Season of the Wolf

Season of the Wolf

Part one: Running With the Pack

Chapter 1

"Grace, you can't be serious." My roommate glares at the cardboard box I've been packing for the last hour as if its public enemy number one. Impatient with my non-response she huffs and taps a manicured nail against her perfectly tanned forearm. "I mean, have you really thought this through?" The tone of her voice hinges on begging, but even her dramatic, over the top pleas aren't enough to convince me to change my mind. I don't want to talk about it anymore and answer her with a casual, nonchalant, shrug off my shoulders.

Am I certain this is what I want? No, I'm not. In fact, if I were certain of anything. It would be that moving across the country is the very last thing I do want. But, it's the only decision that makes sense. Desperate times call for desperate measures and all that. And if I'm anything, I'm that, desperate.

Everything I've ever known is here, in this city, stuffed into the box at the foot of the bed and standing in the doorway frowning at me with her perfectly sculpted brows furrowed in concern. I never thought I'd say this but, I'll miss the harried pace of the city, being an anonymous face in a crowd, and frantic drama that is simply a part of being best friends with Christine.

I like Rod, or at least, I want to. What I think of him doesn't really matter though. Christine is in love and she's the one who is going to be stuck with him until divorce does them part. And I have no doubt, knowing Christine and her flair for the overstated and dramatic. A long, drawn out, painful divorce will be in her future. Based on her past string of broken relationships, I don't need to be a psychic to predict it. I've drawn the conclusion that when it comes to men Christine is more in love with the idea of being in love than actually falling head over heels for a particular man. I hope I'm wrong or at the very least she figures it out for herself before the wedding. I gave up trying to talk to her about anything remotely having to do with the male species a long time ago and am not about to intervene.

I double-check the dresser drawers and the far corners of the closet and take the time to crouch down on my hands and knees and peek under the bed to make sure I haven't left anything behind. There's pitifully little in the boxes. Resolved that yes, this is everything I own and it fits into a few cardboard boxes. I tape the flaps closed and toe the box into the hallway to join its friends.

It's depressing really. After twenty-four years of living on this planet, everything I own fits quite comfortably in the trunk of my beat up Honda. I'd like to say I travel light, but the truth of it is that other than my clothes, a few family photos, and a couple of treasured knickknacks, I own nothing. I'm not sure if the two hundred twenty-seven dollars and fifty-eight cents I got from selling everything I deemed I could live without will get me to my destination. As usual though, just as I've always done, I'll make it work.

I sit on my ass in the middle of my bedroom floor and stare up at Christine. I can't believe I'm moving. More than that, I can't believe I'm moving, not just out of our shared apartment, but practically across the continental United States. It's not Christine's fault. It's not my fault either, but I can't stay. It's not that I'm not wanted. Christine has made her take on that particular topic abundantly clear. But, with Rod moving in, the two of them need their privacy. Boy, do they ever. There are some images burned into my mind I'd rather not have taking up precious mental real estate.

I just can't see Rod and Christine together for the long haul. Christine is just so...Christine. The woman lives in a constant state of OMG. It's truly exhausting. I hope Rod knows what he is in for. Rod is a great guy. He really is. Rod is mellow and down to earth. Nothing much gets to him and that's probably a good thing.

Rod is Christine's polar opposite in terms of temperament. They have nothing of substance in common. But, Rod has the type of outward appearance Christine goes for and she thinks she's in love. I don't know what Rod's take on the whole love thing is. With Christine doing all the talking he can barely get a word in edgewise. There must be something to it though or he wouldn't be moving in and me, moving out.

To me, Rod looks a little too much like a living, breathing Ken doll. He belongs here on the sunny beaches and so does Christine. Together the two of them are a matched set of tanned skin, sun bleached blonde hair, and blue eyes. And me, with my dark eyes and even darker hair, I am the odd man out.

Christine is the total picture. She is tall, blonde, and absolutely beautiful as in beauty queen beautiful. She also thinks that the entire universe revolves around her. I guess that's why we ended up best friends. She loves to be the center of attention and I loathe it. I'm not an ogre, but I'm sure as hell not beauty queen beautiful either. At best, I'd consider myself average, maybe pretty or cute, but certainly a far cry from her level of gorgeousness. From me, she gets no competition. She talks. I listen. Gorgeous men ogle her and I barely warrant a second glance. She's the socialite and I'm the recluse. In fact, other than her and the few acquaintances I've managed to make along the way. I'm not sure anyone even knows I exist at all.

I try to smile and look hopeful about my future. Christine flashes her perfect pearly whites back at me. As if she believes the lie I'm trying so desperately to sell. Well, it is Christine so, it's possible that maybe she does.

Chapter 2

Other than Christine, I'm leaving absolutely nothing behind. L.A. is a beautiful city filled with beautiful people. People that shine like gold, people like Christine and Rod, and not a place for someone like me. I prefer quiet to noise, seclusion to crowds, and open spaces to skyscrapers. I've never really belonged in Los Angeles and we both know it. The place I'm headed should be absolutely perfect for me and maybe, I'll actually find someplace where I belong.

Accidents happen everyday. I don't know the statistics of how many people die in traffic collisions each year and the actual numbers never really mattered to me until that one fateful day they did. My parents were people like Christine and Rod. I loved the city for their sakes. After their death in my junior year of college, I stayed rooted in the spot out of simple unwillingness to let them go.

It has been three years since the accident and sometimes, I still feel like an orphan. I tried to live up to the legacy they left behind. But, whatever I think that legacy is only exists in my mind. The house I grew up in is gone. My parents were cremated and their ashes scattered over the open sea. There's nothing left of what was except for the contents of a few cardboard boxes and the memories in my head.

I'm not miserable living in L.A. I'm just not entirely happy either. I truly have no reason to stay in the city and other than an anticipated tearful goodbye to Christine, no reservations about leaving it either.

It's not like I'm quitting some dream job to move over halfway across the country. The closest I ever got to actually being an honest to God librarian was a dead end job as a checker at the used bookstore down the street. As of last week, the bookstore went belly up and as for me, I found my schedule suddenly wide open.

I was barely making it paycheck to paycheck. An apartment in the shimmering golden land of opportunity doesn't exactly come cheap. That's the second reason and probably the most accurate one as to why I can't stay. My pride won't let me. I won't ask Christine and Rod to let me skate on the rent until I find another job and save up some money to move out. They need their space and privacy, and our teeny tiny two-bedroom apartment really isn't big enough for the three of us.

No, I've got other options than to live on the good graces of Christine and Rod. In a way I suppose I should look at it a very fortunate and unexpected windfall. The letters and the calls from an attorney with the most annoying Midwestern nasally twang to his voice that I've ever heard in my life. It seems I own one hundred and seventy-seven acres of woods and rolling farmland complete with the cows, chickens, horses, and a quaint farmhouse smack dab in the middle of nowhere.

You may ask what is someone like me, someone who can't manage to keep a houseplant alive, has never ever owned as much as a goldfish in terms of pets, considers the city park as the great outdoors, and has never seen more than an inch of snow in her entire life supposed to do with a place like that? And the truth of it is. I really don't have a clue.

Chapter 3

I'm adopted. I've always known. The truth was simply too evident to overlook. My parents are tall and golden, much like Christine, as for myself, not so much. I barely top five feet-four inches tall standing on my tiptoes. I'm tiny, what my mother creatively called petite. Soaking wet, I weigh a whole one hundred and five pounds. My skin is russet in its tone, my cheekbones high and wide-set, and my eyes are a mix of brown and gold with flecks of mahogany in the irises. People who don't know better think I'm Hispanic. I'm not. I can't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure I'm Native American. And if it weren't for the telltale physical characteristics of my outward appearance I wouldn't have the slightest clue of where I came from.

Growing up in a wealthy suburban L.A. neighborhood isn't a place for a kid who isn't a carbon copy of everybody else. I envied the little girls destined to grow up to look exactly like the Barbie dolls clutched in their fists. I wanted my mother's pale platinum blonde hair and my dad's, clear as a cloudless sky, blue eyes. Being an only child and adopted, looking as out of place as a raisin in a bowl of rice, the only thing I wanted was to fit in. I tried, oh how I tried. But, even as children, the other kids knew what I didn't. That no matter how badly I wanted it or how hard I tried. I would never ever belong in their little corner of the universe.

I don't know why I didn't ever try to find my birth parents. Maybe, it was out of a sense of loyalty to the only parents I've ever had. Adopted or not, I was their kid and they loved me for simply being me. I have no memories of any life I might have had before I was adopted. I was just a baby when it happened. I suppose there's a mountain of paperwork somewhere, if I cared to delve into my past. I think I'm better off not knowing the truth of where it was I came from. My mom says she took one look at me and it was love at first sight and that was all I've ever needed to know.

I don't spend much time dwelling on the person I might have become if things had gone down differently. I've never hazarded a guess at the name my real parents gave me. Being Grace Klein the adopted daughter of Thomas and Suzanne suits me just fine. I can't imagine being someone else. The truth of it is. I don't want to be anyone else. I'm perfectly fine being myself. With that being said, I guess I'll never get the chance to get to know my real parents. They're dead, or at least so the lawyer says.

I didn't ask for any details surrounding their deaths. I didn't need to. The attorney, an annoying man by the name of Hanson Galloway, was more than willing to fill in the blanks without my prompting him to do so. My birth mother died shortly after I was born. It was a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He says it took my grandfather years to piece together the sketchy details surrounding the death of an unknown woman accidentally caught in the crossfire of a nasty gang war and to finally draw the conclusion that the unknown woman had a name and a home and a baby girl, me, lost to the system.

Who knew attorneys had a romantic side? Mr. Galloway says my father died of a broken heart shortly after my mother left him. Not that it matters, but I don't believe the annoying Mr. Galloway about the details surrounding my father's death. I didn't believe his story at all until I did a little digging through the back issues of dozens of newspaper articles and read it for myself.

I can't help but think there's something fishy about the whole thing. Why did my mother leave my father? Where was she going? What or whom was she running from or to? What would drive a woman with a newborn baby daughter to such lengths? Why didn't she have one scrap of identity on her? Everyone has a social security number and a driver's license, a credit card, or some link to some place.

The ever helpful and annoying Mr. Galloway assures me that my grandfather left no stone unturned in his search for his missing daughter in law and granddaughter. It wasn't until recently, six weeks ago to be exact, that Mr. Galloway was able to pick up the trail where my grandfather left off and finally fill in the blanks that lead him to me.

I've looked through my adoptive mother's records. The details surrounding my adoption are sketchy. There was no next of kin to notify, no one to contest the adoption, and no one to claim me. No missing persons reports were filed in regards to the unknown woman. There was nobody that stepped forward to identify her. There was nothing to link me to anybody and the overburdened child welfare division of the State of California was more than happy to find someone to take me off their hands.

Mom calls me her cabbage patch kid. She says it was just meant to be. I have to admit that I am curious to have the whys answered and put all the pieces of the puzzle into place. It won't change a thing. Not really. I know who I am regardless of what the adoption papers, the newspaper articles, and the informative Mr. Galloway have to say about it.

My grandfather left me everything: the house, the woods, the barnyard critters, and no small amount of change in a trust fund. He died about a year ago and it has taken this long for Mr. Galloway to track me down. For all Mr. Galloway's helpful informative nature, he was rather closed lipped surrounding the details of my grandfather's death. I assume, since I'm twenty-four, it's possible my grandfather died of old age. But, a part of me really doesn't believe it.

So many parts of me are conflicted. I'm moving forward and being drawn backwards into a past that could have become my present, if things had gone down differently. Christine's answer was the most obvious one, the path of least resistance. Sell the property, the animals, and the house. After all what did I really owe a grandparent I had never met? Nothing, I suppose. I don't owe Nathaniel Blake Galloway, otherwise known as High Backed Wolf or Neeheeoeewootis, a damned thing.

Mr. Galloway Attorney at law assures me that there is no mistake about my grandfather's final wishes. He also, with no small measure of pride in the Midwestern twang of his voice, would like to remind me that I'm part of a proud heritage and that the inheritance is my birthright as the last remaining branch of my grandfather's family tree.

History has never been my thing. But, it is Mr. Galloway's and he was more than eager to tell me about the history of the property I had inherited. Apparently, my branch of the family tree sprouted up from the land on which the house is built. The land has been in the family since 1810 when the first log cabin was notched together. Construction was finished on the current version of the house, the house I'm to inherit, in 1839.

Mr. Galloway assures me she's a lovely grand old Victorian manor and quite full of family history. He is certain I'll come to love the house and the land on which it sits. I only wish I were as convinced as he seems to be that the rolling farmlands of central Indiana is where I belong. I'm not certain of much of anything except for the fact that things simply aren't adding up.

Apparently, Mr. Galloway's passion for history doesn't stop at Victorian manors. He wasted no small amount of words catching me up to date on my ancestors' illustrious past and the history of the land on which my inheritance was built. I come from a good bloodline, Shawnee and Scottish, and according to Mr. Galloway, the legends about my ancestors and the land in which their bones rest run deep.

Out of morbid damnable curiosity, I had to ask. Looking back, I wish I hadn't. My alleged deceased grandfather's last name was Galloway and it's no coincidence that Mr. Galloway Attorney at Law worked so hard to pick up my trail. It seems that he's a distant cousin, our great, great, great, great, great, great grandfathers were half brothers, and he is pleased to be the first in the family to welcome me home.

I asked him more about my grandfather and my biological parents and for an open mouthed man, he suddenly became rather closed lipped. He said under no uncertain terms that I could decide for myself what kind of people they were. In time, he assured me, I'd discover a great many truths. Some, I'd wish I hadn't. I don't know what he meant by that. Maybe, he's right and I'll end up wishing I had never unearthed the history of the family I could have had instead of the one I got.

When I asked him about my birth name. He became damn cryptic. Instead of giving me an answer, he told me I could come to my own conclusions about that as well. I guess it really doesn't matter what name my biological parents gave me. Maybe, it's something hideous like Bertha and he's too much a professional to embarrass me. Maybe, he's afraid if I learned my true name it would scare me off and he'd spend another year hunting me down again. The only thing I do know is that my real last name is Galloway and that I have a home and a history waiting for me to discover in some Godforsaken corner of rural Indiana.

There is one bright spot, a tiny spark of light, to this sudden inheritance other than the obvious, of course. I love wolves. Ever since I was a little girl. While all the other little girls were playing with Barbie dolls and sneaking into their mothers' jewelry boxes and makeup to pretend. I was daydreaming about wolves. I was probably the only kid in preschool actually rooting for the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs. I dream about wolves almost every night. In my dreams, I'm not a casual observer. I'm a wolf and I'm running with the pack.

I know everything there is to know about wolves. I respect their stoic majesty and quiet strength and let's face it. I know what it's like to be a lone wolf. I lucked out on one thing. Out of all the research I've done on the great state of Indiana. I could care less about the Indy 500 or the miles and miles of cornfields. The wolf sanctuary is the only point of interest to me in the whole damn state. And the sanctuary shares my property lines.

I'm supposed to meet up with Mr. Hanson Galloway, distant cousin and Attorney at Law the day after tomorrow. I've got the directions plugged into the GPS app on my phone. I tried Google maps on my laptop. The place I was looking for doesn't exist. Well, it did exist, but it isn't there anymore. There hasn't been an actual town in the spot since 1878. At least the place will definitely fulfill my need for privacy and seclusion.

I'd like to say I'm eager to get started on my new adventure, but I'm not. I still can't shake the feeling that something is off about my unexpected inheritance, the sudden appearance of distant relation, and how neatly everything has been handed to me wrapped up in a big, pretty bow exactly when I needed it the most. I'm rich or will be once the paperwork goes through. The only thing required by me is stop by his office, sign a few papers, and pick up the keys.

I'm suspicious, especially about Mr. Galloway. I looked him up on the Internet. He really is a licensed attorney in the state of Indiana. He's not bullshitting about that. It's the rest of his story or his particular version of history that I doubt.