To thee, a sad lemon

Chapter 1

To Beatrice,
Your children have many questions.
And I'm afraid I have the answers.

———
Lousy lane, a street plagued by the horrid smell which came from the closed horseradish factory which left behind a handful of scraggly trees produce apples so sour that one only had to look at them to feel ill. But down this road of foul stench lead to the Baudelaire's new guardian and to be blunt, their true guardian, for which Lemony Snicket was bringing them in a yellow taxi he borrowed leaving behind an anonymous note of an I.O.U. knowing full well that the use of that note was entirely useless to the taxi's owner, but that did not stop him from doing so for formal courtesy.

So the kids were happy.

Why wouldn't they be?

Despite the awful smell of the road nothing seemed to dull the mood of the Baudelaire children.

In fact, they couldn't help but find their circumstances to be strangely exciting. Strangely, being that they just followed around a person they just met and willingly helped that person steal a taxi, but on the bright side, learned how to steal a car which is always an added bonus to daily life.

"Where are we going Mr. Sticks," Violet said in the back seat of the cab, sitting along with her two siblings as she looked at the miserable looking trees.

"We're heading to the one person who I'm sure your parents would have trusted you with," Lemony said as he was careful with his driving while taking good notice of the wear on the steering wheel.

"Geedth" Sunny said which meant, 'And who is this person Mr. Lemonade?' Which her siblings translated.

"His name is Dr. Montgomery Montgomery and I do believe he is related to Bertrand in some way but that would be pointless to talk about; but what I'm sure of is that there is no one better qualified to be your guardian then him. He was close friends with your parents too. In fact we all practically grew up together in the same program." Lemony said, although he would have not called his place of growing up a program, but rather an institution on special learning that kept tabs on you and sent you on missions with bothersome chaperones.

At least his was a bothersome chaperone....

With what the Baudelaires could understand from Lemony's explanation that left them in questions as they looked at each other in thought. One question they wanted to ask was, how is this man's name Montgomery and Montgomery? Or another question like, why didn't Mr. Poe bring us here, instead of Count Olaf? But an even better question they wanted to ask was, why should we go to a new guardian when there is a perfectly capable guardian already with us? Yet they settled with a simple question that they felt could give a bigger answer?

"Why didn't our parents tell us about their friends? I'm sure we would have gotten along just fine." Klaus said as he thought of all the interestings they could have talked about from their parents' past. They probably could have been considered family at one point and that way they could have been able to come to holidays and tea parties; maybe even make a book club or enjoying each other's pretense as they played games and ate delicious food.

But now the Baudelaires wouldn't have their parents anymore for any holidays or tea parties of the sort.

"Maybe they just decided to stop talking about their friends and just eventually stopped talking to them altogether because they were worried we would think they were strange. I remember when I was younger, my mother would always tell the strangest songs just before bedtime." Violet said resting her head on the window as she looked at the distant sky of forming gray clouds which gave off the appearance of hands reaching for their direction.