As Anneza drifted along above and behind her father, she thought about the smells. They had been good...chicken, onion, carrot, garlic, sage, and cooking wine...very good indeed. It even smelled like good cooking wine; still nothing you'd want to drink, but good for the purpose. She paused for a moment and thought about that, as her father caught the bus; she hadn't really made any distinctions with wine before. She'd had wine, of course, and she'd made a point of keeping a few expensive bottles on hand (well, moderately expensive - enough to be ostentatious, but nothing bank-breaking,) but they mostly just sat there; more than one had turned to vinegar in between dinners with people she'd used it to impress. Even what she'd drunk, she hadn't really enjoyed. She hadn't thought to; it was just something you did when you had money, right? But maybe it was another of those things she'd overlooked...maybe it was something she just hadn't bothered to appreciate. She was discovering an embarassingly large number of those lately.
She followed the bus along its route until her father got out in a little part of town that she thought she remembered had used to be the main commercial district. It wasn't a run-down area or anything, but it was a lot quieter now than it had been even when she was a child, and it was mostly smaller, privately-owned shops now. She watched from above the roof of one building as her father crossed the street and went into a little bookstore. This was it? This was where he worked? She'd have thought that if he had gone back to work, it would've been for something important. He wasn't a CPA with forty years' experience just to handle bookkeeping at a little hole-in-the-wall store, surely? Even if it looked like a nice-ish hole in the wall... She could've understood if the local hospital's accounting department had had someone put out of commission due to an awkward transformation and he was filling in for that, or something, but this...
...but...well, who was she to be making any judgements about how he spent his time? Her gorge rose at the recurring thought of all the time she'd spent building a career she didn't really want for no reason she could think of. Maybe...maybe he just enjoyed it. Hell, maybe this wasn't a post-Sun thing, even; she hadn't really talked to them about their lives in so long that he could've been back to working part-time for...for five years, anyway, and she might not have known. She thought about going in and seeing what he was doing and what kind of place it was, but she felt awkward enough loitering around people she didn't know; the idea of hanging out in a store where her father worked without even being able to explain to him who she was was uncomfortable even to think about.
For the time being, then, she drifted back toward her parents' neighborhood. That was a good point, about not being able to explain to them. She certainly didn't look like her old self, and she couldn't speak English; she didn't have a new driver's license, either. She'd have to bring Ellen with; even her communication with the doll-woman was limited, but it was orders of magnitude better than her attempts to re-learn spoken English. Ellen could interpret for her, at least enough to explain who she was and to...to make some kind of apology. Maybe even to ask for their help. She could come back tomorrow, maybe, or this weekend; no sense interrupting them if they had other work or something. They probably didn't even want to see her.
On a whim, Anneza touched down in the park. It had changed since she was a child, certainly; the playground equipment was newer, more plastic and rounded than the painted steel bar and wood construction she remembered. But there was still some familiarity to it; there was the little rise that someone was always grilling on top of in the summer, over there the tree she'd gotten stuck in for an hour when she was...six? Seven? Couldn't have been later than eight; eight was when she'd begun to outgrow that sort of thing. Trying to look at least a little inconspicuous, she mock-walked over to the boulder, feeling the grass just brush her bare feet, and climbed on top of it.
When she touched the cool, worn granite, it went straight to her core. Something about this tactile sensation she hadn't felt in decades went down deep into her memory and stirred an emotional response. Anneza was overcome by a powerful sensation of homesickness; it felt like she'd been pierced in the heart. She didn't find herself crying, but she crumpled, almost feeling like gravity itself would take back its mastery of her. She curled up atop the boulder, touching it but not pressed down against it, just staring off into the middle distance. She stayed there for some time.
When she'd managed to collect herself again, she swallowed nervously. She couldn't...she had to admit, she had been waffling. She was going to put off seeing her parents until tomorrow, she was going to put it off until the weekend, she was going to put it off as long as it felt like it might be somewhat uncomfortable...she couldn't do that. She had to see them. She'd...it was getting late...or no, it wasn't. Her mother had been setting the meat to marinate, she wouldn't be baking it until her father was going to be coming home from work. They lived on a night schedule, of course. (It surprised her how quickly she'd stopped thinking of time in night-side terms; but then, she'd had quite a roller-coaster week.)
No, she couldn't put it off. She'd go back and get Ellen. She made good time when flying; even though her parents' house was halfway into the next state, it'd hardly taken her an hour to get here. Even if her father worked a half-shift, she could get Ellen and be back well before he was done; she could explain to her mother first, and see how she took it, and maybe...maybe if they wanted to see her, she could stay for dinner...she wondered if she had an unopened bottle of wine left. She couldn't remember whether white or red was supposed to go with chicken...oh what the hell, was that even a real rule, or just some stupid thing she'd memorized? She'd just take one and hope it was something nice.
