A Kiss in the Rain

Chapter 5

Lily made herself at home in Kali's bedroom. She kicked off her shoes, sat up on her zebra print bed and stretched.

"I love your room!" She gushed.

"Thanks." Kali smiled politely as she set out the project papers on her desk.

"I love the black and blue theme." She continued to giggle and analyze.

"Thanks." Kali repeated.

"So where's your computer?" Lily questioned. Kali pointed to the black laptop that sat on her nightstand.

Lily pulled the computer on the bed and turned it on. "Nice."

      The girls typed in a couple of the recommended websites that were on their project packets. They also used a popular search engine to their advantage. Lily typed in Preston and found a few pages about the family heritage. Her father, James Preston, was the president of a local bank that had branched out into neighboring towns. From what Kali could remember, his job didn't allow him to be home often. He worked long days and sometimes stayed in his office through most of the night, doing what business men do. Though, it never really seemed to bother Lily either. But who would it bother when your father was rich enough to buy you a nice car and a wardrobe to match?

   Lily slid her finger across the touchpad, causing the screen to scroll down. She eyeballed the text while Kali tried to keep up. From what she could catch at the fast pace Lily was scrolling, the Preston surname was English and Scottish. It was a name carried to England during the great wave migration from Normandy following the Norman Conquest in 1066. The name means priest settlement. 

   Lily continued to scroll until she reached the end of the page with a list of names under the category notables. Both of them read the names out loud and what they were/are known for. It wasn't until they reached the name Robert Preston that Kali shook her head. He's known for being an American Academy Award nominee, who played as Harold Hill in the 1957 musical The Music Man. See, she knew Lily would have some kind of famous lineage. Of course this didn't mean they were directly blood related. All of the information on this page was about the origin of the surname. Not Lily's actual family tree.

 

   Next Lily typed in her mother's maiden name. It never even dawned on Kali that they would be researching both of their parent's last names. Has her mother ever actually told her her maiden name? She couldn't think of it.

 They didn't get any hits on the page they were just using, so Lily switched to the search engine instead and retyped the name, Tennō.

"I forgot that your mother is originally from Japan," Kali remembered. She had only seen Mikoto Preston two or three times. The first time she ever saw her was at the Kindergarten orientation, which felt like centuries ago.  She remembered how beautiful she was, much like Lily. Long straight black hair, flawless porcelain skin, tall and slender, piercing hazel eyes in the shape of a cat's; she was the model mother to her model daughter. Kali also remembered how gracefully Mikoto seemed to move, as if she were walking on air. It was obvious who Lily got her genes from.

 Kali ran her fingers through the ends of her own hair, eying the ashy blond pigment. From what she could remember, her father had the same light color, even icier. She couldn't seem to remind herself of anymore than that. Her mother didn't keep any pictures of him around the house, but Kali wondered if she had any hidden somewhere. Did she look anything like him? A tinge of curiosity was pinging at her side; this project was beginning to evoke emotions from Kali that she had comfortably swept under the rug. She wanted to know more about him, but at the same time, she didn't.