(working title): Another Life

Chapter 1: Untying the weight-bags

Sarah Walker stood in front of the elevator that would take her up to the offices of Ojaj Foods or was it Walker Landing? Sarah didn´t know anymore. All she knew was that this wasn´t a pleasant family visit. She was going to pick up the stuff from her office. After all not a long time ago she had had one of the leading position at Ojaj and now she felt as if the business she had seen her father built and that he had eventually given her and her brother Tommy to lead was unfamiliar and unwelcoming to her in ways she could never have imagined.

Her uncle Saul had also decided to leave the business after god knows how many years and her other brother, the company´s lawyer, had even been fired.

All who was left from the family was Tommy and though she tried not to despise him for having fired their brother and turning the family business in one of strangers, she had no wish to spend any more time with him that she had to.

Still sooner or later she would have to face him and now that she had to collect her stuff, that day had come. She dreaded seeing himand her former work place and whatever was waiting there for her. When she finally pushed herself to get on the elevator, she felt as if she was an antelope blindly entering a cave of lions.

She had hardly left the elevator when Tommy already came up to her in quick pace which was odd as he hadn´t expected her. She hadn´t told him she wanted to stop by today. In fact she hadn´t spoken to him in quite a while. And she had a feeling neither had Kevin or Saul.

Right now though Tomy tried to be friendly and engaging, but the gap between them was all too obvious now that she wasn´t working here anymore, that she had left because she didn´t like what this place had become, it was as if for once in their lives all there were to each other, was siblings who shared the same parents and not much more.

When Sarah entered her office, she was surprised to find it just the way she left it. The photos of her children and one photo from college days that showed Sarah and Kitty dearly hugging and genuinely laughing stood there untouched just like they had been for years. It gave Sarah a little sting when she remembered how close, how indivisible her and Kitty had been back then. Now Kitty was anxious to adopt her first child and felt left alone by Sarah, even said they had a problem with trust. Sarah choked and quickly put the photos and the few other things that belonged to her into the box she had brought with her, when she noticed Tommy was still hovering in the doorway.

Sarah frowned, turned to him and said rather stiffly: "Is there anything you need?"

Tommy answered: "No, I just need to clear this office once you´re done, so it can be taken by someone else."

Sarah nodded and then packed her things up as quickly as she could, bitterly thinking, if he had already found someone else to take her place, she was not going to stand in his way. In fact she wanted to get out of there as fast as she could to make room for the future, for progress that didn´t involve or required her anymore.

She didn´t give Tommy a kiss goodbye like she usually did, just said almost a little aloof: "Goodbye, Tommy."

She didn´t wait for an answer and rushed down the hall. She felt as if those walls were closing in on her, that there was no air to breathe, not for her anyway. She apruptly froze in her step when Holly Harper appeared right in front of her. This one time Sarah had just hoped to escape her, to foolishly pretend all this change was just the course of life and not hugely connected to her father´s long-time mistress who had stepped into all of the family´s life and made it almost unrecognizable.

Nora Walker, the head of the family, may have been the only one who deep in her heart contempted Holly even more than Sarah did, but Nora didn´t have to work side by side with Holly for months, consider her a partner, just in business but nonetheless a partner.

Sarah had tried but many time her anger was unleashed by Holly´s shameless betrayals and when it came to that, open battle, it was as if fire and water collided. Even though there were no actual winners, Sarah was too honest, to straightforward to really be able to defeat Holly who in Sarah´s mind now took control over Tommy like she once did over her father though in a slightly different way.

The glance that these two women gave each other was accordingly very tense and even that was an understatement.

Holly´s iceblue eyes looked calculating and more superior than ever while Sarah´s eyes had narrowed like a panther ready to attack. Their eyes met and it was as if two bolts of lightning hit, burning each other merciless but they held each other´s glance for several seconds, waiting for the other one to start this inevitable fight.

But was this fight really inevitable? Something inside Sarah moved. She wasn´t part of this company anymore and as Holly was mainly just belonged to the company now, she was hardly Sarah´s problem. Not anymore and what other reason than protecting the family business should she have to even look at a woman that had cost Sarah and her family an immense amount of happiness and safety, not to mention dignity?

Sarah put on a very forced smile that was nonetheless rather humiliating for the one to receive it than it was to herself embarassing. With a underlying threat but no trace of fear, she simply said "Holly." Holly´s eyebrows raised, for a second she seemed surprised, but the player she was she caught herself instantly, saying placidly "Sarah" and walked off, her head high, her long golden hair down her back, swinging arrogantly in the tact of her steps.

Sarah´s eyes followed her through a door and in this moment she desired nothing more than to never have to see this particular woman again.

She finally left the building and suddenly realized with a faint smile that maybe now she really wouldn´t have to face Holly´s iceblue eyes as much anymore.

And for the first time in months she almost felt high-spirited because the big stone on her chest that had made her life often so hard and tedious had vanished and left...space. Space for something other than evil mistresses and doomed businesses.