Mother Bird

Sentenced To Suburbia

"Daddy, are we going to get a cab?" Annie wondered at last, tugging on her father's hand when she seemed to realize had stagnated. And so he had, standing on the curb with his toes just over the yellow paint, staring into the traffic and waiting for each and every driver to stare back at him. Staring with such a lost expression that he had forgotten his objective in this town was not to reminisce, but instead to create a new life to compensate for the one he had lost within these very streets.
"Yes, sorry." Sherlock agreed, dropping his suitcase onto the corner so as to wave his hand around in the air to hail one of those quick moving cars among the mess of commuters. When at last they had gotten themselves situated within the cab it had begun to rain, and it was all Sherlock could do but stare out the window for a long moment at what seemed to be the tears of the town, pouring down upon him in retaliation. Perhaps even Mother Nature deemed him unworthy of returning; perhaps she too understood just how incompetent he was a loving parent.
"Where are you off to then?" the cab driver asked at last. He sounded a bit impatient, almost as if he had asked this question multiple times, though to an ear that was simply not listening.
"We are off to...oh let me look here." Sherlock muttered, ruffling around in his pocket for the address he had printed off. Instead of reading it off he merely handed it to the driver, who looked a bit too closely than Sherlock was comfortable with as the road was still quite busy. For a long moment the driver allowed himself to be distracted with the address, though thankfully he tossed the paper back into the backseat and started his GPS with something of an inaudible mutter. Perhaps he didn't appreciate Sherlock's mannerisms, for he spoke not a word the rest of the unreasonably long trip.
"Daddy, will we have a swimming pool?" Annie asked at last, turning her attention back to her father so as to riddle him with questions that time could answer far better.
"I don't think so." he admitted, as he hadn't remembered seeing such a thing listed when he bought the house. Then again he had not necessarily looked at all of the details, he had instead just flipped through the listings in an attempt to find the one that would plop him most effectively into suburbia.
"We should get a swimming pool." Annie decided quietly, as if she was terribly dissatisfied.
"Perhaps we will, but first we need to adjust to living here." Sherlock insisted, staring out the window towards any pedestrians who were lining the wet sidewalks. He couldn't see their faces or even make out their genders from where he sat up against the window; instead he sat the backs of raincoats and the fronts of umbrellas. Oh but it was no loss, as he still wasn't sure what he was looking for. Curse his unobservant eyes, all those years ago! He should have looked at the parents before he snatched the child, that way his job five years later was less of a daunting and impossible task. If he knew what the woman looked like it might have been easier to speak with her, though he was left with nothing to go on rather than the mere resemblance she may have to his young daughter. Both of the parents would surely have blonde hair, as it was a recessive gene if he remembered correctly. Yet beyond that...beyond that it could be anyone. And if he was to track down each and every blonde haired couple in the whole of this city (considering, of course, that they still lived here!) he would die before he made any impact upon his daughter's life. He was a flawed man; he understood that now...though now it was time to correct his mistakes. And each step they took closer to this town brought them even closer to the family his poor daughter might have belonged to, if he had not intercepted her into a much more loving atmosphere. For a long while they were silent, that is until the roads began to look more residential and Annie began to try to find the house that belonged to them. Well Sherlock thought the answer would come most obviously with the presence of a moving truck in the front yard, though Annie seemed content imagining herself frolicking through the halls of each and every house on their way to their own. Sometimes when the cab drove through she found herself disappointed, as if she really wanted that house to be the one, though when at last she spotted the appropriate structure her little eyes grew wide in excitement.
"Daddy, that's ours isn't it?" she exclaimed, nearly leaning her entire body onto the window pane in an attempt to see the rather bland, familiar looking house that stood before them. The cab parked in the middle of the street, and after a quick transaction and very few words Sherlock found himself standing before the house on the wet sidewalk, his hair getting drenched from the downpour which now ensued. Annie wasn't set off by the rain, in fact she let go of her father's hand completely and went running to the front porch in an attempt to wrench the door open herself. When Sherlock had signed for the house he had been given the key, and so it was sitting here in his pocket, perfectly within his reach. Though for the time being he didn't think to search his pockets for it, for the time being he was perfectly content with standing here on this sidewalk and staring up to the house which looked exactly like its neighbors. He was perfectly happy to look up onto the bland, cookie cutter windows and see that horrible shade of tan staring back at him from the walls. He was happy to look upon the plastic siding, and the gutters which were already filling with leaves. He loved to see the empty porch, a stage for which to set his own array of rocking chairs and flower pots, and the garage that would not have a car parked inside of it for a long while. He loved to see the front yard, still riddled with the holes that the previous owner's sprinkler system had dug into the mud, and the bushes that were trimmed perfectly by the realtor's landscaping company to better market the property. All of this, all of this utter stagnation, well it was his to own. All of this apple pie, copy and paste architecture, all of this happy family of four bulls*it, it was his to own. His life to adopt, and his mask to pull over his own persona of vulnerability and deceit. This was the world he was stepping into, at first as a stranger but soon to be an expert, knowing that it would not be too difficult to drain himself of all originality should the neighborhood demand it. At last Sherlock pulled the key from his pocket, marching up to join his daughter at the door and casting a bored side eye to the moving truck where it sat in the parking lot. It didn't seem to have a driver, which made him think that they had arrived much earlier than expected and decided to take a cab to town or something like that. Well the relief was that it was here, and that they could begin the moving process just as soon as they got adjusted to the house itself. Sherlock allowed Annie to turn the key herself, as she was the most anxious out of the two of them to see the inside. Sherlock hadn't even stepped in, though he knew ultimately what to expect. These were the sort of houses that looked just like every other house you've been inside, the sort that were put up in the span of a year along with ten or fifteen other houses which looked exactly alike. The sort of development that was put together on top of a beautiful field, tearing up the pristine plot of nature and replacing it instead with a soul sucking atmosphere of spin class and man caves. This was the world Annie might have grown up in, and so it had to be the life that Sherlock adopted for them both. It had to be the life accepted by them both, in an attempt to better themselves.
"Look, look Daddy! We've got a fireplace!" Annie exclaimed, rushing from the empty living room and into the kitchen to pry open the fridge. "And we've got a freezer...big enough to fit me inside!"
"How wonderful." Sherlock said with a little chuckle, dropping his wet suitcase down onto the floor with a shutter of defeat and closing the door behind him. Yes, as he had predicted, he had been in this house before. It had hardwood floors and tan painted walls, nails hammered into the plaster to a hang a picture every couple of feet and a staircase leading up to a very predictable second floor. On the ground they had a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, and an awkward sort of sitting area that could filled with a myriad of different things. Up top must be the three bedrooms and two bathrooms, as the realtor had promised him. They had a deck on either side of the house, one that wrapped around the front half of the house and another that jutted out into the extensive backyard. There was no swimming pool; however the yard was fenced in should they ever have need of a family pet. The floors were currently empty, save for a scattered bit of furniture the previous family had not found any use for. There were some end tables littering the hallway, as well as a single bean bag chair left in the corner of the living room (one which Annie took an immediate liking to). Overall the house would certainly suit their needs, as Sherlock could already imagine hosting dinner parties here, or backyard barbeques on the deck. The goal here to was expand his horizons to an uncomfortable level, to sober up and straighten out his mental state so as to focus on finding the woman he had stolen from. And the best way to find someone in the mess of suburbia was to let them find you.