Late Bloomer

Chapter 1


Brentwood, California

Twenty Years Later


Cady Jordan felt sick to her stomach and wasn't sure why. She looked down at the pizza she was eating as if it were the culprit. She'd already consumed four slices. Two would have been enough. She couldn't ever remember eating four slices, much less five. She dropped the wedge in her hand into the box. It wasn't just a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach she was experiencing. She was jittery, too, her right eye twitching, something that only happened when she was under a great deal of stress. She sighed as she swigged from a can of Coca-Cola. Just what she needed, caffeine for her already jangled nerves.

Cady tucked her yellow tee shirt into her worn, faded jeans. Her favorite jeans. They had to be ten years old at least. Holes in both knees, the back pockets long since gone. She would never give them up because they were like an old friend. Like Pete, Andy, and Amy. She decided to make a fashion statement and tied a yellow ribbon she plucked from the doorknob around her ponytail. Now, she was ready.

The sounds of the movers seemed exceptionally loud to her ears. Maybe that's why she was jittery. No one liked to pack up and move. She thought of all the hours she'd spent packing her belongings, being extra careful to wrap the dishes and glassware securely. Her books, mostly hardcover novels and reference books, had taken up an unbelievable twenty-five boxes. Brentwood, California, was a long way from Indigo Valley, Pennsylvania, where her grandmother had grown up and returned to live after being away for so long.

The grunts and groans of the movers in the living room reminded her that she still had some miscellaneous packing to do before the movers left. She got up and took the last of the small appliances out of the pantry.

Her grandmother needed her, at least that's what her mother had implied. Not that she really paid much attention to what her mother said these days. Then she thought about her grandmother's age, and the fact that she'd been in the hospital. That alone couldn't be good. It was time to pay her grandmother back a little for all the wonderful things she had done for her. Her grandmother had always been there for her, even putting her own life on hold to take care of her after her accident. Now it was her turn to put her life, such as it was, on hold. How could she not head back to Pennsylvania to help in whatever way she could

If it wasn't that her grandmother needed her, she probably would have stayed right where she was for the rest of her life. New places, meeting new people intimidated her. When she bought the house in Brentwood five years ago, she'd thought she was putting down roots. What she was really doing was picking a nice safe haven where she could work at her own pace and not have to get involved too much with people. Writing technical manuals for Integrated Circuits, Inc. part-time allowed her the freedom to choose her own hours as well as her own workplace, thus enabling her to work on her dissertation and still remain independent of her parents and grandmother. She might have thought she was putting down roots, but what could she possibly know about that process She had never been rooted anywhere when she was growing up because her mother and father had always lived like gypsies, moving from town to town, preaching the gospel according to Asa Jordan.

On her eighteenth birthday, when her parents had announced they would be moving again, right after her high school graduation, Cady had made the decision to stay where she was, get a job, and work her way through college. She had graduated from UCLA with a master's in English and was just months away from getting her doctorate. Now she would have to put that goal on hold.