The Reunion

by FraidyCat

Chapter 7: Back Stories

It was a mistake, and he knew it.

He had not gone undetected this long by making mistakes.

He had always been so careful. When they had told him they were enforcing the early retirement clause when he turned 55, he had been stunned. Of course they all knew the Base Realignment and Closure commission was looking at Riverbank seriously, but the 2005 recommendation to close the base was still a shock. By 2010, when he was 55, Riverbank would be deactivated. He had tried, for almost five years, to convince someone that 55 was not too old for a transfer. He had tried, for almost four of those years, to convince his wife, Greta, that he would not be put out to pasture prematurely - but she had given up long before he had. Greta had told him point-blank that she wouldn't stand for a reduced income and lifestyle. She was a beautiful woman, almost twenty years younger than he, and had no trouble hooking up with a younger man at the munitions plant. She had moved in with one of the supervisors so easily that he knew what he had long suspected was true. The bitch had probably slept her way through the entire plant during their eight-year marriage. She had probably spent the whole time trying to figure out how to trade up.

When she had left him, and he was alone, he had begun to work on his plan. It was obvious to him that none of this was his fault - and that the entire world should pay. He had given Riverbank the best years of his life, and this was how they repaid him? Forcing him out early, at two-thirds pension? Stealing his young, beautiful wife?

During his last year at Riverbank, he took three weeks of vacation time to set his plan into motion. The year before, in a last-ditch effort to persuade Greta that she should stay, he had used some vacation time to take her to San Francisco. The plan was already half-formed in the back of his mind, however; while they were in 'Frisco, thinking that he might need it someday, he had purchased a fine set of fake ID. It had been surprisingly easy to find a dealer in false identification. A few hundred in cash slipped to a bartender, and he had a name. Several thousand more got him a license and a birth certificate. Greta would be angry to know he had spent the money - but happy that his new ID listed him as only 50. During the last year he was at the munitions plant, he had used the identification to obtain a passport - both because he might need one, and to make sure the ID was good. He took it as a sign when he obtained the passport without a hitch.

During his last few months at Riverbank, using his false ID, he rented a U-Haul truck at a dealership in nearby Modesto. He packed the empty truck with several hundred pounds' worth of sand bags; he needed to duplicate the weight of a packed munitions truck as closely as possible, to make the mileage estimate viable. He also carried several five-gallon containers of gasoline. He headed toward Vegas on Route 66, through the Mojave Desert. He filled the tank in Modesto, and made careful note of exactly where he was, when the U-Haul hit empty. He had picked this stretch of road because it was rife with old ghost towns; sure enough, he had passed one just seventeen miles earlier. It would be a perfect place to stash a U-Haul. In the middle of the Mojave, during the heat of a California summer, he would be completely unobserved as he transferred the munitions from one of Riverbank's delivery vehicles to the back of the U-Haul, filled the U-Haul's tank with gasoline from several 5-gallon containers, and took off again. At the next ghost town, he would stop and burn his real identification. He would no longer need it, having liquidated all his investments and emptied his bank accounts during the divorce, hiding as much as he could from Greta. It would be days before anyone found the munitions truck - and no one would ever find him.

That had been five years ago, and he had continued his careful and thorough ways - until now. Always before, he had chosen a target, followed the target for as long as necessary, hit the target, and been in the next state before nightfall. Now, he sat in a white plastic chair on his balcony, watching the curly-haired man and his beautiful blonde child hold hands as they walked down the beach, and told himself he was making a mistake. He should be far away from California by now, waiting patiently for another target; in the past, he had waited months at a time - at least twice, his new target had appeared immediately, so it all averaged out. So far, over the last five years, he had exacted his pound of flesh from 10 people.

Consecutive targets were never from the same location. Never connected in any way, certainly not as part of the same family. He tried to tell himself he was just watching, for awhile.

He tried to ignore the way his trigger finger itched.

…...

Alan had heard a vehicle slow and pull into the driveway, and he was waiting on the porch by the time Don and Robin got to the front door. "Thank you both for coming over," he said.

Don placed a hand on Robin's back and steered her past Alan, into the living room. "I would have come earlier, but you said to wait for Robin to get home from work." He peered anxiously over her shoulder as the two of them more fully entered the house. "Are Charlie and Abby home?"

Alan followed them into the house and closed the front door behind him. "No," he answered briefly. "Please, sit down."

Robin glanced at Don, who silently arched his eyebrows and shrugged. As she sank onto the sofa, Robin smiled a little nervously. "So mysterious, Alan!"

"Yeah," echoed Don, settling beside his wife. "We just assumed this was a surprise welcome home dinner. We haven't even eaten, yet."

Alan reached to lift a small CVS pharmacy bag out of a box sitting on the floor next to his chair. "Not a problem," he said. "I doubt you'll have any appetite after you see this."

Don frowned. "What is it?" he and Robin asked at the same time.

Alan stood before them like a nervous schoolboy, clutching the paper bag tightly. "Art gave me a ride down to LAPD impound," he informed them. "Gary Walker phoned and said that Amita's van was available for release. I thought I'd save Charlie the ordeal."

"I should have thought to ask him myself," Don said. "I could have given you a ride, or Colby could have taken me, or something..."

"Never mind that," interrupted Alan, growing more upset by the minute. "After I got the van home, I parked it out back, where Charlie wouldn't have to see it all the time. Then I decided to clean it out, so he wouldn't have to deal with that."

"You should have waited," Robin reprimanded mildly. "I would have been glad to help."

"Well, you'll both get your chance," answered Alan. "I put her briefcase, some DVDs that Abby must have been watching in the van, a coloring book and some crayons, and a dog-eared paperback that I found under one of the front seats into a box." He rattled the pharmacy bag. "Then I picked this up off the front passenger seat. There's a receipt inside - she went to the pharmacy about half an hour before she was shot."

Don was almost afraid to ask. "What else is inside?"

"Lip balm," Alan answered. "Two packs of gum." His eyes filled with tears. "A roll of Butter Rum Lifesavers - I'm the only one who likes those, so she must have gotten them for me."

Robin moved as if to stand. "Oh, Alan, I'm so sorry," she started.

He shook the bag at her again. "That's not it!" Suddenly he tossed the bag so that it landed at Don's feet. "Look yourself. I can't even say it."

Don exchanged a look with Robin, then reached down and picked up the bag. Cautiously, he smoothed the creases caused by Alan's death grip, took a deep breath, opened the bag, and peeked inside. He heard Robin gasp, and wondered why everyone was so disturbed by a box of tampons. He reached inside the bag, drew the box out, and registered a line drawing in the general shape of a tampon on the side of the box. He was just about to ask his Dad what he was missing when he turned the box over. No other brand is more accurate, he read, still not understanding what everyone else in the room had already figured out. Results 5 days before missed period.

"Oh, shit," he whispered, shifting the box in his hand as the light finally went off. His thumb moved, revealing a giant lower-case "e", and Don finally had all his clues in a row. "Early pregnancy test," he read dully.

The room was silent for almost a full minute. "What are we going to do?" Alan finally wailed.

Robin's shocked expression had faded. Now, she looked exactly the way she did when she was presenting a summation to a jury. She wrenched the box from Don's hand and started shoving it back into the bag. "We know nothing," she said over the crinkling of the bag. Both men stared at her, and she scowled. "I'm serious. Amita counseled college-age girls; she could have purchased this for one of her students. Or for a friend." She reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear almost defiantly. "Hell, maybe it was a good luck charm. When Don and I were trying to get pregnant, I kept two of these in my office all of the time, and one was hidden at home in a box of tampons. I was hoping I'd need it, someday."

Don's eyes softened. "Ah, Sweetie," he murmured.

Robin twisted the bag shut. She tried to smile at Don. "It's fine," she said. "I'm just sayiing, Amita could have bought this for a lot of different reasons." She looked at Alan, a serious expression on her face. "We. Really. Don't. Know. Anything."

Alan seemed to calm a bit, although his legs were shaking as he backed over to his recliner and sat down. "I suppose that's true," he said.

"Look at it this way," Robin continued. "Even if Amita suspected something, she never got around to taking the test, so she didn't know anything either. She had such a fun time teasing Charlie and finding the perfect way to tell him about Abby - I really doubt that she would have mentioned any possibilities to him before she knew for sure."

"A fair assumption," noted Don. "At the very least, we should wait for him to bring up the topic first, on his own terms."

"I guess," said Alan doubtfully. He stared at the sack Robin was holding as if it contained a snake. "What are we going to do with it?"

She stood abruptly. "Don and I will take it home and put it in our trash; recycle comes in the morning. Don has to take the trash out to the curb tonight anyway."

Alan visibly swallowed and tore his attention away from the bag long enough to look at Don. "Do you still want some dinner?" he asked hopefully.

Don followed Robin's lead and stood next to his wife. "Sorry, Dad," he answered apologetically. "You were right. I'm not very hungry anymore."

…...

Abby let go of Charlie's hand and bent to dig a crabshell out of the sand.

The beach was littered with the shells, left behind by early morning crabbers more enthusiastic than neat. The little girl turned the half shell over, saw what it was, and looked up at her father sorrowfully. "That was someone's house," she pouted.

Charlie was instantly transported to a year earlier. He, Amita and Abby had driven down the coastline one weekend, toward San Diego. They had been walking on the beach one morning when Abby saw all the shells and ran toward them, squealing with excitement. She expected them to be shiny and pretty, like the ones Charlie had bought her in a gift shop the day before. She trotted from one shell to the next, disappointed to find cracked, brown, hulls, dull and smelly. She had tears in her eyes by the time her parents caught up to her. She was angry when she looked up at her mother. "These are ugly shells," she stated emphatically, stamping a little bare foot in the sand. "I hate them!"

"Abby," reproved Amita gently, "that's not a very nice thing to say. That shell was someone's house for a long time. I'm sure the crab who lived there thought it was very pretty, safe, and warm."

The family had found some dry sand, then, and they sat down for a time while Charlie and Amita told Abby about the crabs who lived in the ocean, and sometimes ended up in Grandpa's kitchen. Charlie was a little concerned that they would turn their daughter into a vegetarian on the spot - but Amita, having been one for years, had no problem with that possibility. The almost-three-year-old had been fixated on the idea of some poor, naked, crab walking around without his shell, however, and had missed the reality entirely.

Now, she saw the empty shells and thought of creatures without homes. Charlie was surprised she remembered - and he felt an affinity with the homeless crabs in Abby's imagination. He felt like his shell was empty, too, and he was wandering around naked and vulnerable, searching for his home. "Poor little cwab," Abby said sadly, and Charlie couldn't help but agree.

…...

End, Chapter 7