Fate found her in front of a Sam Ash with forty dollars of cash in her pocket. Harmonicas were getting damn expensive these days. She had eight hours' worth of work in her pocket and was about to blow it on two small metal instruments. But, if her band worked out, she'd be living the high life in no time.

Nothing like putting out the dough and seeing it come back twice.

She walked inside and hit the racks. Picking out an E-flat and an F-sharp/G-flat, she realized how much money she had already sunk into her vast collection of harps. Doing some quick mental math, she surprised herself when she came up with the number.

One hundred and eighty dollars, counting these two? Holy crap…

She shook her head as she had them rung up and as she handed over the two twenties, plus some odd change. Easy come, easy go…

Ray drove slightly above the speed limit all the way home. She didn't flinch when a cop car pulled into her lane, and didn't even breathe a sigh of relief as he passed her. To show fear was to lose the game of cat-and-mouse she loved to play with the rookies on traffic patrol. Ray would go just fast enough to get their attention, and just when they were all puffed-up and ready to write the ticket, she'd slow down and turn off the main drag.

Smirking as the police car went by, she realized she was about to miss the turnoff. Quickly averting her attention back to the road, Ray looked for her home. She turned into the cracked concrete driveway leading up to what could be considered a mobile-home, but obviously hadn't been mobile in what Ray estimated was the last century. She sighed as she pulled the key from the ignition and hopped down from her perch.

Rattling the door, she finally gave it a good shove before the swollen slab of wood popped open. Ray walked down a short hallway and turned the fifties-era painted porcelain knob that was on her bedroom door.

Entering her sanctuary, she dropped her keys into a small green glass bowl next to the door and fell on her bed. The wooden frame creaked and Ray eyed it icily. If it broke, she'd be sleeping Oriental-style: on the floor and all the more closer to any wandering insect life incapable of flight.

Ray turned over and placed the two new harmonicas next to their brothers. She held each one of them, feeling their smooth curves and polished wood. Not much could be said about Ray's housekeeping skills (her room was barely ever clean and she often failed to pick up after herself), but she cared for her harps like a mother; polishing them and buffing their metal once a week, cleaning out the insides and washing the cases.

But one in particular she didn't play. She had bought a replacement so she didn't have to use it. It was in the key of C, the most basic of the tones, and it sat in an old, worn, cardboard box whose label had long since rubbed off. The metal was so grimed and used, the brand name of the harmonica itself had ceased to exist.

Ray remembered how she used to play it when she was much younger. It was her first, and had inspired her to branch out and learn to accompany the local bands in her school. Her talent was much in demand among the groups with acoustics, but those who had heavy-metal bands or "New Age" sounds shunned her because of the twangy sound she produced and loved.

But now, she respected the harmonica and kept her distance. For all she knew, the sound might have gone out of it. For certain it no longer had the "soul" she believed the rest of her harps possessed.

Shrugging it off, she got up and went back into the house. Everything was spick and span as usual; the surfaces were dusted, the floor and rugs vacuumed, and every window was polished until they glimmered. Ray shrugged at her mother's obsessive nature and went into the kitchen.

Fortunately, her mother was there. Ms. Banning was a woman of epic proportions when it came to cleaning and cooking. Her food extraction could come from any portion of the globe; the Bannings had no real preference. The thick Italian, Greek, Hispanic, and dozens of other denominations' blood was mixed and lost in the countless generations that had passed since the dawn of time, leading down to the current generation of Bannings

Ray recalled a genealogy project she had to do once, tracing her family's bloodline back five generations and to tell what countries they came from. The teacher expected maybe two countries from each student, thinking that the heavily populated, immigrant-settled area would be virtually mono-national, but Ray handed in a list of countries so long, the teacher had just given her an "A" without even looking at it.

The memory made her smile as she watched her mother bustle around the kitchen. Ms. Banning was by no means a heavy woman. She wasn't even average. She had a beautifully sculpted figure that Ray thankfully inherited. Her face, although naturally gorgeous when she had been younger, had been exposed to the elements for too long and now required a minimal amount of makeup. Ray needed no such trivialities, and went about her business without worrying about cosmetics; she had the earthy beauty that needed nothing but God's blessing and a wash every morning, which Ray religiously attended to each day.

"What's cooking, Mom?" Ray inquired, sitting on a barstool and leaning on the counter.

"I thought we'd do taco salad and some black bean soup. I'm kind of tired, so is that alright?"

"More than enough, Mom. By the way, did you see the news this morning?"

"Why, no I didn't, dear. What was on? If it has anything to do with the war, I don't want to listen. It's morbid, and I really with they'd just bring the troops home and stop all this publicity," Ms. Banning stated as she chopped up lettuce with a large cook's knife.

"Well, not exactly. There's a manhunt for a group of guys who virtually went on a rampage some years back. One of them just got out of prison and is back to his old tricks. His partner died in jail. Sad, sad thing."

"Really? Well, some people just can't change…" She continued slicing the head of lettuce, not looking up.

Ray looked out the window. Some birds were perched on the edge of the stone birdbath in the backyard, and she watched them drink and fly off.

"Yeah, but a double-felony? I mean, he spent eighteen years in jail! Don't you think he'd have learned his lesson?"

"Honey," Ms. Banning said, putting the knife down. "Sometimes people are in trouble for the wrong reasons. They're messed up in mixed-up ways, kind of like that 'wrong place at the wrong time' thing. Sometimes it's not their fault. But honestly, it's none of our business what some man does. Let the police handle it is what I say."

"You sound like you know the guy," Ray laughed, surprised by her mother's speech.

"I guess I did sound a but funny just then," her mother returned, chuckling herself. She returned to slicing vegetables. "Just who is this 'rampaging' man, anyway?"

Ray struggled to remember the name. "Um…oh yeah! Something…Blues. That's all I can remember."

The knife clattered to the floor. Ray jumped, praying it hadn't landed point-down in her mother's foot. She jumped down and retrieved it, washing the blade off in the sink. Drying it, she consulted her mother, who was staring at the wall, unmoving.

"Mom? You ok? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"N-no. I'm f-fine. Just a bit…dizzy. The heat got to me. I…I'm going to go lie down for a minute. Could you just run out and get the mail? I'll only be a little while…"

Her mother exited, and Ray watched her leave. Turning to the counter, Ray eyed the pile of the day's letters and wondered what could have spooked her mother so badly.