Post by Clea Givens on Apr 3, 2016 15:43:00 GMT
It was her domain, the wide plank floors, the gleaming cypress bar top that’d supposedly been made from one of the gnarled old trees that had once edged the bayou, the ranks of glasses that stood in heavily regimented ranks overhead, even the bug ugly old drunks who graced the stools and slumped around the tables. Clea had loved them all the minute she’d arrived in town and although it’d taken her a good six months to convince the previous owner to hand over the keys to her. He’d been a little reluctant at first, although once Doug Johnson, some distant relation of the Frasers apparently, had seen just how much it’d meant to her, he’d caved. She’d gotten herself employed at Half Moon just a couple of days after rolling through the town limits, likely because she’d dropped Alex Fraser’s name when she’d come in and spoken to Doug and it honestly hadn’t taken long for Cloistere to work its way under her skin. It was, Clea thought as she glanced around her bar, the one place she’d stayed where she hadn’t felt that immediate itch to get on the move again.
Years of school in California and the whole time she’d felt like there was somewhere else she’d needed to be, but not here. It had probably helped that the town had welcomed her like some old long lost member of family when she’d arrived. Clea hadn’t tried to place on Alex’s name too much but mentioning a Fraser, and a well-known one at that had worked as an ice breaker. The town had been founded by them, them and the Dupré’s. Researching the way she had as soon as she’d arrived hadn’t endeared her to some but both of the founding families had been pretty forthcoming, especially once they’d realised she wasn’t about to write some scandalous tell-all book that would bring trouble down on them all. Of course she hadn’t mentioned in her thesis that the mythology wrapped around this town was anything more than myth and fable. She hadn’t told her supervisor had she’d watched from the attic of the Dupré house with Josh to watch the wolves run under a full moon or how she’d first seen Katie, her now best friend, demonstrate her powers to her. All of that she’d held very close to her chest, feeling blessed about how much this town had accepted her.
Smothering a smile at the thought now, Clea tugged the bar towel from the back pocket of her jeans and started to wipe down the counter around the cash register. It really had been a feeling of coming home for her, even rousting the grumbling drunks from the bar at the end of the night had felt right to her. She still had her taste for books, and in recent months had started pulling together a history of the town, a family tree of the generations that’d called Cloistere home of sorts, but now that passion had to share time and space with her bar. Hearing somebody walk in now, Clea wiped her hands on the towel and shoved it back in her pocket before looking up to glance in the mirror that lined the back wall of the bar. It was old and spotted in places, her own reflection taking on an almost watery look but it was enough for her to see just who’d stopped in to wet their whistle. They rarely got strangers coming through town so ninety nine times out of a hundred she’d find herself smiling familiarly, as she did now, and turning to automatically fetch ‘the usual’. This time she turned back, determined to give the opportunity for something new. ”I’d offer a menu but I have a feeling it wouldn’t be glanced at anyway. What can I get you this glorious afternoon?” A glance at the wide windows that glazed the entire front of the bar told Clea she’d not been exaggerating over that. It was a pleasant day, the sign shining down on the square, basking the whole town in its spring warmth. Nobody would’ve guessed a murder had happened out there just a couple of weeks ago.
Tagged: Open * Word Count: 699
