Part 14
Ewen's briefing with his team took until the early hours of the morning. He puts some jazz on the old record player at Wyndemere and downs a shot of espresso. It's going to be another night with no sleep for him. Jones didn't have great news.
Two team members are suspected of being moles and saboteurs, Jones now has them being watched. Until they pull them from duty and question them, Ewen is in the dark about what information they have shared with the enemy. Jones believes that Ewen's cover is still good.
The only good news was that the forensics team found nothing out of the ordinary about Elizabeth's gold box and the watch fob. His team will replace the fakes with the originals today.
He has a few hours before Elizabeth arrives to search Wyndemere, so he gets back to his painting. He doesn't want her to wonder why it's taking him weeks to finish, after all that's what she thinks he does with his free time. It's true, he just has less free time then she believes.
It seems minutes before he hears her at the studio door. "Good morning, is it done yet? Are you going to let me see your painting?"
Ewen smiles at her beautiful face and dashes her hopes, "No not to day, but soon. It's giving me some trouble."
"Maybe it's not the painting but you?"
He washes out his brushes and laughs, "So true doctor, thanks for the diagnosis."
"I just meant, maybe your life is in upheaval right now. Upheaval may be the wrong word, perhaps transition would be better. I doubt you expected, so many distractions from your career when you moved to Port Charles."
He indicates for her to sit on the sofa and he joins her, taking her hand. "Is that what you think I consider you?"
"Maybe, a little. I doubt you planned on a relationship with a woman who has two children and comes with a lot of baggage. You didn't think you would end up with an immediate family … I guess that's what I'm trying to say. You don't have to go through with the swim competition if you don't want to, Cameron will understand."
"No he won't," Ewen interrupts. "It wouldn't be good for him. I'd be another man that makes him promises and doesn't keep his word. I keep my word Elizabeth, maybe not on time always but I keep it, and I wouldn't have said yes, if I didn't want to do it. It will be fun. Unless you think we're moving to fast. We can do the swim and I can …."
She shakes her head no. "No, you just seemed distracted after the swim talk and I thought maybe you were regretting saying yes. We're a little much to take on, with our issues and now my fascination with the watch fob."
"I know I can be absentminded and can get lost in my work, but I assure you, I can handle your issues or baggage as you called it earlier. You forget my profession. Your baggage is significant but pretty light compared to some I've seen. I was distracted, but I was just lost in thought, over thinking something. It's a bad habit of mine."
"A symptom of living alone."
"And being cerebral. Trust me I've thought about it and I like having your baggage in my life. You keep things interesting. You and your family bring me out of my … isolation. The real question is whether you can handle having me in your life. It isn't good for you to always be worrying about what I'm thinking when I do get lost in thought, because it happens a lot. It doesn't mean that I'm regretting being with you or that I don't enjoy my time with your family.
You also need to consider that I will disappear on you, not because I want to but because my work calls for it. Remember I will keep my word, it just may not be on the planned schedule, although I'll do everything I can to keep to the original schedule."
"That part I get. I'm a nurse who works with doctors, sometimes our schedules are not our own. It's just, you are becoming very important to me and," she stops uncertain how to proceed.
He cups her face with his hands, "And you're worried that I might not say the same. Don't be. You and yours are very important to me. I'll risk a lot for the three of you and to keep you safe, more than you know. I fall a little more in love with you every day."
She kisses him, "Good because I think I'm falling for you too."
The two of them allow themselves to delay their original morning plans for some love making there in the studio. It's a long time before they start their treasure hunt.
Elizabeth leads Ewen to the oldest section of Wyndemere. "I saw the design on the watch fob when Lucky and I lived here. We were being foolish, playing hide and seek in this area of the house."
"I don't believe having fun is foolish."
She blushes, "Foolish because of the condition of the building. Wyndemere has maintenance issues, but it's like this wing was left deliberately to decay. Like the caretakers disregarded it on purpose. For all the Cassadine pride, it seems to me that something embarrasses or shames them about this wing. Perhaps that thought is foolish too."
"Or profound, but we may never know. Some things that happen in the past stay there, never revealing themselves to the present."
"And sometimes the eroding power of time reveals the past naturally, like when rain washes the dirt of an ancient city."
"Have I mentioned how much I like the way your brain works? Because I do. It amazes me."
She punches him lightly in the arm, "Flatterer."
"Me? Never. Mr. Truth-teller remember."
"Yeah and I only have your word to prove it."
"I guess you'll just have to spend a lot of time with me, so time can verify my words."
"I could like that. What was your childhood like?"
"That came out of the blue." He moves a beam out of the way of the door Elizabeth indicates they should walk through. "Maybe we should do a cell phone check before we enter. We could end up in Never Never Land or down another pirate tunnel."
"I have mine, fully charged. We were just talking about the past revealing itself, so stop stalling and tell me."
"There isn't much to tell. You already know my most traumatic experience. My mother is interesting. She had an nontraditional life, growing up speaking Walmajarri and living amongst the Aboriginal peoples. Her father ran a pub and left her to be mostly raised by the townspeople – who were mostly Aboriginal. She learned a lot about their art.
She told me that my father rescued her, picking her up out of the dirt, removing her from a tin shack in the desert to a suburban home near the power of the sea. She never really fit in with her neighbors, she was to much of a desert flower for that. But she was happy.
She was always painting, always sculpting. I don't remember her doing much else. She loved me, taught me art, but left me to my own devices, after all it's how she was raised.
As for my father, I never knew him as a child. He rescued her then abandoned her, not before buying her the house and leaving enough money for her and I to live on, but he wanted nothing to do with us. It wasn't until after her death that I met him. He is a very cold, proud, and aloof man, at least with me. I embarrass him. I'm proof of his mistakes."
Elizabeth touches his arm in sympathy, "I'm so sorry to hear that."
"Don't be. Like I said, it was a pretty good life."
"My parents left me to my own devices too. I fought for their attention through bad behavior. It didn't work. The only person I was hurting was myself. My parents are good people, they just weren't cut out for day-to-day parenting. Their purpose is to save lives and they thought by providing me and my siblings a roof over our heads and food on the table, that we had enough. Other people needed them more. They may be right or they could be wrong. I haven't decided how I feel about people who crusade having children. It seems to me the crusade ends up meaning more than the child, but then the child grows up with heroic parents. I guess that's good in it's own way."
She stops to get her bearings. "Wow, this place has really changed in ten years. If I remember correctly, Lucky hid in that wardrobe there and I kept going that way. I wanted to make it really hard for Nikolas."
"Competitive. I see where Cameron gets it."
"Absolutely. Well only sometimes. It depends on the game and the players."
Ewen smiles in appreciation for her own brand of quirkiness, then frowns after opening another door for her. Just as many parts of the ceiling were on the floor as they were on the roof. Brick pillars were crumbling and wooden beams decayed beyond structural integrity. "You went through here? Elizabeth! This room had to be just as dangerous then as is now."
"Never say I don't take risks. Yep, I definitely went through here. See the remains of those stained glass windows. I remember being fascinated by some of the designs. Come on."
She, unheeding his safety warning, rushes in the room. She points toward the far right corner and says, "There. I hid in the fireplace." She runs her hands over the dusty and damaged side wall. "It was somewhere on here, I think."
The fireplace was large enough to roast a whole boar. The top mantel was higher than Elizabeth was tall. Ewen could see why she chose it as a hiding place. She could easily stand against the inside wall and no one would see her from the door.
"Here it is," she says excitedly looking up at the center mantel design. The carving was of what could be a large half shell and at its base was a circle, mostly broken now, with enough left to show that it was a match for the design on the fob.
Ewen hears an unsettling sound above him and looks up. He quickly throws his arms around Elizabeth and carries half pushes her into the fireplace. He covers her with his body as another section of the roof crashes to the floor. Hitting the spot where they had been standing. The force of both their bodies hitting the back wall of the fireplace pushed it open.
When the ceiling stopped falling and some of the dust settles, Ewen carefully checks himself to make sure nothing is broken before moving most of his weight off of Elizabeth. "Are you all right? Did I crush you?"
"I'm fine. I guess I owe you my life … again."
For a moment he looks disconcerted, "Again?"
She looks up at her dust covered hero. "Yes again. It was you that pulled me out of the water and saved my life last fall wasn't it?"
"You knew?"
"Not for sure, not until now."
He rolls off her completely and sits next to her. "What gave me away?"
"Your abs," she says cheekily. "It wasn't any one thing. You just seemed so familiar to me, and then you told me about being a lifeguard. It was weird that you lived here in secret too. It just all added up in my mind. I felt confident enough to ask, after you picked me up just now."
He helps her sit up and pushes some small pieces of stone out of her hair. "Why haven't you asked before now?"
"I wasn't really sure and if you were him, I was waiting for you to tell me. Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I can't tell you why I didn't stay with you until you were at hospital."
"Oh. Cassandra?"
"Partly, but that's all I can say. Can you forgive me?"
"For saving my life, twice? Yes. At first I was mad when I thought you could have been the one that saved me and you said nothing about it. Then I decided that you had your reasons and who am I to judge."
"I'm glad you know. I don't have to feel like I'm keeping a deep dark secret from you, but could we keep this between us? I don't want everyone knowing about it."
"For my hero … sure. At least I know you're not someone out for his fifteen minutes of fame. That's a plus in my book."
"You have no idea how surprised I was when you walked through my door at Shadybrook and how hard it was for me not to tell you that we had met. There she was, my beautiful sea nymph, alive, warm, and breathing and she was at Shadybrook, a potential patient. You have no idea how thrilled I was that you didn't end up as my patient. No idea?"
"Oh I have some idea," she answers cheekily.
He pulls her close, "I guess you do."
"I should apologize to you," she says. "I dragged you on my silly hunt for a symbol and we almost die."
"It's not your fault the building is crumbling, and haven't we agreed, no more apologies?"
"Yeah, but we didn't have to go looking for the symbol. I don't know why I'm interested in it. Knowing that the watch fob was found in this building and in Helena's box is enough to tell me it's connected to Wyndemere. We didn't have to look for more proof."
"Your instincts are telling you to look into the symbol. There's nothing wrong with that. We all need mysteries and adventure in our lives." He looks around. "Where are we?"
"It looks like another secret room. Wyndemere is riddled with them."
"This one feels like it was occupied."
"If it was, I feel sorry for the occupant. It feels cold, like a prison."
Ewen points to the remains of what was obviously a bed. The fabric was silk. "If it was a prison, someone cared enough to keep the prisoner as comfortable as possible."
Elizabeth gets up and moves toward a mirrored dresser. The mirror was cracked and mostly gone, but the wood was still in good shape. "It looks like something was removed from here, pretty recently. You can still see a difference in the amount of dust."
"Another clue for you."
"A clue that will have to go un-investigated. I'm going to leave the sleuthing to the professionals for awhile."
"If you are sure, because I'll happily tag along on your next adventure."
"You might want to think twice about that, we seem to end up in need of a shower after our 'Adventures of the Mysterious Watch Fob'."
"Well, I don't know about you Nancy, but I have no problem with that. I'm growing used to sharing a shower with you."