VeronaHills, Round Nineteen: Teatherton
Rain or shine, Alex made friends - and more.
She wondered if she was too old to hold onto regrets, like never making good on her rebellious promise to her parents and running away from Riverblossom Hills as a teen. The result of staying was more regrets. When she became a young mum, all she could think about was stuffing her backpack with miscellaneous layers and sticking her thumb out on the main road out of the village. In the end, she did pretty much exactly that. There was no running away from that fact.
New friends and new connections in Desiderata Valley were a lifeline. She'd tried to make a go of it, in that trailer at the foot of the hill with Cyd and his pup and his puppy dog eyes - that reminded her, she needed to send the good vet a postcard from paradise. Wish you were here! And she really did, because the present day was perfect.
She played poker in her pyjamas with Dixie and her husband Edwin. She ran out from the waves to the sidewalk to introduce herself to Dixie's older sister Mary (they bonded over dogs being the best creature on earth). She met Nylissit for a rendezvous under the stars.
When she returned to the earth one day (metaphorically, as her ashes were to be scattered at sea), Alex knew her legacy would be more infamous than kindly. Betty Goldstein's Wikipedia page (socialite, philanthropist, etcetera) still had an obnoxiously long section about the yacht robbery, with the name Alexandra O'Mackey floating around in the edit section, trimmed out by lawyers post-Betty-mortem. The nerve to use her old name in the first place - no way she was able to work out the internet! The lovely younger wife must've helped. Oh, Bianca - good thing she was so beautiful. Gone too, now.
Gone, too, Alex Teatherton would one day be. Certainly not forgotten, for many reasons. She would understand if Jules struggled with what to say to condolences, or couldn't say much at all.
Was there still time to try again?
