So, this chapter was actually completed the day after I gave you guys Chapter 20, but I ultimately decided to give you guys a super chapter. I ended up combining chapters twenty-one, twenty-two, and part of chapter twenty-three to give you guys this ultimate, ten thousand word chapter. Believe me when I say that this chapter is the most important chapter of this entire story and this is where things really start to come together. I really hope you guys like the ending of this chapter and for those of you who have been wondering what the purpose was of me creating Lynne as a character...prepare for your answer.
"I said," Sam repeated in annoyance. "Insider trading. Insider trading! Are you even listening to me?"
"How can I not? You're right next to me…and you're yelling." Her younger sister instantly emphasized, her eyes still glued to her phone.
Sam grit her teeth in frustration. It was her first time being back at the mansion since she'd made the discovery in her father's filing cabinet and it appeared that she was the only Manson offspring concerned about the predicament that their family was in.
She shoved a giant, dusty box out of her way as she gave Lynne yet another death glare.
"And do you know what 'insider trading' means?" Sam continued, earning an eye roll from the younger Manson.
"Yeah, Samantha. I do, because I'm not an idiot. What about that box?" Lynne asked, pointing to her left. Her attention was still completely glued to the phone in her hand.
Sam tore the old packing tape off of the box and sighed. "More photo albums. And it would help if you would help and stop playing Pokémon Go and—"
"Hey!" Lynne exclaimed as her older sister snatched her phone away and slid it across the worn floorboards.
"—and pay attention." Sam glowered, finally obtaining her sister's full attention.
"You know what, I am going to ignore the fact that you just cost me the last Oddish candy I need to become a Gloom, because obviously you are under extreme duress." Lynne remarked diplomatically, sifting through the box that Sam had just opened to find, indeed, more photo albums. "And this family is too photogenic."
"You should be under extreme duress too. Our father could be going to prison." Sam answered, pausing to sneeze after Lynne blew dust off of one of the boxes.
The two of them, along with Fi who was taking a pee break, had been enlisted by their grandmother to search in the attic for the box containing her wedding china. It was eight days to the day of their grandparents' wedding anniversary and Gram had decided to celebrate it at the mansion this year. If it weren't for the fact that Gram had called Sam in such a weird mood, Sam probably would've left Lynne to do the search on her own. But it wasn't often that Ida Manson seemed sad, especially since she filled her days with her favorite pastime—tormenting Pamela, so Sam figured that her grandmother had needed her.
Besides, during their phone call her grandmother had confided in her that being in the mansion again after so many years had begun to make her feel nostalgic, which was also unusual to Sam because the only memory she could really recall her grandmother reminiscing over since her grandfather had passed was…well, Felipe.
The thing that mainly stuck with her though was that her grandmother was obviously thinking about the end of her life. When Sam had remarked that she would miss her grandmother when she did decide to return to her own home, Ida had wasted no time in correcting her that the mansion was her home and that she had no intention of returning back to the house that they had moved into over two decades before, when they'd given the mansion to Pamela and Jeremy.
"I'm too old to be lonely now, Sammy." Ida had sternly told her on the other line. "I will live in this mansion until I die. It's my damn house anyway and the dybbuk will not have it."
It was true, as she'd told Danny before, the mansion was the home that Sam's grandfather, Sylvester had had built for Ida and it was where Jeremy had been raised. Sam had always thought the mansion to be huge for just two kids, but she couldn't imagine being all alone as her father had been. The majority of her time spent growing up in the mansion had been in much enjoyed solitude, but she could remember the handful of times she'd actively sought Lynne's company.
This was kind of one of those times.
Figuring that Lynne was the only other person on Earth who could understand how she was feeling regarding their father, she'd immediately launched into her findings once Fi had taken leave from the attic. And what did she get in return from her little sister? Apathy and goddamn Pokémon.
"Dad is going to prison based on what?" Lynne asked, finally becoming somewhat responsive. "Okay, so you found some weird file full of checks. All it means is Dad was paying someone and it doesn't have to be for that. You had a dress holder for your first wedding. This family has a history of paying people for weird crap. Besides, if it is insider trading then why were we poor? And why are we not now? And if that other dude Norman—"
"Normandy."
"—whatever. If he is involved then he's probably going to go to prison too for whatever it is he's doing to earn those checks and he's most likely not going to open his big mysterious mouth. This whole thing is weird and exhausting and I just want to play Pokémon Go. Now gimmie my phone!" Lynne whined, banging on the side of a box.
Sam cast her sister a look. "And to think, for three seconds I was going to commend your maturity."
"Plus, if there was going to be a family criminal I would place my bets on your mom…or Lynne." Fi chimed in, coming back up the ladder staircase.
"This!" Lynne reacted, pointing at her best friend gleefully.
"Also if this was a private conversation, you guys should really whisper. There is a ton of ventilation in this house and I could hear your entire conversation from the bathroom below. Still no sign of the plates? Should we maybe ask your mom?" Fi asked, plopping down next to Lynne and making the floorboards creak.
"No and no." Sam sighed. "I tried that and our mother was as helpful as you could imagine."
On her way to the mansion Sam had decided to bite the bullet and call her mother, hoping that Pamela would know where the dishes were in their gigantic home. But of course, after snidely remarking that she hadn't seen her at the gala, Pamela offhandedly told her that she'd thrown all of Ida's "old trinkets" into storage…meaning that she'd demanded one of the poor maids to haul all of the family valuables that she had grown tired of into the attic, which is how the three of them wound up in there.
Lynne coughed into the crook of her arm as she slid a dusty trunk between the three of them. "Maybe they're in here." The young redhead popped the trunk open, rifling through it before letting out a quiet 'ooh'.
"No plates, but speaking of Ol' Pam, what is this?" Lynne asked sneakily, pulling the contents out of a box that she'd found. Out came a faded and framed high school diploma, an old white lace dress, and three white leather bound books. Fi grabbed one of the books to hand to Lynne while Sam looked at the sewn label on the tag of the dress.
"Patricia Montgomery…that's Mom's maiden name, I'm pretty sure. This must have been her mother's wedding dress." Sam figured. Sam didn't know very much about her maternal grandparents except that her mother had grown up with her parents in Pennsylvania and that her grandmother had heavily encouraged Pamela to be a debutante, which had been an obvious success. "I'm surprised she kept it. This isn't exactly Givenchy."
As far as she knew, Patricia and Roland Montgomery had only had Pamela, also making her mother an only child. The most she could say about the Montgomerys was that they had both died when her mother was in college, right around the time that Pamela had met Jeremy. Pamela didn't speak about either one of her parents, causing Sam to believe that mother issues ran in their family.
"Hey," Lynne called to her attention, "This looks like an old diary."
She watched as her younger sister flipped through the smallest of the white leather bound books. "It's Mom's handwriting. Guess we can't joke about her not having feelings anymore." Sam smirked.
"Here, I see your name. Read it." Lynne handed it over to Sam, who scanned the page momentarily before reading it aloud.
"Two days ago, Samantha said her first word. It was 'no'. She never says it to Jeremy, nor to Ida, who has been gracious enough to take leave of her vacation with Sly to help tend to our first child." Sam read, causing Fi to snicker and Lynne to raise an eyebrow.
"'Gracious'? And no word of dybbuks? What the what is happening there?" Lynne jokingly questioned, grabbing another book to flip through.
"I keep telling you that they didn't always despise each other. And we probably shouldn't be reading these, as much as I hate to say it, these are Mom's private thoughts and she is entitled to her privacy. Plus, I don't need to read about insolent she thinks I am. I'm sure she'd be happy enough to tell me herself if I went downstairs." Sam said, putting the book down.
"Really? That's funny because Mom never said that when she used to read your diary while you were in school…" Lynne tattled in sing-song, playfully reaching to swing another one of the books in front of Sam's face as her older sister glared at her.
"Ooh, ooh, ooh." Fi taunted, gesturing for Sam to take the book from Lynne. When she didn't, the brunette took it upon herself to continue their fun. "I…oh. Maybe…maybe Sam is right. Maybe we shouldn't read these."
"What? No! Let me see!" Lynne gave Fi a confused look as her best friend stood to keep it from her reach, nearly knocking her head on the beam above her head. Fi faltered before handing the book to Sam with a sigh, staring at Lynne.
"Oh God, see? Now Fi has seen a dark family secret that she will never unsee and now she's damaged. Are you happy now? What is this?" Sam asked, accepting the book from Fi. Sam barely had time to scan the page that Fi had left open for her before Lynne snatched the book away. "Lynne, stop."
Lynne ignored her older sister's words as she giddily began to recite what was on the page in a loud and dramatic tone.
"…John is upset with me. He spent the entire evening last night expressing his anguish toward the fact that I cannot—…leave Jeremy." Her voice returned to its normal tone as she looked up at the pair in front of her, a hollow expression on her face. "Mom had an affair?"
She handed the book back to her sister before landing against the wooden chest in a heap. "Mom was cheating on Dad? Oh no, poor Dad. Do you think he knows?" Fi crawled over to wrap an arm around her friend.
"I don't know." Sam murmured, continuing to read the page to herself. She came to a certain sentence and stopped, feeling her breath catch at the familiar name.
"What?" Lynne and Fi asked in unison, noticing her behavior.
"I have to, uhm, I'm going to…I need to give this to Gram, I think this is something about her. I'll be right back." Sam stood, nearly falling over strewn boxes as well as her words. She quickly took the laddered staircase two steps at a time before she was back on the second landing of the mansion.
She nearly ran down the hallway, passing a bathroom and two other bedrooms filled with staff before she made her way down the staircase and rushed into the den, where she knew her grandmother was reading.
"Ah, there you are. I—…where is the china? I knew it. Did that dybbuk throw them away?" Ida asked, looking up from her chair and forcing her book down on her lap in anger.
"John Normandy." Sam blurted immediately. "That's why you hate my mother. It's right here. My mother was having an affair with a man named John and then a few pages in there's this love letter with this 'Normandy' signature and it makes perfect sense because you two used to be so close until like the early 2000's and that's when this letter is from."
Ida stared at her granddaughter solemnly. "Samantha. Samantha, I think it is best that you leave this alone. How much of this did you read?"
"What? No. No, no, no. See, I was in my dad's office and I found some letter from this Normandy guy and I thought Dad was doing something illegal, but of course, this whole thing is my mother's fault as usual, because this guy is apparently blackmailing them because of my mother's affair and Dad has been paying him like…millions of dollars to keep this quiet!" Sam pieced together, barely able to contain her excitement.
It wasn't that she was thrilled to know that there was a valid reason for why her family was being extorted or that her mother had apparently been unfaithful to her father, but this all made much more sense than her father doing something illegal. She could have laughed at the thought now. How could she have imagined Jeremy, her father, Jeremy Manson doing something so selfish and criminal? Of course, if anyone were to have a secret to completely crush their family, it would have been Pamela.
"Hey, we got the plates." Lynne called out, following Fi who was carrying a large box. "Cray-cray over here knocked over a box when she was running down here all spazz-like and we found them. So if any are broken, it's Sam's fault."
"Shut up. Look, I just figured out what's going on. Dad's not guilty of insider trading." Sam explained excitedly.
"Oh. Yippie, you had me worried there with the zero seconds I was convinced that he was." Lynne muttered, rolling her eyes.
Ida stood to take the plates from Fi and set them down on the table nearest her before gesturing for Sam to hand the white bound book over to her. "Thank you for the plates, dear. Now please hand this to me. I will put it somewhere safe so that no one else comes across this damning secret, hm?"
Sam locked eyes with her grandmother and saw something that she wasn't sure she'd ever seen before—fear.
She took a step back with the book, going back to the page that she had found. Why had her grandmother asked her how much she'd read? What else was there…and why was Gram calling her 'Samantha'? She could only recall one other time that Gram had called her that and it had been as a kid, when she'd done something stupid like running across the street without looking.
Her grandmother had called her that because she had been in danger…so what could she possibly be in danger of that was in this book? She continued reading, maintaining her distance from her grandmother who was now pleading with her.
"Sammy, if what I think is in that book is indeed in that book then this family will never recover from its contents. Please hand me that journal!" Ida nearly yelled.
Sam ignored her grandmother, stepping around the other side of the chair so that she was out of reach of Ida and her lithe little frame. "Gram, I don't see what is so traumatizing about th—"
Sam froze and brought her eyes up to meet Ida's matching amethyst ones, which were gathering tears. Sam stared at her grandmother, feeling lightheaded…and sick. She was going to be sick. She was going to be sick right there in the den. The image of her mother making a dramatic fuss about the rug as one of the maids scrubbed up vomit flashed through her mind before her thoughts came back into focus on what was actually happening in reality. What was happening?
No. What she had just read made no sense. It wasn't possible. Or the dates were wrong. No. They wouldn't have kept this from her. In her imagination she could hear her mother scathingly remarking that she expected her to be hungry enough to join them for dinner this evening, seeing as the entire contents of her stomach were now on her $2000 rug.
In reality, she barely noticed Lynne picking up a photograph that must have dropped out of the diary when she'd come around the chair.
Lynne looked at the photograph before quizzically turning it over. "John and our baby?" Lynne read aloud, noticing that both the man and the infant in the picture had familiar amethyst eyes. "Omg, Sam, is this you?!"
"No," Sam whispered shakily, trying to get a grasp on her spinning mind. "Lynne, it's…it's you. John Normandy is your…"
She trailed off, looking helplessly at Ida. She would have killed for insider trading in that moment. She would have killed for the majority of her issues to be that her mother had indeed thrown out her grandparents' sixty year old wedding china or that she had actually gotten sick on the rug. She would have killed for anything except what she would have to say to Lynne.
"Johnathan Normandy is your father, Lynne. Your real father." Ida sighed, sitting down.
Lynne silently looked at what was in her hands, recognizing the small little tufts of red hair in the photograph before she looked back and forth from Gram and Sam, neither of which knew what to say.
"Uhm…wouldn't it be funny if you weren't a Manson?" Fi quietly asked, repeating Lynne's words from the night of the gala before Lynne dissolved into tears.
As Lynne crumpled into a ball on the floor, Sam rushed to join Fi on the rug with her sobbing little sister, feeling herself begin to cry as well.
The Manson family were all sitting in the den, stoic expressions on everyone's faces. Sam sat holding Lynne in the love seat, who had finally stopped crying and had taken to rubbing at her mascara streaked face instead. The words from the diary kept repeating in Sam's head, "I gave birth to my second child today. Tonight, I will tell Jeremy that she is John's child and pray that he will not take Samantha and leave. John must not know. Ever."
Her mind concentrated on that last word, 'ever'. Obviously, that didn't happen since John obviously knew seeing as he had a photograph with Lynne and he was currently threatening to upend their entire family.
Jeremy sat across from Sam and Lynne, his mother tenderly holding his hand as the two of them looked across at the young women in front of them. Nearby in the doorway stood Pamela, looking straight ahead at no one and holding a drink.
"Yes." Jeremy finally spoke. "It's the truth. Johnathan Normandy has been blackmailing our family over the last four years or so and yes, the reason is because he is Lynne's…biological father."
Sam didn't know why hearing her father confirm it made it seem worse, but it did. She was secretly hoping he would come in and laugh and explain everything away. Maybe this would have had something to do with the Cains, they still had to pay them back her tuition, didn't they?
She'd wanted him to go, "Yes, your mother cheated ages ago but I forgave and forgot like the wonderful man that I am!" She didn't not want him to confirm that their family had been harboring a lie for the last seventeen years.
"I've been paying him so that he would never make good on his threat to tell everyone, including you two girls."
Sam glanced at her mother to see if she would have a reaction to this truth, which she didn't.
"God. This family will do anything to save face." Lynne remarked bitterly.
"Lynne," Jeremy immediately responded, looking as if he wanted nothing more than to envelop his youngest child. "This wasn't something I did for this family, this was solely for you."
"Oh right. Because I'm not even part of this family. Because I'm not even a Manson, I'm a—a—Christ! What even is this guy's name again?!" Lynne bit furiously.
Sam wrapped an arm around her sister, bringing her close to her. "Hey, you were a Manson yesterday and you are a Manson today, because nothing has changed. You are my little sister. Period." Sam told her seriously. "Hell, technically, I'm not even a Manson by name anymore. But like it or not, I'll always be one and so will you. Besides, you of all people know that being a Manson is not all that it's cracked up to be."
Aside from the clink of the ice against the glass that Pamela was holding, their mother was completely silent, still making no eye contact with anyone in the room. Lynne, for her part, hadn't even bothered to address her. Sam didn't think the younger Manson knew what to say to her. Sam definitely didn't.
"Lynne, honey. I love you. I have loved you like a daughter since the moment they put you in my arms, because you are my daughter. John is not the father who sat up with you in rainstorms and who read you to sleep, who regards the day you got lost as one of the single most terrifying days in his life," Jeremy pleaded, his voice cracking as his eyes welled up. "He is not the father who loves you with all of his heart."
"Dad," Sam interjected when she saw that Lynne was not going to respond. "Why exactly is he blackmailing us? I mean, why does he care if people know that Lynne is biologically his daughter?"
"Despite the photograph, John didn't know that Lynne was his child until years later. He'd come as the plus one to one of your mother's charity events at the house and had seen Lynne. John shares some of the same…characteristics as the Manson family so he'd had no reason to suspect that Lynne could be his until they had come face to face and he saw some of his own features in hers. He asked me and I couldn't lie to the man." Jeremy explained solemnly.
Of course, Pamela would choose to have an affair with a guy who shared the same uncommon eye color as Gram. It had been such an honor to Gram that not only had Sam inherited her unique eye color, but Lynne too. And now the unique bond that Lynne shared with their grandmother was just a sham.
"I'd thought that as men he would respect the fact that I asked him to stay away from Lynne, at least until her eighteenth birthday when she could make a decision like that for herself, and he did. He did until about four years ago when The Normandy Corporation fell on hard times and he began demanding payment for his silence. I began to pay him until the payments got to be too much, causing our own corporation to fall upon perilous times." Their father continued.
Sam sighed deeply. This decision had affected them both. Of course the effect on her was nothing remotely close to the effect on Lynne, but she was very confused as to how she should feel to know that it was her father's decision to keep Lynne in the dark—though good intentioned as it might have been—that had been the catalyst for her not being able to afford Yale, her arrangement with the Cains, and ultimately her meeting Danny.
"Dear," Ida sorrowfully turned to Lynne. "Now that your father has been unable to protect you from this, would you like to meet Mr. Normandy?"
At this, Pamela finally looked up at all of them, though she still said nothing. She and Sam made brief eye contact before Sam continued ignoring her. Of course, she would look up when the prospect of seeing her old lover came into play.
"No," Lynne finally answered. "If he really wanted to meet me then he would have just reached out to me once he knew the truth instead of taking Dad's money, which is all he ever wanted, obviously. And Dad, I know that you're my dad, I just…feel really confused and really sad right now…and angry, but I'm not sure what, or who," she took this time to look at Pamela. "I'm angry at. I think I just want to be alone for a while."
Sam released her sister as the redhead stood to leave. Lynne gave a furious glance at Pamela as she left, though the older woman did nothing but simply step aside from the doorway to let her pass.
Sam sat, silently processing what had just happened in the course of a few hours. How had Lynne gone from full to half-sister in just a matter of moments? Was she actually better off for knowing this? She took out her phone to see if Danny had responded to the very long voice message she'd left him when they were waiting for Fi and Lynne to say their goodbyes earlier and saw that she had. She smiled at the brief supportive and loving message from her husband and at the promise that there was a vegetarian lasagna in the oven.
She almost laughed at the following message and photograph of pasta in the garbage and the second promise, this time of pizza.
The silence continued until it was broken by Pamela slamming her drink down on the wet bar and striding across the room to feverishly slap Jeremy across the face. Ida let out a surprised and angry yelp and Sam dropped her phone as Pamela, teary eyed, snapped, "You bastard. You let me take the fall, you let me be crucified for not having Samantha's tuition, for having to make that agreement with the Cains when this whole ordeal has been your fault because you were giving our goddamn money away to that man?!"
Sam was taken aback by the look of pure hatred that crossed her father's features. She had never seen him this way and she was not expecting him to direct this look toward her mother.
"Oh, now he's 'that man'. This whole ordeal has been your fault because no one told you to take an interest in investing when all you'd done previously was drink and buy fucking handbags."
Pamela ignored him, though from the mirrored looks of horror on Sam and Ida's faces, they certainly were not able to.
"I have been consumed with guilt over Samantha's betrothal to Adam and I have been blaming myself when it is your fault that Samantha and I have a broken relationship! You cannot play the hero every goddamn time, Jeremy! You cannot!"
"With all due respect to our oldest daughter, it isn't your relationship with Sam that you should be concerned with right now!" Jeremy bellowed in annoyance.
Sam mentally agreed, also wondering how deluded her mother had to be to actually think that their mother/daughter issues began with Adam. From the look of things, she hadn't gotten along with her mother since she'd begun to speak.
"I am so tired of you acting like you are so different than me, because you aren't. You're so consumed with looking like the perfect father, the patron saint Jeremy who can do no wrong. Well, fuck you, Jeremy." Pamela seethed darkly. "I am tired of being the family villain. You need to take responsibility for your actions in this. Besides, you and I both know that you haven't touched me in seventeen years and that if it weren't for the fact that you've known this entire time that Lynnette isn't yours that you probably would have divorced me and taken the girls as soon as your mother told you about the affair!"
"How could I touch you, Pamela?! How could I when every time I look at you, every time I look at our daughter, I'm reminded of the fact that you've been touched by him! How do you not see that you've hurt me?" Jeremy demanded. By this point, both of her parents were standing in the center of the den, face to face and screaming at each other.
"I'm hurting too, Jeremy!" Pamela bawled wildly.
There was a heavy silence that consumed the room as Jeremy and Pamela Manson fought to regain their composure and had become aware again of Sam and Ida sitting in the room.
"Why don't you and I continue this conversation elsewhere?" Jeremy suggested to his wife, clearing his throat. Pamela wordlessly nodded and followed Jeremy out of the room.
It was starting to make a lot more sense to Sam as to why her mother might have been a low key alcoholic.
Once they were gone, Ida leaned forward, her elbows on her knees as she buried her face into her hands and tiredly spoke in muffled Yiddish to herself. "I swear," Ida remarked. "The only thing Pamela has done right is give birth to you girls."
Sam, not quite sure what she was supposed to do from here, got up to find Lynne, tuning out the muffled continuation of her parents' argument and possible separation as she passed by her father's office. She winced as she heard the words, "Well, maybe if you'd kept your goddamn legs closed!" as she made her way to the staircase.
It was an eerie feeling, the feeling of suddenly being aware of her parents' mortality; of seeing Jeremy and Pamela outside of their roles as Hero and Villain. If she took anything from this, it would be that both of her parents were just flawed, hurting, human people…and she wasn't sure if she liked that.
She made her way into Lynne's room, momentarily surprised to find it empty. Pausing for a moment, Sam remembered that when they were younger and when Lynne was afraid that it wasn't her own bedroom that she would run into.
Sam walked a few doors down, past her parents' bedroom, and opened the door of her own to see Lynne and her newly tear stained face sprawled across the bed. She knocked on the door to get her younger sister's attention, but the younger Manson did not look up. Sprawling on the large bed next to her, she laid on her back and looked up at the ceiling while Lynne, on her stomach, rolled over to be closer to her.
"I heard them fighting. Are they going to get a divorce?" Lynne asked.
Sam thought about reassuring her younger sibling, but decided that on a day like today, and possibly every day after this one, that she would never attempt to bullshit or sugarcoat anything for her sister again.
"I don't know." She answered honestly.
The only sound in the room was the sound of their breathing before Lynne sniffled, "I don't want to be here anymore. Is your roof fixed now? Can I live with you instead?"
"Yes and yes." Sam answered without hesitation. Part of the earlier message from Danny were warm words to extend to Lynne, including an invitation to camp out with them for a while if she felt so inclined. "I'll call Danny soon to see if he can bring Betsy and we'll pack your stuff, okay?"
Lynne turned to her older sister with a smile. "You called it 'Betsy'." She said with a smirk that Sam was happy to say reminded her of sister's typical annoying behavior. "Can I have my phone back so I can play Pokémon Go in the car?"
"No." Sam remarked, getting up to call Danny.
"What? Oh, come on! I just found out I'm illegitimate! Hey…do you think this will get me out of homeschooling for a few weeks? I kind of feel like they owe me. Ooh, and I was going to ask for a birthday party do-over now that we're rich again and—"
"Shut up, Lynne or so help me God, I will leave you here." Sam warned.
"If you do, I'll just come on my own! I have keys now." Lynne reminded her.
Sam walked into the hallway to call Danny with a groan. Suddenly, she was remembering what it was like to live with Lynne again. Oh boy.
Living under the same roof with Lynne again had certainly been an adventure that Sam wasn't sure she was properly prepared to have signed up for. If Sam had thought living with her in the mansion had been rough as a teenager, then she had definitely not taken into consideration the fact that she would be living with her in their much smaller two bedroom home.
For one, when Lynne was not using her newfound illegitimacy for her own personal gain, she was begging to be taken places, as she had no license, no car, and no fleet of awaiting limousines to cart her off to Fi's house. Sam's personal favorite of Lynne's pleads was probably the combination of the two where she would wail, "But please! I need a ride to Fi's. I'm illegitimate and I have no family and Fi is all I have left."
To which Sam would reply that she still counted as more of her sister than Fi was and that she did so have a family and no, because she was busy, and to see if one of Fi's drivers could pick her up.
It wasn't until one morning, about a week and a half in, when Lynne stumbled down into the kitchen, wearing a blonde wig for some reason, and yawningly remarked that she'd overheard Sam and Danny having sex the night before, that Sam decided she and Danny were in for a break from Lynne…you know, after she'd helped Danny stop choking on his coffee.
This was why she and Danny were currently wrapped up in each other on the couch, planning their date night out.
"You want to know a secret? When we had to do all of that wedding stuff with your mother and people would always comment on how gorgeous our kids would be, I used to freak out a little." Danny laughed, gliding his thumb across his wife's hand as they snuggled together on the couch.
Sam turned her neck to look at him. "'Used to'?" She repeated with a smirk. "Daniel Fenton, are you trying to tell me that you want to have my babies?"
"That," Danny answered, tapping her nose with a smirk of his own. "Is physically impossible." Sam nudged him as the doorbell rang.
Unraveling herself from Danny, Sam opened the door to see Andrew and his big green eyes. Behind him stood his mother Audrey, frantically pulling on light blue scrubs over a white tank top.
"Oh, thank God. You're home. I just found out that I have a double tonight and my babysitter is only fifteen and she can't stay at my place all night. Is there any way you guys are around to watch Drew?"
Sam faltered, looking behind the front door at Danny, who looked at her with a shrug. Before she could answer though, blonde Lynne bounded down the stairs excitedly. "I can do it!"
Sam turned to her younger sister with a raised eyebrow before she turned back to Danny, who again simply shrugged. "You're only two years older than her babysitter, Lynne."
"Yeah, but I live right here and Andrew loves me, isn't that right?" Lynne beamed, kneeling and opening her arms for Andrew, who readily ran into them. Sam suspected that the now four year old boy loved Lynne because they both shared the same attention span.
"We do have a date planned for tonight, but we can cancel it. Unless you're somehow okay with a wig wearing seventeen-year-old weirdo watching your kid…" Sam voiced to Audrey.
Their neighbor laughed. "How can I say no when Andrew is so smitten? Alright, I've got to take off, but Savannah will be there for another three hours. I'll make sure she gives you all of the instructions you need for the night before she leaves. Thank you so much, guys."
Lynne waved goodbye emphatically as Sam closed the door behind her, eyeing her younger sister. "Since when are you into babysitting neighbors?"
"Since I have neighbors for the first time in my life. I've actually been spending time with a lot of your neighbors…except that lady next door with the pies. She's a wack-a-doo." Lynne blanched, adjusting her wig. "I could get used to this place, even with the weird old people."
Sam rolled her eyes as Lynne followed her into the kitchen. "How many times do I have to tell you that that the Carsons are not weird old people, they're just a little…dated."
Lynne flounced onto the chair nearest her, reminding Sam of Danny. She wasn't sure which one of them was giving the other their bad habits, but she mentally eye rolled at the fact that she now had to deal with two of them.
"More like past their expiration date. Anyway, it's been kind of nice hanging out here for awhile. So…thanks. It's been good to kind of get a break from all of that."
Lynne pulled off her wig and held it in her lap as she stared away at the refrigerator. Sam knew exactly what her sister had meant. Though it had been a little hectic having the master bedroom repaired only to hurriedly move Danny's things into it to get the guest room ready for Lynne, it proved to be worth it. Lynne had stopped crying and moping around by the second day and Sam would never admit it, but she was glad to have her annoying little sister back.
When she wasn't policing all of the Lynne and Fi mayhem, actually doing her job, and attempting to have near silent relations with her husband, she was fielding calls from Jeremy, Ida, and surprisingly, Pamela. But Lynne just wasn't ready to speak to any of them yet, so every phone call always ended with, "Yeah. I'll tell her. I'm sure she'll call back when she's ready."
She turned to Lynne concernedly, "So how are you? I mean, it's been like two weeks and you're joking about it and stuff, but…you know. How are you?"
Lynne's response was an annoyed sigh. "Look, I appreciate you caring and trying to make sure that I'm okay, but don't try to shrink me, okay? I was saying thank you, not looking for therapy. You've gone to like three sessions with that lady and that doesn't exactly give you a degree."
"I'm not trying to be your therapist, Lynne. I'm trying to be your older sister and I get how hard this is for you and—"
Lynne heaved herself off of the barstool with an eye roll. "Stop, alright. Just stop. Because you don't understand. You don't understand what this is like at all. You get to complain about Mom and Dad like a normal daughter. Oh, Mom's overbearing and oh, Dad doesn't react enough sometimes. On my end, Mom is a cheater and Dad is now my stepdad. Gram's not even my grandmother and come to find out, all three of them have been lying to me—and you—for my entire life."
Danny came into the kitchen as Lynne's voice began to raise in agitation, but he didn't interrupt as the frustrated redhead continued.
"Not to mention the dude who is my real dad never even cared enough to consider that maybe if he wasn't going to care for me that he shouldn't try to, I don't know, financially ruin the family that actually was. So for tonight, I just want to be a regular teenager who babysits and has neighbors and I don't want to talk about it, guys." Lynne finished, angrily holding back her tears.
Sam just nodded. "O…kay. Okay, we don't have to. I'm sorry."
Danny walked over to pick up Lynne's strewn wig from the floor, handing it back to the teenager with an easy smile. "Hey, how about this? Sam, why don't you get ready for dinner and Lynne and I will go out and get some ice cream before she begins her sentence as a regular teenager."
Happy to see that someone was at least able to make Lynne laugh, Sam kissed Danny in agreement and turned to Lynne who was smiling again.
"Yes. And sorry, part of my now being a regular teenager is snapping irrationally at relatives." Lynne chirped, rocking on her heels.
"Noted." Sam remarked, ushering the two of them toward the door.
As the three of them walked out of the front door and toward the SUV in the driveway, Sam felt Lynne's back tense under her hand. "Crap. Hurry up, it's the whack-a-doo."
Sam looked up in alarm and Danny hurriedly reached for the car keys in his back pocket, but not before a chilling, "Oh! Hello you three!" was heard near the mailbox.
"Shit. Alright, hurry up and get in the car…but you two owe me." Sam muttered, pushing Lynne toward the passenger side of Monster as their neighbor Olivia quickly approached Danny's door.
"Olivia, hi." Sam intercepted evenly, throwing a side glance to her sister and her husband. The latter was quickly trying to start the engine to Monster as Sam mentally berated herself for hoping that he'd hit her.
Sam was prepared for this, she'd executed this escape for years with her mother, so dodging her overfamiliar neighbor would have been easy…so she thought. She carefully made steps back toward their front door only to have Olivia match her step for step until they were both standing on the front porch.
So much for running and hiding.
"Sam, hello! Oh, I was just saying to Tracy Mason that you were the one neighbor who I definitely needed to visit and look at that! You know this is what they call kismet." Olivia smiled broadly, looking behind Sam as she opened the door.
"More like 'kill me'." Sam muttered to herself.
Sam wasn't exactly sure how Olivia Thomas ended up in her living room, but thirty seconds later she was walking toward the kitchen with the woman in tow as Lynne and Danny pulled out of the driveway. It did not go unnoticed to Sam that Lynne was pretending to pray for her as they pulled off.
"Oh my gosh, you have such a lovely home. It's a good thing you've got this two bedroom with your new addition. And oh, it was so sweet of you to take your younger sister in, though she does seem…spirited." Olivia remarked, for lack of better word. Sam watched as she damn near ogled a photograph of her and Danny on their wedding day, pretty sure that it wasn't her she was thirsting after.
"Yeah…so…" Sam trailed lamely. "Uhm, do you want something to drink or—"
"Tea. Earl Grey if you have it, just plain black if you don't." Her neighbor answered automatically.
Great. Curse her stupid, hospitable mouth. Tea would mean that she would have to stay in her house to drink it.
"So your in-laws bought this house as a wedding present for you?" The older woman inquired, following Sam into the kitchen.
Sam noticed her staring at the oven and was instantly reminded of her suspicious pie. "Yes."
She opened the cabinet where they kept the tea, slightly disappointed that the ghost of boxes from before didn't feel like suddenly appearing to frighten the bejeezus out of her neighbor.
"You know," Oh-Livia continued, seemingly unaware that the last thing Sam wanted to do was have a conversation with her.
"Mrs. McCarthy and I were talking yesterday and we were trying to figure out what on Earth happened to your roof!" Sam wasn't sure if that was supposed to be a question or bait for more unwanted pies. Everything Olivia said seemed like bait for unwanted pies. Hole in your roof? Have some pie!
"What do you mean? It was the storm. You had told us about the storm, remember? And then something about soup…" Sam replied, pausing to raise an eyebrow at her as she put the tea bag in the cup.
This time it was Olivia who raised an eyebrow, cocking her head to the side and dusting imaginary dirt off of her ever-perfect apron. "Oh, honey, the storm isn't for another few days."
"What?" Sam asked, turning fully toward Mrs. Thomas. The other woman wasn't paying attention though as her widened eyes stared at something behind Sam. She raised a panicky hand and waved it in the direction behind her.
"Oh! The kettle! It's much too high!"
Sam turned around in alarm at the sound of the kettle whistle. "Wha—No, I haven't even turned it on yet."
Danny and Lynne drove in rare silence on the freeway, the only sound being Danny tapping against the steering wheel and Lynne humming along to whatever came on the radio. Finally, as the pair reached their destination Lynne remarked, "Poor Sam. We're going to come back to so many pies." to which Danny snorted in reply.
Danny cut the engine off and looked at Lynne expectantly after unclipping his seatbelt. Lynne looked back at him and followed suit, partly curious about what the real reason for this excursion was, but mostly just excited about the free food.
"Cotton candy ice cream, por favor!" Lynne requested as they hopped out of Danny's SUV.
With a dutiful nod, Danny held the door open for his young sister-in-law and gestured for her to pick a booth.
Once he had returned with one scoop of chocolate ice cream in one hand and two scoops of sugary perfection in the other, Danny spoke up. "Do you know what the best day of my life has been?"
"Nope." The redhead replied bluntly, looking out of the window at Betsy in the parking lot.
"It was when I married your sister. The best day of my life so far was the day that Sam became a Fenton." Danny slid into the booth across from Lynne, looking more serious than Lynne could ever recall him seeming.
"Oh. That's nice. Really, that's really nice. I'm going to quote that when I'm telling your future children how your marriage began as a sham." Lynne remarked.
"Your sister would kill you." He countered.
"Everything I do is in hopes that Sam will kill me. But really, I'm glad she ended up with you and not Ad-dumb. I wonder if he has to marry one of his cousins now." She pondered aloud, taking a large scoop out of her ice cream.
"The point is," Danny continued. "Sam isn't exactly a Manson anymore either and I just wanted to make sure you knew that there's always room in the Fenton family for you. You always have family."
Lynne paused, staring at her brother-in-law with a soft smile before retorting, "Thank you. That really means a lot to me…but just so you know, I'm not changing my last name too. I don't want people thinking Sam and I are sister wives or anything weird."
Danny laughed and took a scoop of his own ice cream as his phone rang. "And look at that. There's Mrs. Fenton now."
Lynne slid his phone across the table closer to him and Danny answered it and put it on speaker phone. "Hey, babe. We were just talking about you."
"D…Danny. Danny, there's a ghost in the house." Came Sam's voice from the other end.
"Is it the Box Ghost again?" Her husband asked her smirkingly as Lynne mouthed, "Box Ghost?".
"No. Danny, I think this is a bad one. I think—"
There was suddenly a loud, echoing voice on the other end that sent chills down Lynne's spine. She looked up from the phone to see that nearly all of the color had drained out of Danny's face. Before she could even begin to feel frightened, Danny was up on his feet.
"Sam!" Danny practically yelled, causing people to look in their direction. The sound of Sam's scream rang through from the other end as Lynne froze in place. Those who hadn't been staring at them were definitely looking in their direction now as the phone suddenly hung up.
Danny all but threw the phone at her as he instructed, "Call Tucker and Jazz. Tell them Sam is in danger."
It took a few moments for Lynne to fully register that her sister was indeed in what seemed to be grave danger and that the only person who knew what was going on was now bolting from the ice cream parlor.
Lynne hurriedly turned around in the booth and yelled toward the door, "What am I supposed to tell them?"
"Tell them that Plasmius is back!" Danny said, his eyes seemingly flashing with anger as he clutched his car keys.
"Wait, am I just supposed to stay here?!" Lynne called after him, but got no response as her brother-in-law ran into the parking lot and toward his SUV.
Figuring that she'd gotten her answer, Lynne went to dial one of the two when she realized that Danny's phone was locked and that she had no idea what the passcode was.
She turned to the window to see that his vehicle was still there and rushed up to get to him before he pulled off. Only when Lynne did make it out of the parlor doors and to Betsy, she found it to be completely empty. Lynne turned in place, looking for Danny but didn't see him.
She stood on tiptoe and peered through the driver's side window only to see that Danny was nowhere to be found, but that his keys were in the seat. "What? Where did he go?"
The young redhead faltered for a moment, unsure of what she was supposed to do just then. His phone wasn't going to work, she didn't have their phone numbers and she couldn't call Danny because she had his phone, Danny was nowhere to be found, and from the sounds of it some guy…or ghost…named Plasmius was going to hurt her sister.
The idea that Sam was all she had left flashed through her mind and she knew what she had to do.
"Oh, please let me remember something from Pascal's driving lessons besides the recipe for truffle french fries…" Lynne prayed under her breath, hopping into the driver's seat.
She turned the keys into the ignition and gave a slight gulp as the large vehicle roared to life. "And it's starting to make sense why Sam calls this thing 'Monster'."
It didn't take long for her to plug the address of her new home into the GPS, but it did take what seemed like forever for her to remember how to back out of a parking space. Once she figured out where everything was on Monster, she made her way onto the freeway without incident.
She wasn't sure whether it was fate or people just avoiding what was probably her horrific driving, but she made it onto their block in what seemed like record time. She floored it as she whipped the SUV around the corner and brought the vehicle to a screeching stop…right into Danny and Sam's brick mailbox.
She didn't have time to focus on that however as there was currently a light show of red and green flashing through the front windows. Lynne quickly untangled herself from her seatbelt, ignoring the airbag as it finally deployed behind her. She ran toward the door and rushed into their living room to see one familiar being and another, more intimidating one, firing respective rays of green and red light beams at one another. She recognized one of them as Phantom, but the other, who resembled some kind of vampire, she guessed must have been Plasmius.
"Lynne, get down!" A voice that Lynne was relieved to recognize as Sam's, yelled. Lynne, for once, did as she was told and hit the deck before her peering eyes found Sam and the whack-a-doo crouched down in the kitchen, hiding under the counter of the island.
Lynne anxiously began to army crawl beneath the quick laser-like flashes over her head only to suddenly feel as though she was floating. She looked down at her feet to see that she didn't just feel like she was floating…she actually was. Her heart fell into her stomach as she came face to face with the pale grey face of the vampire ghost.
"Leave her alone!" She heard Phantom yell. She saw behind Plasmius that he was holding two orbs of green light in his hands, but did not look ready to release them at the other ghost.
"What's wrong, Daniel? Worried about hitting a human shield?" Plasmius taunted.
Sam screamed for him to release Lynne, who to her benefit, did not scream or give any indication of fear as she stared face to face with the terrifying ghost, the top of her head touching the ceiling. She could feel a strong chill emanating from him as he held her up with one hand.
"I said," Sam snarled, coming out from her place in the kitchen. "Get your goddamn hands off of my little sister."
Before Plasmius could react, Sam fired what looked like an electric mixer with a FentonWorks sticker on the side of it, hitting Plasmius in the shoulder. The terrifying ghost let out an angered yell as he dropped Lynne, taking aim at the redhead as she fell from the height of the ceiling.
Phantom instantly swooped down and caught her, raising his wrist to block the bright red blast headed for Lynne's face. The ghost known as Plasmius flew up through the ceiling and Phantom furiously followed, leaving Sam to rush toward her sister.
"Lynne," Sam breathed, dropping the Fenton device and bringing the younger Manson into her arms. "Are you okay? Where's Danny?"
As Lynne attempted to catch her breath, the door flew open again and in ran Jazz and Tucker with Danny following closely behind. Danny instantly rushed to the two of them, kneeling down to their level.
"Are you two okay? What happened?" Danny asked, his eyes scanning over the two of them for injury.
"We're fine. Phantom was here. He just appeared and he protected us. That other ghost, I don't know why he was here or what he was looking for. He just came in and attacked me and Mrs.—" Sam turned toward the kitchen, suddenly remembering about Oh-Livia.
Jazz hurried into the kitchen, coming back moments later supporting a trembling Mrs. Thomas who could barely utter a word through her stutters. "Okay, why don't I walk you home?" Jazz suggested, walking her toward the door.
Tucker opened the door for the pair of them as Lynne stared intently at Danny. "How did you get here without Monster?"
Danny faltered only for Tucker to quickly step in, remarking, "Jazz and I were actually nearby the ice cream parlor when Danny called, so we just picked him up."
Lynne shrugged off Sam's embrace as she looked back from Danny to Tucker. "But…how did I get here first? And wait, that doesn't make any sense because I have Danny's pho—"
Lynne's argument went unheard however, as Sam spoke over her, standing to look out of the window as Jazz re entered the house. "Wait. If Danny didn't drive it, how did Monster end up in the driveway?"
"More like in your mailbox…" Jazz winced.
Sam pressed up against the window, groaning as she saw the smashed front of the vehicle. "Lynne, are you kidding me? You could've gotten killed."
"Yeah, well we both almost got killed and you haven't even left the house today." Lynne immediately retorted.
Sam gave her a look but decided that now was not the time to argue as Danny closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I don't even want to see it yet. Now are you sure you guys are okay?"
Sam nodded firmly. "Yeah. Phantom saved all of us but he and the other ghost just disappeared. I'm pretty sure they're gone now."
Lynne watched as Jazz and Tucker exchanged a look, quickly looking elsewhere as they noticed the teenager's watchful gaze.
"Hey, if it's cool can I just cancel on watching Andrew tonight? I was kind of dropped from a ceiling and I'm a little exhausted." Lynne spoke up, still watching Tucker and Jazz as Danny continued to embrace her sister.
"Yeah, for sure. I don't think we're going out anymore tonight anyway." Danny said, looking at Sam, who nodded wholeheartedly.
"For sure," She echoed. "I'm sure Oh-Livia's already told half the neighborhood but I'm going to call Audrey and let her know."
"I've got it." Danny said, kissing Sam's forehead. "You just relax."
Lynne turned to walk up the stairs, overhearing Sam ask Tucker and Jazz if they wanted to stay over for take-out as she tried to focus on processing what had just happened.
Lynne had been in her room for about two hours before Danny decided to check on her. He softly knocked on the door, waiting until he heard, "Come in."
Danny opened the door to see Lynne looking up at him from her phone as he carefully stepped over the piles of laundry that she'd had strewn all over the floor. At least he could say that she was making herself at home.
He sat on the edge of her bed, once again scanning her face for any injury. "Sam told me what happened. Are you okay? If you start to feel strange at all, we can definitely take you to the emergency room. Or we can even have one of your parents' concierge doctors swing by the house." He suggested.
Lynne shrugged. "Nope. I'm good."
"Well…it was really brave of you to take the car. Are you sure you're okay after the crash? We saw that the airbag deployed…" He waited for one of Lynne's snarky remarks, only to get another short response about her being fine.
He eyed the young redhead with worry, wondering if maybe she'd suffered a concussion. That would be all he needed from Pamela, to hear about how they'd had Lynne for less than a month and they'd already damaged her. Though in reality, his mother-in-law would probably appreciate an unusually silent Lynne.
"Alright, I'll give you your space. I just wanted to come up here and check on you. I know it's been a rough few weeks for you and I hope you know that my offer to become a Fenton still stands." Danny said, standing to leave.
"Here." Lynne stopped him, handing him the phone in her hands. Upon closer inspection, Danny realized that the phone Lynne had been holding was actually his.
Danny took the phone from Lynne, making intense eye contact with the younger Manson as she remarked, "You know, it's a good thing that I'm a Fenton now, since I know your secret."
Danny slowly pocketed his phone before clearing his throat. "What?"
"I said," Lynne repeated slowly. "It is a good thing that I am a Fenton now. Because I know your secret. I know that you're Phantom."
Danny gave a slight laugh before taking a nervous gulp. "Lynne, you obviously hit your head or—"
Lynne got up from her bed and grabbed his arm, sliding his shirt sleeve up to where the blast from Plasmius had not fully healed. She pointed to the burn mark while making clear eye contact with her brother-in-law.
"Okay." Danny nodded. "Alright. What do you want to know?"
Lynne walked over and shut her door before turning to lean against it. "Everything."
Special shoutouts to my older fans who know which story of mine the car scene and the ceiling scene were inspired by.