Sometimes you just find yourself plopped right into a situation you never foresaw coming about. Like when your hairdresser just decides to cut in choppy layers without asking you, but then once you have them, you realize you look like a spunky rock goddess and love it.

Or when you go through a drive-through ordering one thing but when you get your food back home you find some crazy green stuff instead of the cheese fries you thought you were having and you eat it anyway trying to be agreeable only to be violently sick all night long.

You might go into something thinking you'll have one outcome, and then come out with something entirely different.

Sometimes those revelations are good, sometimes not.

I'm still waiting to see if this familiar-looking woman staring back at me expectantly is going to be like rock goddess layers or green mystery goop.

"Do you remember me at all, dear?" she asks, her deep blue eyes wet with emotion I don't understand.

Do I remember her?

I recognize her name, and her house, and maybe even her face, but do I actually know her?

My brain scans over all those foggy times before I started bouncing around into other foster homes, while my mouth just hangs open like a fly trap with no words coming out.

I do remember a few things....

I faintly remember seeing her face over me while I was being tucked in. I faintly remember something about baking and the smell of flour, and singing....and I remember crying. I know I cried when I left this place with a social worker. That's what I remember most. That I didn't want to leave.

"Do you want to come inside?" she asks, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes creasing as she smiles reassuringly.

"I'm..." I look back to the curb where the cab still waits, the driver looking annoyed. "I was leaving."

She nods, but insists. "I promise I won't take much of your time," she says. "I have to give you something."

Intrigued, but also a bit wary, I stall on the sidewalk for a moment before I finally turn and pay the driver who peels away with squealing tires. "Only for a minute," I agree and she smiles so big her eyes almost sparkle. "Let me help you with that." I step forward and take one of the large paper sacks from her and she thanks me as she leads the way up the driveway to the front door and fishes out her keys.

As the lock slides her eyes come back to mine and she looks me over once with a grin and watery eyes. "My god, you sure have grown into a beautiful young woman," she tells me as she pushes the door open and I follow her inside.

All. So. Familiar.

The dark wood stairs in front of the door, the tan leather couch with the quilt hanging over the back, the painting in the hall of the harbor, and even the lazy little Pomerania that comes wagging his tail to me are all so familiar. Like walking into a dream or something.

"Hi." I lean down to pet the top of his fuzzy black head and he yips and spins under my hand, licking at my fingers.

"He remembers you too," Cathy says, grinning from the hall that I remember leads into the kitchen.

I follow her in, settling the bag on the counter and then turning around to face her again.

"I lived here for a while," I say and she nods as she puts down her own bag and leans back against the counter, hands clasped in front of her.

"You did," she tells me, chewing her bottom lip as I stand awkwardly, ramrod straight and unsure of what to do. "From the time you were a month old until you were just a few weeks shy of your fourth birthday." She looks down at the ground for a moment, clearing her throat before she looks back up, tucking her light blonde hair behind her ears. "Do you remember what happened?"

"No." I shake my head. "I just remember leaving."

She furrows her brows and grimaces. "That's what I was afraid of," she says lowly. "That you wouldn't remember and think I'd abandoned you."

Actually, I thought you'd died.

"I remember you..." I say carefully. "But not much else. When I saw the house driving by, I knew it, but I'm still pretty much just confused."

"Of course you are." She swipes her hands under her eyes. "I'm Cathy, if you don't remember that. I took you in to foster as a favor to a friend of my sister, and I will have you know it was the best decision I ever made, even when I was so young." She laughs a little and the sound of it stirs something in me. "I loved you, getting to watch you grow and learn and you were such a happy little girl." She sniffles. "But I was in a car accident when you were almost four. I was in a coma for a few weeks and then when I woke up I was struggling with injuries that they weren't sure I'd be able to overcome and so they took you when I was still in the hospital and they placed you into a new home. I wasn't a biological relative though and you were a minor so the courts wouldn't disclose to me where you had ended up." Her voice shakes and I have the urge to hug her but I'm not sure if it would be weird.

Scratch that, it would be weird because I'm not much of a hugger.

"I was up towards Atlanta for a while before I got moved back down to Wakefield by middle school," I tell her.

She shakes her head and smiles sadly. "I know," she says. "Once you were eighteen your files weren't sealed anymore and I could make inquiries about you. It broke my heart I'll tell ya, finding out you were right here under my nose for so long. But then you vanished. I looked for you, trying to find a trail and I did find out you were in a small town in Alabama. I hired a private investigator to find you and he dug up a doctor's visit you'd made there, but aside from that your trail was cold. You're a very tough girl to track down." She takes a deep breath and releases it slowly, calming her nerves. "I can't believe as long as I looked, you just showed up on your own. How are you?"

So many ways to answer that simple question.

"I'm...I've been better," I tell her. "But I've also been worse."

"Oh, deary," she sighs, taking a step towards me tentatively, gauging my reactions first before wrapping her arms around me. I'm stiff at first, but after a moment I sag into it. She smells like sugar cookies and magnolia breezes and it takes me back to being a little girl. I might not remember much of it, but I remember that I loved her. "I know I'm a stranger to you now, but you can talk to me if you want to."

She draws back slightly and I suck in my bottom lip. "I don't want to make you more sad."

"I promise to be brave," she tells me and I decide if I'm going to start being more open, why not start right now. Test the limits. Feel it out.

"I hope you mean that, because it isn't a pretty story."

I launch off into my tale of sorrow, betrayals, heartbreak, and torture, all the while the two of us put away the groceries and then end up sitting at the kitchen table, eating out of a carton of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. We take turns crying, and after hours go by we sit quietly, the tick-tock of the old clock on the wall filling the silence.

"How on earth did you get so strong?" she asks finally. "You realize that other normal people wouldn't have gotten through all of the things you have. You're a special girl, Alyssa."

"I don't feel very strong sometimes," I admit.

"You are though." She squeezes my hand. "No one feels strong all the time. Each of us has our own limitations, but you, deary, are special."

A special brand of hopeless sometimes.

I can admit though how good it feels to get it all off my chest. I'd told the truth, only omitting the murders, werewolves, and Stacey.

"Why did you decide to come back to Georgia?" Cathy asks. "I'm pleased as punch that you did, but this place must bring up so much pain for you."

I shrug my shoulders, setting aside my spoon.

"I needed to put it all to rest," I tell her. "The things that happened here weighed so heavy on my chest no matter where I went, and I wanted to come back so bad but I never could. I needed to come back to the start to be able to move forward again," I explain and then shake my head at myself and laugh. "That probably doesn't make any sense." I blush, looking away.

"It does," she assures me and I relax back into the chair.

"Can I ask you a question?" I ask and she nods enthusiastically.

"Please, anything."

"You said you took me in as a favor for a friend?" I say. "What friend?"

Cathy bites into her lips and exhales deeply. "Right, of course." She runs a hand through her hair. "It was a favor to my sister...well, my sister's best friend."

"What do you mean?" I furrow my brows. "Do you know about my...."

"Your parents?" she asks and I nod. "I only know who your mother was." Was. "My sister is eight years younger than I am," she begins. "That little brat has had me wrapped around her finger since she was a child, but she had a best friend through high school that I found...less than desirable for her to be hanging around with." I can tell she's picking her words wisely. "Her name was Alicia Morgan."

Alicia Morgan.

"That's my mom?" I don't know why my voice shakes. I was abandoned at the hospital. Never even named. I shouldn't give a rat's ass about what her name was, but it repeats over and over in my head.

"Yes," Cathy says. "She was into things, like drugs and partying and other recreational activities I didn't approve of my sister hanging around, but they were inseparable. One night, Katelyn, that's my sister, came home crying. When I asked her to tell me what was wrong she refused for as long as she could but eventually shared with me that Alicia was pregnant."

"How old was she?" I gasp and Cathy frowns.

"She was seventeen," she tells me. "And she had her own problems that adding a baby to wouldn't have helped. I promised Katelyn I wouldn't say anything, but I couldn't keep quiet. The first time I saw Alicia afterwards I confronted her about the baby and the father and she had cried on the spot." Her eyes look past me like she's reliving the moment in her mind. "I'd never seen that girl show a bit of emotion before that moment. She was petrified and begged me to help her to...well...get rid of the pregnancy. I refused, obviously, but I suggested that she give the baby up for adoption. She agreed and I only saw her one other time after that."

She pauses for a long moment and I'm not sure if she's going to go on, but she takes a deep breath and looks at me.

"Alicia had hidden her pregnancy, never telling anyone other than my sister and me, and instead of taking my advice and doing right by you, she had you and then left the hospital before they could even try to talk her into even holding you once." She shakes her head disapprovingly even now. "She skipped town afterwards, and Katelyn came to me, begging that I take the baby. She said that Alicia had been in trouble and that's why she had done what she'd done and she convinced me that taking you in with me was the right thing to do. I was so young, just barely moved out of my parents' house at the time. I can't have children of my own though, and so in a way I thought maybe it was God blessing me, and I was right. I only wish I'd been blessed longer."

So learning lesson of the day is that I got my running skills and my knack for bad habits from dear old mom.

"You said you saw her one other time?"

"I did," she says. "Around your first birthday in the middle of the night I woke up to her banging on my door. I'd thought she was here to try to take you away, but she only shoved an envelope into my hands and begged me to keep it safe and give it to you. She said "in case it comes up"." Cathy shrugs. "She was all over the place that night, jumpy and jittery. She told me it might be important though and so I went along with what I had assumed was her high delusions and I counted myself lucky when she left on her own." Cathy clicks her tongue and reaches out for my hand. "However, the next day her body was found mauled to death in a national park a few towns over."

Mauled. As in by an animal. An animal of the wolf variety no doubt. My mom was murdered by wolves.

"What was in the envelope?" I ask slowly, freaking out about what I was supposed to do if my mom had written whatever she might have known about werewolves and then given it to Cathy all willy nilly.

"I never opened it," she tells me. "I put it away and promised Katelyn I'd give it to you when you were old enough. I just didn't know I wouldn't have you long."

"You still have it though?" I ask and she slides her chair back.

"I do." She nods. "I used to carry it with me for years, but eventually I put it away. You just wait here and I'll go grab it."

She moves to the hall and I hear her footsteps up the stairs and into a back bedroom while I sit and freak the fuck out over what my dead mother whose name was Alicia Morgan might have written as her last and only words to me.

I can't obsess long though as I hear someone approaching the house. One quick look at the clock tells me it's far into the late-night hours and houseguests at this time would be out of the ordinary.

Especially houseguests with that heartbeat.

I could pull it from a crowd.

I turn in my chair, looking towards the living room and my jaw hangs open as he knocks on the front door. I can hear each deep breath he takes, the pound of his heart, and the way he shuffles his feet on the porch.

Everything on my mind blurs away, leaving only one name being shouted louder and louder.

Daimon!