed Erin carefully. “But we were mostly talking about you. I’ve missed a lot of the recent news about everyone else.”

Erin stared down at her plate. She was still holding the bottle upside down over it, even though a glob of ketchup had finally fallen out. “Sorry,” she said with a hint of bitterness in her voice. “I didn’t mean to block everyone else out.”

Kirchel reached over and placed a hand on one of Erin’s. “I know you didn’t. Everyone needs to be the most urgent thing once in a while. That’s why you’re here, remember? So I can give you my undivided attention and let your parents have some time to worry about things like getting Sylvia to practice the piano.” She took hold of the ketchup bottle, which was still dripping onto Erin’s plate, and pulled it gently out of Erin’s hand, turned it right side up, and set it down on the table.

“What did Mom tell you? About...about what happened.”

“As much as she knows, I think. Which I’m sure isn’t everything, but it’s enough to start with.” Kirchel sighed. “Are you finished?” she asked, looking from Erin’s few remaining French fries to the little bits of pasta left on her own plate. “I think we should get home. You’ve had a long day.”

Erin nodded, biting her lower lip. She stood and followed Kirchel to the register and waited for her to take care of the bill.

She noticed the two waitresses watching her, and she hastily pulled her jacket and gloves back on, wondering how much the blonde girl had seen of her arms when she had come over to their table. It was all too easy to feel like it was her they were whispering about as she and Kirchel went past them on their way outside. Erin walked self-consciously, trying to keep herself from limping and earning a shot of pain in her knee for her efforts.

As she climbed back into Kirchel’s car, she found herself wishing desperately that she could be with her friend Carla at ballet camp right then instead of being stuck in a little backwater town for the rest of the summer with giggly waitresses and a cousin she barely even knew.

RynnTheTired

Thank you for reading! ❤

 

Just a note about this story before you continue:

This is the first novel I wrote, way back when I was in college (you can make a guess about how long ago that was based on the fact that the characters are still using landline phones...). It was originally going to be the first book in a series, but by the time I got to the end of it, I'd learned enough about writing to recognize how many problems there were with the plotline I had going, so I stopped working on the series and moved on to other things. But I recently went back to take a look at it and decided that, while the overall plot needs a serious overhaul, this first book by itself was probably worth cleaning up a little and posting online. So, here it is. I hope some people enjoy it. 😊