Chapter 2

As Susan was waking up the next morning, there was a shock of non-recognition. This wasn't where she was supposed to be, in her comfortable room in the Hauner house in Regensburg. This was a strange place! She looked around in confusion for a moment, until she realized that this was her room at home, in Spearfish Lake – it had been her room as long as she could remember, and now it seemed strange. Go figure.

She yawned and twisted her body around to sit up on the edge of the bed. There was still a touch of strangeness here as she looked around the walls to see familiar if barely remembered posters, mostly travel posters for various places in Europe. There was a really neat poster of Neuschwanstein Castle that looked almost as if it was out of a fairy tale. It looked even neater in person, as she'd seen it back in the spring. There was another one of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, which she hadn't been to but hoped to someday.

On the other hand, there were a couple posters of teenybopper rock groups that she used to idolize, and now could barely stand. Those would have to go. Soon. But not right now, she thought as she yawned again, trying to shake off a little of the stiffness that came from being in bed too long.

She wasn't sure what time they'd gotten home the night before, but knew it had to be well after midnight, since it was that long of a drive under the best of circumstances. She vaguely remembered getting out of the car, stumbling up the steps to the deck and through the back door, then going to her room, stripping off her outer clothes and crashing on the bed, but that was all. She must have really needed the sleep, she thought.

She glanced at the clock in what she remembered was the normal place beside the bed. Zehn und zwansig, she thought. Twenty after ten she corrected herself; she didn't always think in German but she did a lot. That was a habit that was going to take some breaking, if she really wanted to break it at all. Time to get up and get moving in any case, especially with that stupid welcome-home party this afternoon.

It felt good to peel off her bra; she'd been wearing it too long. She rubbed her breasts to clear up some of the mild itchiness that she felt, and helplessly thought about how good it had been when someone else had rubbed them. God, that was far away, she thought. There were much better ways to wake up and with someone was one of them, but that obviously wasn't going to happen again for a while. And boy, she thought, Mom and Dad really don't need to know about that!

Might as well do it, she thought, no matter how much she'd like to sit there and wallow in unreachable memories. Scheisse!

She got up and peeled off her panties, glad that she'd decided not to wear a thong for the trip; it would have gotten uncomfortable. Nude now, she realized that her bags were on the dresser and on the chair beside her bed; Dad must have brought them in. She opened one of them and dug out her shampoo, conditioner, and body wash – familiar brands, but with German labels. She was really going to miss her hair dryer; the one she had in Germany did a fantastic job, but was the standard German 220 volts, so there was no way she could use it here. She hoped Elke would get good use out of it and remember her when she used it. Damn, she missed Elke, maybe even more than Hans. The things that girl knew, the way she could make her feel! But that was something else far away now, she thought as she made a mental note to send an E-mail to the Hauner family telling them that she'd arrived all right, and maybe more private, personal E-mails to Elke and Hans.

Carrying the bottles, she headed out her bedroom door and down the hall to the shower, not caring that she was nude. This was one place where she could say that home beat the Hauners' – she didn't have to worry about wearing clothes around the house. No one in the McMahon family had very much body modesty and all were comfortable with being casually nude around each other. It had always been that way; the family had been active nudists since her father and mother had gotten together, and for a while they'd actually had a cabin out at the nudist resort at West Turtle Lake. That was before Susan's time; it had been sold about the time the family had moved into this house, not long before she'd been born. They still got out there occasionally, although she hadn't in a couple years.

Not much had changed around the bathroom in a year; everything was still in pretty much the same place. It still took an awful long time for the water to warm up in the shower; the Hauners had a European-style demand water heater for the bathroom, and when you turned on the water it was hot now.

While she waited, she checked out her nude reflection in the full length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. Not bad, she thought; I looked a little different the last time I looked in that mirror. She had filled out a little over the course of the past year, and had tan lines she wouldn't normally, although this late in the summer it seemed hardly worth the effort of worrying about them. She was tall, though hardly model-slender. On the other hand, only someone with anorexia could call her fat. Well, she could stand to lose a little around her waist, she thought, but only a little. She was a little bigger, a little thicker than the American ideal, although just about the German ideal; with her blonde hair she could almost pass for Brunehilde. Her breasts were just about right, she thought; big enough, but not too big like Alanah Emmendorfer's back in Regensburg – big enough to be in the way and a problem to herd around. Alanah didn't have all any problem drawing the boys, she remembered with a smile, so maybe it wasn't all that bad.

She cut short her musing at her reflection when she realized that the water in the shower was finally running warm. She fiddled with the cold a bit to make it comfortable, then got in and closed the door. It felt good to have the water running over her; it had been nearly two days since she'd last had a shower and she had been more than ready for one. She spent a few minutes at it, first washing and conditioning her hair, then going over her body, luxuriating in the sensation.

Once out of the shower, she spent some time drying off and otherwise getting prettied up. Like any teenage girl it took her a while, but she knew without asking that she was going to have to spiff up today and make a good appearance for the people coming over. Finally, it was time to go meet the world. She needed to unpack her bags, but there was no big rush on that. More important, after nothing but the airline's so-called food yesterday she needed something real to eat, so she headed down the hall to the kitchen.

She saw her mother working at the kitchen counter at something or other. "Hi, Mom," she said conversationally. "Anything happening today?"

"Susan!" she heard from behind her. "Go put some clothes on! Have you no shame?"

"Not particularly," she smiled at her sort-of sister-in-law, Cindy, who had been living with her brother Henry since they'd been sophomores in college, and friends for several years prior to that. If Cindy and Henry had gotten married it was news to her. It might have been a big deal in some families but not this one; Susan's parents had lived together for sixteen years before they got around to getting married, so they had little room to complain. It was why Susan had the hyphenated last name, after all, even though most of her German friends knew her without the McMahon.

"But Susan!" Cindy protested, "what if Henry should see you like that?"

"Big deal, he's seen my bare butt since day one," Susan smiled, shoving the needle into her sort-of sister-in-law. "It's nothing he hasn't seen before."

"You should have at least some respect for others," Cindy said in a huff.

"Hey, it's my home, lighten up," Susan smiled, knowing she had Cindy off balance now. Although Cindy had spent a lot of time around the McMahon house over the years, she'd never warmed to the casual nudity in the hot tub or around the house that the rest of the family did very comfortably. Susan had often wondered if it might have something to do why Cindy and her brother hadn't gotten married. Knowing from experience that the best way to deal with Cindy on this topic was to ignore her, Susan turned to her mother and said, "Is there anything I can snag for breakfast?"

"There's tuna salad in the refrigerator if you want a sandwich," her mother suggested, ignoring Cindy as well – she'd decided long ago that Cindy was just going to have to live with the way the McMahon family operated. "Or, if you don't mind waiting a few minutes, I can throw together an omelet or something," she added.

"How about both?" Susan said. "I can have the sandwich while I'm waiting on the omelet. I had to deal with airline food yesterday, I'm starving."

"I'll throw them both together for you," her mother smiled. To make clear that she didn't disapprove of Susan's apparel or lack thereof, she added, "Make yourself comfortable."

"So, Cindy," Susan said as she sat at the kitchen table, "if you're here, Henry must be around somewhere."

"He's asleep," Cindy said, aware that she'd been put in her place. "He had to co-anchor the early news last night, so we had to drive most of the night."

"I'm a little surprised that you're still there," Susan commented. "I thought the plan was to move on by now."

"Probably pretty soon," Cindy said, unable to quite look Susan in the eye. "He's got resumés out, but the station got short-staffed a while back, so they decided to bump up his pay to keep him around for a while."

"So, how are you liking Springfield?"

"It's OK," Cindy sighed. "I've been in worse places. I guess it's not that bad, but I haven't found the job market to be very attractive. I'm just hanging on to what I'm doing until we can move, since there's no point in trying to get anything worthwhile now."

"You know, Cindy," Kirsten piped up as she set a paper napkin with the sandwich in front of Susan, "speaking as the publisher of the Record-Herald, both Mike and I would be thrilled to have you and Henry move back up here."

"I know," Cindy sighed. "Of course, it involves having to move back up here. If there's nothing to do but sit and watch the buns rise like it was Saturday night in Toledo, Ohio, then there's really nothing to do in Spearfish Lake. And that assumes I'd want to move back here at all, which is about the last thing on my list, and you know why."

"That's all in the past," Susan's mother replied placidly.

"Yeah, but people don't forget in a town like Spearfish Lake," Cindy protested. "My mother managed to sour me on this place forever."

Susan knew the reason for her concern. Although she'd only met Cindy's mother a handful of times, Susan knew that she was very bossy, obnoxious, and controlling -- not just of Cindy, but of everybody who had any real contact with Cindy. Henry and Cindy had managed to keep their relationship quiet through high school, mostly by being very low key. Susan's family had given Cindy something of an occasional refuge. Susan could remember Cindy sitting at this very table and announcing that her one main goal in life was to graduate from high school and get as far away from Spearfish Lake and her mother as she could. Cindy's mother was in Florida now, for all anyone knew, but the threat of her showing up without notice was always possible for Cindy and Henry, which put a strange twist to their relationship.