3

The four of them had left the Facility after Dottie had gotten to see the chickens out in the main grounds area. She was able to feed them, engrossed was the word that Cait could describe it. They left soon after.

On the ride out, Dottie was again quiet. She needed time to decompress. Fergal was sitting with his hand on her knee as she stared out the window.

Colby's hand reached across the center console and grabbed her hand again. When Cait looked at him he smiled but he was still driving.

They headed back to Buffalo city limits but they came at it from a different angle, heading towards an upper middle class neighborhood that had a lot of nice houses and nicer lawns.

Everything hadn't changed, not in the time since Cait had been back in the area. The Facility had been Dottie's home for a long time, since she was in her late teens. She'd gone to the same high school Cait did, which was still up and running it seemed from the looks of baseball game going on at the time when they passed it.

"Here, this house." Cait instructed Colby.

They pulled up into the driveway of an old house with brown siding and white trim. There was a large oak tree in the front yard and their mother kept a lush gardenscape to show off an elegance she herself didn't possess.

"I don't want to see mom." Dottie finally spoke up.

"We won't be long, Dottie. I just want the guys to meet her, to understand where we come from. And then we can head out and leave the city all together." Cait said as she unbuckled herself.

Fergal unbuckled Dottie's seatbelt when she made no move to get out. As Cait and Colby got out, so did Fergal. He walked around to Dottie's side of the car and opened the door for her. When he held his hand out, she took it and he helped her out.

"I'm right here for ya, Dottie." Fergal said.

"Caitlin, is that you?" A woman walked out the front door of the nice landscaped house.

That was their mother, Marg O'Connor. She wore pretty clothes, like she had always done. She had blond hair instead of the red that both Cait and Dottie sported, which came from their father, wherever he was.

"Yes, Mom it's me." Cait sighed. "I brought Dottie for a visit like you wanted."

Marg's eyes fell onto Dottie's hand in Fergal's grasp. Cait knew the look, she could read her mother's facial expressions after nearly thirty years. Marg kept looking from Dottie's hand to Fergal and then back again.

Touching Dottie was never something Dottie allowed their mother. Touching was something that just recently happened, especially in regards to Fergal and even more recently with Colby. Colby it seemed like stepped up as an anchor when their mother walked down the steps towards them.

"Dorothy, you should wear your hair down." Not the traditional hello from a mother, as cold as she was to the sister but at least she acknowledged Dottie at all.

"She's fine." Fergal said.

"Another Irishman, great." Marg rolled her eyes. "Better not turn out like my ex did. Left as soon as Caitlin could walk and the reason why Dorothy stopped talking."

Marg O'Connor had no filter. No 'how are you, would you like something to drink?' She didn't ask the men their names, didn't ask if the drive was okay. Nothing like that.

Cait may not have known her father like Dottie did, but there was that nagging suspicion that he left not because of Dottie but because of their mother.

Inside their childhood home, it was as immaculate as the front yard, with its own garden growing in there. Dottie ended up staring at a particular plant as she usually did when she was back home.

"So, you finally decided to show up. You didn't tell me you were going to be bringing some men with you. Is there a reason for that?"

"What do you mean, mother?" Caitlin asked, smiling at the red in her mother's face when she said that name.

"That Dorothy," her eyes slid over to Fergal and Dottie again. "She's changed. You had a hand in that, didn't you?"

"I brought her on the road, the rest was up to Dottie."

"But she can't, I mean, she doesn't…"

"We've gone out on a date." Fergal said, which earned three pairs of eyes on him. "A dinner date, it wasn't the best but I did get her to do something she wasn't used to. Right, Lovely?" He rubbed her back.

"Yeah, I guess." She spoke barely above a whisper.

"Oh my god, I can't believe this is happening." Marg ran her fingers through her blonde hair. "The doctors all said she wouldn't…"

"Yeah, well, I hate to break it to you, Mom, but she can." Cait said.

Marg looked at her. "But the doctors said...I mean she was difficult to begin with."

"That was then and this is now, Mom. She's got friends. Fergal Devitt, Colby Lopez, a swell Scotsman whose wife actually works with autistic children so he's familiar with that. She's got me. The staff know her enough to not bother her. She's even getting full paychecks for everything that she has done." Cait said.

"But she can't. Caitlin, look at her. She's not going to ever be normal. Sure she can mend clothes but she not going to live a normal life, she's not going to be like you, not get married, have a family. She won't…"

Dottie turned from staring at the plant to looking at her mother. "Can we go now, Cait? I don't want to be here anymore."

Those two sentences had their mother speechless. A quick glance at Colby, who'd been planted next to the front door, proved that he was impressed.

"Yeah, we should get going. We have to be two cities over by Thursday and it's a long drive for us." Fergal said, his arm coming up around Dottie's waist. She stepped further into his embrace.

Colby held to door open for them to leave. As they were getting out to the car they heard Marg.

"Don't trust any foreigners, Dorothy. They'll just be like your father."

Colby stood at the drivers door. "Well, if we're anything like him, we don't want to be anywhere near you!"

Cait laughed loud as she and Dottie got into the car. Fergal was smiling, though he'd been a good sport about it all. As they pulled away from the house, Cait looked in the backseat to see Dottie rocking in her seat again.

"I told you we wouldn't be there for long, Dot." Cait said.

"So that was your mom, huh?" Colby asked.

"Yeah, unfortunately." Cait said as she ran a hand through her hair.

"I'm hungry. Can we stop for food, please? Where can we go, Fergal?" Dottie asked.

"Colby's driving. Driver gets to pick." Fergal responded.

"I don't know. We're not going to a sushi place, that's for damn sure." Colby said as he turned off to the street that would lead back to the main thoroughfare.

"Denny's seems to be close by." Cait said after looking at her phone.

Dottie made a sound.

"Don't be like that, Dottie." Fergal said. "Your sister is going to be there. Nothing is going to happen." Fergal said.

Cait saw his hand go over and take Dottie's hand in his. Cait felt Colby do the same thing with hers.

Maybe this was going to go better than before.