Chap. 1:
Elise Miller stepped off the plane and glanced up at her father who was, as usual, busily talking into the Blue Tooth that was practically glued to his ear. Right now, I'd be skiing with Liz and Jen she thought with a sigh. Instead she was here, in this airport in Washington headed to the smallest, most boring, wettest town ever (actually it wasn't even a town just a stinking reservation), La Push. She wasn't even sure why she was going there, her family certainly wasn't Native American, a wry smile curved her frowning lips up a bit.
Elise was a shy girl, with curly auburn hair, the palest skin imaginable and a stick-like figure. She was smart, she knew that, but other than that and her books she was relatively boring. An only child, her mother had died four years ago when she was twelve from breast cancer. After her mother's death, her father simply threw himself into his work at the law firm and all but left his daughter to fend for herself. Yes, there was the typical string of nannies to care for her, but they had just stopped being replenished when she turned fifteen.
Her father talked to the ever-present Blue Tooth the whole way to their medium sized ranch house that he was renting for a year or so while he worked on a huge case that he had been assigned. This case was clearly important to her father because it would allow him to become a partner of his firm, Dunlap and Jones, if he succeeded. Frankly, Elise couldn't care less about the details of the case and flipped through her favorite book, Little Women, which she could still remember her mother reading to her. Small tears made their way down her cheek as she struggled to stop them. She simply sat in the rental car and waited for her father to remember her existence.
A slight tapping on the window caused her to jump, even though it was the noise she had been waiting for. But instead of her father's slightly wrinkled face with the worry lines all over it, she jumped when she saw the laughing brown face of a beautiful middle-aged woman.
"Hey kiddo!" she laughed as Elise slammed the car door behind her.
"Um, hi?" she asked, while thinking "people are way too friendly here!"
"I'm Ms. Call, your neighbor, but you can call me Lily," the strange woman said.
"Thanks Miss…Lily," Elise stammered.
"I like the sound of that, Miss Lily," Miss Lily muttered to herself, "Oh anyone honey your Daddy hired me to keep house for you both. So kind of him too, I was working at the local diner and all…"
"Thanks," she muttered again.
"Oh, I see dear. You're still tired from that long flight from Jersey. How silly of me. I'll head home and send my son Embry and his buddies over later with some supper, 'kay?" Miss Lily eagerly said.
"Sure, sounds nice," Elise replied quietly. She turned and headed towards the house, her duffle-bag hanging off her shoulder, but she rushed towards a side window to watch Miss Lily walk into a slightly smaller, but homier looking house right next door.