"Is there a lot of paperwork involved?" Laura asked her father as they cleared the dishes.
"Not too bad. I'll put in a call, see how much can be handled by fax." The twinkle in his eyes told Laura this business would be accomplished sooner rather than later.
By Sunday, Mr. Roslin was calling his daughter with the good news. She had been put on Bill Adama's visiting list. She tried not to think what Bill's reaction would have been to seeing her request. She hoped the warden had offered some explanation that didn't sound too…personal. She tried to keep the mental picture of a sad-eyed blustering boy growing up too fast in her mind, but his father's deep blue eyes and rugged face kept slipping through as she tossed and turned her way to sleep.
.
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"Lee, I've given a lot of thought about how to handle your fighting."
The defiant glare was back, at sharp contrast to his slightly quivering chin. "Well, do what you gotta do, Miss Roslin."
She took in the unnatural redness of his left ear. He'd had a rough weekend, it looked like. Time to put him out of his misery.
"I want you to write a thousand words on this theme." She handed him a notecard, printed in her neat teacher's hand: My Father's in Prison and….
He flicked it back across her desk, his eyes giving her a wounded look as he mumbled a "frak that!" under his breath. She calmly handed it back and continued.
"I want you to think about how kids and parents can feel like family under those circumstances, Lee. And it's not just meant to be a consequence. I'm interested in what I…what the school can do to help kids like you and your brother while a parent is incarcerated."
He slowly picked up the card and looked at it again. "I don't know what I'd write. I try not to think about it, just pretend he's on a long run somewhere." A few more bits of armor fell off his guarded look.
She took a deep breath, reminding herself that her superintendent had supported this idea.
"I got permission to take you and your brother to visit your Dad upstate on the teacher work day this week, if your mother says it's okay. I thought that might help you with your assignment."
Painful hope flared in the boy's eyes as he rolled the card into a tube, then flattened it again. "I could get to visit my Dad? I haven't seen"—he broke off as his eyes clouded again. "I don't know if my Mom's gonna go for that."
"Let's see, shall we? Is it okay if I call her?" Her hand hovered over her desk phone. She was dying to get the call over with, but Lee knew better than she did what he'd walk into when he got home this afternoon. His still-flushed ear warned her to let this boy have his say before she interfered with his home life.
"Yeah…maybe she wouldn't mind us being outa her hair for a few hours. Beats us hanging around the house getting on her nerves." He wouldn't meet her eyes then and her heart felt like it was being squeezed with a bony fist.
.
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The call went better than she expected. Carolanne's vitriol towards her soon-to-be ex-husband was no match for her undisguised happiness at having her sons out of the house on a day school wasn't in session. Laura wondered if she'd had any plans for them other than letting them hang around the house. If Carolanne had been surprised that Laura already had visiting paperwork in order, she didn't show it. An ugly thought ran through her mind, that maybe Carolanne hadn't even checked into putting herself and her (their) boys on Bill's list.
Carolanne's voice had been half-thick with sleep when she had answered.
"If that's what you think would keep Lee from getting in more trouble, Mrs. Roslin—oops! Sorry, I keep forgetting you never married.…Yeah, I didn't think the boys should see their father behind bars, trying to talk to him through those windows and phones, but I'm sure you know best." Laura could hear the muffling of a hand being cupped over the receiver as a masculine snort sounded in the background.
"Yeah, they'll be ready. It's, what, about ninety minutes to the prison? If you could keep the boys until nine o'clock or so, that'd be great."
Laura bit her tongue at the veiled request to baby-sit Lee and Zak all day. "Thanks, Mrs. Adama. I think it'll be good for Lee."
"Yeah, I bet. Let him see what happens to losers. And it's Ms. Thorn, if you don't mind. I'm taking my maiden name back a little early. Got my reputation to think about."
Laura said a non-committal good-bye, ignoring the muffled guffaw in the background as she hung up the phone far more gently than she wanted.
.
.
Lee and Zak displayed surprisingly good manners on the way to the prison. Nervous at first, especially Zak, the boys quickly became absorbed in the details of the vintage Mustang and the roar of the engine. Lee asked with almost heart-breaking shyness if he could look in the glove compartment for the manual. Once Laura had granted permission, he had pored over the details of the engine's workings, reading select passages out loud to his bored brother, who more interested in passing scenery than the faded book.
The ninety minutes went by too fast. The prison was looming in front of her before she had fully prepared her opening remarks, her justification of why she had come. This time last year, she had just been the school principal, mixed with a sprinkle of "fondly remembered but no longer relevant old love". She saw Bill a couple of times a year at school functions, and by tacit agreement, they never talked about his first stint in prison and that disastrous meeting the day of his release.
Or the evening three years later...
She had been drinking too much in a semi-seedy bar right on the dividing line between the last decent neighborhood in her part of Caprica City, and the neighborhoods where cops weren't welcomed unless they had ties with certain families. She'd wanted to get away from everyone who might recognize her, the anniversary of her mother's death hitting her harder than usual as she watched her father shut himself away in his study after a subdued family dinner. Her sisters had gone to their homes, but something made her ask through the closed study door if she could go for a drive before returning to her lonely apartment. She was sure she'd heard a "yes". That had been at least three drinks ago.
A hand that had dwarfed the glass of cranberry juice it held had appeared out of nowhere. "Is this seat taken?"
She had looked up into bright blue eyes, weathered wrinkles starting to surround them.
.
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Ten years earlier…
"Well, well…Bill Adama. Fancy meeting you here." A little voice in the back of her head told her she was slurring her words a bit but she ignored it. She had been getting good at ignoring those little warning voices.
He gave her an easy grin, white crooked teeth showing against tanned skin. He looked so much like that old picture she had never gotten around to taking down from her bookshelf, it made her heart hurt.
"I saw your ride outside, thought I'd see if it was you or your Dad slumming in here." He set the glass down and pulled out a chair.
"What's this?" She frowned at the glass and its bright red contents.
He motioned towards the empty glasses on the table. "Looked like it was time somebody switched to juice or water." He slid the glass towards her. "I hate doing bodywork on vintage models."
She snorted but took the glass and drank the tart juice. "Like I'd set foot in Adama Automotive again. Your office manager doesn't care much for me, and the feeling is mutual, believe me."
Bill looked away, rubbing his ring absently. "Carolanne doesn't spend much time at the shop anymore. New prospect, a kid named Helo is in the front office now. Better fit for the work."
Laura felt her alcohol buzz starting to slip away as she sipped on a fresh glass of water Bill had summoned with a nod at the waitress. Thoughts of a past birth announcement in the Caprican Times slipped into her thoughts unbidden. "I hear congratulations are in order."
He flushed but couldn't keep proud smile off his face. "Zachary Adama. He's three months old today." Apparently taking her quirked eyebrows as an invitation, he pulled out his wallet crammed with pictures of a chubby baby and a sturdy toddler.
She ran a finger over the pictures, charmed that the rough biker would have so many shots of his children with him. She noticed all were of the boys…not a single shot of their mother was in the stack. She frowned, then made a show of counting on her fingers.
"They're beautiful, Bill. And by the way…happy anniversary." She gave him a lop-sided smirk.
"What do you…oh, nine plus three, right?"
She fluttered her fingers at him. "Why are you really here, Bill? Bar-hopping seems an odd way of celebrating the anniversary of your son's conception."
He did some subtle signal with his eyes that brought the waitress back with a tall draft beer and two more glasses of ice water. "Like I said, I saw your Dad's baby and thought I'd stop."
"Bullshit. That's like me believing I'm really here only because the anniversary of Mom's passing got me down."
His face softened. "I'm sorry, Laura. She was a wonderful woman. How's your Dad doing?"
"He still hurts on days like today. It's hard on him." She looked at the thick-fingered hand now resting on her wrist, then up at his face. His sympathy was starting to break through her carefully constructed shell. She braced herself: time to bring out the big guns.
"I don't think your wife would appreciate you touching another woman, buying her drinks and being so friendly, Bill. Shouldn't you be home, celebrating"—she paused, muzzily realizing the alcohol hadn't left her system enough for her to be her usual prudent self, and not caring—"that which brought that adorable child into being?" She was unreasonably proud of the drunken elegance of that remark, and that thought started a giggling fit that left her pink-faced and hiccupping.
"Here, swallow nine times, real fast." He handed her the water.
Her giggles worsened through the hiccups. "That's what he said!" Her giggles slowed as she sipped and watched his face turn dark. She swallowed fast, the hiccupping finally stopping along with the laughter. An uncomfortable silence settled over the table.
"I'm sorry, Bill. I'm not usually…I've been going through a—a bad break-up. It's made me a little crazy."
He got that scary air around him that reminded her of how much he'd changed. "He do anything to you?"
She sighed. "No…just wasn't right for me. We weren't right for each other. I just…don't have much luck in that department, it seems."
"Tell me about it." He looked grimmer than he should have, for a man with a growing family.
"Bill?" The years fell away and he was the young warrior again, looking a little lost in post-war peace, and she was the girl who'd had so much faith and trust in him.
At first she thought he'd stay silent, that old stoicism coming over him as it had the day she'd picked him up from prison. His hand moved from her arm to the back of her hand, drawing Tauron symbols with his index finger.
"I've had to be away a lot for work. Side jobs I've contracted. Carolanne…." He wouldn't meet her eyes. Laura flashed back to a cocksure tough in club colors, mouth curled in a permanent smirk.
"Carolanne..?" she prompted.
"One of my guys went nomad after she got pregnant with Zak. Like he took it personal or something."
"Was it a guy named Tom?" She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth. The last thing she needed to be doing was starting problems in Bill's life at this stage.
She expected anger, maybe even rage, and watched his jawline, looking for telltale clenching. She was not expecting the slight easing of his shoulders, his clear-eyed look at her.
"What makes you say that? On second thought, I probably don't want to know." He shrugged. "Carolanne…she can't help what she is. What she isn't. She's been kind of a mess since he left."
Laura tilted her head, examining the man in front of her. "Don't you resent the frak out of that?"
He gave her a rueful grin. "Maybe I know how she feels."
Her head was fully clear as he walked her to her (their) car. She knew exactly what she was doing when she let him slide behind the wheel and handed him the keys. And when he raised his eyebrows in question at the graveled entrance to the lake park a few miles down the road, she nodded with full knowledge of what was going to happen, her lips already parting in anticipation.
Panties on the floorboard beside the discarded condom wrapper, seat pushed all the way back, she welcomed him into her core as she gave him her heart a final time. Half make-up sex after their last bitter parting, half a last farewell to old lost love. As the sweat dried on their sticky skin, their well of words went dry.
She took the keys without asking, stuffing her panties down deep into her purse and pulling down the skirt of her summer dress. They didn't speak on the way back to his bike, where he'd parked it at the dark edge of the bar's lot. Bill rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand, dropping a kiss between her knuckles. She wondered if he was worried at all that Carolanne would smell another woman's scent on him…wondered if he cared.
Maybe not, she thought, as he bent through her window to kiss her thoroughly before he left. Her fingers had stayed on her lips for a long time after he put his helmet on and roared off into the night.
She started the mental process of shifting her self-image to that of a woman capable of frakking a married man, turning that notion over and over as she felt her personal paradigm shift off-center. She wondered if it would stay that way; wondered if she'd just crossed a personal Rubicon into strange territory that she'd now have to make her own. She looked after the disappearing bike, red taillights finally blinking out of sight.
She put the convertible's ragtop down under the flickering parking lot lights. Turning the key, she headed back to her father's house, hoping the night air would blast the sex scents out of the car before she parked it in her father's garage and headed back to her sterile apartment. For having done something so bad, she felt surprisingly good.
.
.
"I have sensitive skin," she answered Lee as he asked why her face had gotten so red.
The Mustang joined the line of cars waiting to get through the guarded gates. She had the paperwork in hand as they inched forward, hoping that she had made the right call.