Chapter 1. Five years
Disclaimer: Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends and all associated or other characters belong to their respective creators and owners, not me. I receive no compensation whatsoever for this story.
Frankie stood on the widow's walk. The small railing enclosed porch, the highest point on the old sagging roof of the mansion. Strictly off limits to all, not that it mattered to her. After all, she was in charge now.
She smoked a cigarette in the lonely darkness. "Nasty habit," she mumbled as she finished her second pack of the day. She crumbled the empty package and tossed over the railing, knowing that she would eventually find it on the front stoop and would feel the need to clean it up. Cleaning up was another bad habit, she supposed. She coughed, spit over side of the tower. She wouldn't clean that up!
The heavy mascara, trademark lit cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth made her look like she was in her forties.
She was twenty-nine years old. She'd be thirty in a few weeks.
And would be rich. Very rich. And very alone.
The few remaining Imaginary Friends knew better than to complain about her cigarette smoke or ashes any more. Not after the incident with the Duchess.
That had been 'the last straw' in the life of the house. Most of the remaining Imaginaries had blamed the changes on the passing of Madame Foster and the subsequent fading away of Mr. Harriman. Frankie (or "Miss Foster" as she insisted on being called now) did not react well. After a drunken binge that lasted nearly two weeks, she announced to the world that Foster's Home was being closed.
It finally reached a point where she announced that the Home would accept no new orphaned friends under any condition. Friends that remained would need to find new homes and, in the meantime, would be expected to pay rent, which meant getting jobs in the human world.
Or leaving immediately
Miss Foster listened to the moaning and complaints. She had enough! Stamped her foot and told the Friends in no uncertain terms "I am not running a hotel for lazy indigent Imaginary Friends!" And "If you don't like it, you can get out now!"
Then in a drunken rage, she set fire to the Duchess and stomped her ashes… Or at least that's how the story was told in the world of Imaginary Friends. A world without a Foster's Home.
They were only a few weeks away from the five-year deadline for closing the home permanently, tearing the mansion down and subdividing the remaining land for development.
When the Foster's mansion was built in the 19th century, it had been on an undeveloped property well outside the town limits. It was surrounded by farms and rolling hills. The nearest neighbor had been over a mile away on a dirt road. Perfect for the reclusive former sea captain who commissioned the mansion.
Today? Fosters was smack in the middle of an urban center. The residential neighborhoods that sprung up around the estate were gone and the Home was prime, undeveloped real estate.
As much as she missed her grandmother, there was someone she missed more. She stubbed out her last cigarette and flicked the butt over the side of the railing, she thought about him every day. It wasn't right, he was nothing to her. Just a boy she had known nearly six years ago.
A boy… and she was a grown woman, even then.
A boy back then. Still a boy… well, a teen now. He was half her age. She was part of his past now, a sweet part she hoped.
That was the real beginning of the end of Foster's Hhome. The boy leaving.
Then the old woman dying and the rabbit disappearing.
Then the lawyers.
And the tax men.
And then the Duchess.