Snapshots of a Small-Town Life
Disclaimer: I do not own CSI. Also, Bridgewater and Greyston County are fictional locations and the original characters that inhabit them are also fictional. Any resemblance they may bear to actual places is purely coincidental.
Rating: K
Chapter 2
It was a picture of their house, not as it was now, nicely painted with neatly-cut grass and a well-tended flowerbed, but as it had looked on the day she first saw it, faded and shabby with peeling paint and a tangle of knee-high weeds and grass for a yard.
The vehicle that stood in front of it was not her red saloon, nor Nick's sheriff's pick-up, but a battered blue station-wagon. Sara felt a wave of nostalgia at the sight of that car. It had carried the two of them faithfully across thousands of miles, away from the life in Las Vegas that now seemed like a distant dream, all the way to Canada.
And then it had carried them right across Canada, through friendship, to love, to marriage, and finally to their new life in Bridgewater.
It had finally died for good about a year after their arrival, but looking at the photograph she could almost smell the upholstery and feel the cracked steering-wheel beneath her hands.
And she remembered…
"Can I help you?" the woman behind the desk in Bridgewater's only real-estate agency asked with a smile.
Sara smiled back. "I hope so. My husband's just started work with the sheriff's department, and we're looking for a house."
"Of course." The agent waved her to a seat, and Sara was relieved to take it. Whatever else it might mean, being pregnant was sheer hard work.
The agent suggested four vacant properties that were within their price-range, taking into account the generous financial support that Nick's parents had insisted they accept. There had been several others on the market but currently occupied, and it was, Sara thought, a mark of small-town trust that the agent simply gave her the keys to the vacant properties and directions on how to reach them and suggested that she look around in her own time.
She had made a mental note to make changing the locks a priority once they had found a house of their own.
The first property didn't impress her: it was too dark and there was a suspicious smell of damp. The second looked eerily like the rental in which her mother had stabbed her father to death. She didn't even stop the car.
The third house was a fifteen-minute drive from downtown Bridgewater, and she almost didn't bother, but it was a nice day and she figured that it wouldn't hurt to see some more of the town, so she checked her map and set off.
And she drove into the rolling hills that surrounded the town centre the houses became more spaced out and interspersed with trees. At last she turned up the driveway of the vacant property.
She knew as soon as she saw it that this was it. For a while she just sat and stared, but then she went exploring. It was everything she had ever dreamed of: a large yard surrounded by trees with one large, spreading tree at the side of the house that could support a swing or a tree-house, or both, a large kitchen, in need of a clean but perfectly serviceable, five bedrooms, including a roomy master bedroom, a bathroom and second half-bath with toilet, sink and shower, and a living-room with a large picture window looking down the driveway towards the road.
A few repairs were needed – the screen door was ripped, half the windows seemed to be jammed shut or, in one case, partially open, and a couple of boards on the verandah were missing – not to mention a thorough clean and a coat of paint, but she knew in her heart that this was going to be their new home.
Before she left, she got out her camera and took a photograph.