While the current and past Pink Ladies, and the T-Birds, were discussing the imminent re-evaluation of the codes, Andrianna was taking Paulette home via the long way around, both of them wearing sunglasses against the brightness of the sinking sunlight.

The girl needed a reality check.

"Why didn't you tell Stephanie the truth?" Andrianna asked, while turning the Eldorado onto the highway. "Be honest with me right now, girl, I swear on my daughter's grave it won't go any further than this truck." It was her go-to promise when she meant it whole-heartedly. She was aware that a lot of people didn't think she had much for a soft side, but the Depression had forced her to grow up in a space of weeks; everything that she and her husband had, they had fought like hell for, and Andrianna wasn't sorry for it.

Paulette looked sharply at her. "You – you had a daughter?" The words were out before she could stop them, and she bit her tongue, looking apologetic.

Andrianna nodded, frowning sadly. "Iris. She only lived a few days; she was very sickly, coming into the world." She shook her head, pushing away the melancholy thoughts. "It was many years ago. Let's stay on the matters at hand. Why didn't you tell Stephanie the truth? And for that matter, why didn't Johnny? Why did you both lie to her about the conversations you were having? And don't tell me you don't know, girl, there had to have been a reason."

"I – Johnny asked me not to. He said he didn't think Stephanie would be understanding."

"I wouldn't have been understanding, either, if I'd had a boyfriend who was talking to someone else about our personal problems. But why did you agree to keep quiet about it? Why did you go behind Stephanie's back about this? It can't just be because Johnny asked you to."

"It was though, at first. He asked me not to, and I said okay ... I think it was cos he was trying to impress her, using my advice like it was his own idea. It never seemed to work out, though. The first few times, I did feel guilty. But then ... "

"But then you developed feelings for him." Andrianna concluded, her voice sharper. "What about Stephanie's feelings?"

"I never did anything physical with him until after they split up!" Paulette protested, stung and uneasy.

"But you lied to her, repeatedly. So did he. That's something he'll be hearing about from me, and from Stephanie, I'm sure. Neither of us like being lied to. June twenty-first when he tried to get her to sleep with him in my husband's truck, was that your idea?"

Paulette was uncomfortably stiff, feeling as though she were under a magnifying glass. "No. I got on him a little about that, too. I told him that girls can't be just expected to hand it over, and that Stephanie probably wouldn't have said yes no matter what. That's not how she does things." Hot guilt sliced through her gut, showing on her face – How many apologies do I owe her?

Andrianna peered sharply at her, insightful. "Have you 'handed it over' to him?"

Paulette bit her lip, and that was answer enough. Andrianna pressed her mouth into a thin line. "How often?"

Given the look on her face, Paulette thought it best not to argue. "Twice so far. I – "

"Has he been using a condom? Have you been using that Enovid pill?" At the unsettled look on Paulette's face, Andrianna barked, "Paulette, for Christ's sake, this is not a game! Neither of you has even finished high school yet! You're attempting for beauty school, according to your mother, and Johnny's drifting. Parenthood isn't something either one of you are ready for!"

Paulette exhaled a shaking breath, and Andrianna just barely managed to keep from screaming her question, "Are you pregnant now?!"

"No."

"You're certain?"

"I'm on my rag as we speak."

Andrianna breathed, looking ahead at the road, and for a minute, there was silence.

"I've seen how Michael Carrington looks at Steph." Paulette ventured, almost timidly.

Andrianna nodded, a small, conspiratorial smile momentarily curving her mouth. "I think she might suspect it herself. But that's between them. What I'm worried about is you and Johnny."

"But we're fine – "

"You're not, girl. Not when he's insulting you in front of everyone, leaving you to ask if you're a slut. He had no business calling you out, and less since he's been with you himself. Frenchy told me about the conversation you all had down at Castle Rock. Not when he's haranguing Stephanie, since she decided she'd had enough of his immaturity. Can you look me in the eye and tell me you're all right with the way he drinks? Or the fact that he went and slept with someone back in October? Or the way he bullies other kids at school? Or how he's behaved outside of school?" Andrianna shook her head. "Maybe you do love him. But he doesn't care about you the way you care about him. He has so much growing up to do it's almost laughable."

She noticed the (wounded, pleading, defiant) look on Paulette's face. "I didn't say quit on him, girl. But there's other ways to be there for someone besides sex."

"We talk – " Paulette tried, her eyes tearing.

"Do you? Or is it, he talks and you list – "

"We talk to each other!" Paulette yelled, yanking her sunglasses off, flinging them up onto the dashboard, her dark eyes accusing. "Ya know, just because you've been married so many years that you've forgotten what it's like to be new doesn't mean that ... "

Paulette closed her eyes and folded her hands in her lap, taking deep, shallow breaths, tears leaking. "This is what's working for us."

Andrianna sighed shortly. "Paulette, there's a difference between being in a relationship and calling it one. I'm asking you to be realistic about what you're doing with him, and what he's doing with you. Where do you see yourself a year from now?"

They had turned off the highway by this time, and were coming upon the backstreet where the Rebchuck house was situated, and Paulette couldn't formulate an answer. Pulling the Eldorado up behind Bernadette's '42 Chevy pickup truck (a fading dark blue and rusted at the edges with several strips of masking tape over a hole on the backrest of the passenger seat), Andrianna listened as Paulette explained in a resigned tone, "Dad left the truck. Mom'll drive that thing til it dies."

Andrianna pulled her sunglasses off, twisting to face Paulette more fully. "A vehicle's a vehicle. I've told you about Iris, Paulette, tell me a bit about your father?" she entreated gently, while the front door opened and Bernadette and Delores peeked out. Paulette looked towards her mother (still dressed in her waitress uniform, her greying dark hair in a messy bun), then back at Andrianna, before shrugging, almost indifferent. "He took a train out. He split when I was ten, Delores was eight. He complained all the time about having to be a ticket clerk at the airport, said that if Mom hadn't gotten pregnant with me, he'd be in a much better place. Mom usually just told him to kiss her ass, at least he had a job, and that she didn't make me and Delores by herself. She always said Uncle Griff was never nearly so lucky with work. The last postcard she got from Griff was six years ago, from some town called Dyersburg, in Tennessee. Mom thinks he probably kicked it drunk somewhere."

Paulette wondered why her tongue was running away with itself – it was the most she'd talked about her father since he'd gone, and she wasn't sure that even Stephanie knew about her uncle.

Bernadette knocked lightly on the passenger window, her expression expectant and curious; Paulette breathed out, and Andrianna murmured, "Maybe you should talk with her about all this. She'll probably yell, she'll probably also give you good advice, if she sees you being serious."

"Yeah." Paulette replied noncommittally, uncertain. Grabbing up her sunglasses and pushing the car door open, climbing out, she said, "Thanks for the ride home, Mrs. Nogerelli."

"You're welcome. Will you think about what I said?"

Paulette gave her a wobbling smile in answer and closed the door. Andrianna gave Bernadette a nod and a parting smile before pulling away from the curb to head home.

"Think about what? What did she tell you?" Bernadette insisted, as Paulette began the walk up the lawn towards the front door, where Delores was still standing in her bare feet. "What were you discussing?"

"Move, pipsqueak." Paulette commanded, gently shoving her way past; Delores stuck her tongue out. "Bite me, blondie."

"That's enough. Paulette, what did you and Andrianna talk about?"

Sliding her flats off, Paulette sank into the chair sideways, pulling her knees up into a tented position and crossing her ankles.

"How'd the meeting go?" Delores asked, before her eyes suddenly narrowed, finally locating the difference between when Paulette had left for the Nogerelli's and now. "Where's your jacket?"

Paulette was silent for a moment, before her voice coming out small and quivering. "Stephanie has it. I may or may not be out of the Pink Ladies." Taking a deep, shaking breath, screwing her courage to the wall, she spent the next quarter-hour explaining the whole of the situation, in detail.

Bernadette was massaging her temples, a headache throbbing, by the time Paulette was finished, while Delores stared at her sister. "Wow. Hard to say who's more a mess right now, you or Johnny."

"Oh, what do you know?" Paulette snapped.

"I know you just about screwed yourself over." Delores retorted furiously, her arms folding while she stared her sister down, narrow-eyed. "Don't treat me like I'm stupid, or act like you're better than me, Paulette. Stephanie wants to toss you for goin' behind her back and lying, and Nogerelli's using you. The – "

"He's not using me!" Paulette yelled. "I haven't done anything with him that I didn't want to!"

"And isn't that something to brag about?" Bernadette hissed; angry, tired disappointment was written all over her face. "I'd be telling you to stop seeing him, if I thought you'd listen." She shook her head, turning away. "I brought home some Thanksgiving dinner from the restaurant, it's in the fridge. I'm going to take a bath. And as for any advice, the only thing I have the energy to tell you right now, Paulette, is fix your mess yourself."

Jake Zinone pulled Frenchy aside as everyone was dispersing for the remainder of the day; Stephanie was out of earshot, and he demanded quietly, "Tell me about Michael Carrington."

Frenchy gave him a faint, knowing smile, and said, "He'll be down at Pfeil's Cycle Salvage tomorrow afternoon, talk to him yourself." She gave him a light wink, then wandered off to pester Rizzo with new motherhood jokes, leaving Jake to ask Helen if she would "Be so kind as to persuade Stephanie to go shopping with you tomorrow? I don't want her to know that I'm sneaking to talk with this Michael boy, not until I've heard what he has to say for himself."

Helen just barely suppressed a grin. "And will you be taking a shotgun with you, sir?"

"Or my old boxing gloves, whichever I come across first."

At one o'clock the next afternoon, Jake pulled his truck to a quiet stop in front Pfeil's, and could see Michael plainly, several yards behind the fence enclosing the wide lot full of motorcycle parts. He was perched on two old milkcrates (one stacked atop the other), coveralls and a pair of sunglasses on, a manual sitting open on a second stack of crates in front of him. Next to him was a motorcycle frame, partially finished and gleaming dully in the sunlight.

Shutting the truck engine off, climbing out, Jake walked over to the fence and whistled sharply. Michael flinched accordingly, coming out of his focus on the manual, looking piercingly in Jake's direction before he relaxed in recognition, confusion flitting across his face.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Zinone. If you're looking for the owner, he's up in LA with his wife. Apparently, it's an important day to shop. He said he'd be back by three."

"It's you I want to talk to, boy." Jake answered, taking note that the fence wasn't very high (at least, not to him, with his six-foot-four stature). With ease, he climbed up and over, landing effortlessly on his feet (and so what if he was forty-two?), careful to avoid the sets of handlebars laying just inches away. Dusting his hands off on his jeans, he strode closer, clench-jawed, hard-eyed, knowing he looked intimidating. Without preamble, he picked up the manual Michael had been reading, handing it to him forcefully before sitting down briskly on the milkcrate stack.

Michael stared at him, waiting, his expression suggesting that he was awed and impressed, but not necessarily frightened.

"You're in love with her."

Wildly so. Michael gave a quick smile, breathing out a short, quiet breath, his mind wandering to the first time he'd seen her. "From the first day we met."

Jake took in the gravity of his tone, the way Michael was looking him in the eye, nervous but unassailably determined, and remembered how he'd felt the first time he'd met Mary, lying on the hospital bed in near St. Valery-En-Caux, with a bleeding head and three bullet wounds – he'd thought he'd been seeing an angel. "I'm her father. I watched you lie to her. Why?"

"I figured she's been embarrassed enough, with everything that he did. The absolute last thing I want her to feel is pressured. Hence, the motorcycle."

"Explain that to me."

"Well ... she said she wants someone who knows how to ride, someone who knows how to do tricks. I could have told her before, except that I don't want a yes from her just because I feel something. That wouldn't be fair to her."

Jake blinked, surprised at the consideration. What are you about, boy? "So, you hide from her?"

"I'll show myself, when the time comes. I'm just ... doing it her way." Michael exhaled.

"Have you tried asking her out?"

"Well ... I did, the first day we met. But that was more of a joke. My exact words to her were, 'Stephanie, will you go on a date with me, just to watch Mr. Nogerelli's head explode?'. She got a bit of a laugh out of that. The time I wanted to actually ask her, she and Johnny were having another argument, and she ended up telling him what she had in mind for herself. I was there, and ended up mentioning that I had wanted to ask her out, but that I felt that, after hearing her wishes, it would have been pointless, and that I don't impress her as I am. She told me that I do, as far as word games go, dealing with the T-Birds, and Benedict Winston, but that that wasn't enough. The motorcycle is a must for her. I saw the look on her face, saying that. So, this." he concluded, gesturing.

Then he shook his head, squinting at Jake. "How is it she stayed with him all that time, when he had no appreciation for her?"

"She's a kid, with things to learn. Same as you. You really think you can be what she wants?"

"I ... well, what do you think she needs?"

Jake blinked, sitting back a little, scowling but admiring Michael's nerve. "Don't play games with me, boy."

Michael almost smiled. "Right. Sorry. I think that, above all else, she wants to be respected, and cared about." He bit back a laugh. "I also think that, the next time she sees that git, she's going to make his ears bleed, for as loud as she'll be yelling."

Jake almost laughed. "Probably. So, you're building this to win her over. Where is it you think you're going to learn tricks?"

"Well ... I have a friend, Ivaleigh, who has friends in Pickard's – "

"The same Ivaleigh that Nogerelli propositioned in February?"

Anger flashed in Michael's eyes. "She has a five point gpa, and she's a good person, sir, which is a miracle considering how unkind life has been to her. The same goes for her sister, Lailea. She and Lailea are with their grandparents now, things are finally going to get better for them." he swore tightly.

Jake stared for a moment, taking in Michael's expression. "That's quite a passionate defense."

Michael breathed out, knowing an explanation was due. "Ivaleigh's and Lailea's father was not a good person, by any means. Their mother is even worse. They were often abused, in trying to be the proper southern belle ladies that their mother wanted them to be. I can relate to everything they've suffered. And no, I can't tell you their story, sir."

Jake had stiffened, sitting back a little as his eyes narrowed, and Michael stood, shrugging off the top half of his coveralls, lifting his sleeveless shirt up some, pushing down on the waist band of his jeans, just far enough that Jake could see all of the four scars near his hip. "I was questioned about these in the locker room on my second day at school, I said they were the result of a car crash when I was nine. These were actually made from a rhino hide whip. My ... father ... is a believer in the corporal punishment. He let his wife, Margaret, do this, to ensure that I would never lie to her again." Michael's expression darkened with bad memories, as he pulled the coveralls back on all the way. "A hypocrisy, coming from them, really. They're nothing but lies. God bless Aunt Ellie, she took care of me, the same way she looked after my brothers, Damien and Bastian, and my sister, Genevieve. Aunt Ellie died this past summer when her house burned."

He closed his eyes for a moment, stopping there, pushing back the sharp ache and letting out a long, slow breath; he looked Jake Zinone in the eye again, waiting for the next question.

" ... your mother?" Jake entreated kindly.

"Heather stays with my grandfather, Rhodri, near Cardiff, in Wales. She has an irreversible drinking habit. I honestly don't know if there's anyone who hates Albert more than Rhodri does. I see them once a year, during the holidays. My fath ... Albert Carrington used her. He wrecked her life, and still, she loves him." Michael bit his tongue to stop the hateful bitterness from coming through. "Or rather, who she thought he was. She's not the only one whose heart he broke, either. Margaret isn't any better. They have no regard for anyone but themselves." He wasn't going to get into his blood-relations with his siblings, and especially not since a newborn girl had just been added to the list.

"God willing, they get what they deserve, in the end. The same goes for Ivaleigh's and Lailea's parents. Have you told Stephanie any of this?"

"I'm not putting my demons on her, Mr. Zinone." Michael answered bitingly. He took a deep breath, willing some calm. "She deserves better than that."

Jake nodded, understanding, having had his own bad experiences during the war, ones he would never share. "But you'll tell her?" he demanded. "Let her know the real you, if she agrees to be in a relationship with you. Unsettling as that sounds, it's the only way things'll work. You'll be honest with Stephanie about your background?"

A slow exhalation, and Jake watched while Michael came to terms with the realization; the boy (young man) looked back at him, nodding, eyes on fire with promise. "Yes."