Because of you, I'm home

Chapter 2 - Billy's and a six-string...

The next few days at the B&B past uneventfully with Claire exploring the property with her newfound sidekick. She'd discovered that the property stables housed a few old mares and a couple of feisty stallions. Claire loved horses, though she'd never gotten so far as to learning to ride, preferring to watch them peacefully or feeding them apples over a wire fence.

The two girls managed to explore many of the corners of the property, though Alice – or Ally as she preferred to be addressed – had already discovered many of the hidden treasures the area had to hide.

Maggie was growing rather found of the new girl as well, with the friendship between her granddaughter and the help that Claire insisted on giving around the property, the aging women declared her a god-send. After the first week Maggie decided to half Claire's' cost of stay in return for the help she gave. If only her own son was of as much use then 'Maggie's B&B' would run a lot smoother during the peak seasons; but that wasn't for another 4 months or so.

Claire had yet to meet Maggie's prodigal son – Alice's father – officially but she had heard many funny stories of the man from her little friend and unofficially passed him by in the early hours of the morning.

Alice spoke highly of her father who had raised her by himself from two years old until last year when they moved in with her grandparents. Though she never spoke of why they moved and Claire never pushed to know.

It was a Friday afternoon when Claire asked Al if he could drop her into town for a few hours, to which he agreed to without any resistance – shocking both Maggie and Alice. He rarely got involved with the visitors they had preferring to keep meetings cordial but distant, though Claire would never know the significance to the older male's willingness.

There were things in town that the young blonde wanted to see and confirm the existence of. Her explorations of Maggie McMoore's property revealed an uncanny resemblance of the estate in her mother's bedtime stories – the stables and their hidden compartments, the stone wall that lined the very back of the property, and the large hills that lay just shy of the northern property line.

The car ride with Al was mostly a quiet journey, a few questions on when she wanted to be picked up and where before he dropped her off to which she said she would call the landline from a pay phone. Claire hadn't bothered to invest in a travel-sim card when she'd left her home country, thinking it unnecessarily expensive.

After three hours of searching the town heart, Claire hadn't found anything that resembled the town in her mother's stories, not even a similar shop name or street sign. Part of her was disappointed not to find anything and she realised that somewhere in her heart she's thought there was some truth to those cowboy tales. That maybe if they were true, that she'd be able to find a little piece of what she had lost, that she could find something to hold onto, to feel at home again where home had been her mothers protective arms as a child.

"God, you're an idiot" She cussed to herself, of course she wouldn't' find anything. That's why her mother had called them 'stories', and even if some part of them were true it wasn't going to bring her mother back.

Claire let out a sigh and thought about finding a payphone to call Al to come and collect her, but a small bar on the edge of the shopping district caught her eye. It was a small under kept looking place, but it had the charm of a small town bar – 'Billy's Booze & Beef'.

Laughing to herself, Claire beelined for the entry, pushing the heavy wooden swing doors open and smiling at the scene that greeted her.

A comfortable yellow light eliminated the open room, two snooker tables provided entertainment to a group of slightly intoxicated men and women, a jukebox stood lonely at the far right next to an empty cork dance floor, and a middle-aged man chatted while mixing drinks for half a dozen men seated by the bar. To the locals it might not have seemed the greatest bar on earth but it was a welcome sight for Claire who was used to the chain-bars that operated around her hometown void of much character at all.