O’Mackey2 1

My name is Alexandra, and I am pirate. It’s the kind of job most people have, but it’s been a part of me for a long, long time. And then, for a long, long time, it wasn’t.

Like many women, I reached a point in my life when I started the ticking of my biological clock in my ears whenever there was silence in a room.

tick… tick… tick… tick… tick…

About that same time, I met a man, Gabe O’Mackey. Gabe was… is… a great guy. Sweet, if a little on the dorky side. A real family man. I knew with him that I was safe. He was stable and good and … boring.

Okay, I said it. Gabe O’Mackey was boring at times. When we first got together, I didn’t see it, or didn’t want to, maybe. I knew that a pirate’s life was not the one I wanted to raise a child in, so I went for the total opposite. Gabe is your typical “white picket fence, car in a garage, two-point-four kids’ kind of guy — he was exactly what I was looking for at the time.

We made it work. He loved me and for a while, I even believed that I loved being a wife and mother to our daughter, Jules. We made a home, and a life, and I pretended to a doting housewife and mother. Oh, sure, I burned a few dinners (and that will probably never change), but I never claimed to be a Betty Crocker type.

The trouble was, deep down inside me, I was still a pirate. I was born on a pirate ship, for gosh sake! I grew up around sweaty men who said “Arrrr!” and had parrots on their shoulders. I saw more of the world before the age of sixteen than most people saw in their entire lives. Meeting Gabe, falling for him… letting him fall for me… was all a denial of the truth.

I.am.a.pirate.

An adventurer. An explorer.

Whatever you want to call it, that’s what I am.

So… I left. I just threw a few things into a napsack, left Gabe a note telling him the truth and went off to find a birth on the first ship I could find.

For a time, I guess I was happy. I was back on the sea, back seeking adventure and treasures galore. I’m very good at what I do, and I could easily give Indiana Jones a run for his money in the treasure hunting department.

But then I started wondering… how was my daughter? Did Jules miss me? And I missed having a ‘home port’ to go to, and a place to hang my hat at the end of day.

So in my spare time, I started looking on the internet for a house to buy, someplace to go to when I wasnt on a ship. I found one in Riverblossom Hills.

It’s a nice little house and I figured I could spend a little time there before I head out again… play house, as it were.

My first week there, I met some interesting people. The first was Oliver Seavey. Oliver is a General in the United Sim Forces. He came to Riverblossom Hills on a fishing trip and just happened to walk past my house while touring the town.

He’s come over a few times since that first meeting. He calls my cell… and if I’m home and not on the ship… I invite him over. We eat dinner in my little kitchen and talk about the world. We’ve both seen so much of it with our work.

Things are moving… at an interesting pace.

It’s different this time. With Oliver. It’s not like it was with Gabe. He’s not like Gabe. We didn’t start out talking about families or babies… it was politics and world travel. He loved that could hold my own in any topic of conversation that he threw at me. I loved that he didn’t ask me too much about my past. Slowly… all the details came out anyway. I told him over the first dinner I didn’t burn that I had been raised on the high seas and had tried living the way normal people did. He told me that he had left a girl at the altar when he was twenty, because he woke on the morning of the wedding afraid he’d miss out on something if he settled for the girl next door. I told him that I’d left behind a daughter I couldn’t bear to write because I didn’t know what to say. He told me he thought I’d find the words someday.

And then he asked me to show him the new items in my antiques collection. He loves seeing the things I bring home from my travels.

I think I am in love with him. I’ve never felt like this before, not even with Gabe. Especially not with Gabe.

Speaking of Gabe… I’ve been “living” in Riverblossom Hills for several months now and the so-called ‘welcome wagon’ finally caught up with me.

I would have expected little old ladies with pies and cookies, not techie geeks and sweet little Asian girls, but there you have it.

I also would never expected the shock of my life. When I introduced myself to them, the ‘sweet little Asian girl’ (aka Patricia Wan) did a double take. “Did you say… O’Mackey?” she asked.

And then it all came out. Some how or other, my past has caught up with me in this little town nestled in the hills. Gabe and Jules live here, too. They moved a year before I did. And what’s more, Patricia? Is dating Gabe.

When she asked we were related, I told her no, I didn’t think so. “Very distant cousins, maybe,” I even suggested, but my heart was pounding and my mind was racing. Gabe and Jules live just down the street. If I spent more time in my nice littl home port, I might run into them.

But what would I say to them if I did?