A/N: Well here it is again, or at least the first half of what I already had. I sincerely apologize to those of you who followed my stories in the beginning, and then I dropped off the face of the planet. But when I was transferring my files to my new computer I found these and began editing and tweaking, just in little bits, and have brought them back! I plan of finishing this one up, and then resurrecting the others. Hope you enjoy, and happy reading :)

It was a dreary day to be arriving somewhere new, I remember thinking. Outside the car window, green fields on rolling hills were slowly being saturated by the rain that seemed to be following me, and various kinds of livestock were huddling together. In the distance I could see the mountains, though I didn't know which range they belonged to. Abruptly, Tim, the kind man who picked me up at the airport and was now driving the truck, turned off the pavement onto a wide dirt road, and a little bit later we passed under a sign that read "Thornfield Ranch". Sighing, I leaned up against the window, and looked out to the distance, wondering what would happen if I just disappeared into the fields.

"If you look over there," said Tim, pointing just to the left of his shoulder, "you'll see the house in a minute." He smiled at me, and I attempted to smile back, hoping he would know I really did appreciate the kindness. To appease him, I looked over, and when the car crested the hill we were on, I couldn't help but gasp slightly at the view. The house was an old, southern plantation-style house, painted a light green with white trim. Windows covered the entire upper floor and most of the bottom floor, which was framed by a pillar framed wrap-around porch. The lawn out front was neatly cut, with flowerbeds up against the porch and surrounding the bases of two tall oaks which framed the sides of the house. Maybe a hundred yards away from the house was a large barn, with a spacious paddock containing some horses adjacent to it.

"It's beautiful," I said quietly.

"This isn't even an eighth of the land, either," he responded. "Over those hills there belongs to Mr. Rowe as well, all the way to those blue mountains in the distance." Again, to appease him I looked to all the places he indicated, and really was astonished with the view. The misty rain made it hard to see the mountains he was talking about, but by the darkish shapes in the distance I figured I was looking in the right direction.

After we had parked, I heaved my luggage out from the covered bed of the truck, and turned around to see an older woman in a simple brown dress and apron walking towards me.

"Oh Jen! Why, you look stunning," she said, giving me a hug and patting my hair. "Just like your mother." When she said this I smiled a little, but I knew my eyes weren't holding back my real emotions.

"Thank you, Mrs. Fairly," I replied. Mrs. Fairly was my mother's cousin's stepmother, and although I had only met her two or three times, she offered me a place to live and job until the next school year. After her stepchildren had grown and her husband had died, she took up the housekeeping and cooking of Thornfield, and, according to Tim, the ranch wouldn't run without her.

"Come on in, then," she said, taking the handle of one of my suitcases. "I've made up some lunch for you, since I knew you probably didn't eat well on the plane." There was something about her kind, motherly attitude that made me accept, even though I wasn't hungry, and hadn't been for a while now.