WIP

In case Fio hasn't imposed the opening of WHERE THE HEART LEADS on you yet, here 'tis.  Ignore the red underlining, which she couldn't erase for some reason known only to Steve Jobs, who isn't available for comment.

Chapter 1

Moira drove into the asphalt lot across the street from the yellow brick building and swung her six-year-old Toyota into a marked space.

Panic crawled up her spine. 

It’s just another audition, she told herself.  You know the routine—you've been auditioning since you were a kid.  No big deal.  You either get the part or you don’t, and if you don’t, there’s always another audition around the corner.  

But this wasn't Hollywood or New York—it was small-town Texas, and she wasn't a kid trying out for a role as somebody’s tag-along little sister anymore.  She was an adult, twenty-six years old, and she was the first day of a three-month trial to be herself, Moira Miranda Farrar, with no safety net whatsoever.  The Bosque Bend Theater Guild had signed her on to direct their upcoming production, and if she could pull it off, they’d keep her on permanently.

And if they didn't?  No, that wasn't an option.  She had to keep this job.  Everything depended on her success, not only for her, but for her family, just as it had since she was four years old when   Gramp had discovered she had a freakish memory and a gift for mimicry.  With his disability pension stretched to the limit, she’d become the major support of the family, although Kimiko, her mother, occasionally sent a check home to Pasadena to help with expenses. 

She draped her arms on the steering wheel and stared at the gold building gleaming in the bright October sun.  It looked like an old high school to her, but Pendleton Swaim, her contact with the theater group, had called it the town museum and said the board met there.

Glancing at her stylishly oversized wristwatch, she realized she was early, which gave her time to get the lay of the land before she met with her new employers. 

She’d been hired, sight unseen, at the recommendation of Johnny Blue, who’d starred in the last sit-com she’d worked in before she had married Colin four years ago.  Well, it wasn't entirely sight unseen.  All of America had watched her grow up as an assortment of third-banana little sisters on TV sit-coms, and later, when she was too old for the bangs-and-pigtails roles, as Johnny's robot assistant.   Of course, now that he’d moved on to films, Johnny was on the show biz A-list, while she wasn't worth a Z. 

            She rubbed the scar on her upper left arm

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 [J1]