The Doonkelshtump Hits the Fan – Chapter 7
Candace was back in the brick cottage in Meadowcrest. She was sprawled on the couch with an afghan thrown over her legs. She'd come home at some point after midnight and had gotten as far as changing into pajamas, but she couldn't bring herself to actually crawl into bed. She had too much thinking to do.
She had dozed fitfully through the wee hours, and now she stirred to consciousness again. She'd left the television on the children's channel Amanda watched, and glanced idly at the screen to find some pixie pony princess drama playing out. Candace had left the kiddie network on because it was one of the few channels she was pretty certain would not be broadcasting the breaking news. Now she stretched and sat up and rubbed her aching head. The time was a little after 6 am. Happy New Year.
The text message alert on her cell phone chimed and she flopped back against the couch cushions with a groan. This was going to be a long day; she supposed everyone who knew her would be calling and texting, being all sympathetic and trying to find out what was going on. Candace had called her mother from the police station at some point last night, to forestall Mom from calling her in a tizzy over the unfolding reports, and to warn her to keep the kids from seeing any news. She had let any calls she didn't need to answer go to voice mail, and she had not replied to a single text message, but when she picked up the phone this time and glanced at the screen, she felt a twinge of comfort. It was Ferb. Not surprisingly, his message was a simple one. I'm here if you want to talk. Of course he was.
Candace stared at the message for a minute. The prospect of her brother's patient ear and cool judgment was inviting, and in other circumstances, she would have leapt at it. But.. Ferb's opinion of Ambrose had never been high, and even though she knew he wouldn't utter the words, the aura of 'I told you so' was not something she wanted to face. As angry and frustrated as she was with her husband right now, she refused to hear anyone else disparage him.
Setting aside the phone, she closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the cushion, and again, like a movie, her mind began to replay her conversation with Ambrose at the police station…
Candace was standing outside an interrogation room, Officer Baehr at her side. He rapped at the door and, motioning for her to stay where she was, entered the room, closing the door behind him. In the brief view she had of the interior, Ambrose was out of sight, but she caught a glimpse of GLIB Agent Double 2 rising from his chair to meet the officer. A minute or so passed before the door opened again and Double 2 came out.
"Mrs. Petersen," the British man approached her courteously, "before you see your husband, I'd like to bring you up to speed. Shall we?" He ushered her into the adjoining room. The two-way mirror was inactive, she could not see her husband on the other side of the wall. Double 2 offered a seat and asked if she would care for a cup of tea – or coffee, or water. When she declined, he took a chair, himself, and proceeded to lay out before her what he knew about the unravelling scheme. Candace absorbed it all in silence. At one point, Double 2 paused to ask, "Your husband never mentioned any of this?" and all she could do was shake her head no. How could this have all unfolded practically under her nose? Had she been so absorbed in her pregnancy, in her children, not to question anything going on outside her little sphere? Had she really been satisfied with Ambrose's carefree assertions that everything was fine, work was fine, life was all kittens and rainbows and there's my Manda Panda and oh, what's for dinner? Was she so content to trust him and be happy he was happy that she had dismissed any fleeting hints that things weren't quite right? One question above all gnawed at her: What had happened to her Busting Sense?
At last, Double 2 rose and asked, "Are you ready?" Candace nodded, and he escorted her to the next room where Ambrose was waiting. Outside the door, he said, "Officer Baehr and I will be observing behind the glass. We can hear everything. If you have any trouble…"
Candace raised a hand to brush off his concern. He knocked and Baehr came out. Smokey also looked Candace in the face and asked under his breath, "You all right?" She nodded, and he gave her arm an encouraging pat. "We'll be right there," he reiterated what the GLIB agent had said about them keeping an eye on things. Candace acknowledged this with another nod and walked into the interrogation room. They closed the door behind her.
Ambrose was sitting behind the table. He looked annoyed, and stubbornly noble, and apparently unharmed. The moment he saw his wife, he immediately got to his feet and said, "Candace! Are you all right?"
"No. No I'm not." The words almost startled her when they came out of her mouth.
Ambrose glowered. "If those GLIB goons have been harassing you-"
Candace bristled. "Those 'GLIB goons' are the only ones who have told me anything! How long have you known about the little blue men?"
The question seemed to catch him off guard, and she could see him puzzling over how to answer this before he finally addressed her real question. "I couldn't tell you about them. They're an endangered species; we were protecting them."
"And you couldn't trust me with that?" Seriously, she was the girl who had let everyone think she was crazy in order to help her brothers protect the Lake Nose Monster. Of course, she didn't suppose Ambrose knew about that. Still…
"Candace, this is all very complicated," her husband said, in a tone she found annoyingly officious.
"It's completely insane," she countered. "You were actually part of a revolution?"
Her agitation was making him soften his voice and slow his words. "Honey, why don't you sit down?" He made a move to lower himself to his chair but hovered halfway down until she was seated. In a deliberately patient tone that did nothing to soothe her, he said, "I don't know what they've told you, but you're taking this all out of context. Drusselstein is in trouble and the Mayor is trying to help sort it out…"
"Really? Really? You actually believe that?" The aggravation was getting her nowhere and she took a deep breath. Maybe he really didn't understand what was going on. "Ambrose," she spoke more gently, as if reasoning with Amanda about why you don't go into the street without holding Mommy's hand, "Roger Doofenshmirtz wasn't helping Drusselstein. He was going to take over the country." When he started to shake his head and speak, she reached out and laid her hand on his to focus his attention and said, "He was going to kill Queen Baldegunde."
She expected Ambrose to react to this with shock; surely this was something he hadn't been aware of. But she was the one stunned when he groaned and brushed this off. "That was all Guiserblint. He's a loose cannon. And nobody got killed."
"You're lucky they didn't," said Candace, "or this would be a lot worse than it already is." If he was really that oblivious, she had to ask, "Have you called a lawyer?"
"I don't need a lawyer," he puffed. "I haven't done anything wrong."
Was he kidding? "They said you had pizzazium in the van! They said you need all sorts of documentation to transport that."
"See, that's exactly what I mean," Ambrose leaned in with that overly-patient tone again. "They're blowing this all out of proportion; they're trying to scare you. There were a couple of flecks of the stuff on the Badinkadinks, it was no big deal. They just wanted an excuse to bring me in."
How could he sit there and act as if they were discussing Trixie chewing a pair of her shoes? "I'm calling you a lawyer," she declared bluntly.
"I don't need one!" he protested again, more firmly. "Besides, GLIB already gave me immunity."
Candace sat back in the chair. Eyes wide, she was silent for a moment before bursting out, "Why would they give you immunity IF YOU DIDN'T DO ANYTHING!?"
Ambrose sighed and rolled his eyes – actually rolled his eyes at her. "Candy Cane…"
"Don't call me that," she cut him off. "They," she pointed at the authorities invisible behind the mirror, "are not making this up. Your Hero the Mayor has been smuggling pizzazium to Guiserblint, helping the DOOFAS people manipulate the markets… Did you know that DOOFAS is practically an organized crime syndicate?"
Again, she expected some sign of surprise from him at this news, but he gave a snort and wisecracked, "They're Drusselsteinian; it's more like disorganized crime."
"You think this is funny?!" Candace was on her feet. "Why didn't I know about any of this before now?!"
He pushed back the chair and got up as well. "For Pete's sake, Candy—Candace," he reconsidered the endearment. "This is a sensitive international situation, I couldn't just tell people…"
"Is that what I am?" she was taken aback. "'People'?"
"You see," he threw out his hands in frustration, "you're taking everything the wrong way."
"What way am I supposed to take it?" she demanded, jaw clenched. "All year long, you've been working all hours, coming and going, jumping every time the Mayor calls, and this is what you've been doing?"
Ambrose pointed at her – Oh, no he didn't! thought Candace – actually pointed an accusing finger at her and retorted, "You want to know what I've been doing all year? Taking care of my family. You've got a nice house, Amanda's in the best school, you get to stay home and play Mom for as long as you want - How do you think all that happened?"
"We were fine," she protested. "We didn't need any of that." When he started to argue, she planted both hands on the table and leaned in to impress upon him, "Roger Doofenshmirtz is a crook, and you were right there with him the whole way, because you trusted him more than you trust your own wife." She braced herself for an argument, but Ambrose said nothing, just breathed deeply and clenched his jaw. The truth had clearly struck a nerve, and he had no answer for it. Candace pushed aside the chair and stepped back from the table. The words that came from her surprised her as much as they surprised him. "You had better call a hotel, because if they let you out of here, you are not coming home tonight."
"Candace…" he started to come around from behind the table to intercept her, but stopped when she glared and made a gesture to warn him off. She had her hand on the doorknob when he spoke out frankly, "What do you expect me to do?"
She paused for a moment, her back to him, and swallowed hard before she gave voice to the thought that consumed her. Candace looked back over her shoulder at her husband, trying to contain the lump in her throat. Her last words before she walked out of the room were: "Tell me how I'm ever supposed to trust you again."
Now, it was New Year's morning, and Candace was back home on the couch, and she still had no answer to that aching question. She hadn't heard a word out of Ambrose since. Either he was giving her time to cool down, or he was expecting her to make the next move. Either way, things had changed, and she didn't know if they would ever be able to get back to where they were only twenty-four hours ago.
Candace looked again at Ferb's text message on the phone. I'm here if you want to talk. A patient ear and some cool judgment would have done her a world of good, but Candace wasn't ready to unburden herself just yet. Instead, she texted back: Thanks, Ferb. Maybe later.
The End
A/N – There will be a separate Candace and Ferb story in the future, but that's it for this one.
