final gifts for maidenjedi
Title: Five Endings Byers and Suzanne Never Had
Author: 50thousandtearz (formerly 50thousandtearz)
Pairing/Character: Byers/Suzanne, The Lone Gunmen
Word Count: 1,890 words
Rating: PG
Summary: Like the incredibly unoriginal title says.
Spoilers/Warnings: The Usual Suspects, Three of a Kind, Jump the Shark, would help if you've seen The Lone Gunmen
Author's Note: Anyone want to suggest an actual title? Sorry that there isn't really a theme to this other than five things + Byers/Suzanne. Also, sorry for resorting to five things in order to write a fic, but that's how I got the muse to cooperate.
1.
At the time, it had seemed like a good idea to run away with Suzanne - heroic, daring and desperately romantic.
Four months later, it was just incredibly stupid.
When he decided to go with Suzanne, Byers didn’t consider what that would entail. He thought only of a quiet life, a white picket fence, anonymous names like Smith, and little girls named Holly. He’d spent enough time dwelling on conspiracies and lies, and he wanted to find a simple truth in a normal life, albeit one created under abnormal circumstances.
The reality of it was that he threw away his life and very identity for a beautiful dream. Suzanne was nothing but single-mindedly devoted to bringing down the government and making the truth known, at any cost. Being chased by authorities at every turn, hiding in cheap dives and lurking around government warehouses - when he got into that cab, he gave up that life, while she entered into it again.
This wasn’t what he’d had in mind.
2.
Yves walked through the Arlington cemetery, seeking out its three freshest graves. She had left Jimmy at the hotel after he fell asleep, but she felt the need to come back and say her goodbyes alone. In the dark, she distractedly counted rows of headstones that gleamed of bone and moonlight, trying to remember where the graves were, and collided into a woman.
“I’m so sorry,” said Yves. “Are you okay?”
“It’s fine,” said the woman. “It’s easy to get distracted in a place like this.”
Yves began to count the rows again, until she noticed the three small bouquets of flowers Scully had laid down earlier that day. The woman was standing next to Byers’ grave, looking lost and anxious. She kept on looking from side to side as if waiting for someone to pounce upon her. Yves inwardly sighed at the company; unless the woman left, she’d have to come back tomorrow. She walked away and pretended to look for another grave, hoping that the woman would leave. But the woman continued to stand there, and after circling a few times, Yves gave up and turned to go.
“Wait,” called out the woman.
Puzzled, Yves walked over to her. “Yes?”
“If you’re here to grab me, just get it over with please.”
“What?”
Now it was the woman’s turn to look puzzled.
“Sorry. I thought you were someone else.”
Yves considered the situation.
“Were you a friend of theirs?”
“Whose?”
“Don’t be obtuse. I think you know perfectly well whose grave you’re standing next to.”
The woman sighed. “Yes.”
“You must be Suzanne.” She raises her hand to cut off the woman’s protests. “Don’t bother. You’re practically hugging Byers’ headstone, and you fit the physical description. Frohike told me about you.”
Suzanne smiled faintly at that.
“And what did he have to say?”
“That you were on the run. What are you doing here? This is the first place they’d look for you. You were clearly expecting something to happen, weren’t you?”
Suzanne tiredly shrugs. “So let them look. I’m done playing hide and seek.” She touches Byers’ headstone. “I don’t have it in me anymore. Not after I heard about this.”
Rage flared up in Yves.
“How dare you,” she spat at Suzanne. “After they gave up their lives, this is how you honor their memories? This is how you honor Byers?”
“I can’t do it anymore,” whispered Suzanne. “Knowing that he was out there, and that we couldn’t be together because duty kept us apart - duty’s done it’s job, we’re truly apart. I can’t fight anymore with the knowledge that there’s no light at the end of the tunnel for me.”
Yves studied Suzanne. The years had clearly taken a toll on her - heavy worry lines and premature wrinkles, trembling hands and swollen eyes. She looked half dead, worn and exhausted, like she was about to join her lost love.
“Never give up,” she told Suzanne. “ ‘Never give up’ - those were John’s last words.”
Suzanne blinked rapidly and leaned heavily against the headstone.
She extended her hand to Suzanne.
Suzanne took her hand tentatively, and Yves gently pulled her away from the dead.
“Let me tell you about fighting the good fight.”
Her goodbyes could wait.
3.
Three years, five months and two days after the worst day of his life, Byers got a phone call.
“There’s a Sarah Leed that has you listed as her next of kin,” said the nurse.
“I don’t know any Sarah’s,” Byers said as he calculated the letters in his head to determine if this could be yet another pseudonym of Yves’.
“She has multiple third degree burn wounds on her lower body, some broken limbs and loss of vision to her left eye. Possibly neurological damage as well.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not sure who this woman is.”
“You are John F. Byers, are you not?”
“Yes, I am. But - “
“You can have her back now,” the nurse said, and Byers dropped the phone.
4.
“Suzanne Modeski is dead. Every computer in every county, state, federal office knows it. This is who you are now,” said Byers, handing her the paper with her new identity on it.
Suzanne reached out and their fingers touched.
“Come with me,” she said, stroking his fingertips.
“I can’t,” he said.
Suzanne bowed her head. “I know.” She leaned forward and kissed him sadly, a tear dripping down her cheek.
Byers pulled away.
“I can’t… Langly… you can wipe me from the computers too…” he said hesitantly.
“What?”
“…And a death certificate.”
“Are you insane? You want to go on the run?”
Langly sputtered and puffed up like a bullfrog, but Frohike interrupted him.
“Let him be, Langly. He should go. He’s not happy. The only thing that’s kept him going this long is the promise of finding the truth and Suzanne, and buddy, let’s get real, we’re not going to find the other thing for a long time, if ever.”
Langly shook his head furiously.
“We’ll make you a death certificate,” Frohike continued. “We can get Scully to sign off on it. Suicide, with a note saying that without Suzanne, you couldn’t go on anymore. Once the story of your ill-fated love gets out, I doubt people would question it.”
Byers stared into Suzanne’s eyes.
“Thank you.”
“Just remember, Melvin makes a lovely name for a boy!”
“I’ll remember,” said Suzanne, and she leaned in to kiss Frohike. Langly stood stiffly when she kissed him.
As the cab pulled away, Langly turned his back to his departing friend and stared at the casino entrance.
“You were always such a sap,” Langly spat out. Frohike could hear the tears in his voice.
“Somebody,” he said, “deserves to be happy.”
“Just not us?”
“Probably not.”
“You bastard.”
“What else could I tell Byers? That he should spend the rest of his life underground with creeps like us? Not take a chance for something better?”
“What are we supposed to do now?”
“…I don’t know.”
Langly took off his glasses and roughly rubbed his eyes, not even bothering to claim that it wasn’t tears, just a speck in his eye.
Frohike roughly patted him on the back.
“Wanna hit the slots?”
5.
It begins like all other momentous occasions do for John Byers - rather unexpectedly. Every day, even his most auspicious days, start out with having to wait for a bleary eyed and haggard Langly to finish up using the bathroom - and you do not rush Langly - while listening to Frohike complain about the morning’s headlines as he fries eggs and pops bread into the toaster. Then Jimmy comes in, cheerful no matter what early hour, and the Lone Gunmen plus one sit together and fight over who gets to read the New York Times - “I’m getting two more subscriptions,” Frohike yells every morning, but there’s still only one newspaper, - and why is there jam on the funnies section? Then it’s off to work on the newspaper - find a story, interview the latest abductees or track down Yves’ latest scheme - this is also considered working on the newspaper even though half the time they can’t publish whatever few findings they end up with.
Yesterday, today, tomorrow, they all seem to blur together. They may end up in different wacky situations, but the motions are the same, the outcomes never quite satisfying to him. Like Frohike’s eggs, it boils down to this: he’s burned out.
They sit at the table, momentarily silent while they chew on ranchos huevos when the doorbell goes off and Jimmy gets up to answer it.
“I don’t know who it is,” hollers Jimmy.
“You sure it’s not Yves?” Langly mutters.
“She’s asking for Byers.”
Byers wipes his mouth and pushes his chair away from the table. He heads for the security screens and takes a look.
As if the lady knows he’s looking, she turns to stare directly into the camera lens, and it’s just like the other times, their eyes meet through the screen and that’s the end of the world as he knows it. Suzanne stands there, her hair a wet black bob, badly applied mascara running from the rain pounding the streets.
~
The next morning, Byers is woken by a persistent banging noise. Langly’s waiting outside the bathroom door.
“Damn it, Byers, get her out of there!”
He moves to pound the door again, but it opens and he falls forward. Suzanne deftly sidesteps him and walks out of the bathroom. She smiles and kisses him on the cheek.
“Good morning.”
She’s wearing one of his shirts over her jeans, and she smells divine in the way only a woman can smell. He follows her, dumbly smiling, to the kitchen table. They sit down just as Jimmy and Langly enter, and Frohike tosses the newspaper onto the table.
“No good headlines today - "
Langly and Jimmy make a grab for the paper, but Suzanne’s already got it, and although Langly’s manners have much to be desired, he knows better than steal from a lady. She quickly scans the first few pages, and the hands it to Byers.
“By request, and because someone decided to help me for once, today we have Frohike’s Famous Flapjacks!” says Frohike with a flourish, depositing a platter of pancakes onto the table. He smirks at Suzanne. “Baby, you can flip pancakes with me any day.”
While they munch on their breakfast, Frohike repeats the latest news he’s heard about from a contact in the health sector. They’re due to drive out to Georgetown and meet with a mole in two hours.
“… So Jimmy, you’ll be driving for once, I need Langly on the computer. Byers, you’re going to meet the guy, and I’ll be snooping around his buddy’s office, he gave me a key. But we could really use someone to provide backup, where is Yves this week?”
While he talks, Suzanne gets up and briskly collects the empty plates.
“I can do backup,” she says lightly, “but I don’t think it’s smart for you to go by yourself, I’ve heard of this company before - ” and as Frohike starts to argue with her while practically drooling over the fact that someone is cleaning up without him threatening to shoot them first… Byers knows they’re not just the Lone Gunmen anymore.
Title: Four Times CSM and Teena Mulder Were Almost Found Out, and One Time They Were
Author: 50thousandtearz (formerly 50thousandtearz)
Pairing/Character: CSM/Teena Mulder
Word Count: 500 words
Rating: PG
Summary: Like the title says. Also, drabblicious.
Spoilers/Warnings: Demons
1.
The first time Teena laid eyes upon Fox, she was convinced that the ruse was up. Bill would surely know the truth. As she held her squirming child in her arms, all she could see in the intense gaze of Fox’s infant eyes, the curve of his jaw, the shape of his ears - was him.
When Bill arrived, he headed straight to the crib to inspect his child. Teena waited, the only sign of her anxiety evident in the clench of her fists.
“He looks just like his old man,” said Bill, turning away from the crib and smiling broadly.
2.
“Mommy, Sam’s crying again -“
Fox stopped in the doorway, startled to see Uncle Carl hugging his mother. Didn’t Daddy and Uncle Carl have a big fight? What was he doing here?
His mother pushed Uncle Carl away and frowned.
“Can you wait in the kitchen please, Fox? I’m talking to Uncle Carl now.”
When his mother came in, she knelt down and patted his head.
“Fox, let’s not mention to your dad that Uncle Carl was here, ok?”
Fox nodded his head, and when his mother handed him a cookie and let him watch cartoons, forgot the whole thing.
3.
“You’re cheating on your husband, aren’t you?” asked Sherry, the bitch who lived next door.
“Excuse me?” Inwardly, Teena seethed with anger, but her face was complacent.
“I have eyes. I see the guy who visits when Bill’s not around.”
“He’s a friend of the family,” insisted Teena, “and nothing more.”
Sherry laughed, and started dropping hints around the neighborhood.
Teena wasn’t really sorry when Sherry died in a tragic car accident a couple of weeks later.
It wasn’t until she realized that Sherry had died one day after she told Carl about her that Teena began to fear him.
4.
Bill became suspicious of Carl after he found a pack of cigarettes in her nightstand. Teena lied and said that she smoked when she was stressed out.
She thought it reflected badly upon Bill that it had taken him years to notice that something was amiss.
He questioned Carl upon his next visit, not bothering to deny the suspicions evident in his hostile inquiries.
“Bill, the truth is that I’m thinking of getting engaged. Remember that girl from Florida, Cassandra? Teena, bless her, has been giving me some great marriage advice.”
Bill never saw it coming. Neither did Teena.
5.
Fox was always asking her to remember things. But this was something she had tried to forget.
“You betrayed my father, your husband,” shouted Fox, and the venom in his voice painfully stung her heart.
“Never,” she protested, but it was a perfunctory denial and they both knew it. She begged him with her eyes, let this one go.
But Fox was always the stubborn one, even more stubborn than her.
“Who is my father?”
She slapped him. The accusations hung in the air like a persistent stench of cigarettes.
Carl’s way was to deny everything, but Fox already knew.
Author: 50thousandtearz (formerly 50thousandtearz)
Pairing/Character: Byers/Suzanne, The Lone Gunmen
Word Count: 1,890 words
Rating: PG
Summary: Like the incredibly unoriginal title says.
Spoilers/Warnings: The Usual Suspects, Three of a Kind, Jump the Shark, would help if you've seen The Lone Gunmen
Author's Note: Anyone want to suggest an actual title? Sorry that there isn't really a theme to this other than five things + Byers/Suzanne. Also, sorry for resorting to five things in order to write a fic, but that's how I got the muse to cooperate.
1.
At the time, it had seemed like a good idea to run away with Suzanne - heroic, daring and desperately romantic.
Four months later, it was just incredibly stupid.
When he decided to go with Suzanne, Byers didn’t consider what that would entail. He thought only of a quiet life, a white picket fence, anonymous names like Smith, and little girls named Holly. He’d spent enough time dwelling on conspiracies and lies, and he wanted to find a simple truth in a normal life, albeit one created under abnormal circumstances.
The reality of it was that he threw away his life and very identity for a beautiful dream. Suzanne was nothing but single-mindedly devoted to bringing down the government and making the truth known, at any cost. Being chased by authorities at every turn, hiding in cheap dives and lurking around government warehouses - when he got into that cab, he gave up that life, while she entered into it again.
This wasn’t what he’d had in mind.
2.
Yves walked through the Arlington cemetery, seeking out its three freshest graves. She had left Jimmy at the hotel after he fell asleep, but she felt the need to come back and say her goodbyes alone. In the dark, she distractedly counted rows of headstones that gleamed of bone and moonlight, trying to remember where the graves were, and collided into a woman.
“I’m so sorry,” said Yves. “Are you okay?”
“It’s fine,” said the woman. “It’s easy to get distracted in a place like this.”
Yves began to count the rows again, until she noticed the three small bouquets of flowers Scully had laid down earlier that day. The woman was standing next to Byers’ grave, looking lost and anxious. She kept on looking from side to side as if waiting for someone to pounce upon her. Yves inwardly sighed at the company; unless the woman left, she’d have to come back tomorrow. She walked away and pretended to look for another grave, hoping that the woman would leave. But the woman continued to stand there, and after circling a few times, Yves gave up and turned to go.
“Wait,” called out the woman.
Puzzled, Yves walked over to her. “Yes?”
“If you’re here to grab me, just get it over with please.”
“What?”
Now it was the woman’s turn to look puzzled.
“Sorry. I thought you were someone else.”
Yves considered the situation.
“Were you a friend of theirs?”
“Whose?”
“Don’t be obtuse. I think you know perfectly well whose grave you’re standing next to.”
The woman sighed. “Yes.”
“You must be Suzanne.” She raises her hand to cut off the woman’s protests. “Don’t bother. You’re practically hugging Byers’ headstone, and you fit the physical description. Frohike told me about you.”
Suzanne smiled faintly at that.
“And what did he have to say?”
“That you were on the run. What are you doing here? This is the first place they’d look for you. You were clearly expecting something to happen, weren’t you?”
Suzanne tiredly shrugs. “So let them look. I’m done playing hide and seek.” She touches Byers’ headstone. “I don’t have it in me anymore. Not after I heard about this.”
Rage flared up in Yves.
“How dare you,” she spat at Suzanne. “After they gave up their lives, this is how you honor their memories? This is how you honor Byers?”
“I can’t do it anymore,” whispered Suzanne. “Knowing that he was out there, and that we couldn’t be together because duty kept us apart - duty’s done it’s job, we’re truly apart. I can’t fight anymore with the knowledge that there’s no light at the end of the tunnel for me.”
Yves studied Suzanne. The years had clearly taken a toll on her - heavy worry lines and premature wrinkles, trembling hands and swollen eyes. She looked half dead, worn and exhausted, like she was about to join her lost love.
“Never give up,” she told Suzanne. “ ‘Never give up’ - those were John’s last words.”
Suzanne blinked rapidly and leaned heavily against the headstone.
She extended her hand to Suzanne.
Suzanne took her hand tentatively, and Yves gently pulled her away from the dead.
“Let me tell you about fighting the good fight.”
Her goodbyes could wait.
3.
Three years, five months and two days after the worst day of his life, Byers got a phone call.
“There’s a Sarah Leed that has you listed as her next of kin,” said the nurse.
“I don’t know any Sarah’s,” Byers said as he calculated the letters in his head to determine if this could be yet another pseudonym of Yves’.
“She has multiple third degree burn wounds on her lower body, some broken limbs and loss of vision to her left eye. Possibly neurological damage as well.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not sure who this woman is.”
“You are John F. Byers, are you not?”
“Yes, I am. But - “
“You can have her back now,” the nurse said, and Byers dropped the phone.
4.
“Suzanne Modeski is dead. Every computer in every county, state, federal office knows it. This is who you are now,” said Byers, handing her the paper with her new identity on it.
Suzanne reached out and their fingers touched.
“Come with me,” she said, stroking his fingertips.
“I can’t,” he said.
Suzanne bowed her head. “I know.” She leaned forward and kissed him sadly, a tear dripping down her cheek.
Byers pulled away.
“I can’t… Langly… you can wipe me from the computers too…” he said hesitantly.
“What?”
“…And a death certificate.”
“Are you insane? You want to go on the run?”
Langly sputtered and puffed up like a bullfrog, but Frohike interrupted him.
“Let him be, Langly. He should go. He’s not happy. The only thing that’s kept him going this long is the promise of finding the truth and Suzanne, and buddy, let’s get real, we’re not going to find the other thing for a long time, if ever.”
Langly shook his head furiously.
“We’ll make you a death certificate,” Frohike continued. “We can get Scully to sign off on it. Suicide, with a note saying that without Suzanne, you couldn’t go on anymore. Once the story of your ill-fated love gets out, I doubt people would question it.”
Byers stared into Suzanne’s eyes.
“Thank you.”
“Just remember, Melvin makes a lovely name for a boy!”
“I’ll remember,” said Suzanne, and she leaned in to kiss Frohike. Langly stood stiffly when she kissed him.
As the cab pulled away, Langly turned his back to his departing friend and stared at the casino entrance.
“You were always such a sap,” Langly spat out. Frohike could hear the tears in his voice.
“Somebody,” he said, “deserves to be happy.”
“Just not us?”
“Probably not.”
“You bastard.”
“What else could I tell Byers? That he should spend the rest of his life underground with creeps like us? Not take a chance for something better?”
“What are we supposed to do now?”
“…I don’t know.”
Langly took off his glasses and roughly rubbed his eyes, not even bothering to claim that it wasn’t tears, just a speck in his eye.
Frohike roughly patted him on the back.
“Wanna hit the slots?”
5.
It begins like all other momentous occasions do for John Byers - rather unexpectedly. Every day, even his most auspicious days, start out with having to wait for a bleary eyed and haggard Langly to finish up using the bathroom - and you do not rush Langly - while listening to Frohike complain about the morning’s headlines as he fries eggs and pops bread into the toaster. Then Jimmy comes in, cheerful no matter what early hour, and the Lone Gunmen plus one sit together and fight over who gets to read the New York Times - “I’m getting two more subscriptions,” Frohike yells every morning, but there’s still only one newspaper, - and why is there jam on the funnies section? Then it’s off to work on the newspaper - find a story, interview the latest abductees or track down Yves’ latest scheme - this is also considered working on the newspaper even though half the time they can’t publish whatever few findings they end up with.
Yesterday, today, tomorrow, they all seem to blur together. They may end up in different wacky situations, but the motions are the same, the outcomes never quite satisfying to him. Like Frohike’s eggs, it boils down to this: he’s burned out.
They sit at the table, momentarily silent while they chew on ranchos huevos when the doorbell goes off and Jimmy gets up to answer it.
“I don’t know who it is,” hollers Jimmy.
“You sure it’s not Yves?” Langly mutters.
“She’s asking for Byers.”
Byers wipes his mouth and pushes his chair away from the table. He heads for the security screens and takes a look.
As if the lady knows he’s looking, she turns to stare directly into the camera lens, and it’s just like the other times, their eyes meet through the screen and that’s the end of the world as he knows it. Suzanne stands there, her hair a wet black bob, badly applied mascara running from the rain pounding the streets.
~
The next morning, Byers is woken by a persistent banging noise. Langly’s waiting outside the bathroom door.
“Damn it, Byers, get her out of there!”
He moves to pound the door again, but it opens and he falls forward. Suzanne deftly sidesteps him and walks out of the bathroom. She smiles and kisses him on the cheek.
“Good morning.”
She’s wearing one of his shirts over her jeans, and she smells divine in the way only a woman can smell. He follows her, dumbly smiling, to the kitchen table. They sit down just as Jimmy and Langly enter, and Frohike tosses the newspaper onto the table.
“No good headlines today - "
Langly and Jimmy make a grab for the paper, but Suzanne’s already got it, and although Langly’s manners have much to be desired, he knows better than steal from a lady. She quickly scans the first few pages, and the hands it to Byers.
“By request, and because someone decided to help me for once, today we have Frohike’s Famous Flapjacks!” says Frohike with a flourish, depositing a platter of pancakes onto the table. He smirks at Suzanne. “Baby, you can flip pancakes with me any day.”
While they munch on their breakfast, Frohike repeats the latest news he’s heard about from a contact in the health sector. They’re due to drive out to Georgetown and meet with a mole in two hours.
“… So Jimmy, you’ll be driving for once, I need Langly on the computer. Byers, you’re going to meet the guy, and I’ll be snooping around his buddy’s office, he gave me a key. But we could really use someone to provide backup, where is Yves this week?”
While he talks, Suzanne gets up and briskly collects the empty plates.
“I can do backup,” she says lightly, “but I don’t think it’s smart for you to go by yourself, I’ve heard of this company before - ” and as Frohike starts to argue with her while practically drooling over the fact that someone is cleaning up without him threatening to shoot them first… Byers knows they’re not just the Lone Gunmen anymore.
Title: Four Times CSM and Teena Mulder Were Almost Found Out, and One Time They Were
Author: 50thousandtearz (formerly 50thousandtearz)
Pairing/Character: CSM/Teena Mulder
Word Count: 500 words
Rating: PG
Summary: Like the title says. Also, drabblicious.
Spoilers/Warnings: Demons
1.
The first time Teena laid eyes upon Fox, she was convinced that the ruse was up. Bill would surely know the truth. As she held her squirming child in her arms, all she could see in the intense gaze of Fox’s infant eyes, the curve of his jaw, the shape of his ears - was him.
When Bill arrived, he headed straight to the crib to inspect his child. Teena waited, the only sign of her anxiety evident in the clench of her fists.
“He looks just like his old man,” said Bill, turning away from the crib and smiling broadly.
2.
“Mommy, Sam’s crying again -“
Fox stopped in the doorway, startled to see Uncle Carl hugging his mother. Didn’t Daddy and Uncle Carl have a big fight? What was he doing here?
His mother pushed Uncle Carl away and frowned.
“Can you wait in the kitchen please, Fox? I’m talking to Uncle Carl now.”
When his mother came in, she knelt down and patted his head.
“Fox, let’s not mention to your dad that Uncle Carl was here, ok?”
Fox nodded his head, and when his mother handed him a cookie and let him watch cartoons, forgot the whole thing.
3.
“You’re cheating on your husband, aren’t you?” asked Sherry, the bitch who lived next door.
“Excuse me?” Inwardly, Teena seethed with anger, but her face was complacent.
“I have eyes. I see the guy who visits when Bill’s not around.”
“He’s a friend of the family,” insisted Teena, “and nothing more.”
Sherry laughed, and started dropping hints around the neighborhood.
Teena wasn’t really sorry when Sherry died in a tragic car accident a couple of weeks later.
It wasn’t until she realized that Sherry had died one day after she told Carl about her that Teena began to fear him.
4.
Bill became suspicious of Carl after he found a pack of cigarettes in her nightstand. Teena lied and said that she smoked when she was stressed out.
She thought it reflected badly upon Bill that it had taken him years to notice that something was amiss.
He questioned Carl upon his next visit, not bothering to deny the suspicions evident in his hostile inquiries.
“Bill, the truth is that I’m thinking of getting engaged. Remember that girl from Florida, Cassandra? Teena, bless her, has been giving me some great marriage advice.”
Bill never saw it coming. Neither did Teena.
5.
Fox was always asking her to remember things. But this was something she had tried to forget.
“You betrayed my father, your husband,” shouted Fox, and the venom in his voice painfully stung her heart.
“Never,” she protested, but it was a perfunctory denial and they both knew it. She begged him with her eyes, let this one go.
But Fox was always the stubborn one, even more stubborn than her.
“Who is my father?”
She slapped him. The accusations hung in the air like a persistent stench of cigarettes.
Carl’s way was to deny everything, but Fox already knew.