Hurry to the Beach House

As I walked down the road, I found a sign next to a driveway that indicated I had the right place. I walked down the driveway and crested the last hill to look down at the amazing little approached what Mira had called Palacio Pequeña de Parker. Which I interpreted as the Parker family's McMansion.

The place was a sprawling building with so many windows that it appeared as if someone had turned as much of the walls into window as architecture permitted. Clearly the Parker's weren't worried about people peaking into their vacation home. As I peered in, I didn't spot anyone moving about, so it wasn't a surprise when nobody answered the door. Fortunately, Mira had thought of this and told me that there was a key hidden in the pot containing the baby palm tree on the front porch. Taking the not actually hidden key from the pot, I slipped it in the lock and let myself in to the Parker's house.

Stepping inside was a just the tiniest bit awe inspiring. {if husband==true}Part of me knew that I could have had a house like this someday, if The Asshole hadn't kicked me to the curb like so much trash, and it nearly brought tears of... rage, yep, totally tears of rage and definitely not tears of pain and loss, to my eyes.{endif} Looking around, I spotted a seat and shoe rack, which was packed with shoes as well as having a plethora of other shoes scattered across the floor around it, and decided to set down my bag, which I had been **** to carry, due to the unpaved road and lack of a side walk, and take off my own shoes.

That done, I took my suitcase and moved into the kitchen. To say it was nice is an understatement, but the pile of dishes in the sink and the illuminated "cycle complete" light on the dishwasher made it pretty obvious that my sister and her friends weren't making much of an effort to keep it clean and orderly.

If the shoe rack and kitchen were a little messy, the bedrooms looked like the scene of the avatar of bedlam made manifest. There were clothes everywhere, as though the girls had decided to unpack by grabbing handfuls from their suit cases and throwing them into random locations across the room. Two of the beds didn't even have sheets on them, either pulled down to the foot of the bed by their elastic, in one case, or taken off entirely and tossed into the nearest corner of the room, in another.

"Good grief," I said to myself. "I hope that Mira isn't quite this messy or spending the week with her is going to be anything but relaxing." I tried to think back to my younger days and decided that, no, in fact, I had never been this messy. Fortunately for me, I located Mira's room soon after and, though she hadn't bothered to hang up anything but a rather slinky evening dress, she had at least tossed the rest of her clothes haphazardly into the open drawers of the dresser, making the mess easy for me to push out of sight.

I hung up my clothes and made the bed before heading back out to the kitchen. There I spotted a notepad that I had somehow overlooked earlier and immediately recognized my sister's handwriting. Grabbing it, I slipped out the back door and past the barbecue, not surprisingly, also covered in the burned bits of a previous meal, and over to the small combination pool and hot tub which seemed slightly ironic, given the entirety of the Pacific visible through the gate in the back wall and down a sandy path.

Sitting on a lounge chair, I read the note my sister had left:

Lexi, I'm glad that you're reading this, because it means you had a safe flight and got here okay. As I said, we're going out sailing today with some cool guys we met at the club! I don't know when we'll be back, but we're planning on eating at their yacht club and then heading into town to hit the clubs after dark.

As you've probably noticed, cell reception is poopy around here, but we should have it by the time we go clubbing, so call me and we'll meet up then. Tiff says that you can take one of the bikes from the garage or you can take the bus (the schedule is in my room, I think.)

Love you lots, Mira❣

PS. Guess what we're doing tomorrow? Hint: We're going to a church first, so that you can get all confessed before. Hint2: Remember that comment about being an angel, well, this'll be kinda like spreading those wings and flying.