Harper's Hill, Chapter 5: A Town Filled With Faces

Fall in Harper's Hill was always beautiful, even on the East side of town, where there wasn't too much that looked all that pretty. Travelling over the hill during Fall was nice, because Emily got to be at the top of the hill and see all of the trees changing colours. The forest looked like it was on fire. But it was also bittersweet, because she knew that Winter was coming, and she had a hell of a time with the big hill when it was covered in ice.

After last Winter, James had requested that Emily take the season off from her delivery services. The hill was a huge hazard when it was covered in ice and snow, and as her big brother (and mechanic), he felt like it was his job to put his foot down.

Emily considered it for about a second and a half, because James was right — the hill was super dangerous in the Winter, and even though she felt she was a good driver, there had been a few situations last year that Emily didn't want to be in again.

But then she thought about her customers. She knew that these people were used to getting the items they needed on a regular basis, and she couldn't do that to them. She also didn't want anyone to have to go out and face the cold. So her and James agreed that she would focus more on her writing in the Winter and only do two grocery runs a week, weather-permitting. He would also supplement some of the income that she would be losing, but it wouldn't be much.

It was Saturday, so it was the busiest day to travel to the West side, but Emily had a lot of customers, so she always did four runs every week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. She found that a lot of people got paid from their jobs or their assistance cheques on Friday, so she had to make the extra trip on Saturday to cater to everyone.

She always felt like she was in another world when she was in the West side. She felt like she was among a different species, though that was obviously not the case. Just because they were rich didn't mean they were superior to her (but inside she kind of felt like that wasn't actually true).

She had spent the previous night on her laptop, stalking her uncles on Facebook. She decided that it would be easiest to start from oldest to youngest. The first person she searched up was her Uncle Nate. She knew her Mom's maiden name was Leigh, but nothing came up when she searched for Nate Leigh, so she tried Nathan Leigh.

She found a Nathan Leigh that owned a construction company based out of Harper's Hill, so she assumed that it was her uncle. Prestige Construction was located in the West side and had good reviews, but that was about all she gathered from that, so she went back to his profile.

She eventually found him tagged in a family photo, posted by someone named Eliza. She concluded after some investigating that this was his wife, who would be her aunt. Emily didn't know if she'd ever met her. It seemed like they had three children, two girls and a boy. They all looked around her age, and the names tagged were Nicole, Liam, and Sophie.

He seemed like he had his life all set up, and she didn't want to intrude, so she moved onto the next uncle. She had a great memory for her family history, and she knew that her mom's next brother was Julian, but Emily remembered that he went by Jules. She searched up Jules Leigh, but found nothing. She searched Julian Leigh, and again found nothing. She was about to give up, but then she went back to Uncle Nathan's page.

Luckily, she could access his friends. As soon as she typed in J-U, one profile popped up — Jules Johnson. This had to be it, and as soon as she clicked on the profile, she recognized her mother in the face in the photo. Her Uncle Jules looked just like her mom. She realized that he was married to a man named Isaac, which would explain the different last name. They had a lot of photos with a teenage girl tagged as Camille Johnson, and Emily guessed she must be their daughter.

Jules had paramedic listed for a job, as well as a bunch of places where he volunteered. She assumed that he would be too busy to rehash the past, so she moved on. Next was Uncle Daniel. Still on Uncle Jules' profile, she searched through his friends and found a Daniel Leigh. His job wasn't listed, and there was actually not much on his profile at all. She couldn't get any perspective on him, so she moved on.

Finally, she searched for Alexander Leigh. He was the youngest of the four brothers, and she was pretty sure he lived in Redwood Valley. Sure enough, there was an Alex Leigh who had his location listed as Redwood Valley, and the job listed was wildlife photographer.

She felt like she had no options left. Uncle Alex looked nice enough, and she thought that maybe it was a good sign that he lived in Redwood Valley instead of Harper's Hill. She decided to message him.

As she did her grocery run the next day, she thought about how she hadn't received a response yet from him. Last time she had checked her Facebook, there was nothing. She finished her grocery run and drove back towards the East side, and she couldn't stop herself from subconsciously trying to find her uncles' faces in the crowd.

Once she got back home and was all done about an hour and a half later, she sat down on the couch. She was about to feel defeated when her phone buzzed. She immediately sat up. She picked up her phone and saw that it was a message from Alex Leigh:

"Hi Emily. Do you want to meet for coffee and talk?"