Chapter Forty Five

The house looked just as I had remembered it. Calling it a house wasn't quite right. It was more of a cottage than anything else. Faded red bricks; dark tiled roof; white framed windows; bright yellow door that looked as out of place as ever; and the white picket fence made up the home that I remembered.

Leaning closer to the fence, I could still make out the scribbles that I'd etched onto the painted wood as a child to make my mark on the place. The wooden post that I used to train with still stood proudly just past the fence. I could still see the parts of the post that lost a little of its shape because I had hit it so many times. Then there were the monkey bars. Now those were pure evil. I remembered falling and injuring myself so many times. This irritating contraption sent me to Rosette far more times than anything else did because every time I fell, I always managed to land on something at an odd angle.

A smile spread across my face when my eyes landed on the wood stump we used