A Series of Unfortunate Events

Chapter 35

Trigger Warning: talk of sexual assault. Not explicitly.

Sharon was shivering so Emily got up and took her terry cloth robe off the hook outside the shower, and laid it around her shoulders. Sharon put her arms through the sleeves and pulled it closed, tying the belt. "Thank you," she said in a nasally post crying jag voice.

Emily rubbed her mom's shoulder, to comfort her. "You're welcome. I heard you crying, Mom. I knew what the sound was because I used to hear it all the time when I was a kid. After Dad would leave us or when he took all our money or when he would call you names and that time, he smacked you when he was drunk. You would wait until you knew we were in bed and then you'd go into the shower and cry. You never cried in front of us but I heard you crying in the shower all the time."

Sharon was dismayed to realize that she hadn't shielded her kids from Jack's verbal, emotional, and one time only physical abuse as much as she had hoped. He had hit her one time only because she had banned him from the house when he was drunk. He had swung at her with his fist during their argument and connected, hitting her across the cheek. She had told him in no uncertain terms she would arrest him if he set foot in the house again anytime in the near future. He hadn't come back until several years later.

Worried her mom was hurt Emily asked, "What's wrong, Mom? Are you in pain? Did someone hurt your feelings? Why are you crying with such gut-wrenching sadness?"

Sharon looked down at her fingers and pressed her lips together. "I guess I'm just sick and tired of being sick and tired! I want my life back, Em. I'm tired of living like an invalid," she said and huffed a heavy sigh.

"You're not sick anymore, Mom , are you ? And you're not an invalid but you are recovering from some pretty bad stuff. Give yourself a break," she said stroking her mother's back and speaking tenderly.

Sharon looked over at her daughter. "Emily, a little more than a month ago, before I got caught in the bomb blasts, before I got pneumonia, before… everything else happened. I swam fifty laps most mornings and jogged around the park four times, which made up two miles, at least three times a week! I could swim, and play with the boys, and Andy in the pool on the rooftop of Los Feliz for hours. When I was at work, I would sometimes not get to sleep more than a couple of hours for three days at a time, while we tried to figure out a case. Now, I can't last more than an hour at a time in the pool and that's if I push myself and after only three or four hours, of being awake and being active, I'm ready for a nap! How am I supposed to go back to work like that? How am I supposed to care for an infant with special needs? How am I supposed to be a wife to my husband, well technically, he's not my husband… yet, maybe I should call off the wedding. Break it off with him, tell him to go find a newer model. I'm a broken down old woman now," Sharon said, sounding morose even to herself.

"Mom, you're not old. You're only just turned 58 and you're not broken down, you're just recovering from everything that has happened to you. You've been through a lot this past month. You've been in the middle of not just one but two bomb blasts, where you were quite literally thrown up against a wall. You breathed in enough C4 and blast dust to cause chemically induced pneumonia. You were shot in the head, while holding Olivia, and shooting your attacker. I know it was just a graze but head injuries bleed a lot! Don't get me started on the trauma all that must have caused you. Then, you were pumped full of dangerous drugs while being held against your will in a psych ward, under someone else's name. If that wasn't enough, you sustained a badly bruised kneecap trying to facilitate your escape. That's more than some people go through in a lifetime and it happened to you all in one month and you survived!" Emily took a breath, she was exhausted just thinking about all her mom had been through she could only imagine how tired her mom was.

"Emily, I lived through it, I know what I've been through. Reminding me of it doesn't change the fact that I feel like a shell of the person I once was. Andy deserves better!"

Emily renewed her efforts to help her mother see reason. "Mom, you can try to break it off with him but Andy is not going to leave you. He's in this for better or for worse. He's not dad, Mom. He doesn't run at the first sign of trouble and you would hurt him very badly if you tried to break it off with him. He loves you with his whole heart, he adores you! Admit it, you adore him too, and I know if he was the one going through all this, you wouldn't walk away from him." Emily put her hand up in a sign for wait and said, "Oh Wait… been there done that." She ticked off her fingers, "broken ribs, a blood clot in his carotid artery no less, and after that, a heart attack. You didn't leave him when he was going through all of that. What makes you think he'd leave you?"

"Hmmm, you're right, he wouldn't leave me. He loves me and I love him but Emily there other reasons that I should try to convince him to leave." Sharon frowned at the thought of a life without Andy.

"What could possibly be a good reason for him to leave the love of his life?" Emily asked exasperatedly.

Sharon opened her mouth and blurted out, "Stroh is back and he's after Rusty and I! Anybody that's close to us could be a target. That means Andy, you, Ricky, Olivia, Nicole, Dean, the boys, Charlie-Bug, and my parents. I'm vulnerable right now and this would be the perfect opportunity for him to come after me and Rusty. I don't want Andy or anybody else to get hurt trying to protect me when I should be the one to do the protecting. That's one of the reasons I became an officer. To protect and serve!"

Emily looked at her with wide eyes. She was shocked. "Have you actually heard that Stroh is here in LA?"

Sharon blanched when she realized she had actually told Emily about Stroh before she told Andy. She was usually more careful when she spoke, but chalked it up to the stress she was under, that had magnified right before she had gotten into the shower. Realizing the proverbial cat was out of the bag, Sharon shrugged and nodded. "Fritz, he's a... a colleague of mine, his wife was the chief before I got the job… she put Phillip Stroh in jail. Since the escape, Fritz has been tracking Stroh's movements, he called as I was getting ready to get in the shower. He wanted to give me a heads u... u... up... " she said with the hiccup you get sometimes after a crying jag.

Emily sighed, "Mom, you don't always have to be the one to protect everyone else. Andy is capable of protecting you and you should let him instead of trying to push him away!"

Sharon started shaking her head. "Emily, you know how I feel about needing to be rescued. It makes me feel like I've turned the clock back fifty years. Women... no... I have come too far to go backward!"

Emily rolled her eyes before saying, "yes, well our feministic sensibilities aside, the fact remains that at this time, in your present physical condition you need Andy to stay close. Whether you like it or not, Mom. Must I repeat? He loves you and he needs to keep you safe! He's come so close to losing you, multiple times. He had no control over those other circumstances and he mentioned that was really hard for him. You need to tell him what's going on. If he knows he can help you keep you, Rusty, and the rest of the family safe. How do you think he would cope if he lost you, after all, you two have been through? It would be the end of him! Especially if you were to die and he finds out he could have protected you if you hadn't kept this from him! You have to tell him. Mom, it's important!"

"I plan to tell him, Em. Just not yet. I shouldn't have told you! I need to think about how to convince everybody it's time for them to go home. There are too many people to protect." Sharon started to tremble at the enormity of the task. Her head was beginning to throb and she started to rub her temples.

Emily rubbed her mother's back and dipped her mouth closer to her ear, and spoke softly, "but you know, maybe Stroh will stay away if you are surrounded by people all the time. How would he even know where you live, anyway? Don't they hide police residences from the public?"

"Well, while we have done our best to hide our ownership of the house, Stroh is a lawyer and he's very smart. He knows how to find information and, being surrounded by people, will only last so long. Once he figures out where we live and he gets impatient, he'll just start picking people off as they leave. Emily, it's time you went back to New York. Ricky needs to get back to his life, my parents also. I've asked Fritz to start around the clock surveillance to protect us and give you, your brother, and my parents a police escort to the airport once you have a flight."

"Mom, I'm not leaving," Emily said with conviction.

"Emily, do you not understand you are in danger here?" Sharon asked agitatedly.

She huffed. "Mom, I don't have a place to go back to in New York and even if I did, I wouldn't leave you knowing that you are in danger!"

Sharon shook her head in confusion. "I don't understand. Why do you not have a place to go back to? What about your lovely apartment?"

"The apartment belongs to the ABT for their dancers, you know that, right? Well, when I told the little prick no, not only did he fire me, he basically had me evicted."

Sharon shook her head in confusion yet again. "Which, 'little prick' are we talking about?"

Emily sighed and backtracked to explain her circumstances. "The woman who was the current assistant to the head of the ABT, her name is Aileen Reilly, became very ill recently. She had an aneurysm and had to have emergency surgery to remove it. She's been in a coma ever since. In her absence, her son Keven who is one of the dancers in the troupe, as well as her assistant, took it upon himself to take over her duties in her absence. He and I… well, let's say we had some creative differences."

Sharon had a feeling she knew the answer but asked anyway, "What kind of creative differences and why haven't you told me before this? You've been here in LA close to three weeks!" Her voice ended on a high note at the end of the sentence showing how perturbed she was at this news.

Emily knew what she was about to say wasn't going to go well with her mom but she knew she needed to tell her the truth. "He thought I should sleep with him to keep the part of Sleeping Beauty and I thought differently. He came onto me at the weekly cast party and I told him no. He persisted, trying to manhandle me into a dark corner backstage. I defended myself by kneeing him in the groin. It kind of all went downhill from there. As far as me not telling you, there was a lot going on Mom. You didn't need any more stress."

Sharon was horrified to hear what happened to her daughter and took a minute to compose herself. "Emily, what he did to you was sexual misconduct and sexual assault. You could have had him arrested!"

"I know, Mom but Aileen has a blind spot when it comes to Keven. He can do no wrong in her eyes. It was either be fired for not being intimate with the bosses assistant's son or be fired for putting Aileen's precious son in jail." Emily let out a sigh. "If she ever wakes up, that is."

Sharon asked all the question she had running through her mind. "Couldn't you appeal to the boss? This Keven McKenzie? Wasn't she, this Aileen, the one that picked you for the part in the first place? Wouldn't she reinstate you once she woke up?"

"Not likely. Mr. McKenzie is out of the country this season. He had family matters to take care of in Budapest. He put Aileen and by default Keven, in charge. He gave her carte blanche on any decisions that needed to be made. We haven't been able to get in touch with him since Aileen became ill. As far as Aileen reinstating me if she woke up, didn't you hear me when I said she has a serious blind spot when it comes to Keven? It's sad really when he refers to her he calls her the "old biddy." He has no respect for older people or anybody really. The only opinion he's interested in is his own. When and if she wakes up and wants to know why I'm not dancing Sleeping Beauty, he will lie right to her face and tell her I came on to him and nothing will convince her otherwise. After all, if Keven said it, it must be true! Either way, my time with that company was over." Emily gave Sharon a half smile, saying, "you've been telling me for years that I can earn more money here in LA. I've decided to listen to you for a change."

Sharon shook her head and gestured with her hand whose fingers were together toward the heavens shaking it forward and back like the stereotypical Italian person. "Now, she listens. Now, when Phillip Stroh is loose in LA, where he can use her as bait to get what he wants. Now, she listens!" Emily giggled. "Emily, I was not trying to be funny. I'm serious!"

"I'm sorry, Mom. You just reminded me of Andy when he starts imitating his mother during one of his stories of his childhood in New York. I half expected to hear you speaking in a broken Italian-New-York accent!" Emily said smiling.

Sharon bit back a smile. "Hmmm, look I'm glad you are here for good, don't get me wrong. I'm over the moon happy that I get to see you indefinitely on a regular basis. It's just with Philip Stroh on the loose I worry. Also, I wish you hadn't had to go through the stuff you did with this Keven Reilly person. He sounds like a real piece of work. I want you to know that you do have options you can explore to get yourself reinstated. If… that's what you want."

TBC...

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