Notes: I've started with publishing this on AO3 and decided to put it on FF too. I'll work on adding chapters here, but may take a few days to get them all loaded. The format here in FF is a bit more complicated than AO3, so I apologize if it comes though strangely.

I've been inspired by so many other VM FFs and decided to give it a try myself. This is my first story, so I hope you all enjoy it.

Disclaimer: Only borrowing these wonderful characters from Rob Thomas. I sadly own nothing, but wish I did.

Chapter 1 – Homeward Bound

Veronica sat on her couch in her modest one bedroom apartment in Massachusetts, staring at her cell phone on the table in front of her. The sun was already setting, casting dark shadows across the living room, while the room grew progressively darker. As far as hump days go, this had to be by far the worst one she could ever remember. She thinks back to how last Friday when her dad had called to try to convince her to come out to Neptune to celebrate his 50th birthday party, everything here was 'sunny side up'. She was loving life here in one of the small towns in Cape Cod, working a decent enough job for the DA's office.

Somehow between Friday and now she'd not only managed to get suspended from her job at the DA's office, but also discovered that her policeman boyfriend of almost a year was cheating on her with his recently assigned female partner. On top of all that, in another 15 days she'd also be looking for a new place to live as she had been planning to move in with Dillon when her lease expired. That was going to work out really well if she was still suspended, or worse yet, actually fired.

Finally having made the decision to get the heck out of dodge, at least until the suspension was resolved, she picked up the phone and flipped through her contact list. After taking one deep breath, she pressed her finger on the screen and held the phone to her ear.

"Veronica?" Keith said with a slight bit of hesitation when he answered the phone. They normally only talked on Fridays, so he wasn't exactly expecting to hear from her in the middle of the week.

"Hey Daddio!" Veronica chirped into the phone. "I was reconsidering your offer to come out and visit for your birthday."

"That's great honey! We'll all be so happy to see you! When do you plan to fly out?"

"I was thinking I'd catch a red-eye out tomorrow night," she said hesitantly waiting for his response.

"OK… but you do remember that Alicia and I are going on a cruise to celebrate my birthday and our anniversary, and we leave tomorrow and won't be back for 18 days, right?" Keith asked starting to wonder what was actually going on.

"Yeah, I thought I could house sit for you and check on things at the office while you're gone. You know, get the mail, do some filing, all that great fun secretarial stuff that you know I miss so much."

"Veronica, what's going on?" Keith's voice was heavy with concern now.

She put on her best smile and tried to convey that through the phone, "I thought working in the office for you and house sitting could be part of my early birthday present to you."

"Sorry honey, I'm not buying it. On Friday you didn't think you'd be able to get away to fly out here for even a few days, and now you want to come early just to play secretary and house sitter for almost three weeks?"

She sighed, "Everything's fine dad," she paused for a second, "I just need to get out of town for a while and we can talk more about it when you get back from your cruise."

He tried to press her for more information, but wasn't able to get anything else out of her, besides the fact that it would just be her, and that Dillon would not be joining her. Since he and Alicia were leaving in the morning, Veronica said she'd give Wallace a call to see if he could pick her up at the airport and give her his copy of Keith and Alicia's house key.

As soon as she disconnected the call with her dad, she dialed Wallace's phone. "Hey little brother, what's up with you?" she cheerily said into the phone as he picked up the call.

"You know that never gets old," he complained sarcastically.

"Ah, I'm sorry, I know being the middle child can be really tough on a child," she teased back.

"Did you just call to harass me V?"

"Actually I need to ask you for a favor, so I suppose I probably shouldn't have led with my annoying big sister material, huh."

They made arrangements for him to pick her up early on Friday morning at the airport, making him only a little late for school, but he assured her that he'd be able to arrange for a substitute for his morning classes. He was a little less pushy about trying to figure out what was going on with her than Keith was, but warned her that she'd better plan to give up the information when she gets into town.

She'd already started packing up her apartment to move over to Dillon's before this entire week went to hell, so she plans to spend Thursday morning getting all of the boxes into a storage unit, and arranging for some movers to come later and get the furniture out. She packs up several suit cases with things she knows she'll want for the next few weeks and gets ready to head back to Neptune.

While a small part of her is looking forward to seeing her friends and family again, a bigger part is dreading what she's going to discover when she gets there. 8 years is a long time to be gone, and with only a couple short trips back over the years, she hasn't stayed in close touch with many people there. She finally makes it to bed and drifts off to a restless sleep with all the things that are plaguing her mind.