Being here, in this place, felt like a new beginning. Although she wished that she had gotten to meet her grandmother while she was alive, she felt surrounded by a gentle spirit that she assumed was her grandmother.

Now, as she stood there looking down the rocky ravine peppered with vegetation, she wondered how she could get down there. Ever since she had been taking her daily walks, she had wanted to get to the creek. But she just couldn't figure out how to do it.

Every day, she came back to the spot and stood there trying to find the best route down to the water. Sometimes, she thought about how cool it would be to have a zip line to take her straight across to the other side. But none of that was going to get her to the bottom.

She tried to figure out which rocks she could step on without slipping and falling, but none of it looked particularly safe. Someday, she would map out a plan of how to get down to the creek. She had most of the summer to do it.

It has been nice to get to know her aunt, and she felt like her relationship with her mother was even getting better. Although, her mother still didn’t trust her. Who could blame her? She had done quite a lot of things for a fifteen-year-old.

Ever since she had read some of her grandmother’s journals, she had thought about how difficult it must've been to be pregnant as a teenager. She couldn't imagine that. But it gave her a whole new respect for this grandmother she had never met.

She sat down on the ground, her legs dangling over the ravine. She liked to pick up little rocks that she found nearby and toss them straight down into the creek below, waiting to see if she could see a ripple from her perch above.

Until she had come here, she never thought of herself as an outdoorsy person, but she loved being outside now. Most of the time, she forgot to even get on her phone until the evenings when things got a little more boring around the bed and breakfast.

There were always new guests coming and going, some that Mia was close to and others who were new to the place. But it was interesting sitting at dinner each night listening to their stories and learning more about where they were from.

It’d been hard for it to just be she and her mother all these years. She’d longed for family, although she had never said it out loud. Sometimes, she wondered what she was missing.

If she really thought about it, she missed her father. Or the man she wished he was. When the other kids at school had their dads show up for games and recitals, she sometimes hid in the bathroom to cry. Why didn’t her father care about her?