BONUS CHAPTER! BONUS CHAPTER! IT'S TIME FOR THE BONUS CHAPTER! This chapter's shout out for bailing me out is to TK. He sent me a little note of encouragement last night and managed to remind me that I hadn't addressed something that I should have. I won't even tell him what it was because it's too embarrassing on my part. All I'll say is, THANKS TK!! HA! I'm a freakin poet. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the chapter. Drop me a line if you want. I'd be happy to hear from you.
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Crown Vic to a Parallel World: From Whence I Came The second installment of the ongoing adventures of Church Philips
12
Gathering the Family
We went in and found Joe parked on the living room sofa in front of the evening news. Mary was nowhere to be seen. I asked a bunch of questions at once. "Where's Mary? What did you guys talk about all day? What are you going to do about Zeke?"
Joe answered my questions in reverse order. "Mary doesn't know what they're going to do about Ezekiel and his embezzlement. It's a jailable offence. It seems our brother-in-law has done similar things before, but never to that magnitude. His habits are getting worse, not better. Mary is going to see if he will agree to counseling, maybe meet with the priest and the bishop and work out some kind of restitution schedule. He took a lot of money. This could end badly for our sister."
I felt bad for Mary. I thought about Ars' money and wondered if Shawn would be willing to use some of it to help. As soon as that thought crossed my mind, I remembered who I was thinking of. I knew immediately that Shawn would help. His nature was to help. Paying off the crime didn't solve the problem though. I worried what would happen if we agreed to bail Zeke out. I worried that he would just continue to escalate his habits until he got himself into a situation he couldn't get out of.
I also worried what Shawn and I would owe Ars if we took two-hundred thousand of his dollars to rescue my brother-in-law from himself. Ars was certain to exact a price of some kind. At the very least, it would give him leverage the next time he wanted something from us. That thought made me freshly angry with Zeke. I gritted my teeth when I thought about all the bullshit that he'd created by being an embezzling, whoring, gambling, hypocrite. `Fuck him.' I thought bitterly.
Joe interrupted my bitterness with some comments on their afternoon discussion. "As for what we spoke about, your story mostly. How could we talk about anything else? Mary witnessed magic power twice this morning. She heard a story that nothing could have prepared her to hear. I was also able to convince her that I'm not going to die. She's thrilled, but she's rattled. Today's display seems to have shaken a lot of what she thought she knew."
I wondered what Joe meant by his last statement, about Mary being shaken. I also wondered how Joe was suddenly so nonchalant about stuff that he didn't believe even when he witnessed it. The idea of Joe having to convince Mary of anything left me bewildered.
I shrugged to myself and tried to put those thoughts aside as they weren't productive to the moment. I looked around and realized I still hadn't seen Mary and Joe hadn't told me where she was. I reiterated my original question.
"She went home in a ride service car about an hour ago." Joe reported to my dissatisfaction. "I told her to stay until you got back, but she wanted to get home for the kids."
I walked around to stand between Joe and the flickering screen. "You just let her go home alone? What if Zeke does something? He had a bad shock today and we don't know what he's capable of."
Joe reassured me in a lazy voice full of unconcern. "Ezekiel is a coward and Mary can take care of herself. If she needs help, she'll call us."
I wasn't convinced. Mary might not approve of me, but she was still my sister, and I was worried. I wanted to check on her, but I didn't want to abandon my responsibilities at the house, like getting dinner started. I thought about the tasks that were immediately pressing and scanned the able-bodied people available to me to consider their individual talents.
I figured that Shawn and Andy could handle dinner. I knew Andy could cook and I figured Shawn could help with the knowledge he had from my memories. Bem, assuming he could stay awake for a while longer, was a better choice to go with me to check on Mary. As a soldier, he understood stealth and, if necessary, physical action. I chose teams. "Shawn, can you and Andy get dinner going? I want to go check on Mary."
Joe disapproved. "She won't like that." He warned.
I put my hands up to silence his objections. "She won't even see me. I'll just sneak up to the house and check. If everything's fine, I'll be right back."
"Bem," I addressed my friend, "how do you feel? Are you up for a recon mission?"
Bem seemed to perk up at the opportunity to be useful. "I'm a little tired but not too bad. Whatever you need, let's do it."
Shawn came around to where I stood in front of Joe. He pushed his front to my front and gave me a chaste kiss goodbye. "Be careful." Shawn sounded cautious. He wasn't afraid for me, but he wanted me to watch myself.
I hugged him to my body and dismissed his worry. "I'll be fine. I probably won't even go in. You know how I am. I'm probably worrying for nothing."
Shawn kissed me again, lingeringly this time and with tongue. When he pulled away, he said, "yes, I know how you are, that's why I'm telling you to be careful."
"Don't worry, Shawn." Bem spoke up from behind the sofa. "I'll protect him."
The too-thin man said it with sincerity that even I believed. "See, nothing to worry about." I gave Shawn an extra squeeze.
Shawn nodded, broke away from me, and headed for the kitchen. He collected Andy from where he'd been sitting on the steps to the upper floor on the way passed. I glanced down at Joe, who had a deep, scowly frown on his face. "What?" I asked.
"Nothing." He snapped.
It wasn't nothing. It took me only a moment to realize it was the public display of affection that Shawn and I had just shared. `Oh, go fuck yourself, Joe.' I thought, but I said nothing. I shrugged, gathered Bem, and headed out the front door for our mission to Mary's.
Bem and I got in the Town Car and made good time to Mary's. She lived one town over in Cherry Hill, in one of those developments where all the houses are exactly the same and all have their pinky fingers stuck up in the air. Maple Shade was very much working class; mechanics, truck-drivers, construction workers, and the like. Cherry Hill went to work in buttoned-down shirts. The residents there weren't wealthy, but they definitely felt themselves `better.'
I drove passed Mary's place and parked down the block. Bem and I walked back and crossed the side yard to get near the house. Mary lived in a modern, brick-clad colonial that was built into a gradual hill. The front of the house was level with the street while the back required a half-dozen steps to get to the deck and the set of French doors that opened into the kitchen. I left Bem leaning against a deck post in the yard while I snuck up the stairs to peek inside.
The doors each contained twelve windowpanes that were protected on the inside by sheer yellow curtains. I crouched behind the house wall, so I wouldn't cast a visible silhouette, and craned my head to the side to peek through the edge of the glass. I used my telekinesis to push the fabric open just enough to look through.
Mary's kitchen was as I remembered from having been inside her house just once, when I'd helped the then, newly married couple move in. The dŽcor was dated then, and it remained dated. I presumed Zeke was waiting for the style to come back around, but I didn't think late-nineties pastel walls and blond wood would ever return to prominence. The once chic, black appliances seemed like dark sentinels standing guard over the open-floor-plan kitchen and dining room.
Zeke sat at the wide island that defined the vague limits between the two rooms. He faced the dining room, which meant his back was to me. He was dressed the same as when I'd seen him earlier. He drank from a water glass and set it down on a wicker coaster. The coaster on a kitchen counter didn't make sense to me, and then it did. The countertops were white composite trimmed in the same blond wood as the cabinets.
Mary had made quite a fuss, all those years ago, about being careful not to leave rings on her white counters. I smirked at the memory of deliberately setting my sweating beer cans down to drive her nuts while me and some of my coworkers, hired for the occasion and paid mostly with those same cans of beer, muscled the furniture into the house.
Instead of light domestic beer, Zeke had a half-empty bottle of gin at his elbow. Mary stood opposite him. She was red-faced and angry. I heard the upset tone in her voice as she tried to talk to him, but Zeke refused to pay attention or respond. I couldn't hear the words of the one-sided argument through the double-glazing of the doors but could guess the topic. The only thing that pleased me about the scene was that the twins were nowhere in sight. I assumed they were upstairs and hoped they were behind closed doors, unable to hear their mother's anger.
Mary called to Zeke a couple times, her fists propped on her hips and elbows out wide. That was her standard posture of anger or disapproval. She got no response from her seated husband other than when he took another sip from his glass. Mary threw her hands up in frustration and uttered what I assumed was an epithet that called Zeke's parentage into question.
I'm not much on reading lips, but the word Mary used had been directed at me often enough that I recognized the shape it made when leaving the mouth. The word seemed to register with Zeke, but only slightly. He set his glass down, rose unsteadily from the chair, approached Mary, and without warning, slapped her openhanded across the face. The force of the blow spun my sister's head around. She didn't fall, or even stumble. Mary kept her feet under her and glared hatred at Zeke.
I saw red. In that instant, I could have killed Zeke. It took all my self-control not to. Instead, I lifted him off the floor and floated him away from Mary. The feeling of his body through my magic disgusted me. He was rigid with fear and panic, but that brought me no pleasure. Mary stared with wide, frightened eyes at her weightless husband until I knocked. The automatic part of her mind seemed to take over, and she answered the door to let me in. I called Bem to join me. Mary stared from me to Zeke and back again. "Are you doing that?" She asked.
"Yes." I forced my hands into my pants pockets as I didn't trust myself not to lash out with them. I nodded towards Zeke, the floating man. "Either he is leaving and I'm staying the night, or he is staying, and you and the girls are coming to Joe's with me."
Mary's hand rose to cover her already-swelling cheek. "I'm alright. I can handle him."
My anger spiked at what I perceived was her defense of the man who had struck her. "MARY, THERE IS NO THIRD WAY!" I shouted. She shrank away from me. I took a deep breath and blew it out to get control of my voice. I couldn't control my anger, but I could modulate my voice. When I spoke again, it was in my normal tone, or as close to it as I could get under the circumstances. "Make your decision or I'll do it for you."
Mary stood, silently rooted to the tile floor. I gave her what felt like an hour but was probably no more than a moment before I did as I promised and made the decision for her. "Bem, take Mary upstairs and help her get some things together for an overnight stay. You get her and the twins in the car and come back here."
Bem grabbed Mary's hand and half-led, half-dragged her toward the stairs that were visible through the hallway toward the front of the house. Mary kept her eyes on me as long as she could. I don't know if she didn't believe that I was really there, or maybe she was afraid of what I would do when she couldn't see.
I waited until she was out of sight and turned my attention to my floating brother-in-law. I'd lost the impulse to destroy him. I didn't even plan to hurt him, though it would have given me enormous satisfaction. When the floor creaked above us, I knew that Zeke and I were alone.
The man was laughing, a chuckling hysterical laugh, as he hovered two feet above the kitchen floor, cocooned and helpless in my magic. I turned him from vertical to horizontal and pressed his back against the kitchen ceiling. I moved to stand roughly under him and to his right. His eyes bulged in their sockets as he stared down at me.
I kept my voice calm and even with no emotion, though it was an internal battle not to scream. I knew that Zeke would understand me better, and fear me more, if I was calm. "Zeke, I'm not going to kill you this time," I announced to focus Zeke's attention, "because Mary wouldn't like it. If you ever touch her in anger again, her or the girls, I will erase you from this world."
To make sure he believed me, I floated an apple out of a bowl of fruit on the island and hovered it below his face. I took my right hand from my pocket to point at the apple and shot it with a beam that enveloped the apple and made it glow. I added a pulse that destroyed the apple with a flash. "Do you believe me, Zeke? Do you understand my power?" I asked when the flash winked out. "I will destroy you with no fear because there won't even be a body left to incriminate me. TELL ME YOU UNDERSTAND!"
Zeke's whole body shook with fear as I held him prisoner in my magic. "I understand." He squeaked. I brought him down slowly, righted him, and stood him on his feet. When I released my hold, he crumpled to the floor like a marionette with the strings cut. "What are you?" Zeke asked from his place on the floor, sprawled and sniveling on the ceramic tile.
I sneered down at him. "I am a powerful man who loves his sister. That's all you need to know." I had a bit more to say, but I clamped my mouth shut when I heard several sets of footsteps coming down the stairs. The tone of the footsteps changed as they crossed the front entryway and the house door opened and closed. I waited in the kitchen with my brother-in-law whimpering at my feet. A few minutes later, the door opened again, and Bem walked into the kitchen.
"They're in the car, ready to go." He reported like we were in the middle of an actual mission. I thanked him and turned my attention to Zeke. "We're leaving now. I will see you again. We have things to discuss." Bem and I walked out and left Zeke lying in a sniveling heap on the kitchen floor.
We strode out the front door and down the sidewalk, along the block to where I'd parked the car. We got in. Mary and her girls, Hannah and Leah, sat across the back seat with Mary behind the driver's seat. I reached for the key to start the car, but I couldn't twist the ignition. My hands shook with impotent rage and there was nowhere to get rid of the anger. A desperate hope made me glance at the passenger side visor. Andy's pack of menthols was still stuck above it. I snatched the pack down, got a cigarette in my face, and lit it with the pop out lighter. I threw the driver's door open and jumped out of the car as I didn't want to smoke around Mary's kids.
I'd only inhaled one drag when Mary opened the door and started to get out. "STAY IN THE GOD DAMNED CAR!" I snarled and pointed the burning cigarette at her. She shrank back and closed the door without a word. I paced the street as I smoked savagely and swore. "Fucking goddamned Zeke...little weasel...call me a faggot will you...smack my sister...I'll kill you, you little fuck."
I finished the cigarette and flicked it contemptuously down the street. It landed on the asphalt and sparked where it came to rest, no longer a delivery system for soothing nicotine, now a dirty piece of litter to be crushed under foot. I went back to the car and got in it. The cigarette and the rant helped some. My hands still shook, but I could control them enough to drive.
I borrowed Mary's phone and called Joe. When he answered I handed the phone to Bem along with some instructions. "Tell him there will be three more for dinner and ask him if there's enough. Don't answer any fucking goddamned questions."
Bem spoke to Joe for a minute. He had to refuse to explain several times. It took him just another minute to get the information I wanted. There was plenty of food at the house. I drove directly to Joe's and parked in the street. Everyone got out of the car and loitered at the curb. Bem seemed to be waiting for me, the twins were waiting for Mary, and Mary was waiting for I don't know what. I used my angry, shaking hands to light another cigarette and leaned against the driver's side of the car. I leaned so I was mostly facing the street but able to see the others in my peripheral vision if necessary.
Something about my action triggered Mary to act. She gathered the girls to her, introduced them to their new, Uncle Bem' and asked that they go with him to see their Uncle Joe. Bem crouched down to their height and made a big show of presenting himself as a knight to the twin princesses,' as he called them. He kissed the backs of their hands to their giggling delight and shepherded them into the house.
The view of Bem's softer, kid-friendly side calmed me more than the cigarette did. His capacity to adapt to any situation never ceased to amaze me. He escorted the girls inside. When the house door closed behind them, Mary and I were alone. She came around the car, into the street, and approached me gingerly, like a lion tamer who'd lost her chair and whip. "What did you do to him?" She asked from well out of arm's reach.
I shifted my stance to lean on the car fender and face her. I drew on my cigarette and talked the foul menthol smoke from my burning lungs. "All I did was scare him. I didn't even repay the damage he did to you. I could have killed him, but I didn't because I'm not a killer."
I had a passing thought for mad King Pravus. I'd technically killed him, but I didn't think that counted because...because it didn't count...or at least that's what I convinced myself to believe. I turned my thoughts back to my sister. "Has he ever done that before?" I asked Mary and wasn't sure that I could handle the answer.
"No." She said to my deep relief. I already felt guilty about abandoning Joe and coming back to find out he was sick. Not that I could have done anything for him if I'd stayed, but I still felt guilty. If I discovered that I'd left my sister in a physically abusive marriage, I would have felt the need to do myself an injury.
"He's abused me mentally and psychologically, but never physically before." Mary admitted and hung her head in shame. "We're broken, Church. It's a bad marriage, a loveless one. He doesn't like me because I won't stroke his fragile ego and I despise him because he seeks that attention elsewhere. Usually he pays for it."
"Why do you stay?"
"I stay because of my faith. I don't believe in divorce." Mary recited the words like they were a mantra she'd chanted whenever she needed to remind herself why she was married.
"Don't you believe in happiness?"
Mary didn't answer right away. Her head still hung so I couldn't see her face. One choked sob escaped before she looked up with tears shining in her eyes. "I used to."
I flicked my cigarette away, took a long step, and pulled my sister into a hug. She went rigid in my arms, either out of surprise or fear. I worried I'd overstepped, but Mary surprised me and hugged back. She didn't cry, Mary was tough as nails, but she wasn't serene either. Her breath came in ragged gasps that told me she was battling an emotional firestorm. I held her until she calmed. "Come on," I whispered, "let's go in and eat. It'll be better tomorrow, I promise."
We separated and went into the house. Andy was in the living room, in the middle of coaxing his cousins to the second-floor bathroom where they could wash up for dinner. Shawn was putting the finishing touches on the meal while Joe set the table. It was clear that Bem had briefed Joe on what happened. Joe greeted Mary but didn't ask any questions. I crossed through the kitchen and signaled Shawn to follow me as I passed through the dining room into the sunroom.
I took him to the farthest corner of the room to ask a favor. "My sister is having a rough time. Her husband hit her tonight. I know she said some pretty mean things yesterday, but would you take a look at her, please?"
I felt Shawn wrestle between apprehension and his natural desire to help. His caring nature defeated his fear, but he still hesitated. "I will if she'll let me. I wouldn't refuse care to anyone, especially not your family, but you need to talk to her first."
I asked him to meet us in the family room and went to get Mary who'd been loitering just inside the front door, seemingly unable to decide what to do with herself. "Come downstairs. Shawn wants to see what he can do for your face."
Mary froze, her head lowered again in shame. "I can't ask for his help after what I said to him." She whispered.
I clamped a hand on her shoulder and made her walk with me. "You don't have to. I already asked him. Just let him look."
I got Mary downstairs and herded her to where Shawn waited near an old-fashioned pedestal lamp with three shades along its vertical-post-body. All three lights were lit. Shawn got right down to business without small talk. "Misses Thompson, please face the light and turn your left cheek to me." He instructed in his clinical voice. I was glad he'd used that tone with Mary. I figured it would be easier for her to see him as a doctor than as my husband.
She did what she was told. Shawn inspected the large purple bruise that had already spread across her swollen cheek. He touched it gently and the bruise faded like a stain being bleached on a laundry soap infomercial. Mary made a little sound of surprise but stayed still. Shawn finished and stepped back. "How does that feel, Misses Thompson?"
"It's perfect." Mary touched the cheek like she needed to reassure herself that what just happened had really happened. "You're amazing, Shawn. Thank you."
"Thank you." I said as well.
Shawn nodded and went upstairs. Mary watched him go, and her hand remained on her healed cheek. "I hurt him," she breathed, "he just helped me. I said terrible, hateful things to him, but he helped me anyway. I shouldn't have judged him. Who am I to judge anyone?"
"It'll be alright." I tried to console Mary. "We're all still breathing so there's time to make it right. Come upstairs, dinner is probably ready."
"In a minute." She hesitated. I went up and left her to her thoughts.