Bird left Galveston Island sixteen years ago. Only months before the twin towers fell in New York City.

And now she was back to a place she’d once called home and then tried a decade and a half trying to forget about.

She was a child when she left. Not yet twenty. The world had not yet been changed by tragedy. Now she was a woman. She had grown up but felt she still had a lot of growing to do. She’d made decisions she had thought were the right decisions. Now everything unraveled. And everything was unsure.

Here she was returning home. To her family. What was left of it anyway. She was running again, from where she’d run to, after she’d killed her own husband.

There’d been so many unanswered questions in her childhood. Things she never knew to understand. Now the things happening in womanhood brought her home for answers, while having collected new questions, all which seemed to intertwine. Past and present. Bird felt that perhaps her childhood had caught up to her.

She had no clue where to begin. Or why she had come back. The questions now seemed faint, unformed, but there seemed to be a beating heart of answers that brought her back to the island. And her soul seemed to follow that beat.

What if there are no answers? What if she doesn’t come to understand? And what if she can’t make the hard decisions she must make? And will she be on her own? And what if what happened to them happens to her?

~

This is one view out of one of my eleven windows from my tree-house loft where I write Behind The White Gate from.

The year I wrote this novel I rarely even left this sun-filled loft. Most days the sun bleached across the cherry stained wood floors making you want to curl up for a nap like a cat.

Other days the storms raged outside these windows, rattling them with their winds as if knocking to be let in.

And others the rain would fall softly and drizzly outside of them, streaking down the panes while I was safe and dry inside with a warm cup of coffee.

Writing my book.

This window had a grand view of much of the island. One direction was the tallest building on the island, shown here, a wee bit more to the right and there was the harbor, to the left slightly and there was down town and more lean to the left and the victorian East End. Look below and a yard planted with avocado and lemon and fig tree’s.

This was my view. My tree-house. My loft. My home. My little hiding place away from the world I receded from in this year. More and more every day. As I dove greatly into the world of Bird and Behind The white Gate.