ABVH: The Definition, Please?
Wow--long time no post. I'm going to try to get this up to date. But in the meantime, here's a new one altogether.
The Definition, Please? is a WIP on Becca's life. It's vignette-style and kind of piecey. I'm not 100% sure where it's going. It's part of my Lives in Pieces series on PDS.
The Definition, Please?
ABVH
Summary: Becca's life. One piece at a time.
Spoilers: through The Harlequin
Disclaimer: LKH owns all things Anita; I just do this for fun and make no profit whatsoever.
1: Sunshine
Eight years old...
She tucked herself into a little ball-I’m invisible-with her eyes pressed to the slight crack Peter had left when he hadn’t closed his bedroom door all the way. Course it used to be Mom’s room, but that was before Dad moved in and they built on and gave Peter the big room with the phone and the TV.
It wasn’t fair.
And neither was Peter getting to talk to Anita on that phone. And neither was him getting to pack a bag like he was going to get to go see her with Dad. Mom wouldn’t let him-she couldn’t, not when there was no way she'd ever let Becca go...
She wanted to see Anita so bad.
“What’re you doing, sweetheart?”
Becca jerked away from the door and turned her head to see Dad standing behind her with a grin on his face. He had his warm voice on again-he’d taken it off to talk to Anita on the phone, but he’d put it back on now. She didn’t say anything, even if she wanted to tell him she thought it was so cool he could change his voice, even if she wanted to beg him to teach her how to, too. ‘Cause if she said anything now, he’d make sure and check that she wasn’t listening next time. He’d realize she saw and heard more than they thought.
She didn't mind that no one noticed that she noticed things-otherwise she’d never get to know the good stuff.
So she just shrugged and gave an innocent smile. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Dad raised an eyebrow and bent to scoop her up into his arms, groaning like she weighed a ton even though he said all the time that she was just a ‘puff of fluff.’ “I think my little sunshine’s up to something.”
Becca shivered and burrowed her face into his neck, filling her nose with his smell. “Don’t call me that.”
Her voice was a tiny whisper against his neck, but he heard her. He always heard her.
“Sunshine?” When she just nodded in return, he pulled her back from him so he could see her face. “I know you’re a big girl, Becca, but…”
She shook her head so hard her pigtails slapped Dad’s neck. Her eyes dropped, and she couldn’t make herself look up even though she felt him still staring at her. “S’not that…”
“What is it then, Becca?” He’d slipped a little, his voice was a whole lot more serious-kind of flat and really, really calm. It made her feel safe enough to say out loud what she’d wanted to say for more than a year now.
“He called me that.” Her hand curled into a fist kind of like the ones she made for the exercises her doctor still had her do.
Dad held her with one arm under her butt and brought his other hand up to close gently over her fist. His eyes were so angry-but not at her. “You never said anything. At the talk times…”
Becca shook her head again, and burrowed back into Dad. He let her, both arms hugging her tight.
She wanted to scream at him. Tell him she hadn’t said anything before because it didn’t matter. He hadn’t been leaving her alone with Mom before. Mom who still cried when people got angry and yelled. Mom who didn’t understand. Who didn’t know. Who hadn’t been there.
Dad hadn’t left Becca alone since the bad time. Peter had always been here. Peter who’d killed that lady-yeah, she’d seen, even if she didn’t talk about it. Peter who took karate and went to the range with Dad and knew how to shoot things and promised her he’d kill anything that hurt her again.
Peter who stared off into nothing sometimes too.
Now Dad and Peter were both packing up to go, to leave her here alone. The thought made her hand ache like it hadn’t in months.
And even worse, they were going to go see Anita. Together. Without her.
Didn’t Anita want to see her too?
Dad made her lean back again and looked her right in the eyes. “You know we’re going.”
Becca nodded, tears in her eyes. She hated crying-crying is what her Mom did. Not Peter and not Dad. She bet Anita never cried. She wanted to not cry, really, but there was too much in her head right now-she couldn’t even care that he’d figured out she’d overheard him talking to Anita and Peter. “Is Anita mad at me?”
A couple of tears slipped out, and Becca wiped angrily at them with her still-fisted hand while Dad just watched her.
He wiped a stray tear away with his thumb. “No, Becca. Anita’s not mad at you.”
He’d taken off the warm voice completely now, and Becca relaxed in his arms. His eyes widened slightly, but she looked down again, not able to look at him when she asked the next question.
“Then why are you leaving me here all alone?”
Dad frowned. “You’re not alone.”
Becca glared at him then. “Mom doesn’t…”
“I’m not talking about your mom.” He repositioned her to get a better grip, settling her more on his hip. “Do you remember Bernardo?”
“Yeah…” Becca remembered pretty black hair and big hands holding hers while paramedics put Dad and Peter into an ambulance and she screamed for a still-missing Anita.
“You won’t see him, but he’ll be around.” Dad pulled gently on her left pigtail. “I won’t leave you alone, sweetheart. Never again. Promise.”
“Ok.” Becca sighed-it still wasn’t fair, but at least she didn’t feel all tied up in knots anymore. “But I still want to see Anita. D’you think if I sent her an invitation with you that she’d come see me then. Maybe that’s what she’s waiting for?”
Dad grinned at her. “Couldn’t hurt.”
She straightened out her fingers and touched the little lines at the corners of his eyes that he only got when he smiled. He watched her face, not saying anything, just letting her trace the lines.
The ache in her hand went away and she squirmed out of his arms, taking off down the hall to the den where her art supplies were, yelling over her shoulder. “Don’t leave before I finish it!”
"Yes ma'am." He laughed.
She loved that sound.
2: Straight to Voicemail
25 years old
#
Mom’s dead.
It was by far the shortest message she’d left them in over nine years, beating the previous record holder, “I’m out of hollow point specials,” by a solid six syllables. What would have been the point in saying more? She so hated redundancy, and those two efficient syllables said it all:
It wasn’t monsters and it wasn’t stray bullets and it wasn’t kidnapping psychos. It was cancer and it ate away at her and neither of you were here to stop it. To hold her hand. To hold me. You weren’t there to convince her that crystals and new age chants couldn’t do what surgery and chemo could. She thought she could shrink it, blow it away with her mind as easy as you blew Greg away with that shotgun. And I had to support her. I couldn’t say what you could have said. Because then the fear and the despair I saw lurking right beneath her thin veneer of confidence and faith would have swallowed her whole and her soul would have given up and what would have been the point. So I agreed. And I helped. And I meditated with her, and I held her when she started hacking up blood. I stayed on her side until it didn’t matter anymore because it was just a matter of days and no surgery, no chemo could fix what she’d let happen to herself.
And you knew it was happening. You know everything that happens to us. She would have listened to you eventually. I would have been her support and you would have made her see reason. And she would have gotten through it.
So congratulations, you both kept your word. Too bad you’re staying away didn’t save her. Too bad it hurt me more than being shot again or having my hand broken again ever could.
“Too bad, so sad.” Becca flexed her hand around the umbrella grip. It seemed like the old injury’s ache was her only other constant in life these days besides the great yawning silence of after-the-beep,the void into which she left all messages for her dad and brother.
Serene McAllister looked up from her eulogy when Becca mumbled under her breath. Donna’s best friend’s sing-song chant-like voice never faltered but her red-rimmed eyes slid over Becca in concern. Becca shook her head and turned to walk away.
She’d had enough of this shit.
There was a ripple in the brightly-colored clad flock of mourners-no black here, passing on to be reincarnated was celebrated despite drenching rain and the quiet rumble of distant thunder. Every head turned to watch her walk away, but once she slipped past the first hand to reach out and try to stop her, the rest fell away and let her be.
Half-way across the cemetery, her heels caked in mud, she froze as she caught sight of a hazy figure in the rain, beneath a tree not ten feet away. For just a second she thought it was Dad, but then the man stepped out of the shadows and she saw long black hair kept gray-free by dye. Bernardo. He looked great. Like Richard Gere, he’d aged to look hotter than hell instead of going to pot.
Asshole.
She ignored him-ignored his nod of acknowledgement, ignored the step he took to come up beside her, ignored the hate she felt well up in her stomach. He didn’t deserve even that much emotion from her-she’d told him, made it plain that he was dead to her. So she walked on past without a word and left him to stand alone in the downpour.
Becca was almost to the parking lot when she heard Serene calling her name, the sound coming closer. She glanced over her shoulder in time to see Bernardo stop the woman, put up his hands and stop the entire group of five with Serene-her mother’s “circle”-from following Becca.
Maybe he thought he owed her. She doubted it. More like it was a carefully conceived plot to get her to think as much and get on her good side again.
He was a bigger idiot than she’d realized if he really believed that would work.
She slid into the driver side of the beat up blue pickup she’d bought with her own money, turned the key and listened to the new engine she and Uncle Raymond had installed together only four months before he died purr to life. She sat there with the heater blowing against her cold cheeks, feeling guilty that she hadn’t visited his grave. Only fifteen plots diagonally away from where her mother’s coffin now sat next to a pile of dirt discreetly-yeah right-covered by a piece of Astroturf.
Becca almost got out again and went back to say a final goodbye to Aunt Esther, maybe walk with her to Ray’s grave and stand there, arms around each other’s waists one last time. But she didn’t; Esther understood-they’d said all they needed to say at Mom’s house yesterday when Becca handed her the keys and told her to let Ted deal with it when he decided to show up.
They’d come tonight. Dad and Peter. Or tomorrow, or next week. Whenever they were relatively certain they wouldn’t bump into her. It seemed that even Donna’s death wasn’t enough to lift The Ban. If that had been the case, he’d have been there the minute the monitor shrilled. The minute the line went flat. He’d have stepped out of shadows she hadn’t even known had been there and held her and taken over and not made her deal with any of it anymore. And she would have yelled at him that she could handle it, hadn’t she handled everything perfectly fine without him, and he’d have smiled that hard, cold not-Ted smile that Peter tried so hard to imitate and he’d step aside to let her handle it because, as he’d tell her, he knew that she could…
At least that was how she imagined it would have gone.
But Dad…Ted…Edward…was sticking to his promise to Donna. He was leaving Becca alone.
Too bad Becca wasn’t going to let him.
But then he knew that too. So he’d be the Devil himself to track down-which was precisely why she wouldn’t even embarrass herself by pretending to try.
Her bags and everything else she’d packed up from her mother’s house, the odd this-and-that she hadn’t been able to leave behind, were stashed and stowed beneath a rain tarp in the pickup bed. There was no point to staying in Santa Fe. She’d never liked it, he’d never come here again once he said goodbye to Donna-if he said goodbye-and he’d never let himself run into her if she stayed. So she was on her way to take an offer she couldn’t refuse. Transferring to Brown for the last of her dissertation and research because it was in the only place she knew for a fact Edward would be in at some point…at some time during the rest of their lives. The only place her mother had ever forbid her to go.
But that was the point, wasn’t it?
Mom’s dead.
And Edward was coming to Becca-he just didn’t know it yet. He had ten years worth of messages to return, and she had a lot more than two syllables to lay on him when he did.
3: In the Hall, Again
10 1/2 years old
As she passed the bathroom door, Becca heard Peter moan over the noise of a running shower. Like he was in pain.
She froze, thrown back into the memory of a small room, of being trapped in muscled arms.
Ever played ‘This little piggy’, Sunshine?
No, no, no. Peter needed her. Peter was hurt again…
She had her hand on the bathroom doorknob when she heard him moan again, only this time she heard Anita’s name.
Her hand dropped away-she knew Anita wasn’t in there. She hadn’t been to see them since that brief visit this summer…and Becca also realized she knew that tone-it wasn’t real pain. It was like when she heard things behind Mom and Dad’s door. Peter said you weren’t supposed to interrupt…
But he was crying now. She could hear that over the water too. Big sobs and a fist-or maybe his head-pounding against the tile wall. And a twisted, painful cry of frustration…
She knew he wouldn’t want her to have heard any of that. She knew he wouldn’t want her to know, wouldn’t want her comfort. She might be only ten and a half, but she knew that.
But she couldn’t leave him, couldn’t abandon him. So she slid to the floor, knees to her chest, her suddenly achy hand threaded into her hair in her own gesture of frustration, her face buried in the other arm she draped across her knees. She huddled in the hall outside the bathroom and cried for her brother. And because such a little noise could still take her back there. To him…To her own pain.
Becca cried until she heard the water turn off, and then she ran so Peter wouldn’t know that she knew that he still remembered his.
4: Welcome to St. Louis
25 years old
“Welcome to St. Louis, Ms. Parnell. Sorry to keep you waiting.”
Becca turned from the wall-length window and view of Washington University spread out before her, shaking her right hand out to ease the cramp from clenching her fingers into a nervous fist. Edward had tried to break her of the habit, said it was too big of a "tell." A therapist once told her it was a sign she was holding onto the memories, refusing to face her fears and let the past go.
Both were probably right, either could be wrong. Becca only knew that sometimes it was the only way to comfortably hold that hand.
Her smile was easy, quick and professional as she offered the same hand to the Dean, a tall woman in her late sixties who dyed her hair red and wore her crow’s feet well behind no-frame glasses.
The Dean gestured to a chair in front of her desk, and Becca sat as the other woman did.
“It’s Forester now actually. Again. My lawyer’s just finished filing the papers for my license change as well.”
“Not a problem; just be sure and file a change of name form with the registrar when the paperwork goes through.” The Dean considered Becca over the rim of her glasses, concern, understanding and curiosity in her eyes. “Parnell was your mother’s name?”
Becca hid her smile-the woman was a Social Worker through and through-and gave a noncommittal, “Hmmm.”
The Dean’s smile sparkled-a kind of non-verbal touché to a fellow case worker. She adjusted the no-frames before opening the folder on the desk. “Everything is in order. Your credits transferred without a problem and you’re looking at one semester left if you buckle down and push to the finish. Somehow, after talking to Dr. Franklin, I think you’ll handle the pressure just fine.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I’m certainly looking forward to becoming a part of the team at Brown.” Becca leaned back casually in the chair. She’d never been one to pussy foot around, so she cut to the chase. “Do you foresee any more problems with the board and my research?”
“Rebecca…” Dean Madison sighed and closed the folder gently. “You have to understand that these things take time. For all the progress this country has made, there is still a long way to go. But I have all the confidence that you’ll smooth right over any bumps you encounter. Make an impression in person to match the one on paper. Make the connections, get the lay of the land and understand the machine that drives the city and ultimately the School…”
Becca’s lip curled in a wry quirk that she tried to keep polite. “Shouldn’t we rise above the politics?”
“On the contrary, my dear, as you are well aware from your own experience these past few years.” The older woman’s eyes glinted behind those clear lenses, turned sharp and clear as Dad’s had the one time he showed her how to take apart a gun, clean it, put it back together. “A Social Worker has to live eat and breathe politics. Your charges live and die by its whims. And only knowing it like the back of your hand will teach you how to cut through it, circumvent it, and manipulate it to get what they need.”
Dean Madison stood, came around the desk and leaned against it so that she looked down over her glasses at Becca. “I’ll tell you this, Ms. Forester, your research, your paper-what I’ve read of it-is a long time coming. We have here in St. Louis one of the most stable preternatural communities in the country. If there was a better place to finish your project and prove its importance and worth, I couldn’t possibly name it.”
“Yes.” Becca’s lip uncurled, her smile morphing into a genuine line as she thought about all the different levels that the Dean’s statement hit on. “I know.”
Dean Madison leaned back and grabbed the folder, handed it to Becca. “I took the liberty of making a list of people you might want to contact once you get settled in.”
Becca took the folder, opened it and briefly ran her eyes over the page that listed at least four names she instantly recognized. “Thank you.”
“I’m very much looking forward to the work I see you accomplishing here, Rebecca. Any help I can give you, I will. Get the work done, prove yourself, and let me worry about the Board.”
The Definition, Please? is a WIP on Becca's life. It's vignette-style and kind of piecey. I'm not 100% sure where it's going. It's part of my Lives in Pieces series on PDS.
The Definition, Please?
ABVH
Summary: Becca's life. One piece at a time.
Spoilers: through The Harlequin
Disclaimer: LKH owns all things Anita; I just do this for fun and make no profit whatsoever.
1: Sunshine
Eight years old...
She tucked herself into a little ball-I’m invisible-with her eyes pressed to the slight crack Peter had left when he hadn’t closed his bedroom door all the way. Course it used to be Mom’s room, but that was before Dad moved in and they built on and gave Peter the big room with the phone and the TV.
It wasn’t fair.
And neither was Peter getting to talk to Anita on that phone. And neither was him getting to pack a bag like he was going to get to go see her with Dad. Mom wouldn’t let him-she couldn’t, not when there was no way she'd ever let Becca go...
She wanted to see Anita so bad.
“What’re you doing, sweetheart?”
Becca jerked away from the door and turned her head to see Dad standing behind her with a grin on his face. He had his warm voice on again-he’d taken it off to talk to Anita on the phone, but he’d put it back on now. She didn’t say anything, even if she wanted to tell him she thought it was so cool he could change his voice, even if she wanted to beg him to teach her how to, too. ‘Cause if she said anything now, he’d make sure and check that she wasn’t listening next time. He’d realize she saw and heard more than they thought.
She didn't mind that no one noticed that she noticed things-otherwise she’d never get to know the good stuff.
So she just shrugged and gave an innocent smile. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Dad raised an eyebrow and bent to scoop her up into his arms, groaning like she weighed a ton even though he said all the time that she was just a ‘puff of fluff.’ “I think my little sunshine’s up to something.”
Becca shivered and burrowed her face into his neck, filling her nose with his smell. “Don’t call me that.”
Her voice was a tiny whisper against his neck, but he heard her. He always heard her.
“Sunshine?” When she just nodded in return, he pulled her back from him so he could see her face. “I know you’re a big girl, Becca, but…”
She shook her head so hard her pigtails slapped Dad’s neck. Her eyes dropped, and she couldn’t make herself look up even though she felt him still staring at her. “S’not that…”
“What is it then, Becca?” He’d slipped a little, his voice was a whole lot more serious-kind of flat and really, really calm. It made her feel safe enough to say out loud what she’d wanted to say for more than a year now.
“He called me that.” Her hand curled into a fist kind of like the ones she made for the exercises her doctor still had her do.
Dad held her with one arm under her butt and brought his other hand up to close gently over her fist. His eyes were so angry-but not at her. “You never said anything. At the talk times…”
Becca shook her head again, and burrowed back into Dad. He let her, both arms hugging her tight.
She wanted to scream at him. Tell him she hadn’t said anything before because it didn’t matter. He hadn’t been leaving her alone with Mom before. Mom who still cried when people got angry and yelled. Mom who didn’t understand. Who didn’t know. Who hadn’t been there.
Dad hadn’t left Becca alone since the bad time. Peter had always been here. Peter who’d killed that lady-yeah, she’d seen, even if she didn’t talk about it. Peter who took karate and went to the range with Dad and knew how to shoot things and promised her he’d kill anything that hurt her again.
Peter who stared off into nothing sometimes too.
Now Dad and Peter were both packing up to go, to leave her here alone. The thought made her hand ache like it hadn’t in months.
And even worse, they were going to go see Anita. Together. Without her.
Didn’t Anita want to see her too?
Dad made her lean back again and looked her right in the eyes. “You know we’re going.”
Becca nodded, tears in her eyes. She hated crying-crying is what her Mom did. Not Peter and not Dad. She bet Anita never cried. She wanted to not cry, really, but there was too much in her head right now-she couldn’t even care that he’d figured out she’d overheard him talking to Anita and Peter. “Is Anita mad at me?”
A couple of tears slipped out, and Becca wiped angrily at them with her still-fisted hand while Dad just watched her.
He wiped a stray tear away with his thumb. “No, Becca. Anita’s not mad at you.”
He’d taken off the warm voice completely now, and Becca relaxed in his arms. His eyes widened slightly, but she looked down again, not able to look at him when she asked the next question.
“Then why are you leaving me here all alone?”
Dad frowned. “You’re not alone.”
Becca glared at him then. “Mom doesn’t…”
“I’m not talking about your mom.” He repositioned her to get a better grip, settling her more on his hip. “Do you remember Bernardo?”
“Yeah…” Becca remembered pretty black hair and big hands holding hers while paramedics put Dad and Peter into an ambulance and she screamed for a still-missing Anita.
“You won’t see him, but he’ll be around.” Dad pulled gently on her left pigtail. “I won’t leave you alone, sweetheart. Never again. Promise.”
“Ok.” Becca sighed-it still wasn’t fair, but at least she didn’t feel all tied up in knots anymore. “But I still want to see Anita. D’you think if I sent her an invitation with you that she’d come see me then. Maybe that’s what she’s waiting for?”
Dad grinned at her. “Couldn’t hurt.”
She straightened out her fingers and touched the little lines at the corners of his eyes that he only got when he smiled. He watched her face, not saying anything, just letting her trace the lines.
The ache in her hand went away and she squirmed out of his arms, taking off down the hall to the den where her art supplies were, yelling over her shoulder. “Don’t leave before I finish it!”
"Yes ma'am." He laughed.
She loved that sound.
2: Straight to Voicemail
25 years old
#
Mom’s dead.
It was by far the shortest message she’d left them in over nine years, beating the previous record holder, “I’m out of hollow point specials,” by a solid six syllables. What would have been the point in saying more? She so hated redundancy, and those two efficient syllables said it all:
It wasn’t monsters and it wasn’t stray bullets and it wasn’t kidnapping psychos. It was cancer and it ate away at her and neither of you were here to stop it. To hold her hand. To hold me. You weren’t there to convince her that crystals and new age chants couldn’t do what surgery and chemo could. She thought she could shrink it, blow it away with her mind as easy as you blew Greg away with that shotgun. And I had to support her. I couldn’t say what you could have said. Because then the fear and the despair I saw lurking right beneath her thin veneer of confidence and faith would have swallowed her whole and her soul would have given up and what would have been the point. So I agreed. And I helped. And I meditated with her, and I held her when she started hacking up blood. I stayed on her side until it didn’t matter anymore because it was just a matter of days and no surgery, no chemo could fix what she’d let happen to herself.
And you knew it was happening. You know everything that happens to us. She would have listened to you eventually. I would have been her support and you would have made her see reason. And she would have gotten through it.
So congratulations, you both kept your word. Too bad you’re staying away didn’t save her. Too bad it hurt me more than being shot again or having my hand broken again ever could.
“Too bad, so sad.” Becca flexed her hand around the umbrella grip. It seemed like the old injury’s ache was her only other constant in life these days besides the great yawning silence of after-the-beep,the void into which she left all messages for her dad and brother.
Serene McAllister looked up from her eulogy when Becca mumbled under her breath. Donna’s best friend’s sing-song chant-like voice never faltered but her red-rimmed eyes slid over Becca in concern. Becca shook her head and turned to walk away.
She’d had enough of this shit.
There was a ripple in the brightly-colored clad flock of mourners-no black here, passing on to be reincarnated was celebrated despite drenching rain and the quiet rumble of distant thunder. Every head turned to watch her walk away, but once she slipped past the first hand to reach out and try to stop her, the rest fell away and let her be.
Half-way across the cemetery, her heels caked in mud, she froze as she caught sight of a hazy figure in the rain, beneath a tree not ten feet away. For just a second she thought it was Dad, but then the man stepped out of the shadows and she saw long black hair kept gray-free by dye. Bernardo. He looked great. Like Richard Gere, he’d aged to look hotter than hell instead of going to pot.
Asshole.
She ignored him-ignored his nod of acknowledgement, ignored the step he took to come up beside her, ignored the hate she felt well up in her stomach. He didn’t deserve even that much emotion from her-she’d told him, made it plain that he was dead to her. So she walked on past without a word and left him to stand alone in the downpour.
Becca was almost to the parking lot when she heard Serene calling her name, the sound coming closer. She glanced over her shoulder in time to see Bernardo stop the woman, put up his hands and stop the entire group of five with Serene-her mother’s “circle”-from following Becca.
Maybe he thought he owed her. She doubted it. More like it was a carefully conceived plot to get her to think as much and get on her good side again.
He was a bigger idiot than she’d realized if he really believed that would work.
She slid into the driver side of the beat up blue pickup she’d bought with her own money, turned the key and listened to the new engine she and Uncle Raymond had installed together only four months before he died purr to life. She sat there with the heater blowing against her cold cheeks, feeling guilty that she hadn’t visited his grave. Only fifteen plots diagonally away from where her mother’s coffin now sat next to a pile of dirt discreetly-yeah right-covered by a piece of Astroturf.
Becca almost got out again and went back to say a final goodbye to Aunt Esther, maybe walk with her to Ray’s grave and stand there, arms around each other’s waists one last time. But she didn’t; Esther understood-they’d said all they needed to say at Mom’s house yesterday when Becca handed her the keys and told her to let Ted deal with it when he decided to show up.
They’d come tonight. Dad and Peter. Or tomorrow, or next week. Whenever they were relatively certain they wouldn’t bump into her. It seemed that even Donna’s death wasn’t enough to lift The Ban. If that had been the case, he’d have been there the minute the monitor shrilled. The minute the line went flat. He’d have stepped out of shadows she hadn’t even known had been there and held her and taken over and not made her deal with any of it anymore. And she would have yelled at him that she could handle it, hadn’t she handled everything perfectly fine without him, and he’d have smiled that hard, cold not-Ted smile that Peter tried so hard to imitate and he’d step aside to let her handle it because, as he’d tell her, he knew that she could…
At least that was how she imagined it would have gone.
But Dad…Ted…Edward…was sticking to his promise to Donna. He was leaving Becca alone.
Too bad Becca wasn’t going to let him.
But then he knew that too. So he’d be the Devil himself to track down-which was precisely why she wouldn’t even embarrass herself by pretending to try.
Her bags and everything else she’d packed up from her mother’s house, the odd this-and-that she hadn’t been able to leave behind, were stashed and stowed beneath a rain tarp in the pickup bed. There was no point to staying in Santa Fe. She’d never liked it, he’d never come here again once he said goodbye to Donna-if he said goodbye-and he’d never let himself run into her if she stayed. So she was on her way to take an offer she couldn’t refuse. Transferring to Brown for the last of her dissertation and research because it was in the only place she knew for a fact Edward would be in at some point…at some time during the rest of their lives. The only place her mother had ever forbid her to go.
But that was the point, wasn’t it?
Mom’s dead.
And Edward was coming to Becca-he just didn’t know it yet. He had ten years worth of messages to return, and she had a lot more than two syllables to lay on him when he did.
3: In the Hall, Again
10 1/2 years old
As she passed the bathroom door, Becca heard Peter moan over the noise of a running shower. Like he was in pain.
She froze, thrown back into the memory of a small room, of being trapped in muscled arms.
Ever played ‘This little piggy’, Sunshine?
No, no, no. Peter needed her. Peter was hurt again…
She had her hand on the bathroom doorknob when she heard him moan again, only this time she heard Anita’s name.
Her hand dropped away-she knew Anita wasn’t in there. She hadn’t been to see them since that brief visit this summer…and Becca also realized she knew that tone-it wasn’t real pain. It was like when she heard things behind Mom and Dad’s door. Peter said you weren’t supposed to interrupt…
But he was crying now. She could hear that over the water too. Big sobs and a fist-or maybe his head-pounding against the tile wall. And a twisted, painful cry of frustration…
She knew he wouldn’t want her to have heard any of that. She knew he wouldn’t want her to know, wouldn’t want her comfort. She might be only ten and a half, but she knew that.
But she couldn’t leave him, couldn’t abandon him. So she slid to the floor, knees to her chest, her suddenly achy hand threaded into her hair in her own gesture of frustration, her face buried in the other arm she draped across her knees. She huddled in the hall outside the bathroom and cried for her brother. And because such a little noise could still take her back there. To him…To her own pain.
Becca cried until she heard the water turn off, and then she ran so Peter wouldn’t know that she knew that he still remembered his.
4: Welcome to St. Louis
25 years old
“Welcome to St. Louis, Ms. Parnell. Sorry to keep you waiting.”
Becca turned from the wall-length window and view of Washington University spread out before her, shaking her right hand out to ease the cramp from clenching her fingers into a nervous fist. Edward had tried to break her of the habit, said it was too big of a "tell." A therapist once told her it was a sign she was holding onto the memories, refusing to face her fears and let the past go.
Both were probably right, either could be wrong. Becca only knew that sometimes it was the only way to comfortably hold that hand.
Her smile was easy, quick and professional as she offered the same hand to the Dean, a tall woman in her late sixties who dyed her hair red and wore her crow’s feet well behind no-frame glasses.
The Dean gestured to a chair in front of her desk, and Becca sat as the other woman did.
“It’s Forester now actually. Again. My lawyer’s just finished filing the papers for my license change as well.”
“Not a problem; just be sure and file a change of name form with the registrar when the paperwork goes through.” The Dean considered Becca over the rim of her glasses, concern, understanding and curiosity in her eyes. “Parnell was your mother’s name?”
Becca hid her smile-the woman was a Social Worker through and through-and gave a noncommittal, “Hmmm.”
The Dean’s smile sparkled-a kind of non-verbal touché to a fellow case worker. She adjusted the no-frames before opening the folder on the desk. “Everything is in order. Your credits transferred without a problem and you’re looking at one semester left if you buckle down and push to the finish. Somehow, after talking to Dr. Franklin, I think you’ll handle the pressure just fine.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I’m certainly looking forward to becoming a part of the team at Brown.” Becca leaned back casually in the chair. She’d never been one to pussy foot around, so she cut to the chase. “Do you foresee any more problems with the board and my research?”
“Rebecca…” Dean Madison sighed and closed the folder gently. “You have to understand that these things take time. For all the progress this country has made, there is still a long way to go. But I have all the confidence that you’ll smooth right over any bumps you encounter. Make an impression in person to match the one on paper. Make the connections, get the lay of the land and understand the machine that drives the city and ultimately the School…”
Becca’s lip curled in a wry quirk that she tried to keep polite. “Shouldn’t we rise above the politics?”
“On the contrary, my dear, as you are well aware from your own experience these past few years.” The older woman’s eyes glinted behind those clear lenses, turned sharp and clear as Dad’s had the one time he showed her how to take apart a gun, clean it, put it back together. “A Social Worker has to live eat and breathe politics. Your charges live and die by its whims. And only knowing it like the back of your hand will teach you how to cut through it, circumvent it, and manipulate it to get what they need.”
Dean Madison stood, came around the desk and leaned against it so that she looked down over her glasses at Becca. “I’ll tell you this, Ms. Forester, your research, your paper-what I’ve read of it-is a long time coming. We have here in St. Louis one of the most stable preternatural communities in the country. If there was a better place to finish your project and prove its importance and worth, I couldn’t possibly name it.”
“Yes.” Becca’s lip uncurled, her smile morphing into a genuine line as she thought about all the different levels that the Dean’s statement hit on. “I know.”
Dean Madison leaned back and grabbed the folder, handed it to Becca. “I took the liberty of making a list of people you might want to contact once you get settled in.”
Becca took the folder, opened it and briefly ran her eyes over the page that listed at least four names she instantly recognized. “Thank you.”
“I’m very much looking forward to the work I see you accomplishing here, Rebecca. Any help I can give you, I will. Get the work done, prove yourself, and let me worry about the Board.”