Chapter 2 - Lightning Strikes
"How you be, lass?" Connor frowned in concern, looking down at the blonde girl that had gotten herself mostly free. And then fainted. That she'd come around was a good thing. She was the only one whose eyes were uncovered, as they hadn't gotten to the point of freeing the others from their bonds, and she was meeting their gazes head on. Connor made a step for her and she unconsciously tilted her body back. He stopped moving as he felt his brother walk up.
Murphy walked up beside his brother, a bag filled with the dead men's things. A robbery gone wrong. He leaned into Connor, grinning and laughing as he patted the other on the shoulder, teasing him, "Isn't that just like you? Always scaring the girls off."
Connor's face scrunched up and he turned to wap his brother on the shoulder. Murphy just kept laughing, muffling the noise with a hand. Connor shot a glare, but his gaze softened as he turned back to the girl, "We'd like to help you. Get all of you free and back to where you came from. Can we do that?"
Beth sucked in a heavy breath, the panic still clutching at her chest and making it difficult to focus. To think straight. She shook her head and looked down, breaking their gazes, mouth opening but nothing coming out. Her voice cracked on the first attempt. She looked back up at the brothers, slowly taking them in, from their worn black work-boots, to the well-loved and matching black peacoats, to the nearly identical veritas and aequitas tattoo on their left index fingers, finally reaching their striking and dissimilar facial features. She felt her skin heat up at the heavy scrutiny, embarrassed at how poorly she was reacting. Even if it was perfectly understandable, she wasn't in the right frame of mind to realize that.
Beth sucked in another breath and tried again to get something out, "I - Thank you!" Her voice cracked again, this time with tears as her fear finally caught up with her. She started crying, tears rushing with a choked sob, "So much. For saving us. Them. M-me."
A mother always knew when something was wrong with her babies. Annette Greene wasn't raised no fool either. She knew something was up when all the girls, including spirited Maggie, came in somber and quiet. Some of them with dried tears tracking down their faces or were wiping snot and tears away. The other chaperones had gone down to the hotel restaurant and that left just Annette to greet the girls and figure out what was wrong.
She waited until the group had a chance to sit down, though most of them huddled together, before asking, "What's going on?"
The question was meant for all of them, but Annette aimed it at Maggie first. She was one of the oldest and one of Annette's own. But Maggie's lips thinned and pressed firm. Nothing was coping out of her. She looked at the others. Beth started to hiccup as she tried to keep the sobs at bay.
"Bethy?" Annette pleaded softly, moving to touch her baby girl's arm, "What happened?"
Looking up, Beth pulled herself deeper into her sister's side and sobbed out a choked 'momma!'
"Beth. . . Bethy," Maggie hissed low and concerned, trying to subtly hush her up without looking like that's what she was doing.
But it was Mary Cathy that cracked, not Beth, blurting out, "We were attacked. In an alley. They tried- they tried to-" She cut herself off with a sob.
"They had guns, momma," Beth sobbed.
Maggie brought her arms up to hug her sister fiercely. She looked up to meet Annette's eyes before looking down and nodding, "They didn't hurt us. Some guys, these brothers... they came in and... and..."
"They scared the men off," Beth interrupted, squeezing Maggie's side. She took a deep breath and looked up at her mother, "They started yelling fire and stuff. Caused a scene. No one else came, but the men that were trying to mug us, they ran off."
Annette's hand went to her chest. Her heart was pounding so hard and she had to sit down. It was a relief to know that they were all alright. Just scared. With good reason, of course.
"Okay," Annette said after she took a moment to catch her breath. She forced a smile that ended up being sad regardless as she looked around at the group. "Okay," was repeated, a little softer, a little firmer, and she nodded. "Okay. You're safe. You're all here and you're safe. I know it must have been terribly frightening, but you're here and you're safe. For the rest of the trip, any time you go out, you go with one of the chaperones."
She looked at Maggie, reached out to press a hand to her step-daughter's cheek, "That's nothing against you. You've done great the last week. But if people are targeting all of you in a group that big, then we're going to have one me or one of the ladies of the church out with you girls at all times."
To Maggie's credit, she didn't protest. She just gave a shallow nod before tucking her head into Beth's shoulder.
It wasn't exactly a good end to the day. But by the time the other ladies came back up from their meal, most of the girls had calmed down enough to retreat to their rooms and talk quietly among themselves. Get cleaned up. And even feel up to ordering pizza.
The ladies of their Church group were informed by Annette about what happened. What the girls had told her. Enough of the girls had never seen the other end of any sort of gun that their continued nervousness and jumpiness even among friends didn't seem too out of place. The violence that had been promised on them with the mugging was enough to cause more than a few nightmares and some difficult nights sleeping.
It was only when two friendly, smiling, Irish men with tattoos greeted the group after Wednesday morning Mass at the Church near the hotel that any of the girls showed signs of relaxing. All of them had shy smiles and blushing looks. The boys, as the girls started to affectionately refer to them, were introduced as the ones to 'scare off' the muggers. Annette and the other chaperones were, of course, very relieved to make their acquaintance. Other than the tattoos and smoking, the two were the picture of good, deeply religious, men.
After that first meeting, the boys became a regular feature around the hotel rooms for the rest of the week. The ladies of the church group tittered and giggled at the sounds of their Irish lilt and melted as the brothers spoke in a half dozen languages they didn't know. Mostly inside jokes between themselves, but sometimes conversations about the state of the girls and one blonde haired, blue-eyed girl, in particular.
The ladies of the Church were, at their heart, a group of gossiping old biddies who had nothing better to do with their time. And no real drive to, either. They loved the girls, in their own way, and they were of course, very concerned about the attempted robbery. But with everything having been averted for the better, they didn't see what a lot of the continued fuss the girls were putting on about was for. With the girls needing fully-adult chaperones at all times now; enforced by Annette, the younger members of the group got to be exposed to the casual gossip.
The only time it didn't happen was when one of the Greene girls weren't around. The'd check inconspicuously to make sure the coast was clear and then start tittering away with underhanded and snide remarks. Mostly having to do with Maggie's history of sneaking off at all hours and being brought home in the back of a police cruiser. Which then led to speculation on if it ran in the family on Hershel's side because of all the drinking he'd done when Maggie's mother had passed. The man had gotten himself into quite some trouble, including time in the drunk tank, during that time of his life. Perhaps Maggie had learned it from him? She was only five when Josephine was taken by cancer.
Annette ran the farm at that time, having come in to help take care of her cousin and her family while Josephine's health deteriorated. Hershel's drinking continued for close to a year after his wife's death and Maggie was a terror at school. Both stopped quite suspiciously around the same time that Hershel started coming to church with Annette on his arm.
She had come to church every Sunday since arriving. Her and her little boy, Shawn. Freshly divorced at the time and largely looked down on for that choice by the locals. She'd fast become a topic of gossip and though she did call many of the Church ladies friends, they were mostly just social acquaintances that fed on whatever juicy bits of drama they could sink their teeth into.
Gossip about Annette had died down during the year. It started right back up when she came in with Hershel, smiling shyly. Shawn and Maggie behind them. Speculation started right up about how long the two had been together and if Annette had been angling to get with Hershel since she got to town. All kinds of mean-spirited words that if they were ever confronted about, they'd just laugh off as 'harmless' because obviously there wasn't a lick of truth to it.
It was Mary Cathy, the blabbermouth of the group, that told Beth and Maggie – and the boys by extension; as they had volunteered to watch over the girls for the last afternoon the group was in town – about what the other ladies were saying about their family. Beth had become a target of the gossip. She'd always been the 'good girl', the good daughter, in the eyes of the Church ladies. A perfectly lovely example of how to be a proper young lady. Right up until the ladies noticed how the boys would stand to either side of her and let her walk with an arm in each of theirs while the rest of the girls fanned out around them. Like she was a 'little queen bee' who 'thought better of herself than everyone around her' – it was the words of the ladies, not Mary Cathy's. Though we all know by now, how Mary Cathy's tongue likes to wiggle and wag.
The boys' foreign language conversations got far more insulting after that. They smiled all through it, but when they dropped the girls off at their hotel room for the last time, they made sure to politely kiss each and every old lady's hand while spouting obscenities that rolled off their tongues and sparkled like stardust. Beautiful sounding, but terribly cutting if any of the women had been able to understand a lick of it. Although, Annette Greene was still no fool and while their lips met her hand, she laughed. Understanding the biting tones of their voices, uncomprehending the actual words they spoke. For the young ladies themselves, the boys were actually polite.
And they came to her last, into Beth's hands they slipped a piece of paper with some very comforting words: a couple prayers for safety in travel and a phone number to a bar called McGinty's and the address for the bar too, in case she was ever in town again. Beth, in turn, slipped them a piece of paper with the address to a small farm in the Georgia countryside. It came with a thank you note signed by her mother and an invitation to write as often as they liked. The gossips of the church be damned. The two had earned Annette's trust.