The Girl on the Stairs by Barry Ernest

Author:Barry Ernest [Ernest, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biographies
ISBN: 9781455617838
Publisher: Pelican Publishing
Published: 2013-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

February 1981-October 1998

Victoria Adams had settled down. The memories of Dallas—and the fears those memories generated—had all but vanished. Like tossing an extra blanket over the bed on a cold winter’s night, she buried them deep, out of sight.

She didn’t even have dreams about that day anymore.

She was in the Great Northwest now, even farther removed than before. First it was Spokane, then Seattle. She liked this part of the country. It was clean here, safe, even peaceful.

It was a place where one could establish roots, if one chose. And she did, for nearly a decade.

She’d stuck it out with her real-estate career too, making the kinds of business decisions that would gain her listings in Who’s Who of American Women and Who’s Who in the World. She had found her niche.

Then one day she got the urge to move again. Only this time, it was different. No longer was it that sudden impulse to flee; now it was simply a desire to see.

She was getting older, approaching midlife. She wanted to travel America’s highways, view the country up close and personal, drink in its sights and feast on its diversity. For the next six years, she and her husband did just that and only that. They moved about from coast to coast in a five-wheel trailer. She enjoyed every minute of it.

She had always wanted to be a writer, getting a taste of it during her high-school years when she worked and wrote for the Monitor, a small Catholic newspaper in San Francisco. Now on the road, she wrote and published a newsletter called Principles in Action. It was a diary of sorts, a chronicle of the people and stories she met and heard along the way.

Next came the idea of writing a cookbook. The result was a collection of simple but appealing recipes gathered from those who lived beside the blue roads of the land. The title was No More Than 4 Ingredients, and it sold well along the way, providing the extra income that kept this pair of gypsies going.

She loved seeing her country, traveling through nearly all of the contiguous states. By 1997, she had made her way east to Pennsylvania, where the rolling farmland of the central region appealed to her eyes and the simple lives of the Amish appealed to her sense of balance. She became so enamored with the area that she remained there for several months, living near Harrisburg, the state capital, dining in that city and savoring its surrounding attractions.

Then it was over, the journey finished. Reality returned, and so did the itinerant duo—back to the Northwest and the utility bills, the mortgage, the car payments, the humdrum of everyday life.

That would suit Victoria Adams just fine. There would be few changes, few interruptions, few things to remind her of her past, at least for a few more years.

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