Is he still living at his home town now, at sixty-something years old?
you'll see
I wonder what brings Sydney back to Liberty?
you'll see that in the next chapter
Chapter 2
In college, I majored in journalism and creative writing. I’m really not quite sure how I fell into that either. I mean, in high school, I hated English class, but I think that may have just been because we had to read boring books and all that Shakespeare felgercarb. I hated Shakespeare, but I loved journalism, which, I guess, worked out for me rather well. I never really excelled in any particular field of study. My math grades were alright, but is there really a career in that besides a teacher? Trust me I’d make a horrible teacher. Science classes and me didn’t go well together at all; same with history so that left me with journalism.
I had a problem, though. A bachelor’s degree in journalism was all well and good, but how exactly would I make a living doing that? Sure, I could have written for a newspaper in a larger city, maybe, but Liberty didn’t have a newspaper and I had to go back to Liberty.
You see, my mama had diabetes all her life and for the most part she managed it well. She was almost forty by the time I was born, so by the time I graduated college she was sixty years old and, for some reason, her diabetes was affecting her whole body. The doctors weren’t sure why, either. They told her to go see specialists who might be able to help her, but she refused. She always hated doctors. She said it was enough that she had to give herself insulin injections every day; she didn’t need to be poked or prodded by anyone else. This, of course, wasn’t exactly conducive to her health improving, so I had to return to Liberty to take care of her.
Luckily, by that time Liberty was slowly beginning to come into the modern world meaning we were opened up to the wonderful world of the internet. Sure, the stubborn people marched themselves straight to church, praying for God to save them from the devil’s intervention that was the internet, but for me it was a gift. That way, I could find a job that would let me write articles and email them (albeit through dial-up, but that was better than nothing), thus enabling me to make enough money to support myself and my mama.
I got a job, well two jobs actually. One job was a once-a-month column in a magazine for teens encouraging them to major in journalism. That didn’t pay much, but it was fun. The other job was a bi-weekly column about a subject my editor gave me. Usually, I could write the column after doing a bit of research using the internet and I was set. Some would call it a cake job, but it was actually a lot more work that it appeared to be. It wasn’t overly time consuming though, so it allowed me to be able to help my mama the best I could.
For years my mama and I lived that way and it worked for us. Some people wondered if I wasn’t bored or lonely or ‘a loser’ for staying with my mama, but those people just didn’t realize that we were all each other had. We stayed that way until a few weeks before my twenty-seventh birthday, when she passed away in her sleep. Complications from her diabetes, the doctors told me.
That was hard. I have to tell you, it was probably the hardest thing in my life. For nearly twenty-seven years she had been there and suddenly she was gone and I was alone… well, not exactly alone. That’s one of the benefits (and sometimes a curse) of a small town like Liberty. The moment word of her death got out I had more people showing up to help me than I knew what to do with. They all volunteered to help me with funeral preparations and everything; I didn’t have to do a thing, which was good, because I doubt I was in much of a state to make important decisions.
The drawback, however, to letting them take over, was that they planned my mama’s funeral to take place in Liberty Baptist Church. Like I mentioned before, I’d never set foot in a church in my entire life, neither had my mother (at least not in her adult life). We never talked about God or the Bible or nothing like that, so, let me tell you, it was a big shock when that preacher came up to me and told me how my mama was in heaven with all the other angels. Luckily he could see that I really wasn’t in any state for a Bible lesson or a lecture on the sin of not attending church. After that day, though, I never went back; never had a reason to.
Now, you see, I’m to the part where this story really begins. After mama’s funeral, I was sort of lost with myself. Looking back, I see that my problem was that I was waiting for something to happen, as if some switch would be flicked and everything would fall into place. However, that was not the case. I didn’t know what to do with myself. There I was in Liberty, thinking I had to stay, but really I didn’t. Then, to my horror I realized that the town had gotten under my skin like it does and I was trapped there. I begrudgingly came to realize that I enjoyed recognizing the faces of those who I passed on the street. I enjoyed (albeit some days more than others) that I couldn’t simply go into Dobson’s and buy my groceries without having a twenty five minute conversation with Mrs. Dobson and whomever else was in the store at the time. Mostly, though, I doubted I’d be able to survive any place else. For twenty-seven years, I’ve had the snail-paced way of life from the deep south engrained within me; ridding myself of it would be near impossible.
So, there I was, walking down Main Street on my way to Dobson’s to pick up some food for the weekend when I saw her. Her brown hair floated out behind her, carried by the light breeze blowing, as she walked down the street towards me and though she was wearing large, oversized sunglasses and dressed in clothing far too warm for the temperature outside, I knew it was her. Sydney Bristow had returned to Liberty, but the question was… why?