With their move, everything was supposed to get better. A new city, new people, a fresh start. Far away from her former life. A place where no one knew her and she knew no one.

And yet, here Mila was. Back in Bon Temps. A little town in the middle of Louisiana. A jackpot.

Just for a few days, that's all, then back to New Orleans. After the funeral, gone. That. Was. This. There was no reason to stick around.

Now for the 'problem'. As a vampire, it was not possible for Mila to go out on the streets and do things at the 'usual' times. Those times were over. For a very long time. The 'normal' hours, when shops and services were open, she could not visit accordingly. There were a few stores that stayed open late so she could shop, but most of them closed early. The best conditions to organize a funeral. So she had no choice but to do everything by phone. Telephoning, a thing she hated. As if someone was going to make an exception so that she could take care of one thing or another after dark, like flowers, the headstone or the coffin. That was her problem, not the employees' or the owners'.

There was no advantage, even if vampires were now considered a 'normal' part of society. Too many people didn't want vampires in their town, let alone as neighbors. Just don't. Did anyone think about the children when they passed this law? Probably not. And since Mila knew her hometown, it shouldn't be much different here. A place of small-minded and ignorant people.

▪︎

For longer than was necessary, or should have been, Mila sat in the car and looked toward her father's house... her house. It was her house now.

A long, finished snort escaped Mila's lips, after which it took another second or two for her to reach for the lever, open the car door, get out, and grab her bag from the back seat. As she trudged across the path from the driveway to the porch, she looked through her keys and slipped one of them into the keyhole, only to find that nothing had changed. Then as now. The key fit, but it could only be turned halfway, and that was that. In more than ten years, her father had failed to replace the lock or have it replaced.

After a hard push with her shoulder against the door, Mila stood in the hallway of her old house and didn't know what to do.