.....

The rest of the evening Ezra spent dancing around questions about how he had spent the years since Abigails abrupt depature. He didn t want her to worry, and found himself even wishing she would go away.  Having her here looking at him with her eyes, the very same eyes his wife had looked at him with it was if he could feel his heart breaking all over again. The heart that beat only for her but even seven long years later it wouldn't stop beating to give him the peace he so desprately wanted.

Abigail was talking to him but the words were meshing together. The flood of memories beat down the walls he had tried carefully constructed in his mind making it impossible to concentrate on any one thing.

....

"So what brings you home" asked Ezra cautiously as he place a cup of tea and jelly topped cookies on the table. Abigale gave a slight smile, mostly at the sight of the cookies. After all these years and product advancement her daddy was still buying those same old bland cheap cookies.

"Well" she said, pausing to stare at Liam as he played with a toy car he had produced from his pocket. "It has been a long while since I've been been back to "Rock Port," and I thought it was time Liam meet his Granddaddy."

Ezra locked eyes with her. He could see that she was hiding something behind those soft gray globes. He didn't want to push her too hard, too soon. The power flickered again and the thunder exploded overhead shaking the entire house. Liam jumped and Abigale let out a screech, recoiling in relief with a hand on her chest. The rain started to come down hard and fast, pattering on the shingles of the house and causing the street to hiss and clap. Ezra looked to Liam on the floor.

"Just a little storm hey champ?" Ezra stood and moved to the window, peering out from behind a dusty curtain. "You know, the last time we had a storm like this was the day after you left. I had driven around town all day knocking on peoples doors, and checking all the barns in a few square miles of this place looking for you." He backed away from the window and turned to face Abigale.

"Bobby Johnston's parents came by the next day to ask me if I had seen their boy, and I hadn't. They said they thought he may of run off with you, seeing how you was missin' as well. Well, during our visit the clouds rolled in and everything got real dark. The wind picked up and tore the shutters right off the house. And rain. Boy did it rain." Ezra sat back down at the table and slowly pulled his chair in. "Fitting atmosphere for the situation you see."

"We'll, I guess I blow out with the storm and blow back in with it," Abigale looked down at the table and fiddled with the Zippo in her hand. "You know daddy, I'm really sorry I ran out on you like that. After Momma died it was like my life got turned upside down. Liam was so young and I had no clue what to do without Momma. And this town..." Abigale let out a long sigh and looked all around the cracked and slightly leaking ceiling. "I didn't feel like I had any kind of future here. I thought that if  I moved to the big city I would have more opportunities you know, for me and Liam. Freddy wasn't helping me so I had to do something." Her expression suddenly changed from sorrowful to disgust. "And why would people think I ran away with Bobby Johnston?"

"Well, everyone knew he was always trying to court you. And since you both disappeared at the same time people started to wonder." Ezra nodded to the left. "Mrs.MacKailey say's she saw him hanging around outside the house the night before you ran off, and nobody has seen him since not even at the bar."

"Well I didn't go nowhere with him I promise you that. I met a man at the bar the day after Momma's funeral. I was really upset and went to "Charley's" to drown my sorrows. His name was Mark, and he was from the city. He asked me what a beautiful girl like me was doing in a small town like this. I told him I was raising Liam at my Daddy's house, and that Momma had just died." She looked back down at the lighter, and seemed to shrink in on herself. "He told me he worked for a big fancy modeling agency, and that if I met him in the city he could give me a job making good money for very little work, enough to support Liam, and if things went well enough, to travel all over the world." She looked up at Ezra who was listening intently. Like he was waiting for the part of the story where this Mark fellow raped her, pimped her out, got her involved in dirty pictures, drugs or hurt her in some way like you hear on the evening television news. She could see the look forming on his face like he was getting ready to grab his shotgun and go find this monster of a man.

"Don't worry Daddy, nothin' too bad happened. I got work here and there with the agency, but after Mark realized I wasn't going to sleep with him, he focused his attention on the girls that would. So I floated around for awhile trying to get in with a different agency with little luck, just small contracts that barely showed my face. They all told me I was too generic, whatever that means. I didn't want to come home ashamed of my poor choices " She was about to continue when lightning flashed overhead and the power buzzed out.   

.....

Ezra was searching through his old paint chipped cupboards looking for something suitable for a ten year old to eat, preferrably something without the words "fiber" or "bran" in the title. Suddenly the power went out shrouding the kitchen in near darkness.

Abigail had been sitting at the kitchen table watching Liam play on the old faded lineolium. She reached into her purse and produced her zippo lighter then she struck the flint and set it onto the table.

Ezra saw the zippo and knew instantly where she had gotten it from. It had been a stocking stuffer her mother had picked out for her one year. Ezra and his late wife had argued about it at the time as he had fobidden his Abigail from ever starting smoking in the first place. But in the end his wife had won out saying, " Maybe if you hadn t forbidden her it wouldn t have been so tempting for her to try."

Seeing it again after all of these years he was glad he had lost that argument. It was a piece of her mother she could easily take anywhere unlike the furniture and clothing that surrounded Ezra daily that he refused to move. He believed she was still in this house with him in some form and this is the way she wanted things. He dared not move it for fear of the wrath of her ghost.

His wife Gwen. He still missed her every single day, so much so that it made it nearly impossible for him to carry on with his own life. He never talked to any of his old friends unless they stopped by just to make sure he was still alive. He let the house go into a state of disrepair to the point it almost certainly would be condemned should the county building inspector spend more then ten minutes in it.

It was also the reason Abigail had left town with Liam 7 years ago. It had been far too hard for her to deal with seeing the same things she had grown up around and not having her mother there. So she had run away and had made no attempt to contact Ezra until today.

...

Standing hunched over and run down in front of the door, he reached for the knob. The brass felt cool and warn, the paint was peeling off the door, and the hinges squeaked as he opened it. Standing on his dilapidated porch was a child. Small and blond, no older than ten. His Grey eyes staring blankly up at the old man.

The old man instantly recognized him. He looked passed the boy to see another familiar face, one he had not seen for a few years. Coming around the front of an old beat up pickup truck was a women, with hair so blond it could be white. She had a thin frame, legs like a giraffe, poking out from a purple knee high dress. Her white sweater flapped in the wind as she made her way through the cracked cement driveway in white heels.

The old man looked back down at the boy and smiled. "You must be Liam."

"Hey Daddy!" The women called out as she made her way up the stairs of the porch.

"Please, come in. Get in the house, before the rain kicks up again". The old man gestured in the direction of the house, and guided Liam inside.

The old man patted the boy on the head and turned to his daughter. She looked the same as when she left the village all those years back. Liam was only three at the time, but he had maintained his features. "My dear" he said warmly with a smile. he stretched his arms out wide to embrace his sweet Abigale. Her smell filled his nostrils and his soul up. Seven years is a long time for a father to go without hugging his daughter. A tear formed in his eye as he pulled away. Holding onto her shoulder with his hands, he glanced all over her face. "Let me look at you".

"Oh, Daddy" she said all embarrassed. "I'm glad to see you too".

Suddenly, surprised shock washed over the face of the old man as if he had forgotten to do something important. He turned and scooped his grandson up off the floor. He hugged him and twirled him in the air. It was the most active thing the old man had done in years. He placed the boy back on the floor with a laugh.

"Say hello to your Grandpa Ezra, Liam" Abigale said with a grin.

the beginning a.k.a. part one....

The lights flickered again... this was the thrid time in the last hour and if it flickered again the power was going to go out for sure...

The thunder storms started early and had carried on into the early afternoon. The clouds in the sky reminded him of steel wool stretched out across the horizion. The old man was sitting in his chair and watched the lightning dancing across the horizion when there was a knock on his door.

He wasn't expecting anyone this afternoon and he couldn't imagine who in their right minds would be out in this storm. He slowly got up from his chair and ambled across his thickly carpeted livingroom floor to the front entrance to his home.