A/N: I've broken up the Bennet family and made Elizabeth an only child. (now Lizabeth because Mrs. Bennet wants her precious daughter to have a more unique name). Jane, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia still have strong roles. I also broke up the Bingley family, so Charles and Caroline aren't brother and sister, though mostly appear in the same scenes. Darcy is here exuding arrogance. Charlotte is Charlene (I knew few modern Charlottes and opted to change her name). I have also included all the other characters, though some minor ones have been elevated to having more significant roles as I needed a few OCs to help the plot along. — SixThings

VOLUME 1: SHE

The clock read 7:59 a.m. Lizabeth grabbed the keys off of her desk and moved down the length of the counter towards the front door. She made her way around its curve and let herself in and out of the little counter-door at the end. The county clerk office's front door didn't merely unlock by unlatching a deadbolt; the keys also disarmed the alarm system.

Douglas Morris was waiting outside to get in, as usual. Doug was a local realtor (among other things); real estate didn't pay the bills. He came to the county offices most mornings to access its services. Usually, he poked around on the county's public computer.

The county recording office had a computer terminal for citizens to use for property searches. It was available for them to see if there were liens on their house (circumventing having to hire someone). But Lizabeth had long suspected that Doug had figured out how to get past the security software on the computer and that he could get out to the internet and used it for other purposes. He told her that he had an office, and yet he was there every morning, just like Lizabeth was there every morning.

Judge Metcalfe, the only other county office employee at that site, was not as prompt as Lizabeth and didn't show up until about 8:30 a.m. The judge had his own key since he had a private door. Troy Metcalfe was also a salaried employee, not an hourly employee like she was. He often said he worked through lunch while Lizabeth had to dutifully clock in and out for her lunch periods.

Not that Lizabeth Bennet resented working with the Judge. He was fair-minded and pleasant. In the seven months that she had been in Merton, the work had been challenging, and she enjoyed coming on board at a government office and learning the ropes. When she had pursued a library degree, this hadn't been the job she had envisioned: working in a government records office. Though records was information of a sort (and related to her degree). But coming to Merton had been a first step in getting out from underneath her parents' thumbs.

She unlocked the door and pulled it back a few inches. Doug pushed it open farther, then held the door for her. "Good morning, Lizabeth."

"Good morning, Doug." She left him to whatever it was that he did every morning. He had a cup of coffee, and something clutched in a bag from the café just up the street. He plopped down in front of the terminal.

"Hey! It's not booting," he called out just as she reached the little counter door.

"Really? Best to just restart it," she recommended. "I wish I could leave it on overnight. Let me know when it asks for a password."

"Can't you share the password?" Doug grinned, pulling on his realtor confidence as he leaned back in the chair.

"You know I can't," she answered. Lizabeth wondered how long it would take to reboot and whether she should go back to her desk, only to have Doug call her back. Because they dealt with sensitive data, the office had been redesigned when some of the civic buildings had been retrofitted and modernized a dozen or so years ago by installing a long continuous counter to prevent a random person walking in and getting at personal information on the work computers or in the file cabinets in the work area.

"What are you working on this morning?" she asked.

"Property searches," he said, teasing. "Actually though, I don't know if you heard that Catherine Deburg is selling off a huge parcel of land? That one west of Field Avenue?"

"I hadn't," Lizabeth replied.

"Yeah, the city council approved it last month," Doug explained. "They're going to allow vanity lots rather than approving standard residential lots."

"Vanity lots?"

"They're cutting the land up into three-acre parcels. They're trying to lure rich Silicon Valley tech people to live out here. With the Spectre Boys in town, the city council has had a taste of money." She made an encouraging sound. "I think the idea is there're people who are disgusted with the commute, housing prices, and the lousy schools in Silicon Valley. They're trying to make Merton a nice place to live as a lure as those tech people haven't discovered the secret of youth yet," said Doug.

"I've heard about that," she murmured.

"I'm assuming they're aging and getting married or at least doing things like having relationships or kids. And they're realizing that working sixteen-hour days isn't the only thing in life. Anyway, the council is trying to woo them with big luxury homes, which would mean an increase in property taxes for the city." He sipped from his cup.

"And the county."

Doug nodded then looked at the screen. "Yeah. I think it's ready for your magic password."

"Look away," she cautioned and logged the terminal onto the county-wide system.

The John Muir County Records Office was an information hub that it dealt with information for the city of Merton (and surrounding area), which was the principal city in what was a rural county. The office handled a lot of paperwork, such as marriage certificates, birth, and death certificates. A person could register to vote without waiting for a registration drive (or someone standing outside of a store when burdened with grocery bags). It was also where people applied for business licenses or tax exemptions for reasons such as disabilities or if a business was a non-profit or a church.

In some ways, Lizabeth was surprised that she had landed there. A year ago, she had finished a degree in library science and thought she would work in a proper library. But the clerk job was a great fit: processing and recording information. It also fit in another, odd way. It was a fit for someone who was a little gossipy or curious. Not that Lizabeth wanted to admit that she was—that was her mother. Mrs. Bennet was the ultimate, interfering, infuriating, meddlesome mother. But Lizabeth was similar to her mother and liked to know things, even if she didn't gossip about them. (Though sometimes she speculated that her mother wished she would share information she came across at work.)

Most of Dawn Bennet's prying focused on her only daughter. Dawn needed to know what was going on in Lizabeth's life in intimate detail. That meant that there had been a great deal of conflict once Lizabeth had hit her teenage years. Mrs. Bennet was the epitome of a helicopter parent. Lizabeth could never be more than five minutes late without accounting, practically minute by minute, for where she had been when she was out. The same held for her four years of college. She had gone to a local state school (cheaper, her father's argument). While it had saved on money, it was more convenient to live at home and have home-cooked meals (her mother's argument). But Lizabeth never was able to break free from her parents.

When she decided to pursue a graduate degree, she had pushed to move out of the house. But as it was 'only' a two-hour drive to the school that offered her graduate program, she had been shot down. At the age of twenty-four, this only child had never been on her own before she practically stole away in the night when the job at the county clerk's office became available.

It came to her notice because her uncle and aunt lived in Merton. Aunt Chrissie was one person to whom Lizabeth could regularly text or email about her difficulties at home. And though Dawn Bennet objected, she wasn't hyperventilatingly hysterical about the move. It wasn't as if Lizabeth had decided to do something wild—like move to Los Angeles.

At the recording office, there were always tasks to be done: daily tasks, weekly tasks, monthly tasks, quarterly tasks, and yearly tasks. She only needed to consult a binder that had labeled tabs with sections that spelled out what she needed to do every day. The previous clerk had been very into procedures.

There had been little training as the job had been vacant for two months before she filled it. Lizabeth often winged her way through her days. While Judge Metcalfe answered questions, he wasn't one for hands-on training. But she was happy with the job.

Such a situation was one which Lizabeth enjoyed, and it was satisfying not to have someone looking over her shoulder and telling her how to do something or how not to do something. (Or whether she was right or wrong.) Most of her life, whatever she did, she was told she was doing it wrong, and her mother instructed her how to do it…correctly.

Lizabeth chose a mindless task that morning: scanning the old property map books. They were enormous and cumbersome. Not all of the historical information about the county was available online as often as Doug Morris sat at the computer day in and day out. She spent a significant amount of her time converting dusty old map books into electronic files and adding to the county's collection of documents.

She wasn't thinking of any particular topic as she went about her job, though she did have a few plans and ideas that swirled about in her brain. She usually met a friend once a week for lunch, and she and Ed had dinner plans on Friday. But what Doug had mentioned about the land west of Field Avenue being up for sale had intrigued her.

The Deburg family had been a fixture in the area for years. Judge Lewis Deburg had died about two years before she had moved to town. People still talked about the lavish funeral that had taken place in his honor. There had been a huge procession through the town which had required streets to be blocked off. Extra police had to be on duty, something the family had been willing to pay for. Lizabeth's Uncle Ned hadn't thought much of Mr. Deburg (or rather of Mrs. Deburg as it was the widow who opted for such a display on the death of her husband).

For the locals, it had been one of the first times that they had seen the daughter, Anne. There were many rumors which surrounded the young woman as many claimed that she suffered from ill-health. Some had claimed she was mentally deficient, others that she was intellectually gifted. Lizabeth's aunt thought she had a chronic disease. Anne Deburg was a mystery. But the locals were surprised to see her looking normal and healthy, dressed in black, and standing next to her mother through all the events of that day.

Perhaps they were just a private family. But Lewis Deburg had been a judge, and most judge's lives are open to a little more public scrutiny. Catherine Deburg was often involved in many aspects of Merton society. It seemed odd that the daughter was such an isolated young woman and a target for gossip. If no reason was given by the family for her non-involvement and non-appearance in Merton society, people invented some.

Voices interrupted Lizabeth's thoughts, and she looked up to see a pair approaching the certificate counter. There were three stations along that counter, even if there was only one clerk who handled all business transactions. But a young woman had her arm around another's back. The second woman's face told Lizabeth that she was there for a death certificate. She wasn't old, probably only in her late forties, with darkish hair that was streaked with gray.

Lizabeth wondered if the pair weren't mother and daughter. The older woman wore no make-up as if she knew tears would wash it away. The younger had perhaps just finished high school; she had dark blonde hair and was pretty in that vibrant way that teenagers have before real life catches up with them. She looked to be doing her best to cheer her mother along with this difficult task.

"We need a death certificate," the young woman said as she came up to the counter.

"I can help you with that," Lizabeth answered in her kindest civil service voice. She had a customer service voice she used as this job wasn't one about processing documents so much as it was about providing services to people—looking them in the eye and listening to what they had to say. (Something she never got at home.) It was often about figuring out what they really needed because what people said they needed sometimes wasn't what they actually needed. The older woman burst into tears.

"Why don't you sit down," she soothed.

Whoever had designed the office with its restricting counter hadn't considered how much time she would spend consoling people when it came to filing for death certificates (or congratulating them about birth or marriage certificates). Lizabeth pulled out the box of tissues she kept handy and put it on the counter in front of her; the widow grabbed it.

There was a small set of chairs out in the middle of the room. She had asked someone from facilities to put them there after her first month on the job. "Go have a seat. I'll bring you the paperwork." She had a clipboard ready for these scenarios and walked out to the chairs to join the women.

The older woman had the box of tissues under one arm and was dabbing at her eyes. "Thank you," she said. Her self-control was barely held in check.

"You're welcome," Lizabeth answered, sitting down with her clipboard and pen. She didn't ask any questions because she knew there was a story first.

"It's my husband." Lizabeth nodded as the tale unfolded. "Ross Philips. His name is Ross Philips. No, was…" there were more tears. "He died ten days ago, but I can't do anything without a death certificate. They've frozen the bank accounts; I can't do anything. I don't know what we're going to do. We don't have much money as it is." She had to cry and dab at her eyes for a couple of minutes.

"Tell me your name," Lizabeth prompted.

"Lori. Lori Philips. This is my daughter, Lydia."

"Hi," said Lydia.

"Never in my life did I think I would need to borrow money from anyone, but Lydia's been working and lending me money, borrowing from my own daughter! This is all such a nightmare!" Lori cried.

Lori Philips's story came out in pieces, with a lot of repetition and tears. They had been having money troubles before her husband's death, so losing her husband (besides the grief of his loss) made her rather desperate. Mrs. Philips didn't know what she was going to do. It had been a trying couple of years.

"The economy, you know, has been bad for a long time," said Lori as she finally got to the point where she could begin to fill out the paperwork. Lizabeth let her talk. Most people exhausted themselves in a short amount of time.

Tears were tiring; visitors usually shed a number of them, then got down to filling out the application. Lizabeth would see them off with a handful of extra tissues, just in case. She could then return the box of tissues behind the counter. It was handy for births and marriages too. Some people were so thrilled to be discussing their newborns that they were brought to tears. Others were so excited to be married that they shed tears. But that box was always used, always, when someone came to request a death certificate.

But Lori Philips was a talker. She talked and talked and talked. She spoke about her financial state, which was not good. Lizabeth had understood that in the first five minutes. The daughter was also a talker and corroborated the fact that the Philipses had been having financial difficulties for several years. Lydia Philips talked and talked and talked as Lizabeth watched the clock tick up towards the noon hour when she was supposed to close the office for lunch. But she would never chase anyone away in such a situation. So Lizabeth let Lori and Lydia talk until they had exhausted the piece they had to say. Lori signed her form; Lizabeth escorted them out and locked the front doors.

It was already ten past noon. She was going to be late for her lunch with Charlene and didn't know if she was going to make it back in time to open at one o'clock. She wrote a note, 'be back at 1:15,' and taped it to one of the doors to give herself some leeway. Using the side entrance, she walked to the Hill Café for lunch.

Charlene Lucas worked at a dentist's office as the office manager and was waiting for Lizabeth, drumming her fingers on the table. Lizabeth's soup and half-sandwich were waiting for her as well when she sat down.

"Sorry, it was a death certificate," she declared, which was all the explanation that was needed. Charlene's job, like Lizabeth's, had set lunch hours. She had even less flexibility to get back to the office late as there were patients waiting at the door with one o'clock appointments.

Lizabeth had to have some friends, though she was sure that her mother wouldn't approve of Charlene. Dawn Bennet generally didn't approve of anyone Lizabeth met first without being properly vetted. It had been gratifying to make her own friends or just to have one she could see without having to sneak around and hide from her parents.

Since coming to Merton, she had discovered that most of the people she knew in high school and college could merely be classified as acquaintances. They were people Lizabeth knew in a specific context—like people from school—but not friends that she shared confidences with or pursued simple pleasures with like shopping or watching movies. Any friends at home—potential friends—had been required to meet her mother first before Lizabeth was allowed to leave the house with them.

During her teen and college days, she realized that new friends weren't as flexible as you'd expect about sneaking around behind her mother. They weren't true friends. When she needed to study with someone, Lizabeth would stay at school and text her mother. Dawn would keep an eye on the phone app to make sure that she stayed on campus and didn't go anywhere else. She rarely went any place or did anything when she was in college. She never went out for fun.

But she had met Charlene Lucas at a local Merton store called Pope's Treasures. It had been both pleasing and awkward to strike up a conversation with a stranger as the pair of them discussed decorating a home with the little knick-knacks that personalized it to make it feel lived in and yours. Charlene had been friendly and didn't notice Lizabeth's self-conscious responses. They ended up buying similar whimsical salt and pepper shakers before noting the time and exclaiming that they were due back at the office. The next day they ran into each other at Hill's café and opted to share a table and their friendship blossomed.

Charlene was a few years older, but that didn't matter to either of them. She had grown up in Merton and could detail its history while Lizabeth had come from the outside and had other experiences to share. They both loved to read and traded books back and forth. Sometimes, they met on the weekends to go shopping or to see a movie, those forbidden activities which still felt slightly criminal. On slow days, they sometimes popped into Pope's Treasures to browse before they hurried back to work. Lizabeth liked Charlene as she was reliable and straight-forward and not nearly as wild as many of Lizabeth's peers (who were often about the latest craze or meme or technology).

"I ordered for you. I just guessed what you'd want," Charlene remarked. Her cup of soup was empty, though there were still remnants of her sandwich left. It helped that they ordered the soup/half sandwich special most weeks, though Lizabeth could be fickle about her taste buds. That was one embarrassing aspect of having a helicopter mother who catered to her every whim. Dawn Bennet would wait to fix a meal only after asking her wishes. Lizabeth knew she had been spoiled but was learning how to live with fewer choices.

"Thanks," she said, looking at the tomato soup with a wrinkled nose. She admitted (only to herself) that it wasn't what she wanted that day, but she dug in, grateful for lunch and company.

"Are you excited about the party on Saturday night?" asked Charlene. She didn't have as much food to get through so could talk.

"I am! I've never been to Judge Metcalfe's house before, and everyone tells me it's quite swanky," she replied between spoonfuls of soup.

"It is," Charlene nodded. "I've been many times, for various reasons." She finished the last two bites of her sandwich. "He's had political to-dos there before he was a judge, and also hosted some general parties, like a fund-raiser for the Art Association." She wiped her hand on a napkin as she watched Lizabeth spooning soup rather hurriedly into her mouth. "His wedding reception was there too."

Lizabeth slurped soup off of her spoon then pointed it at Charlene. "Must say I'm happy about that. If Mrs. Metcalfe and he hadn't married, I wouldn't have a job." She put the spoon down and picked up her sandwich.

"You lucked out," her friend remarked. She picked up a cookie and silently nibbled at it. Charlene hadn't purchased one for Lizabeth, who tried to watch her sugar intake. Her mother was forever in her head, admonishing her about 'goodies' and to watch her weight.

"I've never been to a gender reveal party," Lizabeth commented after she had eaten half of her sandwich. Hill's Café was a favorite place for the two of them because it had good food and was close to both of their offices.

"Knowing Mimi, it's likely to be an extravagant party. She never does anything by halves." Charlene finished her cookie. "Married late in life. Married money and a judge. They decided to go straight to the IVF stuff since she's older."

"I'm surprised there aren't two babies," said Lizabeth.

"I think they're doing better with controlling women having too many. You know about the Jenkinson quads, right?"

"Yes. I met one of them already," she mentioned. She didn't want to say that one of the four Jenkinson daughters had come in with her fiancé to apply for a marriage certificate. She wasn't sure if they had gotten married or not or if the family knew. But the four Jenkinson daughters were famous in Merton.

"I heard that Mimi hired an event planner," said Charlene, looking at her watch. She was one of the few people who wore one, but it helped her do her job since she dealt in appointments all day long. "I'll need to leave in a few minutes."

"I wonder what an event planner would do for a gender reveal party?" Lizabeth speculated. "I wonder who they got to do the honors?"

"Probably the woman who works at the hotel," said her friend, who began to gather up her belongings so she could bus the table. It was in the mid-50s outside; Charlene pulled on her coat for the two-block hike back to the dentist's office.

"Jane Sweet?" said Lizabeth. "We're friends. In my early days, someone applied for a marriage certificate and then invited me to their wedding at the hotel, and I went. That's where I met her; I see Jane around town and talk to her if Ed and I are out."

"That must be nice, having strangers invite you to their weddings!" Charlene cried.

"One of the perks of the job. The flip side is having a day like today, where I spend an hour consoling a recent widow," she remarked, collecting her food items, though she still wasn't done with her sandwich.

Charlene said goodbye and hurried out to ensure that she would make it back to the office by one o'clock. Lizabeth wasn't in as much of a hurry to ensure she opened the county office by one. The reason she and Charlene chose Thursdays for their weekly luncheon date was that it was the least busy day of the week for both of them, and it was easier to getaway. For whatever reason, there weren't patients waiting for Charlene or citizens itching to get into the office on Thursday afternoons when they were on other days.

Lizabeth finished her sandwich, then decided she also wanted a cookie. She gazed at the little glass-topped counter. When she had moved to Merton the previous July, and thought she was taking control of her own life, she figured it would be easy to get rid of her mother's influence, but had been surprised how much her mother (or her father) still influenced her thoughts and actions.

Sometimes, she felt that every decision she made required her to pause and ask, what would Mom think about this, or what would Dad do? depending on their expertise or their opinions on the matter-at-hand. It wasn't that her parents were necessarily experts at everything in the world. Still, they each were highly opinionated about particular topics, ones which they had taken the time to share with Lizabeth, eight thousand times throughout her childhood, youth, and adulthood.

"Damnit, I just wanted a cookie!" she called out.

"What?" the clerk at the register asked.

Lizabeth realized that she had said that aloud and laughed in embarrassment. "I'm arguing with my mother…in my head," she explained as her voice rose. "I just want a cookie."

"Dollar ten plus tax," said the clerk. She paid and walked out with it in her hand, embarrassed and hoping that the young man wouldn't be working the next Thursday.

Nibbling as she walked, she finished it by the time she turned the corner to the front entrance of the office. There were two figures in front of the doors. Doug Morris was sitting on the cement wall of the planter, which had some drought-tolerant landscaping in it, but another man was standing directly in front of the double doors with his hand on them, rattling them in obvious annoyance.

A/N: updates on Mondays and Thursdays. 31 chapters total. I have it scheduled between my two vacations so there shouldn't be a disruption in updating. We should end by the first week in June.