A Place In This World (Beginnings and Goodbyes, #1) {Completed}

girl on a mission

"He's coming home."

I stop in the large doorway of the barn. The sun has barely risen and my flashlight is running low on power. I flick it all around, but I can't find the source of the voice. I know who it is though. My middle name is a rendition of his name. I've known him my entire life. The only thing is that he's supposed to be dead, or so I've been told. I set my milk pail down on the dirt floor and trip over to the lightswitch. Bare bulbs flicker on, and a figure appears on the pile of hay bales I had thrown down from the loft the night before. He sits forward with his elbows on his knees, looking over at me with his one eye, his stoic face giving me nothing but a weighty seriousness.

"Uncle Nick?"

"Don't look so surprised. You really think I'd let somebody kill me and let them have the last laugh? I don't think so," he says, shaking his head. Nick Fury closes himself off to just about everyone. He has no attachments, no family, no friends. Only allies. But I'm pretty sure he has a soft spot for me. He stands, unchanged since the last time I saw him, wearing all black, and hands me a palm-sized tablet.

"Death suits you though," I say, my eyes flickering down to the screen. I catch a small smile on his lips on the edges of my periphery, but I'm now too engrossed in the words Uncle Nick has handed over to me.

"Your father left me this," Fury says and taps the message to magnify it. As if I don't already see it. As if I've completely missed the meaning of those words. My father's words.

Barton to Fury. Mayday. Mission compromised. Team down. Homestead in 0700 hours.

I look up from the screen with worry, but Uncle Nick seems unfazed by this message. I begin to wonder if the guy really is as unattached as I sometimes fear him to be.

"You know what this means, don't you?"

I shake my head because what was I to say? My father coming home happens every now and again, but I'm worried this time he'll return with parts of him missing. What else is there to pick out of this message?

"It means," Nick gently retrieves the tablet out of my stiff fingers, "that your father and the team are on their way here. I'm going to need you to get your act together and make a first good impression with the others. You hear me?"

"First good impression? But-but they're not supposed to know about us. No one but you and Nat are to know."

Nick stares into my distressed face and only raises an eyebrow. "Is that right? Then who the hell sneaks into that treehouse of yours almost every single night, waiting for you?"

My heart sinks as I realize that Nick has been spying on me and now he knows about one of my best kept secrets. I search Nick's stern eye, but my gaze shifts towards the one hidden behind his eyepatch. I remember Nat telling me that Nick had his damaged eye removed and replaced with a high tech scanner. It had all kinds of settings, even one to detect if someone was lying to him. I was eight at the time when she told me so I believed her, and now, with this accusation hanging in the air between us, I fear I believed in that tall tale once again.

All the tension falls away from me as I slouch in defeat, but the grip on my flashlight tightens as I know I'll have to come clean to him. I couldn't lie to him like I lie to everyone else about why my hiding spot, my treehouse, is so special to me. It wasn't because my dad built it for me, with me, so I'd have a place to myself after both Cooper and Lila were born. It wasn't because the clearing beneath the treehouse was dedicated to where I've been training for the last three years, and I didn't want my mom to know. When I snuck out to go to my treehouse and leave my responsibilities behind for a little while, I finally had a few secrets of my own like my dad did, like my mom. It is where he and I met, where I feel more like myself, where I can be honest about anything and everything, and not worry that I sound crazy or overly critical or ungrateful. He listens to me, always, and I have never wanted to let him go because of it. He's my best friend, my secret best friend, and I'm not supposed to have him. Because as far as the Barton family is concerned, we don't exist.