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The thing about surprises were,they only worked if the people you were surprising were actually home.
After travelling for the past two days taking one eight-hour bus ride, four flights and having two six-hour layovers, Easton Bishop showed up at his parents’ house in Sacramento to find the door locked and all the lights off. It wasn’t exactly the scene that he’d hoped to be met with when he left Tanzania forty-eight hours earlier.
He knocked for several minutes before pulling out his phone and calling his mom. She picked up after the third ring. Casually, so as to not ruin the surprise about him being back in the States, he inquired about what she was doing. It was only then he found out that she and his dad were in Palm Springs for the next three weeks. They’d be coming home on Thanksgiving Day. Which he would have known if he had social media. Apparently, she’d been posting up a storm.
Speaking of storms, the one that he was currently driving in was getting worse by the minute. The weather conditions were not what he’d expected when he set out on what should have been a three hour drive up to Hope Falls but was turning out to be closer to six.
After striking out at his parents’ house, he’d decided to head up to the mountains, which was where his final destination was going to be anyway. He’d only planned on popping in to see his parents for a day or two, but that hadn’t been in the cards. Thankfully, his parents had let him keep his ’89 Ford pickup at their house since he didn’t have a home base to call his own. It was basically the only thing he owned in the world that couldn’t fit in a duffle bag. So, after a twenty-minute search for the correct rock that the hide-a-key was in, he was able to get into the garage where the key to the truck was hanging on the rack and he was on his way.
In the past few years, two of his three brothers had relocated to a small mountain community hidden in the Sierra Nevadas. He’d only been there once, so he didn’t know the terrain all that well. But he did know that it had been at least an hour since he’d seen anything resembling civilization and the signs he passed told him that there wasn’t anything for another thirty miles.
Thirty miles might not seem like that far, but in this weather, which was getting worse by the minute, it might as well be a thousand miles away.
He grabbed his phone to call one of his brothers to let them know he was on his way, just in case he didn’t make it. At least someone would know where he was. But when he looked down, he saw that he had no reception.
For the past twelve years while he traveled around the world, he’d been for all intents and purposes living off the grid. He’d had a phone, but most of the time the places he lived didn’t have great reception and it had never bothered him. For some reason, being back in the States and being faced with the same situation made him uneasy.
Maybe it was because for the first time in his life he was actually going to be doing something for himself.
He’d dedicated most of his adult life, his entire adult life if he counted the six years he’d spent in the Marines, to the service of others. He’d engineered and dug irrigation systems so that thousands of people would have clean water. He’d built houses, huts, schools, and orphanages. He’d worked on infrastructures that educated people about sustainable living and solar energy. And now he was going to take a year to himself to write a book. He wasn’t sure whether it would be about the lessons he’d learned on his journey, or short stories about his adventures, or it might even be something fiction.
All he knew was by this time next year, he was going to be a published author. He’d wanted to write a book since he’d read Charlotte’s Web in third grade. He’d loved that story and had always thought that one day he was going to be an author.
His life had gone in a different direction, but now he planned on making his childhood dream a reality. And once Easton set his mind to something, he accomplished it. It was really as simple as that.
This year, he was going to settle down in one place and write. He also planned on spending some much-needed quality time with his family. He’d considered moving back to his hometown which was the state capitol of California aka Sac-town, where both of his parents still lived in his childhood home. But he’d sort of fallen in love with the small town feel of Hope Falls when he’d visited it for his brother’s wedding.
Plus, he missed his brothers and he wanted to get to know his new sister-in-law, the one he didn’t grow up with. Shayne Fox was an actress who even he’d been aware of despite the fact he’d spent the last decade in remote areas most of which had no electricity or running water.
His oldest brother Evan, who was a hotshot, had worked as a consultant on a film Shayne had starred in called Red Card Warning. The film had gone on to be nominated for several Academy Awards including for best picture, best cinematography, best actor, and best actress.
Shayne did not end up winning the golden statue, but Easton had seen her in interviews saying that as much as it would have been nice to win an Oscar, she’d won the only man she needed when she made the film, his brother Evan.
His youngest brother Eli had also tied the knot, but he’d ended up with someone Easton was very familiar with. Mackenzie Sutton had been Eli’s childhood sweetheart but then, they’d broken up. To this day Easton still wasn’t clear on the reason.
He knew his youngest brother had always loved Kenzie, and honestly, he’d never been able to figure out what had torn them apart. But whatever the reason, they’d managed to find their way back to each other.
Eli was also a firefighter and Mackenzie was in the film business as well, but unlike Shayne, Kenzie was behind the camera as a documentary filmmaker.
His other brother Everett had met his wife in Hope Falls as well, but the two had ended up relocating to the East Coast for work.
His brothers weren’t the only familial ties he had to Hope Falls or firefighting for that matter. His cousin Deanna, who was like a sister to him and his brothers, also lived in the quaint mountain town and had the distinction of being the first female firefighter for the HFFD.
Easton had always been close to his family and had missed them over the years he’d spent abroad. But lately…lately it had felt like more than just missing. He’d felt a void in himself, a restlessness, an emptiness that he’d never experienced before.
He wondered if it was because his brothers and cousin were all married and he knew that they would be starting families soon. Easton had never seen himself walking down the aisle. He’d been in three serious relationships with incredible women, but they’d all ended for the same reason, he hadn’t put a ring on it.
He’d dated Alicia for four years when he was in the Marines. She was a medic who he met when she treated him after his unit had been ambushed during a non-combat evacuation during his first deployment in Afghanistan. Alicia was sweet and caring and he’d loved her, but when she found out that he had no plans of settling down even after he was out of the service, she broke up with him.
Then there was Risha, who he’d worked with in New Delhi when he worked on an irrigation system for an impoverished community. She was passionate, smart, and hilarious. They were together for two years and at the beginning of their relationship, she’d said that she never wanted to have kids or settle down. She loved her independence and hadn’t wanted to be married. But her desires changed over time. They ended things when she realized that she did want a ring on her finger and little Rishas running around.
Carrie was a woman who he’d met when he was living in Moscow working to build a new orphanage with heating and running water. She was a few years older than him. When they met, he was thirty-two and she was thirty-eight.
She was brilliant, gorgeous, and loved her freedom and lifestyle. Again, things started off with both of them being on the same page. She was divorced and said that she had no desire to walk down the aisle again and that kids weren’t in the cards for her. But, like Risha, that changed. She told him on their two-year anniversary that she did want to get married and have kids. Apparently turning forty had made her reevaluate her life. He loved Carrie, but he hadn’t wanted the same things that she had, so he told her the truth, that he didn’t see a future with her.
Now he’d been single for a few years, and in that time all three of his brothers, and his cousin, had gotten married. He hated to admit it, but for a while now he’d felt like he was on the outside of a party looking in through a window. Which surprised the hell out of him. He’d never had FOMO when it came to people in relationships. But he found himself having those feelings when he talked to his brothers and he could hear how happy they were with their significant others.