Uncommon Bond
Chapter 33
Rated – NC-17/MA
Author: Batistafan(given name, given on request)
THIS IS THE SEQUEL TO UNCOMMON SENSE – If you have not yet read the first story, doing so may better help you to piece together the events and characters of this fiction…enjoy!
Disclaimer: This is a mature fanfiction intended for mature readers. This story contains graphic violence, as well as explicit, mature, consensual sexual situations and these would not be deemed appropriate for all readers.
I do not own nor claim to have any affiliation with the WWE, its characters, wrestlers, staff or other affiliates. I do own any original characters that I have created, as well as scenarios that ensue throughout the course of this fiction. However, since both my characters and scenarios are inexorably intertwined with those of the WWE, my ownership of them is not autonomous.
I do not endorse nor do I discourage the use of any brand-name products that might be referenced in the fiction and have no claim to them as they are property of their respective companies of license. Thank you kindly for not suing.
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"Today is the tomorrow I worried about yesterday."
- Sandi Bachom, The Wrath of Grapes
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"You know, I'll bet your Dad would enjoy it if you flew down here so the two of you could go hunting together." The words were a soft unimposing suggestion, as they fell from Jean Hadaway's lips.
Max nodded in silent contemplation as he listened on the other end of the line. "The only draw back to that idea is that he'd make me clean and haul away anything we caught." He shuffled through Nancy's stack of sketch books as he balanced the phone between his ear and shoulder. "Dad never did tell you about how he made me drag that 12-point buck all the way from the river bank, up the hill and then he made me load it into the chest."
She laughed gently, remembering the specifics of the trip with ease. "If you kill it then you clean it. Wasn't that the rule?"
"I could probably dispute that unwritten rule in any court of law, Mom." Max pointed out good-naturedly as he remembered how he and his father had fired upon the large buck almost simultaneously, their bullets piercing mere centimeters from one another. "Dad took credit for the kill, but passed off the heavy labor to me by default since we didn't have the aid of on-site forensics testing."
"So then don't go hunting with him." She encouraged her son. "Make him go fishing with you. Even though you're a dead-eye with a rifle, I know you've always preferred fishing to hunting."
"Ha!" Max nearly barked in his mother's ear as he unearthed a large sketchbook that he discovered to be home to two dozen or more prototypes for the spring lines, that Nancy must have sketched and put away so that he wouldn't spill something on them as he was prone to do.
"I didn't think it was that funny." Jean said backing the phone away from her ear and gently rubbing it as if she expected to find that her ear was bleeding.
"Sorry, I just found the Holy Grail!" He held the book up closing his eyes for a moment and sighing with relief at the knowledge that he and Nancy's careers were no longer circling the toilet. "Besides, if I take him fishing he'll give me the shitty bait just so I'll catch the cast-offs." Max chuckled, continuing. "He's been doing that to me ever since I accidentally sank a hook in his shoulder when we were casting back to back at Emerald Lake."
After a smooth smile and a sigh, Jean was suddenly reminded of the phone call she had received only an hour prior to calling Max. "By the way, were you able to get LittleJohn to do that legwork for you with the vendors you spoke of?"
That question quickly cast a black cloud over Max's decent mood. "Yeah…um, he checked everything out and so it looks like we can start doing business with those guys."
"The reason I asked was that his secretary called here less than an hour ago, concerned about his whereabouts. It appears he hasn't checked in with her for three days and she seems to think that's an odd amount of time for him to be out without some sort of contact."
"I'll admit I was expecting to have gotten the bill by now." Max said, neglecting to tell his mother that LittleJohn had been investigating a possible murder under his hire and might very well have met with some sort of foul play.
Max had given up on the prospect of reaching LittleJohn, via cell phone and had reported the situation to the police officer who had finger-printed the soda can Max had given him, during his search for dirt on Barren. Now, he was faced with the reality that he would have to do the right thing in calling the secretary to inform her that he'd enlisted the help of the detective in researching Barren and that the search had led to her brother and possibly something more macabre. It was the fair thing to do, giving her a place to start, especially if something had gone wrong, yet conversely it would serve to leave them all with egg on their faces if the Private Investigator had merely gone off for a weekend with some buxom beauty he'd met or some other equally secretive pursuit.
"I'll call his secretary." Max offered softly before excusing himself from the call with his mother and springing into action with regards to the designs.
Max hung the phone up and snatched his keys from the corner of the desk. He was post-office bound, to send the binder full of prototypes through overnight mail to an independent sewing contractor that he knew could sew the designs and have them back to him in 48 hours, so Max could then in turn, ship them out to the companies who had contracted the designs for their spring lines. And Max knew that time was of the essence, because the first of the spring shows began in one week and so this was a last shot deal for he and Nancy to get their proverbial foot back in the fashion design door before they were shut out completely.
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Lynn sipped the water slowly, her shaking fingers holding the paper-cup, her body and soul deflated and numb as she sat in the wooden chair in the rectory. The throb in her skull had dissipated markedly. The dryness in her mouth was waning, but not the weighty feeling of failure and betrayal. And certainly not the sorrow of facing the rest of her life alone; that was still there, more imposing and real than it had been before Evan had entered the picture.
The anger that she'd felt was barely there too, she simply didn't have the physical strength to hold onto the fury. Lynn had woken less than an hour ago and it had taken several lethargic moments for her to figure out that she was in fact, on her back in a church pew. After that realization, it had taken a good ten more minutes of mental struggle for her to assess why she was on her back in a church pew. The scattered remnants of her memory crept back together, realigning the picture of her previous encounter with Evan and she was prepared to react in rage. But she quickly found she couldn't, for when she struggled to sit up, hell bent on tracking the heartless bastard down she discovered the dress, tucked carefully beneath her arm…a wordless message from Evan that he still cared. Maybe even, that he always had.
The flash of light from the morning sunlight as it streamed through the arched windows had caught up inside of and flickered through the prismatic diamond on her finger, bringing it to her attention. Evan had left her brother's ring…if he had been the cad she believed him to be, he would have taken it with him, knowing that it was worth a mint. If Evan were truly the masterful traitor he appeared to be, he would never have left her in a safe place, far away from her home where he claimed she could be hurt. He had hidden her from someone, just as he had been trying to tell her; and he had only done so because he loved her. The fact that he'd made certain that she had her purse and all of her proper I.D., as well as the ring and the precious red dress, told her that he cared.
Lynn Orton pondered the situation for a few moments more, until her attention was drawn by the Reverend and the Mother swiftly returning her skirts swishing the stone floor. But what set Lynn's pulse to a nervous patter was the fact that the two of them were being accompanied by a uniformed police officer. She swallowed thickly, and turned her head away with a sigh. The last thing she felt like doing was answering any questions.
"He left her in the church pew and when I asked him if she was hurt he said that she was." The Nun informed the officer, wringing her fingers nervously. "She hasn't said much since waking, perhaps you can help her."
Lynn's gaze alighted on the officer who seemed as curious as he was confused. His hair was a deep ebony peppered with grey and his eyes were alert, yet kind. He reminded Lynn a little bit of her father, but only because of the eyes.
"Ma'am, can you tell me how you got here?" The officer asked, bypassing any niceties. "The church staff believes that the man who left you may have assaulted you in some way."
A brief, weak and humorless laugh escaped Lynn's lips, but she didn't respond verbally, at least not right away. She massaged her temples with the tips of her fingers.
"The security camera from the ATM machine across the street caught a still-second photo of him leaving, so we have a clear shot of his face and we can put out an APB on him." When Lynn still hesitated to come forth with a response, the officer leaned down and prompted. "If he hurt you, then we need to catch him before he hurts someone else."
Lynn knew that no matter what collective any local law enforcement mounted, they would never 'catch' Evan. And certainly it was more than likely that he would hurt someone again, but it sure as hell wouldn't be her…so why should she care? She glanced up at the officer in his crisply starched uniform and noticed the slightly impatient expression on his face…and that, was when Lynn was suddenly stricken with the all consuming urge to laugh at the ridiculousness of the entire situation…despite her pain, despite the bleakness of her circumstance, despite the gravity of the entire rotten mess…and so she did. She laughed until the water in the paper cup rippled as she held it. She laughed until her sides ached and tears cut a path down her cheeks. She laughed until the Father, The Reverend Mother and the Police Officer stared at her as if she'd gone completely mad. Lynn didn't stop laughing until the officer cleared his throat loudly, his kind eyes boring a hole through her forehead.
"Excuse me?" The police officer inserted. "Is there a joke I'm not wise to? Is-is this a prank of some sort?"
"No, no it's not." Lynn said, sniffing and wiping her nose and eyes with the handkerchief that had been thrust her way by the suddenly disapproving, stern-faced Father.
The officer clamped his lips into a thin line, and then pursing them together he contemplated his words before speaking. "Far be it from me to wanna do my job correctly, but with all due respect, your sudden expression of humor is hampering my investigation."
"I'm sorry, really." Lynn held up a hand in surrender and was once again possessed by a short round of tittering.
"Look." The officer held his hand up. "There's a possibility you were attacked and the fact that you find that funny, disturbs me and leads me to believe that I'd get better answers by having you sent to county hospital for an exam while I concentrate my efforts on finding the man that dumped you in the pew."
Lynn cleared her throat and stood to her feet, placing the paper-cup on the seat. "I am truly sorry and I don't mean to disrespect you." She began. "I just find the situation funny…it just looks so silly." She turned and draped the coat and dress over her arm, lifting her handbag and tucking it between her elbow and rib. "I—came to pray." She lied.
"To pray." The officer repeated.
"Yes, to pray." She affirmed, appearing slightly offended. "The last thing I remember was feeling woozy outside the door of the church and then, whaddya know, here I am waking up in the pew." Lynn chuckled and smiled as if to engage a humored response from the officer.
"Hmm." The officer crooked his upper lip. "They said the man admitted you were hurt when he was asked and that after he left, you were unconscious for at least five hours or so."
"Well, you see I can explain that." Lynn hesitated for a mere second before launching into a spur-of-the-moment, convoluted explanation. "I—uh, I'm an insomniac…you see, and so I don't sleep very often a-and I sometimes don't eat as well as I should…" She scrambled for an adequate way to cover all of her bases. "I guess my blood sugar just dropped and I got dizzy and fell and that gentleman, God bless his soul, found me and stuck me in that pew."
The frustrated look on the officer's face was barely tempered by the evenness of his words. "And…you found that funny, why?"
Lynn stuttered. "W-well—because um, my mother's always telling me I should go see a doctor for my condition, but, uh…me being the 'Au Naturale' girl that I am, I decided that I would p-pray about it—first." She flashed a smile and a nod to the three dumbfounded persons in front of her. They didn't appear to be buying her story, and Lynn was pretty sure she was going straight to hell for lying in a church, but there was no way she could send the police after Evan…no matter what he'd ever done to hurt her.
All four of them stood staring at one another, she at them and they at her. Finally the officer spoke. "Well, then…if there's no assault and no robbery, then I guess we're done here."
"Yeah." Lynn said a bit too quickly. "No robbery, I have all my stuff." She pointed to the items in her arms, preparing to shake the officer's hand and hightail it out of the church.
"Your stuff and some of his." The officer noted quite perceptively as he reached out and tapped the collar of the expensive leather jacket, that was draped over her arm, but barely concealed beneath the silken red dress.
"What, this? N-no, um this isn't his, this um, is actually mine…I mean, not mine, its my brother's. I wear it from time to time." Her voice trailed off at the end of her proclamation when she caught sight of the twitch of a smile tickling the Reverend Mother's lips and the stoic frown that creased the Father's forehead.
The officer lifted one disbelieving brow. "And the dress?"
Lynn let out another soft peal of laughter. "Well, now that's a matter for the Father and I to discuss…you don't mind, right? It's that confidentiality thing in confession, you know?"
Lynn's comment brought forth a soft snort of amusement from the Reverend Mother, which earned the poor woman a glare of incredulous chastisement from the Father.
The officer on the other hand was clearly less than amused and seemed to have developed a cursory twitch to his right eye, likely a result of his anger with her, but instead of railing on the Lynn as he would have liked to do, he simply smiled and offered. "Absolutely, in fact, after I leave I recommend that you go right in there and confess to your heart's content. I hear doing so works wonders for pathological liars." He snapped his notepad shut, tipped his head in a gesture of respect to the Father and Mother and then he spun on his heel and retreated.
Lynn Orton watched with a sense of relief as the police officer left, but her attention was drawn back to the Father when he cleared his throat, and lifted his brow into a sharp arc. He stepped into the confessional and curled his finger, casting toward her a severe judgmental glower, a silent authoritative command that she come. "I'll take your confession now."
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Vanessa had been duly prepared for the possibility of walking in on anything, when she pulled into the garage with Audrey in tow. It was conceivable, after her father's massive temper-fit and the broken door that she could very well walk in to find her stepmother packed and gone or both of her parents engaged in the middle of a hostile war. She had even entertained the notion that she could stumble upon a homicide if things got worse…Silly thoughts, when she took into account that Nathan was in there and so it was more sensible to believe that he would abate most of the tension simply by his innocent presence. No matter how frustrated her father became with her stepmother and vice-versa, little Nate was just too cute altogether for anyone in the house to stay mad at anyone else for long. Just looking at him cheered Vanessa up and she was desperately looking forward to commandeering her baby brother the minute she went inside.
Audrey on the other hand, had completely forgotten the fight and was chattering aimlessly about the school play that she would be in. Angry because she had been passed over for the lead, in lieu of Toby Davis and because of that, she was currently preparing for a battle with the red-haired menace once more.
"It's not even a part for a boy!" Audrey groused, reacting with true disappointment. "They just picked him because his Mom's always bringing cookies to the music teacher."
Vanessa grinned as she lugged her bag out of the trunk leaving room for Audrey to grab her own. "Just learn the lines for your part and do the best you can. You have umpteen years of school left. You're bound to get the lead in a play before you graduate."
"I'm a tree." Audrey informed in a lackluster voice, both hands held out to her sides as she pinned her sister with a look of incredulous frustration. "I have no lines. I just stand there and wave my branches when the choir sings."
"Oh."
"But I know all of the lines for Toby's part." Her almond shaped eyes took on a menacing glimmer and the corners of her mouth curved up ever so slightly in a smirk.
"Well that's good." Vanessa encouraged, opening the inner door for Audrey. "Then if he gets sick or something, the play won't be ruined."
"Or if he falls on the playground, or drinks sour milk and starts puking before the play…"
"Audrey…" Vanessa warned, once she determined where her sister's line of thinking was taking her. "If you do something to Toby the night of the play…" She wagged one slender finger.
"I'm just saying…" Audrey shrugged. "He could even magically get stuck in the bathroom the night of the play, all kinds of stuff could happen."
Vanessa groaned as she frowned at the back of her little sister's head and then abandoned the idea of reforming her, in favor of finding baby Nathan. Her observance told her that though she might have anticipated walking in to see clearly staked battle grounds and a war zone complete with smoking landmines, there was nothing of the kind. No yelling, no slamming doors or splintering wood; what she did notice, was the light tinkle of her stepmother's laughter, coming from the office down the hall. Stranger still, was the fact that Nancy's laughter was followed by the low rumble of her father's voice and the deep softness of his own responding chuckle.
A glance told her that Audrey had already traversed the stairs headed straight for her rabbit and so Vanessa tip-toed down the hall to spy on her father and stepmother. The entire temperament of the household was most definitely calmer and she could feel it the moment that she walked in. It was a relief to Vanessa. And as surprised as she might have been to hear them speaking so politely, even fondly to one another when she pressed her back against the wall next to the open door where she could not be seen, she was shocked when she finally summoned the courage to peek. Her head poking around the frame the two of them sharing a photo album and its memories…with her father seated in the desk chair and her stepmother seated in his lap, one arm casually looped over his shoulder.
She certainly couldn't say exactly what had transpired in the time that she and Audrey had been away. But the one thing she knew for certain was that someone in that office had won their battle, someone had lost and neither of them seemed to be bothered by it. Prepared to back away with the satisfaction of knowing that the household was back in order and without being noticed, Vanessa failed to watch where she was going and bumped the hall, console-table with her hip, sending the lamp toppling to the floor.
In her shock and discomfiture, Vanessa stepped forward into the line of the doorway in time to see both of her parents separate as if they were teenagers caught doing something they shouldn't. Her stepmother was on her feet in a millisecond, her father jerked in surprise and both adults adopted very neutral poses. Dave who was more amused than embarrassed casually adjusted his posture but Nancy who was sporting a nice blush, turned and pretended to fiddle with something on the shelf.
"I didn't expect you guys back for another couple of days." Dave informed. "Everything alright?"
Vanessa picked the unbroken lamp up, righting it on the console and straightening the shade, then she cleared her throat. "Yeah, everything's fine. I—we just thought you wouldn't mind if we spent an extra day…here…you know, to help with Nathan." Slightly embarrassed to have been caught eavesdropping, Vanessa was seeking to cover her blunder. Her curious glance darted between her father and stepmother who evidently were trying to conceal the fact that they were all of a sudden more than happy to be hanging out with one another and though she knew she didn't have to ask, she simply couldn't resist. "Is everything…okay…here?"
She was sure her stepmother's face couldn't possibly get any redder and though she knew her father was more surprised than humiliated, Vanessa could see that he too bore the slightest shade of crimson. Simultaneously, both adults attempted to speak, affirming that everything was 'fine—okay—never better'. The dialogue quickly became a jumble of broken words coming from both directions, eliciting a grin from Vanessa…yes, something had definitely happened while she was gone and if she thought about the deeper, more secretive details for very long she would be forever traumatized. "Cool." Was her nonchalant response and with a deep sense of contentment, that things would now be normal, Vanessa turned to leave.
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Nancy didn't exhale her bated breath until Vanessa was completely down the hall. Only then did she sigh with relief. "I didn't even hear them come in." She admitted in a mortified whisper as she poked her head out into the hall confirming there were no more intruders to their privacy and then she closed the door.
He was behind her the moment she turned to face him, mere inches from the front of her body. "I'm going to have motion sensors installed." He joked.
"Or at the very least, we should close the door…" She wrapped her arms around him, lacing her fingers behind his back.
"It doesn't matter, because Audrey barges in anyhow."
As if on cue, the door flew open behind the two of them, slamming loudly into the wall, the heart stopping clamor of it ripping the two adults apart once more. In the doorway stood Audrey, wide-eyed and smiling. She appraised the surprised looks on the faces of her father and step-mother and then she stepped back out into the hallway and verbally confirmed in her loudest 'indoor voice', "Yep, you're right! I think they love eachother!"
Audrey then turned and grasped the doorknob. "I was just checking to see if she was right." She admitted, her eyes dancing as she grinned. She pulled the door shut behind her and her retreating giggle could be heard through the door.
"Maybe locks are a better idea…like the one on the bedroom door." Nancy offered.
Dave nodded slowly, as he walked his wife backwards until her back met with the door gently, the tiniest 'thump' resounding. "Locks are always good." His voice was soft and quiet as he pressed both massive hands against the door on either side of her head as if to prevent any more intrusions.
She couldn't clearly remember, but she was almost positive that she had always felt this sort of electrical thrill when he was close. Something about the dark enigma behind his eyes when he leaned in to kiss her made her want to write secret fantasies about him in a diary…and maybe she had. But at this moment his lips weren't a fantasy as they met with her mouth, firm, warm and demanding. And though she knew that this encounter would be short-lived, Nancy let herself be wrapped up in it…soaking in the feeling of falling, as dim and obscure flashes of a possible memory flickered across the backs of her eyelids.
Seconds later she reemerged from the fog of desire, mainly prompted by the sound of the phone ringing, but somewhat by the firm pressure of his hands on her backside, when he squeezed and then released, groaning and biting off a curse.
"I better take that." He said.
"I'm just gonna…" She began nervously as she took note of the lupine glimmer in his eyes that confirmed they had unfinished business. Something about that look made her feel deliciously naughty and she had to look away. "I'll let you get that." She cleared her throat and opened the door of the office, letting the cooler air in the hallway graze her heated skin. Afraid to venture into the common areas of the house and face her stepdaughters with a blush from her forehead to her toes, Nancy opted to go into her studio and piddle around for awhile.
Max was nowhere in sight, she discovered upon entering the studio and that was a bit of a relief. At least she could rummage through her office without feeling like she was snooping. Nancy noticed that he had obviously cleaned up the studio and she grinned, shaking her head. She liked Max…she wondered why he had been so scarce as of late. No doubt he was busy trying to balance the weight of running a company on his own. It was sad that he had been thrust into that position by her amnesia and as Nancy dug through her desk and her file cabinets absently, she suddenly set out to rectify the problem.
If she were half as responsible as everyone claimed, surely she had prepared some designs in advance. Now she would simply have to find them. That task had been made easier by the fact that Max had cleaned up the mess, but her brief search of the immediate area was turning up nothing. It was possible that she had some sort of back up filing system in a closet, perhaps and so it was also possible that she had thought to stash the precious designs there. Because the studio space was an exact bare bones copy of the town house, it meant that her search could be relegated to an additional three bedrooms on the upper tier and so Nancy ascended the steps and entered each room in turn. All of the rooms were mostly empty save for the master which had been outfitted with a sleeper sofa and littered with four bicycles leaned against the far wall. Inside the closet was a locked gun cabinet, housing half a dozen hunting rifles, which she was certain, belonged to Max.
Disappointed that her search had revealed nothing in the way of hidden designs, Nancy descended the stairs, when a cardboard filing box on top of the cabinets in the kitchen caught her eye. There was no harm in looking in the box since she had looked everywhere else in the studio with no result and so she scampered up onto the countertop without the aid of a stepping-stool. The precarious position allowed her access to the box even if she did have to stretch to reach the lid fully. Her fingers tipped the lid and as she stood on her toes, she was able to push the lid off, watching as it slid down and fell to the floor below her. "Come on…" She grunted in her attempt to balance the box so she could pull it down.
The effort to retrieve the box met with disastrous results when it slid forward, slamming into Nancy's chest, sending her falling fully backward onto the concrete floor below, her back meeting with it solidly. The sudden impact ripped the air from her lungs and even a tucked chin could not have saved her head from the snap backward allowing the back of her skull to hit the floor.
Nancy's vision suddenly blurred, a colorful shower of sparks swirling through her line of sight. From somewhere far away she heard the dull resounding of a bell. A doorbell maybe? A deep and loud thump began in her head and she was suddenly very aware of the weight of the box as it still lay on her chest. Though unconsciousness had not fully claimed her, Nancy suddenly had a deep urge to let it do so, but that desire was soon eclipsed by the much greater desire to kick Max's ass for putting the box on top of the cabinet in the first place. Her vision quickly cleared and Nancy pushed the box off of her chest and sat up…much too rapidly. A feeling of nausea, washed over her and she gritted her teeth as it settled and passed.
"Damnit Max." She groaned and rubbed her lower back as she awkwardly stood to her feet. "If I've told him once, I've told him a thousand times, not to put boxes up that high." She muttered, taking note that though she was banged up, nothing was bodily broken.
The files inside of the box hadn't stayed put during the fall and were scattered around the floor. As her gaze swept over them, that was the very moment Nancy suddenly wondered how it was that she knew she had told Max 'once and a thousand' times. How was it that she could remember that it had even been Max that had put the box up there in the first place?
But, as strange as the whole thing was, she could clearly recall not only that incident, but the fact that she would never have placed prototypes in a cardboard box. She recalled without hesitation that all of her prototypes for fashion lines were always neatly housed in a very proper, black leather bound sketch-book in the middle drawer of her desk where Max couldn't possibly spill coffee on them.
One deep breath and a wide-eyed laugh later, Nancy was certain that she remembered everything. "Dave!" His name was out of her mouth before she could call it back and she was tearing out of the studio into the townhouse to find her husband. Up the staircase in a split second, she was in the master bedroom, but he was not. She called his name again, in desperation as she poked her head into the nursery, where Vanessa grimaced and motioned silence as she held Nathan in her lap, watching him sleep.
Nancy stepped out into the hall again and upon hearing voices coming from the open garage door, she launched herself down the stairs slipping on the last step and nearly pulling the newel post off in her attempt to keep from falling. Out of breath, smiling, Nancy was in sight of Dave…his broad back filling the doorway concealed the people to whom he was speaking…she called his name again in sheer, unconcealed exhilaration.
He turned, his body revealing that Randy and Barren were holding hands with one another in the doorway. They were whom he was chatting with. Barren…Barren? Oddly, like a movie reel shrouded in smoke Nancy could recall exactly where she knew the woman from. And it wasn't from Randy's introduction. The picture flashed through her mind as quickly as any memory could.
..."I'm not gonna hurt you." Barren's soft words were what had prompted Nancy's eyelids to open a mere, unnoticeable crack as she lay there in the hospital bed. She could see the metallic glint of the key and then feel it being pushed beneath her back, just seconds before the woman retreated. She never saw where the woman had gone, since her eyes had closed of their own volition, giving in to her weakness. She had only barely heard the alarms before slipping away into unconsciousness again…
Barren was the reason Nancy had the key in the first place…the key that she had hidden from her husband; that she allowed to dictate her distrust for a man that never would have hurt her…not in a million years. Firmly latched to the memory, Nancy locked gazes with Barren.
"What's wrong?" Dave asked, his smile fading into a look of concern, once he realized that she had come running from upstairs.
Nancy glanced at her husband and then back to Barren, whom she quickly realized knew that she was now in full possession of her memory. It made perfect sense...all the questions Barren had asked in the time she had known her, the incident when Nancy had caught her snooping through the truck. Barren had been looking for that key…she was hiding something, running from someone and probably had been since the moment they met. And what's more, was that she had callously taken advantage of Nancy's loss of memory to regain the key, after hiding it on her in secret without her knowledge.
"Nancy?" Dave placed one hand on her shoulder, noticing that she seemed out of breath, slightly panicked and gridlocked on Barren. "Hello?" He prompted with a gentle squeeze, praying that the obvious, sudden flash of worry wasn't due to his son.
Nancy looked up again, plagued by a severely strong emotional tug as she stared at her husband. She clearly remembered how much she loved him; even remembered that she'd loved him the whole time. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and tell him the truth, tell him that she knew all about the fun they'd had throughout their marriage; that she remembered exactly how they'd made their son. On the verge of tears, she knew she couldn't tell him…she couldn't tell him, not until she settled this mess with Barren. Revealing that she had regained her memory to him right now and accusing Barren of hiding the key on her would only bring forth a denial from the red-haired fraud standing in front of her. Nancy might very well end up looking insane if she spouted off all she knew, not to mention the fact that telling Dave and Randy about the key, would reveal the fact that Nancy had been hiding that very same key from Dave for quite awhile and that could potentially wreck the whole scene. "I-uh…" She began, swallowing deeply.
"Is something wrong with the baby?" Dave sidestepped as if to head upstairs.
Nancy grasped his arm. "No." She said quickly scrambling for an excuse for her alarm. "Its diaper…wipes." She said finally. "We're out."
"Diaper wipes?" He repeated calmly, one brow lifting.
Nancy nodded unable to speak around the lump in her throat. It was killing her not to be able to tell him that she could remember everything.
She heard his sigh and saw the muscles of his shoulders as they visibly relaxed. "Diaper wipes got you this upset?" He didn't appear to be buying it, but he made no gesture of argument, as he turned to look at Randy who also appeared confused. "New mothers." Dave announced. "Worried over even little things."
Nancy responded with little more than a withering, half-hearted smile.
"I'll go pick some up." She heard him say and she shut her eyes to block out a tear as he leaned down to press his lips to her forehead. "Let's go for a ride, Randy." He said, snatching his keys from the hook by the door.
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Readers, please accept my apologies for the serious lag in updates. I was out for a bit with knee surgery and then with the transition of my cable internet company being bought out I have had the crummiest service ever, so please forgive me and I promise to make the next update by the end of the week!