Surge - Sequel to Swell

Chapter One (Part Two)

My heart breaks in a heartbeat,
And you storm me when you come and go,
The taste of something so sweet should have,
Warned me 'bout the undertow.

- "Undertow", Sara Bareilles

***

Adora picked the keys up and grabbed her handbag. "Adam Joshua Taylor, come on, we'll be late!" She called up the stairs of the house.
"I'm coming, I'm coming!" His panicked voice called back from the stairs and Adora rolled her eyes before she smiled at her daughter.
"We need to find a better way of getting your brother up in the morning." She chuckled.
"Don't look at me, Mum. AJ is much more like Uncle Tom than he is Daddy." Celeste held her hands up before she picked up her backpack.
AJ shut the door that separated the ground floor and the residential floor of Edgar's Escape and stood straight in the foyer. "Ready!" He announced with a bright smile.
"What am I going to do with you?" Adora ruffled her son's light brown hair and pushed him gently out of the front door. She held it open for Celeste and then pulled it shut and locked it behind her.

"Love me, mum." AJ turned around and gave her another one of his huge smiles as he stood in front of the car.
Adora shook her head as she unlocked the car and the three of them got in. AJ reminded her so much of Will and Tom, and even when she tried to stay mad at him, all he had to do was flash his father's smile and she was done.
The almost eight-year-old twins sat in the back seat and Adora watched in the rear-view mirror as they buckled up their seatbelts.

"Ready!" They sang out together and Adora started the car and headed into town.

She dropped the twins off at the primary school, kissing them both goodbye, and then drove out along the Ocean Highway.

The tree-covered mountains rose up on one side of the car, and the azure ocean spread below the cliffs on the other side as Adora took the all too familiar drive away from Wheeler Falls and Edgar's Escape.
There were only a few more school weeks left before the summer holidays. Her work was beginning to slow down at the schools along the coast, Will had booked the week between Christmas and New Years for leave and they were looking forward to an uninterrupted Christmas at home for the first time in years.
There were no guests staying at the Escape during that week, and Anne had decided to cook a huge dinner in the Escape's kitchen, and invite everyone.
Dodge, Tara and their kids, Iain, Tom, Nancy and considering they lived there, Adora, Will and the twins. Even the Taylors were invited to come down for a few days from their little retirement cottage interstate.
Adora had gone away for her university degree, but even when she had moved into the shared accommodation as a teenager, she knew she would be back home in the end. She only spent a year and a bit in the dorms before she moved into a small apartment with Agatha.
Four and a half years away at school, visiting Wheeler Falls whenever university had holidays, sneaking Will into the dorm when he got time to visit during her first year of university; before her apartment.
Their first Christmas together had been hard.
Will had recovered from Marti's attacks, but the pain was still heavy on the Taylor family.
All these years later, the memories of that year still sent chills through her body.
They never spoke about it; they'd told Will's parents not to speak about them when they had gone to visit Marti.
They'd built a safe life in Wheeler Falls once Adora had finished her Master's degree, a loving one. There were plenty of babysitters; Anne had moved into one of the cabins of Edgar's Escape and given them the main house, Anne was still the main manager of the accommodation, but she enjoyed tasking the twins with little jobs to spend time with them.
There'd been many things Adora had considered for her life; teaching like her cousin Dodge, taking over the Escape entirely, youth work, and psychology.
It was the latter that had won out, she traveled along The Ocean Highway every workday, going to the different small towns and their high schools as a visiting psychologist.