The McEllis Boys

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Letcher County Kentucky

September 2011

"BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!"

Nicole groaned and reached out her hand, fumbling blindly in the dark as she searched for her alarm. After successfully silencing the bane of her existence she covered her face with her hands and rubbed roughly.

She had taken the week off of work, having needed a vacation from rambunctious toddlers but had forgotten to turn her alarm off the night before.

Nicole pulled her blankets back over her head and rolled to her side. After several long moments of flipping and flopping she gave up on falling back to sleep and with a curse she tossed the covers aside and threw her legs over the edge of the bed.

She shuffled to the kitchen and flipped on the coffee pot that she had gotten ready the night before and then made her way to the living room to fire up her laptop and check her e-mails. She had one from one of the mothers of the children that came to her daycare begging her to let her daughter come this week and offering to pay twice the normal fee.

Nicole sighed and grudgingly sent her an e-mail back saying okay. She knew that Leslie wouldn't mind if she took little Madeline on any errands she had and of all the children she watched four year old Madeline was the most well behaved.

Leslie instantly e-mailed her back saying she was on her way and Nicole sighed as she shut the laptop and went back to the kitchen for her coffee. She wasn't even going to worry about changing out of her yoga pants and tank top before Leslie arrived.

There were certain perks to running a daycare out of your home and going to work in your pajamas was certainly one of them.

Nicole carried her steaming cup of coffee out onto her front porch and sat down in the swing. She looked out over the surrounding land and sighed. She loved her home. It had come up for sale a few years back for much less than it was worth (the bitter outcome of a nasty divorce) and Nicole had jumped at the chance to buy it.

She lived all the way back at the head of a winding hollow and mountains surrounded her. The tiny gravel road leading to her home followed a noisy river and birds were constantly singing in the trees.

Nicole had pretty flowers planted all around the two story home. She had painted it a cheerful yellow and the wraparound porch was her favorite feature.

She also loved the decorations that she had worked hard to buy or make over the years. She had found old metal wash tubs and turned them into flowerpots. She had two man saws and other tools from the eighteen hundreds hanging on her tool shed and her house was full of western touches. Spurs as wall decorations and old time kerosene lanterns and lamps as table pretties.

Most thought her style was old fashioned and much too mature for someone in her mid twenties but Nicole loved it. She often felt she had been born in the wrong time and wished that she could one day go back in time and live the life of a late eighteen hundred frontier woman.

Of course she would have to be sure to take her yoga pants and blue jeans along with her.

She smiled as she blew on her coffee and then took a drink. It would take Leslie a good twenty or thirty minutes to get here. That was one thing about living in such a spread out, lightly populated community. It took a while to get anywhere you wanted to go.

***

"Thank you so much for doing this for me!" Leslie exclaimed as Madeline ran from the car and jumped into Nicole's waiting arms.