Midnight Shadow

Chapter 3 - Midnight Shadow

3 months later. 

Even the most mundane of tasks were a pleasure now. A year ago I would have been in my room sketching or reading or going out of my mind planning my next move. But now, after a couple of weeks of allowing myself to be part of the family, even a trip to the grocery store was something to look forward to. I thought about the other families I had lived with as we sat in the car. The Mitchell's in Texas had been good people for a year. The Hammond's in New York had been difficult at best. The Jenkin's , The Dean's, The Hernandez's.... All nice families with good hearts. All so willing to take in a late teens foster child new to the system in the areas they lived in. But I had never considered staying with any of them for more than a school year. I'd feigned being newly seventeen years old and a senior in high school many times. A good student with a scholarship in a far away place to make leaving easier. But I'd never connected on a personal level with any of them.

The Hill's were different and I loved it. Mr. Hill worked for a television station covering local news and sports. He was a kind man that had a lot in common with the outward story that I'd made up for myself. He was an orphan, having lost his parent's when he was 7. He'd moved from home to home of foster parents as he grew up in Illinois. Most of his foster parents had been hard working people with very little tolerance or compassion. I'd seen the memories in his head as he watched me from time to time. He'd almost always been made to work way too hard on family farms in the midwest and it taught him many things about life and how to treat people. Even growing up as not much more than a work horse provided by the state, he'd vowed to help others like himself and treat them better than he had been treated.

I was their third foster child in the last five years. All of them older like I pretended to be.  Tyson had been a problem child since the age of seven and only lasted about four months with the Hill's before he'd been kicked out of school for fighting. The only thing they new was he was in prison now in California. Andrew, the most recent foster, had been a little younger and a better person. He lived with them for three years and was preparing to be a senior in high school when the agency had called the Hill's with news that his grand parents had been located in Idaho. The grandparents wanted him and though they had never met Andrew, he left the Hill's to live with them. All they knew now about Andrew came from the occasional letter from Seattle where he was in preparing to go to Med School.

That was five years ago and Walter and Dianne Hill hadn't fostered any children since. Mrs. Hill had gotten pregnant but miscarried the child a few years ago. She'd been devastated by the experience and they'd taken time to grieve before helping another orphan. It was hard to imagine Mrs. Hill, Dianne, any other way than eternally happy. She was short and willowy with green eyes and burgundy red hair. Pale skinned and the most generous person I had met in hundreds of years. If there was a way to serve other people, the less fortunate or her community she found it. She'd been a nursing major in college when she'd met Mr. Hill and they knew immediately they were home. Even after a whirlwind courtship and engagement of only six months they’d been together now for almost twenty years and still looked at each other with the eyes of first love.

Their daughter Rebecca was a typical thirteen year old girl. She loved music and her friends and boys. That seemed to occupy much of thoughts but she had inherited much from her mother. Always ready to help others in need and an exact replica of her mother; she was literally a half sized Dianne. Mr. Hill thought often of his life and considered himself the luckiest man on earth.

I'd never stayed with a family so..... humble. They were pretty well off, the house was nice and comfortable but not ridiculous. It was a normal suburban house in Memphis, Tn, which I loved. It had been over 60 years since I'd lived here but I always loved it here. Maybe it was because it reminded so much of my home so many millennia ago. Or simply that it shared the name of the place I was born... Memphis. I sighed quietly to myself soaking in the emotions of Mrs. Hill as she waited to pull in to the Kroger parking lot. She was constantly planning or working on something and this trip was no exception. Halloween was a week away and she was buying enough candy to distribute to every class in the eighth grade at Rebecca's school. Just so that no children would go with out a little happiness on a silly holiday.