The party raged on.  I guess it’s ironic, but the more the people around you drink and the later it gets, its not always that entertaining when you can’t get drunk, no matter how much you drink.

So, I’d kind of given up trying when we left the Utopia club.  I’d tried to give it up completely when Olivia got to the base.  It seemed liked I should…..be a better role model or something.  For the most part I’d stopped the drugs at least, but cold turkey on everything hadn’t really worked.  So, instead, I tried to keep the cigarettes to a minimum and the drinking to a more normal…..maybe one an hour socially.

I’m not saying the rest of the team was lit by the time three in the morning rolled around on the first of November, but….well, they weren’t sober either. Brewski’s was still pretty loud when I turned to Amelia, who had borne the brunt of the side-eyed looks and snide comments from Henri most of the night, and asked, “You want to get out of here?”

“Absolutely, we can leave. Where we headed?”

“Just a second….” and I got up to find Brant.

I found him at the dartboard, again, “Hey, I think we are going to bail.  You think you can pick Olivia up in the morning when you go buy to check on your students?  Do you mind? I think Amelia and I will stay in town, get some gifts for her birthday tomorrow.”

“Yea, that’s no worries……” and I trusted him to remember even if he slurred his words a bit.

“Thanks……..Look, I wanted to say…..well, thanks for helping.  And, I’m sorry for fucking things up with you and Henri because of well, me.”

I wasn’t big on apologies so I turned and walked away before he could respond.

---

We started walking towards the apartment after Amelia called Livy to check in and let her know Brant would pick her up in the morning.

The cool night air was refreshing to me after the swarm of people and heat at Utopia and at Brewski’s, but in less than a couple blocks Amelia shivered.  I pulled her closer, wrapping my arms around her.  It’s not like an Elizabeth Swann costume was without cover, but it was tight, and thin material.

We didn’t really talk for the few blocks it took to get to the new building full of condos William had built to help spur redevelopment after the Paragon Center opened, even it had slowed as the hate of the HomoCons grew.

“What’s this?” Amelia asked as I turned into the entry and entered the access code for the lobby entrance.

“My secret lair….”

“Another one?” and she smiled brightly.

As we entered the elevator, I said, “It’s my apartment of course.  Well, Oliver Smith’s anyway.”

“Ooo, a secret rendezvous place under another name.   Guess everybody needs a stash pad for the occasional tete a tete.”  It was a joke, sarcasm and inquiry rolled all into one.  Which, frankly, was one of the reasons I fell in love with her fifteen years ago.

And yet, “Well, Oliver Smith needs a place to live, I change here a lot to run back to the base, or to shower and go into work after running from Tempest.”

As I opened the lock and the door, and held it open for her, “The cleaning service keeps it clean, but there’s probably not much food other than some prepackaged, and the only other time I used to use it is when I would take Shawna to the clubs she liked and we wanted to be away from the others.”

I’m looking at her when I say it, I don’t know why.  To be mean I guess, out of my own guilt more likely, but I catch the twinge of discomfort at that, but she’s better at this game than I am, because she replies, “Oooh, I like your toaster.  It’s the same color as the microwave we bought the year Olivia was Peter Pan in the school play.”

It definitely hurt, and my face relayed my own discomfort.  “Is there video of her?”

She turns, bringing up a phone, before bringing up something on a social media site.  Instabook or whatever.  I watched all three in a row, standing there in the entry before turning and handing her the phone.

We spent the rest of the night and past dawn in the bed, alternating between making love and her telling me stories and showing me videos of our daughter and her activities.  School plays, choir videos, lots of motorcross, and even one of her playing basketball one season a few years ago.  Love, laughter, and bittersweet pain as I watched my daughter grow up without me one clip at a time.

So, of course, I had to dig a dagger into the past and carve out some pain for us all to share, not much later.

“Hey, show me one of Livy and Courtney.”

And the wall slammed down, or the switch flipped, or any number of other cliched sayings. She’s been more than uninhibited all night, but she pulled the sheet tight around her beautiful body, turning to roll out of bed. “”Courtney isn’t yours. Don’t worry about Courtney.”

Then she was up and out of the master suite, and it wasn’t long before he heard her banging the coffee maker around.

Sighing, I got up, pulling on a pair of boxers before following.  “Yea, but she’s yours isn’t she?  She’s Olivia’s sister right?  You can’t tell me that she doesn’t matter to you and Olivia.  Which means she matters to me…and unless you’re  going to tell me Dryse isn’t her father….then she doesn’t have anybody wherever she may be.”

Sighing again, “Damn it Amelia, I’m tired of secrets. How am I supposed to build something with Olivia if I don’t even know huge events like wherever her sister is?” Automatically pulling on our shared past, “That’s a huge god damn land mine for me to step on.”

The rigidity of her shoulders and neck as she stares at the coffee pot signals to a smarter man than me how angry she is; angry, frustrated, hurt, all of that and more maybe. “You only have to worry about landmines if you step in that direction. So don’t.”

“Fucking Christ Amelia, here’s the problem with minefields.   You never know you’ve wandered into one until it’s too late. I can’t avoid what I can’t sense.”  I pause, before attempting to gather her in a hug.  “No more secrets.  Please.  Let me help you.  Let me help our daughter.  Please. I don’t know what happened.  I don’t know if it can be fixed.  I don’t know what you are going through.  But I do know what it’s like to lose a sister.” And then he’d pause again.  “Let me help you.  After all these years, let me help.  Even if it’s just listening to what you have to say.”

She pulls away from me, before turning to look at me, but her eyes are narrowed, but glazed in anger, rage, perhaps.  Turning away again, she heads for the sink. “Always interrogating, aren’t you? Can’t just enjoy the moment. Can’t just enjoy…this…..whatever the fuck this is. Here I am trying to rebuild this dream, or maybe it’s just a fucking sham, with your friends always bringing up the other girl, willing to upend my daughter’s entire life to tell her who you really are, living on a fucking superhero base with nowhere to go, no friends, no nothing, and what does it get me? Questions? More questions. And not just questions, now questions about things that don’t even involve you. Damn it, Brett!” Snatching up a mug, she slams it onto the counter, shattering it. “You want to help me and Livy with Courtney. Great. Here’s step one. Leave it the fuck alone!”

I don’t say anything for a good thirty seconds, which seems like an eternity, but I know, because I mentally count, watching her breathe.   I just watch, not moving after her, standing in the entry to the kitchen.

My voice is then just a flat monotone, tamping down all of my emotion, using every ounce of control I ever had because a rage blossoms up, one I’ve felt before at all the betrayals, the tortures, the guilt. I’m trying to hold it in, but I know that my eyes have changed, because I see it in her flinch, “You’re right of course.  I’d argue or make some sarcastic comment about you always having to be right, but honestly….I don’t remember.  I don’t know if you’ve changed.  I don’t know how I’ve changed.  I don’t know one fucking thing about our daughter from earlier than about six weeks ago, only stories from you and Mum, and now a couple dozen highlight videos of everything I have missed.  Who by the way said how much she trusts you and likes you, and how I hadn’t deserved to know about my daughter because she was part of such a fucking loving and stable family and I’d just fuck that up.  Because obviously she knew who Olivia looked like.  I don’t know what was good, what was bad, what celebrations, what fucking trauma you have experienced, or what she has, or anything.  No first, no seconds, no birthdays, no Christmases.  So yea, I’m asking questions.  And if you consider it an interrogation, maybe it fucking is.  And you know what, so fucking what?  Can you really blame me for wanting to know what happened in the last fifteen years?  I have this vague fucking memory, it has to be fucking fake of course, a couple years ago I would have said….well never mind what I would have said.  Maybe Olivia was five or six, and there was this little blonde girl, maybe two, maybe three, holding her hand, and there was no doubt she was your daughter.    And that memory is what I held onto, when I thought hey, it’s a loving family, and three years ago when I thought you were dead, I thought, you can’t go get her and take her away from her father and her sister.  And now I find out, even in the barest details, that he was a monster, that he worked for that fucking asshole English, and…..something happened.  Something happened to a child I can only assume was his daughter and you want to tell me to butt the fuck out?”

By the end it’s a rage filled sibilant hiss because I’m losing control.  I know it, and I can’t help it.  But, fighting, I take a longer shuddering breath to attempt to gain control.  “As to Shawna, the other girl, yea, a couple of my friends are annoyed with you, or taking it out on you.  When really they are angry with me, because I love you….but I love her too, and have for the last couple years.  And the very day that “my friends” rescued our daughter from that god damn supernatural attack on the church in Port Hedland, she was attacked too, and lies in a coma a hundred feet from us all there at that base, in a fucking automated medical wing.  Oh, and where was I, you ask…well, I couldn’t do anything for our daughter because your FUCKING HUSBAND tortured me and dumped me into the ocean where I DROWNED repeatedly for twenty some hours.  And all I could think about was the fact that I would never get to see the daughter I just met again. Never see that “other girl” again.  Never get to talk to you again…the woman I loved so long ago and was so astonished to see was alive. And you want to tell me your rebuilding a ‘sham, or maybe a forbidden dream.’  I don’t know what we are building, if anything.  I’m sorry that we took you out of Port Hedland.  You tell me what you want done, and we will do it.  Because from the very beginning, I obviously had NO FUCKING SAY.”  By now, there are tears of sadness and rage, and more fucking guilt leaking down my cheeks, and under me I feel the granite on the corner of the countertop crack in my grip.

Tears now pouring, she whirls on me. ” I was trying to protect you, asshole! If you’re concerned about NO FUCKING SAY then guess what, I’m your girl!” Smashing yet another mug. “You know why I married Dryse? To protect YOU! To keep an eye on YOU! You know who I loved the entire time? YOU! You know why I had another child? Because he didn’t think I really wanted to be married to him because I showed no interest in having another child. So guess what? I did it: To! Protect! You! And I’m sorry that my being here has thrown a little wrench in the picket fence you’re trying to build with the other girl, but you know what I didn’t have? ANOTHER GIRL. For me it was you, you fucking jerk!” Turning her back on me, she stares down at the sink, at all of the shattered parts of the mugs. “It was always you. It was only you.”

Quietly, in a pained whisper, “From the day I met you, I loved you.  I never thought I wanted anything as much as I wanted to be a soldier.  Until I met you.  I would have done anything for you.  And it killed me that day you called to tell me it was over.”

“And then….nothing.  I just don’t know what happened.”

“Bryce and I finally ended up here.  And I began to remember pieces.  Apex and Henri helped me hack the databases, and every single one showed you as missing or dead.  Just like it showed the rest of the team.”

“And I died again.  And I knew it was my fault.”

I look mournfully at her back, “How do you betray someone that’s dead?  Can you? I guess, because I feel like I did.  So, finally, yea, I guess there was another girl. And I grew to love her.”

“Then we came home. And Bryce insisted on going to that damn stadium.  And you were so, so, so angry, when I was so shocked, so happy, so confused to see you alive.”

“And now here we are.  Ripping, clawing at the wounds.  I don’t know what to do with any of this Amelia.  I’m sorry that my questions cause you pain.  I’m sorry for every pain you have suffered.  I can’t change any of it.  I wish I could.  I wish a lot of things.  I’m sorry for what you endured.  I’m sorry that we ripped you and Olivia from the life you had.”

I step up behind her, “Please.  All I wanted to do was help.”

“If you need me to leave, I will.  It will break me, but I will for you. We can get a house for you and Olivia somewhere; I’ll pay for it all, school, racing, a job, a church, whatever.  Anything you want.”

“But….I’d rather you stay.  All of that; somewhere with me.  The base or not. But I don’t know what I was like fifteen years ago.  I know now that I’m damaged, paranoid; I need someone who will always tell me the truth.  I need that base.   I need that rock.  I always wanted that to be you.”

I’ve slowly moved up behind her as she cries, looking into the sink, breathing in and tasting her scent, reaching out to lightly touch her shoulders.“Please be my rock.  And let me be yours. Someone you can tell everything. Let go of the burdens. Please let me help you.  What good am I if I can’t help you and everything that’s a part of you?

“Leave?” Her laugh is weak and defeated, before turning to look at me, “I just got you back. I don’t want you to leave. I never want you to leave. At the stadium I was furious when you showed up. After years of trying to move past you I thought I was there. I thought I had convinced myself that life could be normal. A mother and wife. A woman who had a purpose that wasn’t centered around a fucking….Ghost.  But then you showed up, and in a snap,” as she snaps her fingers, “all of that space was gone. I was roped back in, flooded with emotions, like nothing had ever changed. And now I have what I’ve always wanted. I have a life with you in it, where you and I and Livy can be together. But it’s all balanced so recklessly on this razor’s edge. One slip and it all crashes down. I don’t know if I can do that. I know you want answers and I wish I could give them all to you, but I can’t. I don’t have all of them.” Turning to look up at me, she puts a hand gently on your chest. “But I really want to help you find them.”

I put my arms around her and cautiously grip her in an intense hug, cautious to avoid hurting her with my intense strength, but afraid to let go, before murmuring into her hair.   “How do we do it? How do we find those answers? How can I help you find a new purpose?  I still can’t believe you are both here.  Every time I close my eyes, I’m terrified that is just another broken dream. Another ghostly fantasy that will end. I can’t lose you again.  Even if our daughter despises me.”

She accepts the hug, wrapping her arms around me, pulling me tightly against her. “She doesn’t despise you.” She says into my chest. “She doesn’t even know you.” A deep breath seems to help settle her shaky voice before she leans back to look up at me. “But she will. Come hell or high water, she will.” Gently she kisses me. “She’ll get to know you. You’ll get to know her, and we’ll get to know us.”