Welcome to Cairns

Chapter 8: Porches

Ever since running into Lisa at her store, Roseanne was feeling more confused than ever. For five years, she'd been thinking of Lisa as the way she was when she left her, a bit of a drunk who stood for everything that Roseanne needed to leave behind. She'd never thought that Lisa could change, let alone become so successful in a field that was so different than anything Roseanne could have imagined her doing.

Lisa was a better person without Roseanne around, and that realization hurt Roseanne more than she expected.

Roseanne spent the week before her wedding making sure that everything was perfectly planned while Claire fretted over every detail and made sure that her guests, Miller and Jennie, were well fed, something they were both grateful for.

Something still felt off though, it was the week before her wedding and she knew she should have been feeling elated. At first she chalked it up to stress, but she knew that wasn't the case. Roseanne was a planner and her wedding, despite being short notice, was going to go off without a hitch. She wasn't stressed. She just felt that something was missing. When she brought her concerns up to Jennie, Jennie pointed out that it was probably because Jaemin wasn't around; he was still in New York. Roseanne knew that wasn't it though.

It didn't take her long to realize that what felt off wasn't her wedding, but the fact that she was in Cairns, about to celebrate the most important day of her life, and she was missing the two people she'd cared about more than anyone. She was missing her two best friends, the two people who made Cairns what it was.

And she couldn't have either of them. Ten was dead and Lisa was gone. Ten had been her Best Man when she'd married Lisa. He'd been the one she'd turned to whenever she had a freak out about anything to do with the wedding.

And now it wasn't the wedding she was worried about, but rather how she would get through it without her best friend by her side. Without either of them.

So she called Lisa. She needed to hear her voice. Even if only for a moment. Calling her over and over again probably wasn't the best idea, especially since her ex-wife continued to ignore her calls, but that didn't stop her.

Jaemin and his mom arrived in Cairns two days before the wedding. Luckily, they were staying at the hotel in town so the Parks didn't have to worry about anymore guests, but the night they arrived, Claire prepared a special four course meal, pulling out the recipes for all the family classics.

Despite the fact that she was a politician, well practicing in lying through a smile, Julia Na didn't try very hard to hide her disgust with Cairns and the Park's modest home.

Dinner was more or less a disaster between Julia's snide remarks about their modest home and Claire's high-carb and high-fat cooking and Mason's questioning of Julia's political strategy.

Long after Jaemin and Julia had gone back to their hotel and Jennie and Miller had settled into their own separate hotel rooms, Roseanne found herself out on the back porch of her parents' home, alone. She'd finally given up calling Lisa and was stewing in her own thoughts. Stewing in memories that refused to leave her alone.

Roseanne was pulled out of her melancholy by the sound of the back door opening behind her. She turned around to see her father exiting the house.

"Mind if I take a seat?" Mason asked, gesturing the empty space beside his daughter. Roseanne nodded and scooted over a bit to make room for him. "So Claire's mom is a walk in the park compared to Julia."

Roseanne laughed out loud at Mason's statement. It was so to the point and accurate that she couldn't not. "Family functions will definitely be interesting to say the least."