Expect The Unexpected

Chapter 1

Memories plague my mind as I put my truck in second gear, pull the emergency break, and shut it off.

The house looks the same, and after using my work field to do some digging, I found out that we still own the house.

My house.

I remember the last time I set foot on this land lie it was yesterday.

I was eight years old.

Mom had left me and my father when I was six years old. She seemed like a good Mom to me, so when she left without a trace, I never understood. Dad took great care of me. He was great.

I remember one time, after my Mom left, I asked Dad, I said:

"Daddy, what is missing somebody?"

He sits down next to me, on the window seat.

"Is this about Mommy?" he asks.

I nod slowly, looking out the window.

"Well Lizzy, missing somebody isn't about how long it's been since you've seen them, or how long it's been since you talked. It's about when you're doing something and you wish they were there to do it with you."

He used to take me outside at night and told me that if I counted all the starts, it till wouldn't add up to how much he loves me.

One morning though, when I was eight years old, it was Christmas, and I woke up to open presents, and he was gone. The car was here, the front door was wide open, but the house was empty.

I didn't know what to do. I was just a kid, so I walked miles to town. We lived on a fifty acre property, and just my driveway was five miles.

I went to the first house I could find and told them my Daddy wasn't home.

I ended up in foster care my whole life. I lived in Iowa until I was twelve and then I moved to Florida, and then California, and then Washington, and then New York City. Then I turned eighteen, and I forced myself to go to college to be a private investigator.

I'm basically an FBI agent but I only get work when people come to me, I only don't have a team, and I'm legally allowed to break into people's houses and go through their stuff.

Just a month ago, I got a case about a little boy who woke up to his parents missing, and they thought they left him, but the Uncle of the boy hired me to find out more, and it turns out that the kid's parents were kidnapped by some criminals that were blackmailing them to kill people. I rescued the parents and the group that took them got arrested.

And I started wondering about my parents, so I upped and moved after changing my name from Elizabeth Rebecca Nole to Rebecca Elizabeth Carter.

I faked my own death by writing a suicide note and leaving it on my bosses desk.

I got hired by somebody else.

It got announced to the world that I'm dead.

Now, sitting outside of my childhood home, I know something is amiss.

The land is perfectly tended.

The white picket fence is in perfect condition, the barn is wonderfully kept, the house is recently pressure washed, the land is mowed, and there's blueberries growing in the field, and my windows are down, and I can hear the pigs and horses and chickens and cows.

If my Dad still owns the property, then who the hell is taking care of the house.

I get out of the truck silently.