Author's note: I know it's been a long wait for an update, but the good news is that I have made good progress on this story and I've written all but the last chapter of my related story "Waking Up" (wahoo!) which was actually very helpful to me in getting this story plotted out. Thanks for your patience, and I hope you enjoy the chapters coming for both stories!
Also, I've published three family trees for Steve and Peggy and their descendants on another website to help everyone keep the original characters straight and see how I imagined them to look. Unfortunately, FanFiction doesn't want me to post links, which is a pain in the neck, so I'll have to get creative here. Hopefully this will get you to the place. Make sure there are no spaces or quote marks in the URL. Once you find it, you might want to bookmark it so you don't have to type it again.
"https" and colon and two backslashes and "sites" and ".google" and ".com" backslash "view" backslash "forceforgood"
Update: It looks like that family tree website is making visitors request access to each of those images. Feel free to make those requests and I will grant it to everyone. (Unless and until I figure out how to fix that permanently.)
October 13, 2011
Maggie and Sarah emerged from the portal onto a forest floor that crunched with a layer of snow, as flakes drifted down from the dark sky and settled coldly onto their hair and shoulders.
The two of them paused to survey the cabin in front of them.
Crowded closely by spruce trees, a cabin was perched at the edge of a partially frozen pond that was shallow and marshy at the edges. The cabin itself was simply built, its logs weathered and unadorned, and it didn't look large enough to house more than a few people. All was quiet, although a few of the windows were gleaming yellow light into the darkness. They could also see the lights of a guard tower not far away. Oddly, there wasn't even a road coming up to the cabin, and no cars parked around it. A Quinjet was perched in a grassy area not far away.
"Where exactly is this Retreat?" Maggie asked, her voice echoing strangely here in the Mirror Dimension.
"Canada. Manitoba Province, up in the north," her mother said promptly, pulling her sling ring off her gloved hand and stowing it in her coat pocket. "Funny enough, even your Grandpa never knew that. Nick Fury's so paranoid he didn't even tell Captain Rogers where he was taking him."
"Well then, how do you know?"
"Easy. I got on the Quinjet when it left Manhattan Headquarters and flew here with Dad. On the other side of the Mirror, of course. Once we arrived, I just slipped through the trees, left the Mirror Dimension, and looked at the GPS on my phone to get the location."
Maggie frowned. "You had to leave the Mirror Dimension to check your phone?"
"There's no signal in here," her mother confirmed. "Any satellites or cell towers you might see in this dimension? They're just reflections of the real thing. They don't actually function."
Maggie was a little taken aback. "So if I need to call for help..."
"No way to do it," her mother said matter-of-factly. "Not without a sling ring. Once you're in here, you're trapped until I come back for you. But it's safe enough. Even if something happens to me, Aunt Tien has the visualization and knows to look for you here. Come on."
She strode forward through the snow, and Maggie followed her to the illuminated window at the corner of the cabin. Her mother looked boldly though the window, not even trying to be stealthy about it, and Maggie had to remind herself that they were truly invisible from this side of the Mirror.
"Okay, he's ready for visitors," Mom said, and as she stepped back from the window she waved her hands authoritatively through the air. To Maggie's surprise, the log wall abruptly split in half and the sides rolled back like scrolls.
Captain Rogers was sitting alone in the bedroom that had just opened up, dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt and reading a newspaper, totally unaware of the dimension-bending that was happening around him.
"Go ahead," Mom said softly, nodding toward him, and Maggie stepped up out of the snow and into the shelter of the cabin, instinctively edging away from him where he sat on the edge of the bed until she bumped up against the desk in the corner. She glanced at a stack of papers resting on it and saw that it was literature about the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. The corners of the pages were already dog-eared.
"Ready?" her mother asked from the makeshift entrance to the cabin, snowflakes coating her blonde hair, and Maggie nodded, trying to look more confident than she felt.
"Ready," she said.
"Okay. I'll be back in two hours."
Her mother waved her hands, and the wall resealed itself between them. A few moments later, Maggie saw a golden portal flare to life outside the window, and then her mother disappeared into it.
She took a deep breath, and turned to face Captain Rogers, who was still absorbed in his newspaper.
"Hi, Grandpa," she said tentatively. "It's Maggie. Margaret Blackwood. Your granddaughter."
He didn't look up at her, of course. His eyes just kept moving from side to side as he read the text on the page with a slight frown of concentration.
It was strange seeing him both young and clean-shaven. In Maggie's earliest memories of Grandpa, he had already been in his 60s... and in the family photos she'd seen from before that time, he had always been sporting a beard in an effort to avoid recognition. And he did look young here; she almost felt as though she were seeing a distorted image of her own brother Steven and not Grandpa at all. It was a little disconcerting.
"I guess we haven't exactly met yet, but believe it or not, we've spent a lot of time together," she continued, sitting down gingerly in the desk chair across from him. "You and Grandma moved into the same house as my family when I was 16. And then I ended up marrying a Brit, just like you." She smiled a little. "We live in Kings Worthy, about three miles from Winchester. We have dinner with you almost every Sunday, me and my husband and all our kids."
She shuffled her feet under the chair, feeling a little awkward talking to someone who couldn't answer. But Mom had suggested it, saying that it would help the time go by.
"Grandma wanted to be here to sit with you herself," Maggie said. "She doesn't like leaving you alone while you're going through this, but her health is... not as good as it could be. She needs rest. We had a family meeting and decided that some of us could take turns watching over you instead. I was pretty excited to volunteer. I won't get to meet you face to face for years. Not until after the Snap. So this is the next best thing until then."
Captain Rogers shuffled through the newspaper pages with a rustle until he found the continuation of the article he was reading. What had been his usual serious expression was gradually deepening into sternness.
"What are you reading?" Maggie asked curiously, and she got up and moved around behind him so she could see for herself. "Oh. Politics, huh? No wonder you look unhappy." She sat back down in the chair facing him.
"I get it, believe me," she said sympathetically. "Things change so quickly these days, and you missed such a big chunk of time; it must look like the whole world's gone insane."
"Yeah, I'm not too happy with politics myself right now," she admitted after a beat.
She tried to say it lightly, but her heart was too heavy to fully succeed.
"My husband Henry is running for office," she told him then. "You won't find his name in your paper, though. It's funny... the election, it's consuming our lives. Feels like we can't do anything or say anything without considering how it's going to affect the campaign." She pushed back a stray lock of dark hair. "But at the end of the day, it's only a race for MP," she said. "Small potatoes, really. In the grand scheme of things it's not that big of a deal."
Her voice wobbled a little, and she knew that if he could hear her, Captain Rogers would know she wasn't being completely truthful. The truth was, it was a big deal, to her at least. After years of helping Henry get to this point — the meetings, the interviews, the professional relationships to be nurtured, countless social events with movers and shakers, and all of it done amid pregnancies and babies to nurse and children to raise — it had been exhausting, and at times she had felt like she was reaching the end of her rope.
"I feel like I'm ungrateful to even complain," she said more softly. "I knew Henry's ambitions and I supported them. We're lucky to have the opportunities that we do. As hard as it's been to juggle all of this with our family responsibilities, we made our choices. This was what we wanted."
She took in a long breath, and let it out in frustration. "But I swear... if I have to paste on a smile for one more introduction... If I have to see one more campaign ad or letter to the editor totally misconstruing who my husband is and what he stands for... If I have to go one more week managing the kids by myself while Henry's gone..."
She pressed her lips together firmly to stop herself from finishing that thought. Because there was nothing to finish it with. They were committed to a course of action now, and the only way past the fire was to walk through it.
She looked over at Captain Rogers to see how he was doing. He was still looking at the newspaper, but his eyes weren't moving back and forth anymore. He wasn't actually reading. Just lost in thought. Brooding, maybe. There was a noticeable frown pulling down at the corners of his lips.
"It's too bad our family's in hiding," she told him. "I think everyone would have liked to help with Henry's campaign if circumstances had been different. Most of us are pretty well-spoken. Hard-working. Community pillars. You know the type. But everyone's living under false identities as far as the government is concerned, and it's better not to draw attention. It's risky enough for me to be in the public eye, even with all my legal fictions. Grandma and Uncle Mike and Sammy helped me make up a fake family. So I'm kinda on my own, at least on paper."
She knew she was pretty much talking to herself, but she could admit that it was a relief to be able to say whatever crossed her mind without fear of being judged. And even if he could hear her now, it would be the same; Grandpa had always been a good listener. It was one of the things she loved most about him.
"I shouldn't let it bother me like this," Maggie went on. "I've been fighting anxiety ever since I was a teenager, and by now I have some ways to cope with it. Well, you know all about that. Or you will." Without thinking, she reached up to fiddle with a strand of hair, and then realized what she was doing and made herself stop.
"Whenever it gets to be too much, it helps me to go for a good long run," she said. "You were the one who first suggested that to me, actually."
Her eyes went distant with the memory. "I used to wait until all the kids were in bed, and then I'd leave the house and tear across the countryside just as fast as I could possibly go. It was dark enough that no one could see me. Made me feel like I was the only one in the world, just me and the sky and the path ahead of me." She glanced over at Captain Rogers with a faint smile.
"You know, I'm not as much into the super soldier stuff as some of the others in our family," she admitted. "I'm not the strongest, and I don't really get a kick out of fighting. But actually... out of all the grandkids, I'm the fastest. I've always been kinda proud of that." Her shoulders squared up for a moment, but then she sighed deeply, letting them sag. "But I haven't run in a while. Haven't really had the time for it."
"Am I talking your ear off, Grandpa? Wish you could talk back. Wish I knew what you were thinking."
He was folding the newspaper up now, slowly and deliberately, until he laid it on the bed beside him. He didn't make a move to get under the blankets and go to sleep, though. Just sat there frowning at the wall across from him.
"And Natty used to be my rock, you know," Maggie added more sadly. "My best friend. Oh, you don't know... She's your granddaughter. My cousin. But she has her own problems to deal with right now. Her husband's working to be named successor when the CEO of his engineering firm retires. It isn't just ambition... I mean, Quyen's a good engineer, a good leader, but mostly we thought it would be really helpful to have someone in a position like that when Hydra unmasks themselves a few years from now. He could steer what kind of projects the company focuses on, and he already has some ideas for what might come in handy during the Uprising. Anyway, Natty's too busy and stressed out to support me, and I'm too busy and stressed out to support her. It sucks, Grandpa. It really, really sucks."
A sharp crack sounded from outside the window. Captain Rogers startled visibly, his eyes flaring wide and his right hand darting back over his shoulder as if to grab something from off his back. But there was nothing there to grab.
Maggie was a little startled herself, as much from Captain Rogers' overreaction as from the noise itself.
"Are you looking for your shield?" she asked, brow wrinkling. "I don't think that was a gunshot, Grandpa. I think-"
Suddenly it occurred to her that maybe it was a gunshot. They were sitting in a maximum security S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, after all, even if it did look like a rustic vacationing cabin by all outward appearances. If someone outside S.H.I.E.L.D. had figured out who they had in here... Or worse, if some Hydra agent within S.H.I.E.L.D. had decided to take care of the newly revived Captain America before he was in any condition to handle combat again...
Maggie scrambled to her feet and went to look out the window. Captain Rogers launched himself off the bed at the same time, and they both pressed themselves against the glass, side-by-side, peering out into the night.
In the light shining from the guard tower, they could see the snow falling down thickly, blanketing the trees and stumps surrounding the cabin. They both strained their eyes and ears, but there weren't any people running around or shouting in the darkness. Captain Rogers craned his neck to see the guard tower, to the far left, and Maggie followed his stare. They could see the silhouette of a guard standing up top, wearing a parka against the elements, with a rifle slung over his shoulder. He was obviously not on alert, despite the fact that he was wearing night-vision goggles and was pacing along the railing, coolly scanning the woods below him.
Maggie felt herself relax.
"It was probably just a tree branch snapping under the weight of the snow," she told him.
The same possibility must have occurred to him, but he didn't move from the window. He just stood there motionless, staring out into the night, tension written in every muscle of his body.
Maggie gazed at him for a long time, but he didn't relax.
"Old habits die hard, huh?" she asked him softly.
Captain Rogers' jaw clenched, and both of his hands, hanging down by his sides, slowly balled into fists. And still he stared at nothing in particular. Although now his stare was more like a glare.
"You're safe," she told him gently. "There's no war here. You have a little time before it comes again. Take your rest while you can."
Abruptly he turned away from the window and scrubbed his face vigorously with his hands. Then he gradually went still, his fingers still threaded through his hair, staring at a spot on the floor, his eyes scrunched up as if in pain.
Maggie took a step closer to him. "You okay?" she asked him.
He was beginning to breathe heavily, his shoulders moving up and down with quick, sharp breaths. Maggie's eyes flicked over to the PTSD papers on his desk. She looked back at him, and realized that he was trembling.
"Are you having a flashback?" she asked him hesitantly.
What would he be seeing? A memory of some bloody battle? Bucky's fall? His own crash in the Arctic? The horrible moment only a week ago when he learned that he had left his own time behind, that Grandma was lost to him forever?
Captain Rogers turned on his heel and began to pace rapidly across the bedroom. It was a small room filled with heavy log furniture, not much space to walk, but he went back and forth between the foot of the bed and the window anyway, only a few steps each way before he turned to go the other direction. It was like watching a tiger pace in its cage. There was a strange wildness in his eyes, a mixture of confusion and agitation, and he clearly didn't know how to handle the emotions that were buffeting him from every side.
"Grandpa, I'm so sorry," Maggie whispered, watching him go back and forth. "I know. I know. I'm so sorry." Her heart wrenched in her chest. No wonder Grandma had been shaken by her visits through the Mirror. The compulsion to reach out and hold him was nearly impossible to fight. But she couldn't help him from here. Not really. She could only be with him, for whatever that was worth. Maggie felt a hot tear escape her eye and burn its way down her cheek. If only she could open a portal to him! Just to say a few words of comfort. To tell him this wouldn't last forever. To tell him he had a family walking this dark path with him, every step of the way. To tell him he wasn't as alone as he felt.
He abruptly stopped his pacing and pressed both fists against his mouth, fighting for breath like he'd just run a marathon, his eyes glistening in the lamp-light as if something deep inside him had snapped... and Maggie felt something snap inside her in response.
"Grandpa, run," she whispered intensely, putting her hand on his heaving shoulder and wishing with all her heart that he could feel it. "Run like I do. Run until you can't think anymore. Run until you can't breathe. It'll help. I swear to you. You'll be able to sleep then. Just run. It'll help you. I promise."
He sucked in a gasp of air loudly, and with a sudden determination, he strode over to his closet, opened the door and took out a pair of sneakers. In two swift movements, he shoved his feet into them.
"Did you-" Maggie whispered, suddenly taken aback. "Did you hear me?"
He didn't look at her, though — of course he didn't — just grabbed a sweatshirt from a hanger at random, tugged it on, and strode out his bedroom door. After a beat, Maggie swallowed her confusion and followed him.
There was a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent relaxing on the couch in the next room, reading from his phone, but he took in his charge's agitation in a single glance and sat up straighter.
"Going somewhere, Captain?" he asked.
"Running." His voice was unexpectedly deep and sonorous; Maggie was used to hearing him reedy with age.
"Wait... now? In the snow?" The agent looked faintly alarmed, starting to get up. "But it's dark-"
"Don't care."
She'd never seen him be so abrupt. He strode out the cabin door while the agent was still searching for the words to object, and Maggie readily followed him. Outside, the light from the guard tower illuminated the thickly clustered trees, and she could see the faint shimmer of the laser fence that surrounded the Retreat. Captain Rogers put one foot up on a snowy stump and tied his sneaker with sharp movements, and then did the other, his breath coming out in white puffs in the chilly air.
Maggie bent down to tighten her own laces, her pulse quickening in anticipation. She hadn't been running in so long. So many other things — and people — commanding her attention. She hadn't had a moment to think of herself and her own needs. A good run was long overdue. For both of them.
Captain Rogers straightened up and gazed down a darkened footpath leading into the trees. His muscles tensed for only a split second before he took off like a shot, snow and dirt flying up from the back of his heels. Without missing a beat, Maggie took off too, running by his side.
In moments they were fairly flying, the trees on either side of the path turning into green blurs. Captain Rogers wasn't bothering with any kind of slow lope to warm up, but rather throwing himself into a full sprint with reckless abandon. It didn't take long before the path led them to the laser fence and then curved around to follow the perimeter. Maggie was taking in big cold gulps of air, pushing her muscles to their limit just to keep up with him.
To her great surprise, she was keeping up with him. Was she really as fast as Captain Rogers in his prime? Mom had said he was already physically recovered from his time under the ice, and it looked like that was true; not only was he blindingly fast, running alongside her, but he was also adjusting to the rough terrain and the slippery snow underfoot with the same confident precision that Maggie herself was.
They raced on, the only sound in the forest their rhythmic breathing and their snow-muffled footfalls as they curved around to follow the perimeter of the laser fence. Was Nick Fury under the impression that he was keeping Captain Rogers in with that fence, in addition to keeping threats out? Maggie wondered. He had run away from S.H.I.E.L.D. practically the moment he had awoken, it was true, but this fence was hardly enough to contain him if he decided to leave. Maggie ran her eyes up some of the trees growing alongside it, and knew that even she wouldn't have much trouble scaling one to jump over that fence, and the fall to the ground on the other side wouldn't be too much for her to handle, either.
Even so, fence or not, Captain Rogers was trapped here.
He had nowhere to go. No way back home. For him, S.H.I.E.L.D. was now the closest thing to home; a cold comfort for an introvert who had never had a large circle of friends but had been very close to the small handful of people he had connected with. Bucky. Grandma. His Commandos.
None of them could ever be replaced, not even by the Avengers when they came along. Maggie knew that because it was how she felt, too. Her husband, her children, her siblings and cousins, and just a few friends from outside the family: they constituted her entire world, and if she lost them all, she would be lost, too.
Then she would be the one running her heart out along a lone track in the snowy woods, running uselessly in a circle because there was nowhere to run to.
Maggie looked over at Captain Rogers as they rounded the bend again. He wore a grimace that seemed carved on his face, his jaw set but his lips parted as he sucked in breath through his clenched teeth as steadily as a metronome. His eyes gazed in a vague middle distance; he was practically running on autopilot now, his feet finding the best spots for purchase without much need for thought.
There wasn't room inside him now for anything but what he was feeling.
Just as there was no room inside her for anything but what she was feeling.
Maggie could feel it coming on like a tidal wave: a long-overdue release of all the worries and frustrations she had been carrying on her shoulders for so many months of Henry's campaign, borne in silence until they had built up to an unbearable pressure.
She was grunting through her teeth with every step now — less from the physical effort of their breakneck pace and more from the barely controlled emotions that were threatening to break the levee — and water droplets were streaming from the corners of her eyes back into her hairline. She wasn't even sure if they were tears of relief or just snowflakes melting against the warmth of her skin.
Maggie saw it just in time: a branch that hung across the footpath low enough that they needed to duck underneath. But before she could do it, Captain Rogers bounded a few steps ahead of her and struck the branch with his fist with so much force that it snapped off and tangled itself into the laser fence, a burst of sparks briefly lighting up the night.
They could have run on unimpeded, but suddenly Captain Rogers let loose with a guttural, wordless cry that echoed through the forest and he slid to an abrupt halt, snow and dirt flying up from his feet as Maggie sailed past him, surprised by the sudden maneuver.
Gasping for breath, Maggie plowed to a stop, too, and then circled back to Captain Rogers, who had sunk down into a crouch in the snow, head bowed, one hand braced against a tree trunk for support. Slowly, she crouched down by his side and saw that there was pain etched on his face. Had he hurt himself, knocking that branch out of the way? But no, she could see there was only a faint scraping on his knuckles, with just a few drops of blood seeping their way to the surface. It didn't look like he had even noticed.
The expression on his face was undeniably one of grief.
Captain Rogers crouched there in the snow, his chest heaving with every breath, his eyes scrunched up fiercely. His wet hair lay in long, untidy strands across his forehead and his strong shoulders sagged in dejection. She was so used to seeing him with a dignified posture that he practically looked like a different person this way.
Troubled, Maggie leaned a little closer, holding out her hand out toward him to... she wasn't sure what. She could touch him, she knew, but he wouldn't feel it. Nor would he be able to see his own distress mirrored in her face.
She ached to touch him anyway. But just before her outstretched hand made contact, a flash of anger crossed his face, and he clenched one hand into a fist and lashed out, hitting the tree he had leaned on with a solid thunk.
The tree shuddered from the blow, and seconds later large chunks of snow came plopping down from the branches overhead. One of them landed on his head, coating his head in white.
He didn't even bother brushing it off, just slowly sank down until he was on his hands and knees, wet hair streaming melted snow in rivulets down his face. His anger had left as quickly as it had arrived, leaving nothing but a weary kind of despair in its place.
Maggie knelt down by his side in the cold snow. Slowly, carefully, she put both arms around him. There was a shivering in his body that seemed to come from his very core.
"Hey. We're okay," Maggie whispered to him, tears pricking at her eyes. "We're okay. We're... we're gonna be okay."
She leaned a little closer and rested her forehead against his, just the way her youngest son Scott liked her to do with him when he was having a rough day.
"It'll pass," she whispered. "You won't feel this way forever. I promise. It'll get better."
Gradually, his trembling began to ease, his gasps for breath slowing and quieting. They knelt like that together for several long minutes. The forest surrounding them was very dark and still. Like they were the only ones left in the world for this moment in time.
"We're okay," she whispered again.
And then, slowly Captain Rogers lifted his head.
His face was no longer a rictus of pain. Instead, there was an air of intent concentration about him. His eyes slid from tree to tree as if he was searching for something. Or someone. Had he heard someone approaching? Maggie held her breath, arms still around him, and listened very carefully, too. But as the seconds ticked by, she heard nothing and saw nothing out of the ordinary.
And still Captain Rogers was frozen as if in the attitude of listening.
His blue eyes flicked from side to side, looking at the empty spaces between the trees. He didn't look alarmed exactly; more like curious, or maybe faintly confused.
"What is it?" Maggie asked him softly.
He stiffened, his eyes widening slightly.
"Did you-" Suddenly Maggie broke off. There was a voice in the forest. A man's voice, barely audible from this distance, calling "Captain!"
Captain Rogers blinked rapidly, his concentration broken, and after a short hesitation he abruptly stood, pulling free from Maggie's arms. Quickly he used his fingers to comb his wet hair back into some semblance of order, and then he pulled his sweatshirt up and used it to dry his face. With a conscious effort, he squared his shoulders and lifted his chin up and then all at once, he looked like the Captain America he was supposed to be.
Head held high, he strode down the path toward the sound of the man's voice still calling out "Captain!" In another minute, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent from the cabin came around a bend and spotted his charge.
"Oh, Captain," the agent said with a hint of relief. "You okay?"
"Yeah," Captain Rogers said, in a tone of mild remonstrance that clearly said, why would you even ask?
"Okay." The agent surveyed him for a long moment, silently noting the wet splotches of melted snow on his clothes, and then nodded back toward the cabin. "Ready to go back?"
Captain Rogers hesitated for a split second, and then nodded. "Yeah."
He and the agent began to trudge through the snow, heading back toward the cabin. After a beat, Maggie followed them, walking several paces behind them. They hadn't gone far before Captain Rogers glanced back, slowing a little as he scanned the woods behind him once more.
The agent paused and looked back, too.
"What is it?" he asked, shooting Captain Rogers a curious look.
But his lips had pressed together into a straight line, radiating tension to his jaw.
"Nothing," he said, and an odd note of cynicism crept into his voice. He turned forward once more and strode through the snow with a business-like pace. "There's nothing there."
The cabin was dark and quiet, Captain Rogers finally having gone to bed and shut off his light, by the time Maggie's mother came back through a portal to retrieve her.
"How did it go?" Mom asked, pulling out her sling ring to open up a portal back home.
"Fine. Um, Mom?" Maggie asked hesitantly. "Are you sure he can't hear us from in here?"
Mom lowered her hand and let the burgeoning portal fizzle out as she regarded Maggie seriously. "He can't, honey," she said gently. "We aren't even in the same dimension as him. The Masters of the Mystic Arts explained to me how it works back when I first got my sling ring. We can experience the conditions of the real world reflected into this dimension, yes, but nothing from our side can penetrate the barrier. No light particles, no sound waves, not even air. It's a one-way Mirror only."
"Oh," Maggie said, and the thread of disappointment she felt was undeniable.
Mom's expression softened. "I know why you ask — I've had moments where I could swear he was responding to me, too — but it's only coincidence, honey," she said. "Really."
"Okay."
"But you had a good visit?"
Maggie nodded. The strenuous run had done her good; she could feel a sleepiness beginning to descend and she knew she would sleep well tonight for a change. That was good. Henry had a big campaign event in the morning and she would need to be at her best for that.
"I'm glad I went," she said.
TO BE CONTINUED
Author's note: Your feedback would be greatly appreciated! Let me know what you think.