Chapter One: The new beginning

It was a dark and stormy night when she first arrived at the castle. She had never been to her father's home before. Heck, she had never been on a plane before but here she was in a small isolated town in Europe, on her way to a nearby castle high in the mountains.
She knew little of him, except that he had left when she was very small. She felt guilty about it, but she had always blamed her mother for his departure. She felt as though her mother hated him, though she had never given Sarah any specific reasons to suspect this. It was just a look when she mentioned his name.
No photographs existed of him. An odd family custom prevented it, but Sarah could remember his face perfectly, becuase it bore such striking resemblance to her own. "Hard to hate someone who looks just like you," she thought as she knocked on the door.
She had just graduated from college when he summoned her. Summoned was the right word for it. It came in the form of a telegram. She had never seen one before, and had no idea such things still existed. He told her in the message that he missed her and needed her to come quickly because he was sick and might not live much longer.
When she presented the telegram to her mother, the reaction was about what she had expected. "Go if you want, but I wouldn't."
"Why not?"
"I just wouldn't," she replied enigmatically and said no more about it.
Sarah couldn't let her father die without saying good-bye to him, even though he had not shown her the same courtesy when he left, so she packed a suitcase and a few foreign language dictionaries, boarded a plane and headed for the old country.