Chapter One

San Francisco International Airport

August, 2008

Rachel gratefully accepted the small glass of orange juice that the smiling flight attendant handed down to her. The hot California night humidity hung heavily in the air outside on the apron and she welcomed the cool climate control of the aircraft. Buckling her safety belt snugly against her lap, she settled in for the flight ahead by tucking folders pulled from her briefcase into the little pouch in the back of the seat in front of her. She had plenty of planning to do to keep her entertained in the five or so hours ahead.

With the plane gathering speed down the runway she allowed herself one final look at the landscape littered with twinkling lights that she was leaving behind her before firmly snapping the oval blind shut once they were airborne. No more looking back.

A ripple of excitement mixed with nerves travelled down to her toes as she flipped through the various sheets and files she was now spreading out on her flip tray. This was the job of a lifetime, a promotion she would never have deemed possible, at least not in her old life anyway. 

But then the accident had changed all that, it had changed everything.

The immediate aftermath of that terrible day when she had in the blink of an eyelid lost everything that she lived for was hazy to say the least. She had seemed to just float in some sort of hideous nightmare from day to day and month to month. The worst memories she had blanked from her mind, funerals, birthdays and anniversaries no longer seemed to exist. She refused to allow them to exist – they had no part in her life.

Work for a long time, had been her only routine that seemed to remain unshakable. With the recent crash in the economy many might have thought the real estate industry would have crashed simultaneously. While turnovers may not have been as impressive as they once were there had been no cease in the workload and the company she worked for had continued to turn in comfortable profits. Home owners were struggling though to make ends meet and in her job she was dealing with more and more foreclosures and forced evictions than she had ever thought possible. Perhaps if she had remained the same person she once was a few years ago she would have found it heart breaking to see so many families in financial turmoil but ‘this’ Rachel who she now was opted to remain cool and unattached. Her job was her life but lately it seemed to have lost some of the challenges that drove her to be the best she could.

The delight she had once found in finding a family the perfect home or closing a really big sale had faded perhaps due to the fact that she no longer thrived on happiness. Happiness was a bonus in life but not a necessity. She didn’t require it to live her life; she functioned just fine without it. What she couldn’t function without were challenges. A meandering dull life allowed too much time for retrospect and that lead to nothing but trouble. It had been on just such a typically dull day at a bank conference that her next big challenge had presented itself, in a way she had never dreamt of.

James Michaels, the guy that had introduced her to real estate all those years ago had suddenly walked into her world and thrown her a lifeline. An opportunity she would have been certifiably insane to turn down.

She had first met James when she took a job straight out of school as a desk clerk at a local real estate office. He was a few years older than her and she had been instantly charmed by his boyish good looks and supreme confidence that bordered on being cocky. He made real estate glamorous in her eyes, dressed for work each day in the sleekest of suits and with a dazzling smile that ensured even the most ramshackle of homes gained top price. She had been flattered when he had begun to take notice of her, complimenting her platinum blonde perm that had been all the rage back in the eighties and offering to give her rides home after work in his fabulously cool Datsun 280Z.

They dated briefly but the romance had ultimately fizzled out partly due to James’s insatiable drive for the high life and partly due to his career move to a big bank in the city. James had always been destined for greatness and he hadn’t failed to deliver. They had lost touch eventually when he had moved east to take over as manager in one of America’s biggest financial institutions. She had barely recognised him across the vast conference table that day just barely over a month ago. There were more lines around his face and he was slightly broader than she remembered but once those lines had melted into his familiar smile she had been transported back in time.

Over coffee they had fallen into easy conversation catching each other up on their respective lives. She had skated over the obvious black hole in her own life but had been saddened to hear his own wife had divorced him a few years earlier. The hurt was still evident in his eyes as he spoke of it. On the other hand his career had continued to spiral to dizzying heights having being appointed CEO of the company last year. As he put it himself, from the outside life couldn't be much better for James Michaels.

When he had probed deeper into her own life she had eventually spoke of the horror of losing her family on that fateful spring day two years ago. She rarely spoke of it to anyone, even her own sister avoided mentioning it so the fact that she was able to talk to him about it had surprised her. When she had confided in him that she felt she had reached the limit of what she could obtain in her present job he had promised to look into things for her. She had passed it off and thought no more of him until a week later he had sent her the proposal she now sat reading again as the plane took her further away from her old life and further into the night sky.

REO (Real Estate Owned) Regional Sales Manager for the North East Region now awaited her. The promise of a new life on the East Coast with no ghosts to haunt her shadows. The chance to live again, to experience new things and start over - of that she could not deny herself.