Life Is Like A Bowl of Cherries

Prologue

For 16 years, Randall Raines had traveled across the US, flitting from coast to coast. The longest amount of time he’d spent in one place was New York, because getting lost in Manhattan was a cake job. For two years, he and his family had stayed there, and they were happy. But someone came sniffing too close to their history and so they’d hightailed it out to Reno.

For the most part, he adjusted to the frequent change of address well. As long as there was a roof over his head and he could provide for his family, he was satisfied. Kip and Tumbler, who’d joined up with him for reasons of their own, pretty much adopted his point of view. But out of their small “family” of four, the one who didn’t like their constant moving was, in this case, the most important.

His daughter.

Sage Raines didn’t take especially well to switching her life around every seven months. For one thing, it meant making new friends and trying to adjust to new schools, but it also meant she could never get close to anyone. And that made her a bit of a loner.

The medium-sized brunette with eyes the color that earned her name, was not a shy person. But she had a chip on her shoulder, and eventually grew sick of trying to please everyone so she’d finally stopped. She started skipping school, her grades dropped, she hung out with the wrong crowd, dabbled in some hard liquor (not that she ever drank any of it, but her father didn’t need to know that) and got her belly button pierced.

For her father, that was the last straw.

The next day, she came home from school – that day she’d actually gone – to find her entire room full of boxes. All her things were missing and the boxes were everywhere. In the kitchen, the living room, and, when she checked, in her father’s bedroom and even the bathrooms.

She was about to ask her uncle just what in the hell was going on, when her father, whom she very rarely saw, came down from the attic and smiled at her funnily.

“Pack your things,” he’d said, with a funny glimmer in his eye. “We’re moving to Long Beach.”

And so her journey had begun.