In Her Heat - Ainsley's Story

In Her Heat - Chapter Thirty-Four

Sorry for the wait! :S Been MIA for a while1 Enjoy!

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By eleven o’clock, the few things I owned had been packed up and loaded into the same car I’d arrived in. Cade was in that car now, going over plans with Damon, who wouldn't be coming along with us. Declan sat in the backseat, making sure we had everything we needed.

Athena and Kat were in the cabin with me. As we stood at the kitchen counter, preparing and packing food, I sighed for everything I was about to lose.

Although I’d only been on the reserve a few months, it had come to feel like home to me. The land, the people, my people, they were all a part of me. I’d also had the niggling sense that I couldn't leave yet, as if I was forgetting something, as if there was still something left to be done.

To my right, Athena seemed to sense my thoughts. “You’re not going to be gone forever, Ainsley.”

I put down the sandwich I’d been making and turned to face the woman. I explained to her my feelings of something here being incomplete, my sense that I was forgetting something.

“What could you possibly be leaving behind?” Kat asked in her usual blunt manner.
“You barely filled up two duffel bags.”

“Oh leave the girl alone,” laughed Athena, throwing a piece of cheese at Kat.

“Hey! I'm just saying!”

Once our laughter subsided, I elaborated on what I meant. “I don't feel like I'm leaving something material behind. It’s more like I'm forgetting to do something.”

Then it clicked. I was leaving behind the only family I had left, without even saying goodbye.

“I need to see Connie.” I dropped the sandwich and wiped my hands on a napkin. In seconds I was out the door and heading the path.

“Ainsley!” Damon’s voice called after me in the dark, cool air.

“I have to go see Connie!” I yelled back, never stopping. How had I not realized this before? I would have left behind the one person who’d been completely honest with me about my parents’ death. That was just wrong.

“Ainsley, we’re leaving in ten minutes!”

I picked up my pace until I was running, the night air caressing my face as I ran along the roads. I ran, not stopping or slowing to catch my breath. Finally, my feet stopped on Connie’s porch.

Just as I was about to knock, the door swung open, releasing the scent of vanilla on a soft breeze.

“I’m in the back, dear.”

I didn’t bother asking myself how she’d known it was me. I would probably never figure it out and it wasn’t all that important.

I found Connie in what was supposed to be a second bedroom. However, instead of a bed, dresser and closet was a lone easel surrounded by shelves and shelves of painting supplies. On the walls were completed paintings. There were landscapes and abstracts, but mostly portraits.

One in particular caught my eye. It was a painting of a young woman and a young man standing in a barren field consumed by weeds, holding a single, blooming sunflower between their bodies. I knew instinctively who the young couple was.

“Your parents were like that flower.” Connie sat at the easel, a paintbrush in her hand, a single slash of black paint across the easel.  “The single living thing surrounded by dull things. She brightened up everyone’s day. There wasn’t a person alive who didn’t love your them.”