It was two days later when my tears were finally dry and I felt like I could breath without holding on to my chest. I ventured outside of the house determined to do one thing. just collect my father's things and bring them home where they belonged. My moms car sat unused in the driveway and I wished I'd learned to drive. I stared at it longingly and thought about the summer my father let me drive around the backroads up north. I was terrible. But trying to breathe had always been the one thing I'd had to be good at, and everything else seemed to take a backseat to that struggle. People always asked me why I had trouble breathing if I had good lungs and a bad heart, and my dad always said "you can have a car in great shape but if your pump doesn't pump, nothing else gets the juice". Truth was my lungs always got too much, a large weak heart let's your lungs build fluid which is really hard for air to work through.

I arranged for a driver to pick me up and take me to the office at ten am and made sure to pick a service that would provide a driver that would accommodate carrying the boxes to the car when I needed a pickup. My body was still weak, but I needed to do this and getting help made it easier. I didn't worry about spending the money, my aunt had assured me my father had planned for the future and things would be fine for a very long time.

When the car service pulled up to the gate at Gen Tech the guard on duty looked menacing. He marched to the driver's side of the car and made a gesture with his hand to the indicating he should turn the car around and leave.

"What should I do?" The driver stared in the rearview mirror as he asked, his large hairy brows creased so hard they turned into one long caterpillar like vision.

I rolled down my window and motioned for the guard who stomped his way over to my backseat window. "No trespassing. No visitors. Turn the car around."

I almost told the driver to do it, I had never see the company as aggressive or secretive. Coming here when I was younger it had always been a place for candy and adventurous days away from home with dad.

"I'm Cassie Summers. I'm here to clean out my father's office. I made an appointment with someone." I practically yelled it, hoping the words sunk through the helmet and penetrated past the scowl the guard wore.

He marched back to the booth and picked up the phone without saying a word. The driver, whose eyes never left the mirror stared at me, a small bead of sweat trickling from his hairline.

Suddenly the gate opened and the guard waved us past the booth. "You're clear Ms. Summers. Main door. Stop at the desk."

Somehow the all clear didn't give me much relief, and the driver's posture became stiffer as he crept into the gated premises and quickly made his way to the door.

When I got out of the car another guard stood at the entrance. I tried to take it all in stride, trying to recall the last time I had been here, and what exactly my father said they did here. Suddenly I wished I'd paid just a little attention to his never ending barrage of words. He was an engineer for the government. Well paid, and happy. He had always seemed happy about his work.

"I do what normal scientist do Cassie. I make people happy, and better. I'm going to make you better."

He had said it a million times, and I believed it. As I walked through the door escorted by the guard I realized for the first time, I had no idea what my father did but from the looks of it, I was about to find out.

"Name?" Her screeching voice pulled me from my memory and I snapped my gaze away from the guard and towards the small round woman sitting behind the desk. A gasp escaped my lips as I immediately made a connection between her voice and looks to the secretary in Monsters Inc.

"Umm, Cassie. Cassie Summers. I'm here to clean out my father's office. I have an appointment. Well, with the office. Not with a person."

She tapped her nails on the phone as if I were supposed to say more. I just stare at her blankly, this is my first business interaction. After a stare down, she looks toward the guard and gives him a nod. He turns and leaves my side without a word or glance.

"Have a seat please, Kyle will be down in just a minute." It's supposed to sound sweet, compassionate maybe, but it doesn't, and for some reason I wait a moment longer letting a bitter word hang on my tongue unsaid before I back away from the desk and sit.

I look around at everything and nothing trying to find my father in the shadows. Tracing in my imagination the steps he took, wondering if the breath he had taken weeks ago still lingered in the air, and if somehow it was now traveling through my body recognized by his heart sitting within my chest. Was it possible that I could capture him here?

"Cassie! Oh my gosh is it really you?"

A swirl of motion occurs to my left as hands reach out, grab me, and pull me out of the chair into an embrace. I stiffen. It's the first time I've been hugged, aside from Agnes, in a month and it's foreign to me. Especially considering I have no idea who smells like summer and feels like a solid tower of muscle. Until he backs up.

His blue eyes sparkle and golden wavy hair flies in all directions as he looks me over. Memories lick and tingle in the back of my mind. Picnics and pigtails and someone pushing me around in a wheelchair because I couldn't make the trek from the car to the field. Being at my dads bosses house, in the shade by a pool sulking that I wasn't strong enough to swim. Pouting until a crazy boy gave me a water gun and even from the chair let me feel like I was playing.

"Kyle?"

"The one and only. I knew you couldn't forget me! And whoa. You look amazing. I mean really amazing. I've never seen you healthy. I mean, I'm sorry Cassie. I'm so so sorry." His face crumpled and tears filled his eyes making the blue shimmer even more like sun glimmers on a lake.

"I know Kyle, I'm sorry too." It seemed inadequate but what else can someone say? It sucked. And it didn't. Because I was alive. And my new heart beating was leaping around for the very first time for something other than being broken. It was a mess of feelings and emotions I still hadn't been able to sort.

He entered a code on the keypad and walked me through the door. The long hallway was bright and empty reminding me of hospitals, or worse. I felt myself on the edge of panic, memories of hospitals and pain trying to claw to the top. Kyle put his hand on my arm and snapped me back to reality, impulsively I leaned closer, thankful he was there.

"The company already took everything related to past and current projects. The boxes are behind the door. And I'm completely free if you want me to help."

As he opened the door I waited, expecting the same warm feeling I had when I'd first got back home to hit me. But the office was sterile. The piles of papers from memory gone. Even the desk which had always been completely covered in post its and leaning mounds threatening to topple contained a single item. A picture of our family, dusted and angled to look as if he'd sat staring at it.

Something crawled across my mind. A slow creeping feeling like the cotton from a dandelion. I didn't have a great memory, my focus had always been consumed by my heart and trying not to die. But there was one thing I was sure of. This was not my father's office.

They could have cleaned the smell, gotten rid of papers and dusted everything in the room, but there's no way possible that they had changed the layout of the entire office or the view from the window. I know it didn't happen earlier because a main topic of my dad's homecoming was telling me what he saw from his window facing the woods. Something was off, and I was going to find out what.

*****************************
So Cassie is already forming that instinct that there's a lot more going on here than boxes and drawers waiting to be emptied. And Kyle!! Now there's a surprise from the past. Hang on, we're on the way up, any theories on what's hiding behind door number one? Thanks for tuning in!