Some people were amazed at how quickly I was able to organize the survival and recovery of Sunset Valley. But really, what seemed like it happened quickly to some, felt like it was going too slowly for me. Finding people who were willing to not only help with the rebuilding and restoration of many buildings and landmarks, but to also stay and become part of the community was not an easy task. Few people with substantial means wanted anything to do with our tragedy.

I was able to reach a few people, though. The Green’s and the Wycliffe’s – who moved into the Landgraab and Goth estates respectively — were more than willing to pool their resources into getting things going at a quicker rate. No one wanted to think of the wasteland Sunset Valley could become if the poverty weren’t dealt with immediately. One thing we did not need was violence and crime.

And so it was that, in the course of only two year’s time, Sunset Valley was once again habitable. It was safe, once again, to send my children into town and meet the families who helped make it a reality and who were now our neighbors.

Of course, while Laleh prefers the swing, Denny heads straight to the pond, wondering if the meteors decimated the fish population as it had the human one. Both of them met several of our new neighbors during their first trip to the newly restored central park.

Jemma Higginbottom, coming from the theater. She was disappointed to discover that it wasn’t showing any movies, but that was, after all, to be expected. New shows are scheduled to arrive later on in the month, though.

The Chilsons – Debbie, Stephen and their daughter Brenna — all enjoying a visit to the park after moving into their new home. They have a little boy, too, but he was still at the daycare center I had set up during the long months of reconstructions.

Laleh got along really well with Brenna, and they were soon fast friends.

Everyone seems so excited about their new homes in the new town.

I am very proud of the job we all did, however, sometimes I feel a deep and abiding regret that we could not save everyone. So many people were lost… so many familiar faces who will never be seen again. And so many of them were family. My aunt’s and uncles, cousins, second and third cousins… all lost. All gone. Somehow, I hope they find peace with what we have done and grant us their blessings.

Laleh and Denny also meet and befriend the children of the McRandomsim family. And odd bunch, but friendly and just as excited to be here.

And these are…

… forgive me, but I think they are some of the Wycliffes. It’s hard sometimes with all these new faces popping up to tell who is who. I am trying to learn them all because until a new town government is established, I am still the defacto mayor and principal of the school. Things are very insane at city hall right now.

And at home, too. As you can see, we have lost our maid to the meteors as well. And wow… does that statement make me sound like a pampered little rich girl? I don’t intend to. Actually, the family is pretty good at pitching in and doing things for ourselves now that we have to.

It will be a while before things truly become normal, I think.

Dad’s been running a free clinic in the park, every Tuesday and Thursday. He administers vaccinations to everyone in the town, and to all the visitors coming in from foreign countries. It’s important, he says, because who knows what diseases we’re susceptible to since the meteor crash. Not to mention the fact that most of us have been working 20-hour days trying to get things done.

But not everyone is happy with his decisions and no one likes vaccines. He puts up with a lot of flack just keep us all healthy these days.

Sometimes the little Chilson girl sells things in the park. It’s weird, because no one did that before, but now, people come to see what she’s selling. When I asked her what she did with the money, she told me that she was saving it up for the Sunset Valley Building Fund. My heart just about broke then, so greatly did her words effect me.

Did I forget to mention the 20-hour work days?

Sometimes, I feel like all I have time for between the manual physical labor and the business end of things at city hall is a quick bowl of cereal or soup.

Brandon, who has begun painting in what little spare time he has, says he thinks I’m losing weight. Maybe a bit too fast. I can’t see it, but I can tell that he’s worried, so I promised to eat lots of cake at Denny’s birthday party to make up for the loss.

Speaking of Denny… he’s a teenager now, and while he was always a little bit chubby, he’s ballooned out with puberty. He’s so self conscious about it because he wants to be more like his father… athletic and muscular. He’s gained some muscle doing odd jobs for the families around town, but not as much as he hoped he would. He’s also struggling with his math, the poor dear. Luckily for him, I have been there to help him out.

Mom is as crazy as ever. Although, I guess I should amend that, she wasn’t always as crazy as we thought she was. Now, though, she’s taken to standing atop that tower she had built, looking out into space no matter what the weather. Whether she’s surveying the new town or looking for more meteors, I don’t know.

When she’s not busy with that or trying to revive the vegetables in the garden, she is busy with the boys. I can’t believe how much time has flown by! Once, they were babies, but during the last two years, they have grown into handsome little men.

But time does fly, doesn’t it? When you’re so busy that you don’t have time to stop and think… time breezes right alone and you don’t see it slipping away until it’s passed you by entirely. I feel like that these days. People come from other countries or cities and their talking about so many things I didn’t know had happened because I was dealing with the issues of Sunset Valley. I wonder if we will ever catch up to the rest of the world?

Bachelor

There’s Fern and her husband Jesse. Helena and her husband Brandon. Brandon’s son Denny, from a previous relationship, and his children with Helena — Laleh, Marcus and Nevelle.

Jeffrey Bachelor, his wife Maria and their daughter Gail.

Kenneth Bachelor, his twin brother Isaac (Foreman) and his wife Jasmine.

Bindel

Sophia Bindel, an adventurous young woman looking to help out a community in need.

Chance

Twin sisters Bonne and Mal Chance.

Chilson

Stephen and Debbie Chilson, and their children Brenna and Mickey

Flin

Deanna Flin, a young woman who had hopes of moving to (old) Sunset Valley, only to arrive and find it in rubble and ruin. Not to be deterred, she rolled up her sleeves and pitched in to help.

Gilscarbo

Goopy Gilscarbo… a croctchey guy with his own agenda

Green

The Greens are one of two wealthy families Helena convinced to come and help out the new Sunset Valley economy. They are: Mia-Rebecca, Laura-Lena, Hamzah Lufti, Gyriaque, and Pia-Stella. An interesting bunch, from the looks of things.

Higginbotham

Eli and Jemma Higginbotham

Jones

Virginia, Dakota and Carolina Jones… daughters of a semi-infamous tombraider, they also came to Sunset Valley to help rebuild. Or maybe to unearth a few secrets of their own.

McRandomsim

Random, wish wife Randoma, and their two children, Randomina and Rando

Starr

Angel Starr, a newcomer from far off Legacy Land

Stevenson

Jacob Clayton Stevenson… another loner who may or may not have a Past.

Wycliffe

Dallas, Quinton, Rosella, Pinkie, Zando, Force and Mayli. They moved into the old Goth Manor, which needed little rebuilding, thankfully.

And These Guys

Angelo Devlin, Bob Plumb, Caso Prueba and Darren YNasti all came to Sunset Valley to help rebuild. While they weren’t very good construction workers before they got here, they sure learned a lot and decided to stay and see how the fruits of the labor stood the tests of time.

But lately my dreams have been unsettled. I see things I cannot describe. Death walking the streets of Sunset Valley as a man of utter darkness. Fire… fire stalking my children… taking my dear sweet Helena to grave and thus bringing about the end of us all. Vicious, cruel fire.

Dreams are closer to reality than most people will ever know. How, I wonder, can I prevent these things from coming to be? How can I ensure that life will continue to move forward in our family?

Understand that I am not afraid of death or the Grim One who is it’s shepherd. But I also know that the children do not need to die now. Death wants not the young. He favors those whose lives has already spent themselves.

It is not. It cannot be Helena’s time yet.

But how to prevent it?

My mother’s words.

They seemed so innocent only a little while ago. Innocent and naive in that crazy insane most of her thoughts do, but in light of what has happened to our beloved Sunset Valley, I shudder now to think how prophetic they were… and now utterly foolish we all were to think that civilization had progressed so far that we could not be touched the harsh hand of Mother Nature herself.

But here, I am getting ahead of myself, and there is much of the innocence and naivety to share first.

My daughter, Laleh, had just celebrated her eighth birthday, and was excited to be starting school with her big brother, Denny. Although she wasn’t too keen about the art classes her Gramma Fern kept insisting she take.

But off she went anyway, ready to tackle anything so long it wasn’t an art class.

After school, they both rushed through their homework and hurried out to the garden to play in the sprinklers.

Mom looked at them, smiled and walked away muttering something about the fleeting joys of the younger generation and how little they paid heed to the danger which awaited them. At the time, I ignored it, like we all did. She could have been just as easily talking about the broken nectar press in the basement of the nectary, for all the sense it made at that time.

I know better, now. God help us, but we all know better now.

But not so much then. The months leading up to it were so typical.

I was pregnant again. The doctor said twins. Go figure, me having twins. I’d already picked out names, too. Michelle and Nicole for girls. Marcus and Nevelle for boys.

I went into labor one night while playing in the back yard with Denny and Laleh. I don’t remember my parents playing with me much, but Brandon and I always make time for the kids. It’s become important to us, especially after watching my parents go down so rough a path. Brandon is right… the laughter of children is the best medicine in the world.

Mayhap, it will be the one thing that saves us all in the future.

But there I am, getting ahead of myself again.

Brandon and Dad were both at work, so I had to drive myself to the hospital. I left Mom with the kids, of course, and returned later with two healthy baby boys. Marcus and Nevelle.

I apologize for not having many pictures of them as newborns. A lot of things have gone missing since… well, you know, since I keep getting ahead of myself.

A few weeks later, an uncle of Denny’s on his mother’s side dies. Like Denny, he is an avid fisherman. In his will, he left Denny his entire aquarium of perfect fish. It was amazing! Denny was so thrilled! We bought him some new tanks and watched as he filled them, naming each fish because he knew what they were… even though I couldn’t tell one from the other!

How innocent and carefree it all was! I look back on that night, with Denny so light-hearted and joyful as he watched his new fish swim round and round, and it brings tears to my eyes.

Two nights later, I saw something that changed my life forever. Uncle Alexander, my great-uncle Alexander to be more precise… jumping on the trampoline like a school child. He stopped in mid-jump and looked at me. Straight at me, so seriously that it sent chills down my spine.

“Stay home from work tomorrow, Helena,” he told me in an ominous voice. “Keep your children and your family home. If you do not, when the rain of fire comes, you will all surely perish.”

I was so scared that I ran into the house, and ran smack into my mother, looking as white as a sheet.

“You saw him, too,” she said softly. I nodded my head. “Death and fire are coming, just as I always knew they would,” she replied, patting my hand. “Don’t worry, Helena. Uncle Alexander came to warn us for a reason. Call your brothers, and tell them to stay home if they value their lives.”

I nodded my head, and called my brothers, one by one spinning this very tale as I told it to you. In the background, I could hear my mother arguing with Aunt Elena. In my heart, I knew that she could not reach Aunt Elena in time and that the raised voice on the other end of the conversation was all I would have left of my aunt.

The next morning dawned deceptively normal. The children arose from their beds, complaining that they didn’t why they had to stay home. Denny was especially distraught because he was supposed to sit with his best friend on the bus that morning.

“I’m sorry,” I told them. “But you’re staying home. Try to make the best of it. Most kids your age would give anything to have their parents let them stay home.”

My father approached me, looking care-worn and ragged. It was a look I would become familiar with in the days to come. “You’re mother passed out an hour ago,” he said. “She was up all night night trying to get the Mayor to declare a state of emergency for the entire Valley.”

“He didn’t believe her,” I said sadly. Dad nodded.

The meteors – Uncle Alex’s ‘rain of fire’ as it were – began an after the school and business day would have begun in Sunset Valley.

In less an hour, over half the town, including City Hall, was in utter ruins. The town was in flames, people were dying. Very few places remained untouched by the savages of Mother Nature and her fury.

When it was over, some of the buildings still stood, most of them scarred by fire or drowned by the fire department’s feeble attempts at dowsing the flames. Those who survived huddled together in the hospital, where my father finally made his way. As Chief of Surgery, he spent many days and long, long hours treating the ill and injured.

In the army compound where my mother worked as an astronaut, we found a few more survivors and a battalion of the national guard ready to help with clean up.

In the sports stadium, Brandon found another small enclave.

My brothers – who blessedly listened when I called them, pleading with them to stay home – and I led the first wave of phone calls, attempting to get the city the financial and humanitarian help it needed to rebuild. We Bachelors… Bella’s descendants, the children of Bella and Mortimer… are all that are left of the old guard. The rest … those who didn’t die in the flames, that is, are gone, having fled the disaster. Some have nothing left to come home to, anyway. But many, so many… are gone.

Those who’ve remained have appointed me their defacto mayor. I’m in charge. Dad’s running a 24-hour triage unit out of the hospital. Mom’s leading the army up at the compound. Jeffrey, Kenneth and Isaac – my three brothers who hate the outdoors – are in charge of clean up and planting. Brandon is helping out with the children. Not just ours, but everyones. He really is good with kids.

And they all turn to me now for leadership in this new era. This scary, brave new world.

The morning of my wedding dawned to the wailing sounds of my daughter in need of her breakfast and a diaper change.

She was cranky, because her grandfather lets her stay up late and her father likes to play with her before he puts her to bed. I suppose I should be grateful that they both dote on Laleh, but that particular morning was not the one for cranky babies.

That morning, our family and friends gathered to witness the official welcoming of Brandon Bartholomew (and his son Denny, too) into our family.

Afterwards, we all gathered together to celebrate. A lot of it was a blur to me, really. As the bride, I was being pulled in so many directions at once. Smiling for cameras, kissing my husband to the delight of the crowd, father-daughter dances, bride-and-groom dances, dancing with Denny, even. There was a LOT going on that day, but it certainly was fun!

So many of the family turned out to see it… cousin Galen, who spent a lot of time playing in the sprinklers…

Kenneth and Isaac, who okay, weren’t guests because they live with us, but not for long because they finally found a house to rent – together with Isaac’s girlfriend, Jasmine – although I didn’t know that until after the wedding.

Several of Uncle Alexander’s kids and grandkids were there… all cousins I’ve only met in passing. Cousin Chauncey and Bernice… It was so wonderful to see them all.

I’d like to say that after such a wonderful wedding ceremony we had an equally wonderful honeymoon. How I’ve dreamed of traveling to China or Egypt (like Gramma Bella) and making many happy memories with Brandon.

But we both had to work because I just got off maternity leave and Brandon is a starter for the Sunset Valley Stingrays and he has a big game coming up that he can’t miss.

As you can see, he’s very busy preparing for it.

So busy, in fact, that he fails to see Dad being cornered by that hussy, Guadalupe Luke. I probably wouldn’t know about this at all if not for the fact that everyone else at the gym that night hadn’t been cousins!

She “ran into him” again at the bistro a few nights later. Kenneth was there. So was Uncle Gyes. Kenneth called me, like good brothers do. Uncle Gyes is a good brother, too. He called Mom.

It went about like you’d expect… Mom confronted Dad, Dad denied anything, and they both blew up over everything that’s festered between them for years. Mom accused Dad of spending too much time in the deep forest of this discontent (which still baffles me, quite frankly) and Dad said that if he was discontent it was because she never treated their marriage like a partnership. They were supposed to be a team, to do things together. To decide things together.

If I hadn’t still been reading the old family journals and hadn’t just gotten to Mom’s, I would not have known what that was about. Mom remodeled the family home when I was a baby, just before Isaac and Kenneth were born. She did it without consulting Dad and used up all the family’s money. For most of my life, my seemingly wealthy family was in debt up to its eyebrows.

I’d never known. I don’t think my brothers knew, either.

Hearing them argue, I vowed to speak to Dad later and get him to tell me how he fixed things with the creditors. I needed to know, if I was going to keep us afloat after their deaths. I also needed to know how much we still owed and how soon it would be paid back.

Mom’s next words to Dad stopped me cold.

“You didn’t care about being a team when you were hording the money from your books!”

Dad fell eerily silent. Finally, he said, tersely, “all of that money, except for what little we put into the pool house you now affectionately call your ‘mother-in-laws suite’ went to paying off our debts, Fern. And our utilities. And the maid who does your laundry. All of it. I wasn’t hording a dime.”

He turned and started to walk away, but Mom’s whispered response stopped him cold. “You didn’t tell me.”

“You never asked, Fern. You were too busy talking to your dead grandmother about forests and fog.” He started to walk away again and then turned back at the back door. “I was always here, Fern. Despite what you think, I have never stopped loving you.”

He went back to the pool house and Mom ran out to the nectary, where I could hear her crying.

I was so wrapped up their drama that I didn’t Brandon until he had wrapped his arms around me. He wiped away the tears I didn’t know were falling from my eyes and simply held me. “Will they be okay?” I asked him in a shaky voice. My parents’ marriage has never been anything close to ideal but I didn’t want to see them separate.

“I don’t know, baby,” Brandon told me, honestly. He kissed my forehead and held me for a moment longer before suggesting we go outside to play catch with Denny and watching Laleh play in the grass. There was something therapeutic, he said, about the laughter of children.

Maybe Brandon isn’t so clueless a guy, after all.

In my mother’s journals, she spoke so confidently – naively, maybe – of their being a family once the made it through the forest of discontent. While I don’t like to feed her delusions and I know there was no real forest… I do know that there was genuine discontent. I only hope and pray that they can work through it now that it’s all out in the open.

That we all can.

And as if knowing that my parents’ marriage is on shaky ground and my entire life of luxury has been a well-preserved lie wasn’t enough… our home was invaded late one even a few week ago. Well, almost.

A burglar came sneaking out of the shadows one night… and if it hadn’t been for the alarm Dad had the foresight to have placed on the front veranda, I think he would have just walked right in and carried off anything he wanted.

But the sound of the alarm seemed to root him to his spot, holding him there until the police arrived. He tried to make a break for it, and they fought. I didn’t think that the little slip of a woman could stop that horrid man, but she was victorious.

Our would-be burglar was thwarted, cuffed, and carried away in the police cruiser.

And all without stealing a single thing.

Brandon said it was lucky, for that alarm and for the athletic skills of the police officer who’d arrived to save the day, but something about the incident has me shaken still. I don’t if it’s really that, or what’s been going on with my parents, but I suddenly feel so alone up here on the hill. The two house next ours – the Landgraab Estate and Villa Alto – once were home to two of the founding families of Sunset Valley. Now they stand empty.

They are sad ruins, echoes of better times for the people who once lived there. Cold, pretty monuments to wealth’s fleeting power.

They make me wonder what the future has in store of my family.

With my pregnancy becoming more and more noticeable, things in the house were coming to a head.

And it was very frustrating indeed, at least, for me. Kenneth and Isaac were both busy trying to find jobs and houses and Mom and Dad…

They do a good job of avoiding the situation. Every situation. So it was no surprise to me that they had not taken the time to talk about Ms. Pink Dress, whom I learned was Guadalupe Luke, who works as a paramedic at the hospital where Dad is now Chief of Surgery. I also discovered that, at least for now, my father was telling the truth. There doesn’t seem to be anything between them. No one I know from the hospital has reason to suspect an affair. And believe me, with all my cousins in this town, if there was something going on, one of us would know!

So Mom got to see her dream of becoming an Astronaut fulfilled without the taint of having an adulterous husband, and for that, I was very, very grateful. I still wish, though, that they would actually talk to each other instead of floating around the house like two ships passing in the night.

Speaking of couples and talking about things… I finally cornered Brandon when he wasn’t at work and told him about the baby.

Or rather, he cornered me and asked me if I had put on weight. ::facepalm::

Honestly, who knew guys could be THAT clueless! But I think he took it well, all things considered. He looked a little stunned at first, but then he knelt down and rubbed my belly, and said hello to the “little guy.”

I didn’t correct him, but I was secretly hoping for a little girl. Maybe one with his hair. That would be nice, don’t you think?

And then he asked me what he thought we should do now?

“I think we should get married,” I replied. “Or at least, engaged.”

Brandon was somewhat dumbstruck by the forwardness of my suggestion, but then he embraced me tightly and yes “Yes!” about twenty times, at least.

And then, he took my hand and led me over to a bench. “We do need to talk about something, though. You know that I live with Tomica Buffington, right?”

I nodded. “She’s your roommate.”

“Yeah, she is… now.”

Now sounded complicated, and it turns out that it was. Brandon explained to me that he and Tomica used to date and that they had what he described as an amicable break-up.

“Neither one of us was looking for something serious, not at the time,” he explained and I understood that. I hadn’t been looking for serious when I met Brandon, it just sort of happened. So I nodded my head and said I understood.

Brandon sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I hope so, Helena. Because this next part is complicated and I don’t it to jeopardize the special thing we have, you know?”

“Okay.” I said in a small, scared voice. I wondered how bad ‘complicated’ could be.

Brandon took my hand and squeezed it tightly and I could see how sincere he was. He told me that a few months after he and Tomica broke up, she invited him over to his house and … well, she was very pregnant.

“His name is Denny,” Brandon said, showing me a picture he carried in his wallet. “There’s no denying that he’s mine.”

“He has your eyes,” I said, agreeing.

“He does, yeah…” Brandon ran his hands through his hair again. “I have never tried to deny him, Helena. I even asked Tomica if she would marry me. She turned me down. She said she wasn’t trying to railroad me into marriage” Tomica Buffington already had a daughter by some other guy. Everyone in town knew that. “and I respect that. But we stayed friends for Denny’s sake and when she started having trouble with her bills, I offered to move in with her so I could help out where I could.”

“Does she know about me?” I asked, wondering how much of his love life Tomica knew about.

Brandon nodded. “She knows we’re dating and she knows it’s been kinda getting serious. Don’t think she knows just serious, though,” he added with a soft chuckle, touching my belly again. “When we get married…” he said after a moment’s thought “I’d like Denny to come live with us, if Tomica doesn’t mind. I love the little guy so much. Never thought I would — I didn’t see kids as a part of my life before him.”

I could see how much of an admission this was for Brandon and it touched me so much. How could I deny him the right to have his son with him?

Denny Bartholomew… the newest edition to our family and my baby’s big brother. Soon-to-be big brother.

It’s hard to wrap my mind around having a ready made family, but I knew that because Brandon is somewhat older than me, it was always a possibility.

Everything would be perfect if I didn’t feel so much like a whale!

Or I wasn’t hungry all the time!

Lucky for me, Isaac likes to cook. He’s going to make Jasmine a wonderful husband someday.

Here are my baby brothers… both of them eating up the idea of being uncles. Kenneth spent a lot of time with Denny after they first moved in. It wasn’t unusual to find him in the nursery reading to Denny or teaching him to talk. They never once questioned Denny’s place in our family.

Wish I could say the same for Dad, though… he and Brandon got off on the wrong foot after they moved in. Dad was … offended, I guess the right word is… that Brandon had a child by another woman. They had words, and for a few days it was pretty tense.

I finally cornered Dad and spoke to him. It turned out that it wasn’t Denny he was upset about, but that he was questioning Brandon’s true feelings about me. “Baby, if he could get another woman pregnant just like that, how serious could he be about you? I just want the best for my little girl.”

As it turned out, Brandon was walking by and he overheard what Dad said. He came into the room and joined us. “I understand where you’re coming from, Mr. Bachelor,” he said to my father. “When I was younger, I did a lot of things I am not proud of now and I openly admit that settling down was the furthest thing from my mind. But two things changed my mind — becoming a father and falling in love.” He was looking at me when said the last part. I could have cried for joy.

Or maybe from pregnancy hormones.

My pregnancy went along pretty smoothly, and sooner than anyone thought, I was going into labor. Brandon rushed me to the hospital, and we came home a couple of days later with a beautiful baby girl. Our daughter, Laleh.

Laleh and Denny shared a birthday just this once.

Isn’t she adorable?

Mom spends a lot of time with her in the nursery.

Reading is a family past time… *g* Mom is reading Dad’s latest novel. Kenneth is learning about gardening. And I’m… well, I think it was something for work. Because now that I’m not pregnant, I can go back to teaching at the school. Although, I have to admit that sometimes there are lots of distracting reasons I could stay home.

And he keeps himself in such good shape, too! ::fans self::

Also, now that I’m not pregnant anymore, I’ve begun planning my wedding to Brandon. It’s going to be awesome! I just know it!

A few weeks ago, my mother sat down with me and told me that as of now, I was the defacto head of the family. She had this old box filled with journals, pages and pages of her words, my grandmother Cassandra’s words, and those of my great-grandmother, Bella Bachelor.

It was, though I find it difficult to admit, a really terrifying moment for me. I had never, not once, thought of myself as anything more than Helena Bachelor, daughter of Fern and Jesse, Granddaughter of Cassie and Lester. Now, I find out that I’m … special. Hand-picked to carry on some kind of weird legacy.

For weeks, I have been slowly reading and re-reading the words of those who have come before me. My great-grandmother started out looking for herself and for love, and only really found it at the very end of her life. Gramma Cassie waited until she almost past child-bearing years, marrying late, and then giving birth to not one, but two sets of twins. Twins, it seems, runs in the family.

I am a twin, but unlike previous generations, I am the only girl. The only one, my mother tells me, who can continue the family line in this house.

Jeffrey has decided to move out.

He’s gotten engaged to his girlfriend, Maria Foreman, and they’re going to rent a house across town. Mom cried the day he left, hugging him tightly.

I don’t think she wanted him to go. The truth, I think my mother is very lonely when the house is empty. It makes sense, considering she’s ground up in a house full of people and suddenly we have this big huge house that just screams to be filled if you listen closely.

She and Dad barely speak, and haven’t for years. When I was a kid, I didn’t really notice it, but as a teenager, I did. Many a night, Jeffrey and I lay in our beds in our room and asked each other if this was how marriage was between adults. Or worse, if they would get divorced.

I am glad that Jeffrey has decided not to let our parent’s obvious disfunction tarnish the rest of his life, and I pray with all of my heart that he and Maria have the happy life my parent’s should have had.

Love does seem to be in the air these days… for all of us.

My brother Isaac has been dating Jasmine Foreman. She’s Maria’s baby sister. That should be weird, but they love each other.

And then there’s me and Brandon…

Things have really been moving fast for us.

Maybe… a little too fast?

By the time Isaac and Kenneth’s birthday party rolled around, I was starting to show… but I still hadn’t gotten up the courage to tell Brandon. I was excited and scared – but mostly excited – to tell him, but I was soooooooo worried that he would think I was trying to railroad him into marriage. I am not!

If it’s one thing reading Bella Goth’s journals has taught me is that we Bachelor women don’t need a man to be a success in anything we put our minds to. I could take care of a baby on my own, if need be.

But there, I’m getting ahead of myself…

The party was a few days way, when Mom ran into a surprising and familiar face! Uncle Alexander. He’s my Gramma Cassie’s baby brother and has lived a long, long time. The exchanged phone numbers and went on their way.

The next day, Uncle Alex called asking to come over. I overheard Mom telling him that our house was still his and that he could come home any time he wanted to. That’s the same Gramma Cassie wrote in her journal after Alex moved out.

So, Uncle Alexander came over and he was barely on the property when he quite suddenly … died!

The Grim Reaper came for him before any of us in the family even had time to notice he was there! It was Dad, coming home from work – and he seems to be working a LOT lately, too – who discovered the body.

We buried Uncle Alexander in the family plot next to his sister and mother. That only seemed fitting. Mom spent hours sitting in there talking to him, getting him acclimated to being home, or so she said.

Sometimes… I really worry about my mother.

She’s an elder now, and I guess you could excuse some of this as age catching up with her mind, but the truth is, she’s talked like this for as long as I’ve known her. She acts like the dead and living co-exist on the same earthly plane.

She’ll go riding around town on her bike or work in the hot garden all day and sometimes I just … worry.

Dad doesn’t seem to notice at all, though. He’s too busy with work and his writing, and up until recently, the pool house renovations. (It’s done… I really need to take pictures of it, I think. I’ve noticed that Mom and Gramma Cassie both included pictures of the house in various stages of the family development. I suppose this is one of those, too.)

So, finally it was time for the Boy’s birthday party. We invited Isaac’s girlfriend, Jasmine, to join us, because her birthday was the same week. So, it was kind of a triple birthday party.

And that was how Isaac and Kenneth celebrated their coming of age.

I wish I could say the party was a very happy event. It had it’s moments, some really good ones. But then there was THAT Woman In The Pink Dress.

I don’t know her name, but somehow, she would up on the invitation list.

I think Mom saw something… something she didn’t want to see. I overheard her and Dad talking about it while I helped the boys clean up after the party. Dad said she was just a friend from work, and that Mom had misconstrued an innocent conversation as something else.

Mom said that he had been in the forest too long and needed to come home.

Sometimes, I really, REALLY worry that Mom is not at all grounded in reality. I don’t know what she meant by “forest” but do that I will be looking into Ms. Just a Friend From Work in the Pink Dress and see who she really is.

And if she poses a threat to my family.

It seems so very strange to have a house full of teenagers now. When I renovated the house, I built up a playground for the children to play in, not realizing that all but one of my babies would grow up to hate the outdoors. The only ones who use the playground now are Jesse and my brothers when they come to visit. Jesse is not very graceful on the trampoline.

What occupies my sons most are their school work and their own little side projects.

Jeffrey loves to tinker with his inventions. He is always in the garage working on something. He’s taken to selling his inventions at the Landgraab Swap & Sell and thinks that I should do the same with the older bottles of my father’s Bachelor Nectar.

“What is the use, Mom,” he asked me one day, “of having a nectary if we don’t profit from it?”

I have to admit that he makes sense, but I would not know where to begin to sell the wine that we have.

One of Jeffrey’s inventions is a charming little man made out of scrap metal. There is something about him, this little metal man. His eyes are very brilliant and when I asked Jeffrey how me made them, he surprised me by saying he did not know. That the eyes just seemed to ‘be there’ when he was finished.

Eyes are the windows to the soul and if you ask me, this gnome is more man than metal.

Though no one will believe me, I have seen him move… flitting around the grounds like he owns the place.

Jesse has been an attempt at bonding with Isaac and Kenneth.

For reasons that make no sense to me, the three of them have taken up fishing. Neither Isaac or Kenneth like the outdoors, but they both say they want to go fishing with their father.

They started out at the park across the street from our home. It went well and it was close by, so that when the boys got tired of the great outdoors, they could simply come home.

Several months into this little social experiment, however, they decided to go fishing at the cemetery. It’s rumored that there are different fish there – vampire fish and death fish. The boys want to catch one in the worst way. It’s all they’ve been talking about for a while now. So finally, they went – going at night because that’s when everyone says the unique fish were more likely to be in abundance.

The trip was interesting for them, but not very productive as far as catching fish went. They did, however, come with several hundred pounds of scrap metal and stone for Jeffrey’s inventions and the tallest fish tale of them all.

I find it all very amusing, although I am concerned that now all three of them are obsessed with fishing. It’s all they talk about now! Jesse even talks about fish in his sleep!

I suspect the meteor messed with their heads.

And now, dear family archive, I must bid you a farewell. It seems as though my time tell the family’s story has come to an end.

Helena and Jeffrey are young adults now, so now it is time to pass the torch over to her.

We threw them a huge party, though, and invited all of the family to come. My brother’s and Uncle Alexander showed up and all of my cousins and their spouses. Cousin Galen played the guitar and everyone had an awesome time.

Afterward, there was a ton of clean up, and I complained about it to Gramma Bella as I cleaned up the last of the dishes. But I do agree with her that it was worth it. She threw one for mother as well, even though it tapped her resources for the unforeseeable future.

Speaking of tapping resources… I have been a lot of thinking about the house now that Helena is poised to start her own life. The house we have is fine, but there is no secondary master suite for what will be the secondary couple in the home.

So I went to Jesse and asked him what he thought we should do. It might have been the first time in a very long time that we spoke to one another about anything with more depth than a bowl of cereal. The forest of his discontent is very deep indeed, but he still found his way to a clearing where we could talk.

He surprised me by saying that he had some savings set aside from his books, and that, perhaps we could use them for to build a small pool house in undeveloped section of the property.

“We don’t have a pool,” I pointed out.

“We could build one, Fern,” he told me.

I agreed that we could. “But who would live there?” I asked.

“We could lived there, once Helena starts her own family.”

It didn’t, he explained, have to be a huge building. A small pool and a couple of rooms… a bedroom, bathroom and maybe a small kitchenette. Nothing like my beautiful palace, but a quiet and cozy place to sleep at night.

In a few short months, the construction was done, and I must say that I do find the pool house to be a very relaxing place. I often go there just to sit in the wicker chairs and think about things.

Mostly, I think about Helena and how much she is changing as a young adult. I wonder if I really know my daughter at all. We do garden together, most days, but usually it is just me offering her advise on how to clear out the weeds while she works.

Lately, she has been spending time in town, and the park and other places, and hear from my brother Gyes that she has been keeping the company of a young man by the name of Brandon Bartholomew.

It seems to be quite serious, and I know that her family is about to begin.

Simmer’s Notes: No heir poll this time around, as Helena is the only female and this is a matriarchy, after all. Below are her stats, in case you’re wondering. (Click to view bigger image.)

Gramma Bella says that sometimes people get tired. So tired that all the want is to lie down in the softness and stay there until something changes that makes like exciting and new again. When you’re dead, you can afford to do just that. But the rest of us must muddle through life waiting for the day to come when happiness finds us.

Lately, Jesse and I don’t have a lot of happiness that doesn’t involve our children. Gramma Bella says Jesse is lost in the forest of his own discontent and he has a long way to go before he before he finds his way out.

It’s because of the house. I know that the house, my beautiful castle, has driven a wedge between us. I try to understand, but I love it. It’s the home I was meant to live in. Deep down in my heart, I know this to be the truth.

All Jesse sees is the money. He can’t grasp it that money isn’t all that important. There are other things. Warmth and joy, comfort, nurture. My house has all of these, but he can’t see it.

The fog in the forest he travels has blinded him. I must wait for the fog to lift so he can come out of the forest and join me in our home.

What pains me the most is that he won’t talk about it, not with me. Instead, he buries himself in both work and his writing.

I’ve always known Jesse wanted to be a writer. He used to tell such wonder stories when we were teenagers, stories so vivid, I almost believed them to be real people. Now he spends hours sitting in the den with his computer, pouring their voices onto the screen.

I know that he’s published a couple of his stories. The publishing company sends complimentary books every time he does.

I only wish that I could feel like a part of it.

Instead, I feel cast aside, floating and wandering with nothing to anchor me.

Kind of like Uncle Uriah. He and Aunt Bianca divorced, did you know that? And Aunt Donna has gone missing. It’s very, very odd. I asked Gramma Bella about her and she assured me that Aunt Donna is not among the dead. But where she, Gramma did not know. it makes her sad. So does Aunt Bianca. She won’t pay child support for her children and she’s very, very mean sometimes. I always thought she loved my cousins. So did Gramma Bella. It breaks her heart.

In the absence of anything better to do, I find myself doing… whatever I feel like when I’m not at work. I joined the cause to abolish scientific testing on lady bugs. Half the people there were related to me – including my sister. Elena thought someone should have brought a guitar. Protests, she said, need music.

The protest went off without a hitch and the cops weren’t called in. I was so glad! It was such fun and it would have been a shame for half the family to be hauled off to jail. Somehow, I don’t know if we would have the money for Jesse to bail me out.

But think of the adventure that would have been, too! Sitting on a cold bench tethered to the wall, wearing an orange jumpsuit. Rubbing elbows with hardened criminals… or maybe just Aunt Bianca. (She’s rich… but she won’t tell anyone how she made her money. It’s really very suspicious.)

Then again, perhaps it’s best that I didn’t get thrown in jail. For the kids, you know? What kind of example would that have set for them?

They’re growing up now and doing it so fast that I can barely keep track.

One minute, Helena and Jeffrey are struggling with fourth grade math…

… and the next, we’re celebrating their birthday and they’re suddenly teenagers!

Jeffrey is dating that Foreman Girl. Marrissa or Melissa or Something… I admit I barely know them because the Foremans are new in town, and surprisingly NOT related to us! But they have two daughters and I can’t tell them a part at all.

Helena is obsessed with art, and has been painting pictures every minute of the day. Much like her father with his writing. My own father, Lester, was an artist. As were Aunt Bianca, Aunt Donna and my dearly missed Gramma Bella.

When he isn’t with his girlfriend, Jeffrey is in the garage tinkering on his inventions. He won’t tell anyone what he is making, just that he’s going to make a name of himself someday.

Isaac and Kenneth both grew up just as fast. They went from babies to toddlers to children in a blink of an eye.

And then before I knew it…

… teenagers. Handsome ones, my sons. Kenneth has my hair and eyes, while Isaac has his father’s chiseled features and Gramma Bella’s green eyes.

Through it all, Jesse wrote novels and worked… we slept in the same bed but barely talked. The forest of his discontent is very, very deep and wide indeed, but I will continue to wait for him because I do love him. Even after all this time.

Simmer’s Note: I’ve decided to start adding the teaser I create for LJ comms to the posts, so all story is now going under the cut.

The money is gone.

It was only a little thing, money. How could it be this important?

Jesse was complaining about how cramped we were in my mother’s small house. He was always saying things… making comments about tripping over other people if he so much as breathed.

I meant it as a surprise, I really did. A good surprise.

You see? All my life, I’ve wanted to live in a palace. I dreamed that my mother’s home, the house that Gramma Bella built, was that palace. Small and cramped or not, it was a grand palace in my dreams. A castle fit for a princess.

I had sketches, thing I’d drawn up in crayon as a child. I had kept them all these years, locked away for all times. But now that Mother was with Gramma Bella and Father, I brought them out and dreamed of making it a reality.

Then it occurred to me that I was the one in charge of the money now. I could build my caste!

So I did!

There’s three bedrooms and a nursery, three and a half baths, a library and a family room… a huge unfinished attic we could convert to more living space… and towers and turrets… and… it’s my palace, like I drew it as a child.

Building it cost every cent we owned, though.

When I told Jesse, he was furious. He yelled and yelled and yelled and I cowered in the cornered of our new bedroom and whispered, “but it’s just money. Material things are fleeting and hold no weight in the Here After.”

“Fern,” Jesse said then, after a long, long silence. “I love you, baby, but you don’t know what you’ve done.”

I found out later that day when the first of the creditor’s arrived and I couldn’t pay them for the work they’d done. And then more arrived. And still more.

Jesse left me alone then. I thought that he had gone, leaving me to the winds howling at the gates. He did return, however, and when he did, he passed out bank cheques to all the people to whom we owed money. He wouldn’t tell me where he got it, but later that night, he pulled me aside and told me that we’d both be working until the day we died. His sorrow made me shiver.

When I walked down to the cemetery, in the full of the moon, I questioned myself. Had I done the wrong thing? I looked to Gramma Bella’s tomb and hoped she would come to me, to comfort me as she used to, but she did not. For the first time in my life I was alone. All, utterly alone.

I wanted to call Elena. I’ve never been close with my sister, as twins are supposed to be, but now I wondered if could call her and we could find the way back to normal together. But she was off seeing the world and left me behind.

But not alone forever. A few months after the Incident with the Money, I discovered that I would once again be sharing my body with someone else.

I was pregnant. The doctor said it was too soon to tell, but I knew in my heart that it was twins.

They were born right before Helena and Jeffrey’s birthday. Isaac and Kenneth, twins just like I thought they would be.

By then, Jesse’s anger towards had thawed. He did like the new house, it seemed, although he finally admitted that what he’d really had in mind was buying one of the other houses on the hill. But this land is Gramma Bella’s legacy to our family, and I could not have done that no matter how much I love Jesse.

So we celebrated our children’s brithday on even ground at last.

Aren’t they beautiful?

Helena Bachelor

Jeffrey Bachelor

It still amazes me that they have Father’s hair coloring. So many people in our family have black or brownish red hair. Jeffrey looks so much like his father, though, despite the hair.

With the birthdays out of the way, I turn my sight to the future and hope with all that I am that it is a good one. But lately my dreams have been unsettled. I see things I cannot describe. Death walking the streets of Sunset Valley as a man of utter darkness. Fire... fire stalking my children... taking my dear sweet Helena to grave and thus bringing about the end of us all. Vicious, cruel fire.

Dreams are closer to reality than most people will ever know. How, I wonder, can I prevent these things from coming to be? How can I ensure that life will continue to move forward in our family?

Understand that I am not afraid of death or the Grim One who is it’s shepherd. But I also know that the children do not need to die now. Death wants not the young. He favors those whose lives has already spent themselves.

It is not. It cannot be Helena’s time yet.

But how to prevent it?