Content warning: allusions to borderline-abusive parenting. If not just straight-out abusive. Louise's step-mom was... not a nice person.

Glass Shard Beach, 1994

Louise opened the refrigerator, retrieving the pitcher of Louce she made that morning to pour herself a glass. Probably wasn't very healthy, but she'd ignored dad's advice and gotten up too early, meaning she needed the extra energy; and after what just went down at the funeral, she needed that energy even more.

It was a basic formula. Crushed blue jelly beans scattered into Pitt Cola, turning it a faint lilac. Still just as sickeningly sweet as she remembered. One sip gave her a jolt, though, and that was all she needed - even made her hairs stand on end. She shivered slightly; between the events of the funeral and that stupid suit, she'd had a shower as soon as she got back to the apartment, before changing back into her usual casual clothes - she was still feeling a little damp.

Putting on her best blank look, she turned to face the table. It'd been laid out for the meal of condolences, before certain events put that on hold. Grauntie Shprintze was sitting there, a look of naked fury on her face. Cousin(?) Tiber was next to her, doing some sort of overblown Tai Chi poses? Lou wasn't sure.

"Tiber, will ya give that a rest, already?" Shprintze berated her son, "oy, yer like a helicopter in here, with the rotors all over the place! Yer gonna knock down all the things!"

"Aw, c'mon, ma!" Tiber pleaded with her in a nasally voice, "all dese things that are happenin' are not good fer my mental state! I gotta get back into the ol' zanshin, yanno what I'm sayin', ma?"

"Yer'll give yerself a hernia, at this rate! Look atcha, look atcha red face, with the sweat! What's with you, ya look like a schmuck!"

"Will you give it a rest, ma? Geez!" Tiber gave up, throwing his arms in the air. "Look, if it makes ya feel better, I'll 'rehydrate' like yer always sayin'! Like with- that, thanks!" he said as he snatched Lou's glass away from her, as though he already asked for permission.

Before Louise could even begin to object, he took a long swig of the lilac liquid inside - and violently spat it back out, all over the nicely-laid table and Shprintze's dress.

"PFFFFFFFFFTTTT WHAT THE H IS THIS CRAP?!"

"Moses, gimme strength! Look at the mess you've made, ya kung fu idiot!" her Grauntie berated him some more, standing up and frantically dabbing the sticky stains left by his spit-take with a napkin. "It's gonna take freakin' for -ever to clean this out! See, this is what happens when ya just take random drinks from people's hands! What were ya thinkin'?!"

"'Ey, it ain't my fault that Aunt Caryn's granddaughter drinks freakin' unicorn tears!"

"She's yer cousin, not one o' yer dumbass students! Fer once in yer life, Tiber, have some common-freakin'-courtesy!" Shprintze repeatedly poked her son in the chest with each word, almost making him fall on his butt. Which looked a little absurd since she was a plump old lady and he was a muscular man a whole head taller than her.

Louise's grauntie turned to face her, just in time to see her pouring the remains of her glass down the sink. It wasn't worth all this.

"Louise, I'm so sorry, ya must be absolutely shattered right now. The last thing ya need is yer cousin makin' an ass of 'imself when we're supposed to be rememberin' yer grandma! My big sister!"

Just mentioning grandma, even indirectly, was enough to get Shprintze's face watering again. It was enough to disarm Louise, make her blank look crumble ever- so-slightly, as she nervously rubbed her arm.

"Yeah…" she mumbled under her breath.

"Aw, c'mere, you!" she declared before lunging in and clamping Louise down in a hug. She'd been hugged many times by her grauntie before - not being taken off-guard like she was with her father the day before, she allowed herself to find some comfort in it, and gently placed her own arm around her. It being much softer than her father's vice-grip certainly helped.

Suddenly, the door to dad's room opened up, and Uncle Stanford stepped out, taking a moment to screw his face up and rub rheum out of his insomniac eyes.

"I just got off the horn with Shermie…" he announced, drawing everyone's attention. "He says Filbrick's alive. They're gonna- going to keep him in bed fer a few days, but he's expected to recover as long as there's no more, uh… shocks."

"Bah! Typical!" Shprintze started fuming again, dramatically planting her fists on her hips, "there's no justice in this world, I tell ya! None at all! My Caryn dies in agony but that good-fer-nuttin' scoundrel gets to live another day! Oohhh, am I glad I let Dimitri punch 'is lights before 'e kicked it!"

"Yeah!" Tiber mimicked his ma, "good-fer-nuttin' scoundrel! He's lucky he's a decrepit ol'-timer, or I'd show 'im a few moves! WHOOOO-HI-YA!" he screeched, throwing out an overblown roundhouse kick at the air beside him, making everyone in the room tense up, just in case it caused a disaster in the cramped apartment. If he'd kicked a little wider, he might have knocked over one of their candles.

"Tiberius Romanoff, will you KNOCK IT OFF, ALREADY?!" Shprintze bellowed, giving her son a slap on the back of his head, "look'a those candles, ya coulda burned us all to ashes! One'a these days yer gonna break somethin' important with those kicks, an' then you'll be sorry, ya schmuck, ya freakin' Chuckie Lee-lookin'-ass!"

At that, Tiber's huge presence actually seemed to shrink, like he was still a young boy and not a forty-something-year-old man. "Yes, ma, sorry, ma…" he croaked, folding his arms.

Louise sighed, leaning against the kitchen counter like she was wounded. This was all too much crap right now. Just when it was starting to seem like she could think straight, everything goes straight to hell and everyone's running around like headless chickens. It'd been absolute chaos for the past three hours or so. If these two kept yelling at each other for much longer…

"Anyway, uh…" Stanford spoke up again, "Shermie's gonna stay with pa at the hospital for a while. He said we should go ahead with the meal of condolences without him."

"Well, thank the lord fer that, Stanford!" Shprintze declared, "I dunno about'chu, but I'm starvin', an' there's no chance I'm puttin' off rememb'rin my sister fer her good-fer-nuttin' husband! Caryn wouldn'ta wanted that! I know he's yer pa, but I gotta say what I gotta say!"

Louise felt her brow perk up. Somehow, in all this chaos, the foundations of a question emerged.

"Wait, I thought that the immediate family has to be present for the meal?" she asked.

Her grauntie turned back to her, pleasantly surprised. "...Yeah, dat's right! I'm glad someone 'membered'ta do their homework, unlike dis meathead!" she jerked a thumb accusingly towards her son, who just awkwardly scooted into a chair. "But dese are exceptional circumstances, ya hear? Shermie may be willin'ta forgive an' forget, but I ain't! If dat earns me a month in gehenna when I kick the bucket, I'll take it!"

Louise's brow remained sky-high once more. What was with her family lately? First dad, then Uncle Stan, then grandpa, now Grauntie Shprintze? She was always the devout one, the 'moral core' of her family - she'd said so herself, many times. Whenever she visited, she'd always berate grandma for her choice of career and her choice of marriage partners, tell her to move out, go to college, marry a firefighter or judge - 'ya don't wanna end up like yer brother, do ya?'

At this stage, she wouldn't be surprised if Grunkle Dimitri rose from his grave and announced he'd become a rabbi.

That was another thing - she was too young to have remembered Dimitri when he was alive, but she'd generally gotten the impression he was a nasty piece of work, the 'wrong sort' of person. He didn't like grandpa either (and the more Lou thought about it, the more it became obvious that no-one liked grandpa), but at some point he'd done something so heinous that even his own sisters wanted nothing more to do with him. But whatever it was, it wasn't so bad that Shprintze couldn't side with him over grandpa and even risk post-mortem punishment for not following proper shiva guidelines. Hell, the reason Louise had even read up on them was so her grauntie couldn't accuse her of forgetting her heritage!

Louise began rubbing her temples. All of that thought went around her mind at about a mile a second, and she was sure if someone read it back to her it wouldn't make a lick of sense.

"Um, Louise… you okay?" Uncle Stan spoke up.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine," she lied. He clearly didn't buy it, shaking his head.

"Well, anyway. I s'pose we ought to get the food on…" he sputtered after some hesitation. "Guess that'll be your department, Shprintz."

"You kiddin'? I'm Caryn's sister, I can't prepare the meal! It has to be a neighbour, or failin' that, non-immediate family!" Shprintze proclaimed with a raised finger. "Tiber, you do it!"

"What?! You insane?! I couldn't cook a fish on mercury!" Tiber objected, "I-I mean, I can open a can'a beans! I can even do it enough times fer the whole dojo! I did that once when we was snowed in that one time last winter!"

"Gimme strength, why's this family so useless?! Now Caryn's gone, I'm gonna hafta stick around 'fore you all start livin' on takeout! It ain't that hard! Just open a freakin' cookbook an' use yer eyes to connect the dots an' follow points A through B through X, Y, Z! Even a schmuck like you could do it!"

"I'll do it," Louise suddenly said, cutting into the conversation like a dagger.

All eyes in the room turned to her, and she felt her arms cling to her sides, like she was an embarrassed little girl all over again.

She had no idea why she offered to cook. She couldn't cook. She's a college student. Only 'dinner' thing she can cook is pasta. Not even good pasta, the kind with cheap store-bought sauce.

"I-I'll do it," she said anyway, in spite of how horrible an idea it was. "I'm her granddaughter. Not immediate family."

"Aw, thank you, Louise! Y'too kind to dis ol' bag!" Shprintze declared, once again pulling her into a giant hug.

She seized up. She saw Uncle Stan looking at her. This time his brow was perking up.

"Yes, that is indeedly very kind…" Stanford said, "you do know how to cook, right?"

Louise - still trapped in her grauntie's cuddle prison - gulped, harshly and loudly.

"Yeah."

"I see…" he said, obviously seeing right through her. "Well, you're still gonna need ingredients and whatnot. C'mon, let's go down to the store."

Lou forcefully released herself from the hug. "Uh, I-I'm pretty sure we have all of the-"

"Uh-uh, less talky, more walky-drivey! You look like you could do with the fresh air, anyways!"

"I dunno, maybe I'm- gyah!" she yelped as Stanford hooked his arm around hers and began pulling her along as he made his way outside. "But I don't even know the-"

"Don't worry, you're not the only one who's had to do research!" he answered, "it's bread, hard-boiled eggs, cooked vegetables, and coffee! I know just the place! You two, don't burn down the house while we're gone, I don't need another reason for Shermie to gimme grief!"

Before Louise even knew what was going on, Uncle Stan had cajoled her outside, and now she was sitting in the passenger seat of his car. Hadn't seen it before - bright red '68 El Diablo. Clearly been through a lot, going from all the scratches and weathering on the paintwork, and the tears and stains on the seats, and the piles of random garbage so deep she could hear her feet rustling through them. There's close-eye detective deduction, and then there's 'it's so obvious anyone could figure it out'.

"Oy, thank moses we're outta there, I thought those two would never shut up..." he mused, leaning against the steering wheel. 'Leaning' may have been the wrong word, more like 'slumped'. He looked like he was about to drop to sleep at any moment.

After a moment of silence, he managed to keep himself awake, pushing his glasses up his nose. "That's why you offered to make dinner, right? To get 'em to shut up?"

The puzzles in Lou's mind all fit together. That's what drove her to come up with that objectively horrible idea. If it weren't for the idea she probably wouldn't even be able to hear herself think right now.

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Good call," Stan answered, still facing forward. Referring to it as a 'call' was probably giving her too much credit, but whatever.

Instead of immediately driving off to wherever it was they were going, he took a few moments to stare out the window, apparently deep in thought.

Louise's eyes were drawn to his hands, as he tapped his fingers over and over on the steering wheel like he was making morse code.

She furrowed her brow, as she was struck by a feeling of déjà vu.

"Uncle Stan, what happened to your sixth finger?"

Stanford froze up, like he'd been struck by one of those magic ice spells from D&D&MD. The fact that her mind chose to make that connection, of all things, meant the memories of their last meeting were coming flooding back.

After a few seconds, Stanford relaxed and resumed tapping, as though nothing had happened. He shrugged. "Eh, I had surgery a while back. I was tired'a not bein' able to wear gloves. Ya have any idea how cold it gets up in Oregon during the winter?"

"You know mittens exist, right?"

"Pff, yeah, and when have you ever seen a grown man wearing mittens?" Stanford scoffed, "I'd sooner take my chances with frostbite- hypothermia. Proper… terminology."

Louise's brow actually curled upwards with worry. In that moment, the flood of memories crashed against a mental dam - it almost hit her physically, as she found herself sitting up, like she was treading water.

She was trying to reconcile the Uncle Stan sitting next to her now with the Uncle Stan who sat opposite her back in '79, at the same table she'd just volunteered to cook a meal of condolences to get away from (and there was no way that was going to end well, but she wanted to distract herself from that right now).

"You told me you'd never get your sixth finger removed. Not for all the money in the world," she said, mentally kicking herself for how sappy it sounded. She almost heard herself say it in the voice of her eight-year-old self.

"I actually said that? Well, I mean… it's easy to say that when you're not experiencin' financial difficulties. You were the one who asked why I went into tourism, right? The grant money dried up 'cause no-one was seeing any returns on my research. That's how it works. They don't just give you money for nothing. Ain't capitalism a beautiful thing?" he concluded, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

"I-I wasn't disputing that, I mean-" Louise countered, taken off-guard again by how irrelevant that tangent seemed, "it's just…"

'You know you helped me a lot that day', she wanted to say, but that stupid mental block was back. It was the dam. There was a lot she wanted to say. 'You helped me stay proud of myself when no-one else would be'.

But there was also a question lying beneath it all; just like last time, she didn't want to ask it, even though she didn't have 'I could get in trouble with dad' as an excuse. Dad probably asked the same thing.

No. This wasn't the right time. This was supposed to be shiva, for her grandma. She should be thinking about her.

"...N-never mind, it's not important," she finally said, folding her arms and turning to look out the window. "Let's just get the food."

"O...kay, then," Stanford conceded, starting up the car.

"You know, when you said you knew 'just the place', this isn't what I had in mind."

After a short drive across Glass Shard, once again taking in the scenic sights of bricked-up suburbia, faintly pollution-tinted skies and heavily-accented locals loudly complaining about people walking past them, they'd arrived at a green-roofed fast food restaurant - the O'Donnell's chain, with their big green 'O' displayed on a mast nearby.

"What?" Uncle Stan held his hands out, as though he were offended. "What's wrong with it? It ain't fancy, but since when have we been the height of high culture? There was one'a these across the road from where ma was buried, we've got no room to get snobby all of a sudden! 'Sides, shiva rules say the meal o' condolences have gotta have bread, eggs, cooked vegetables, an' coffee," he repeated, counting off the essentials on his five-fingered hands.

"Or tea," Lou added.

"Or tea, I know. It don't say anythin' about where it came from or how it's made, as long as it's kosher. An' I've been here before, trust me, it's kosher."

Louise wanted to pick from one of several unclear reasons why she felt uncomfortable. She started with the obvious one, and she found herself chuckling. Getting takeout for her grandma's meal of condolences? Just hours after her grandpa had had a near-lethal heart attack on the same day as his wife's funeral? It was so obviously, flagrantly, audaciously wrong that she couldn't help herself. Was she living in a cartoon now?

"Hahah… Uncle Stan, are we seriously about to do this? Are we really gonna buy fast food and disguise it as my own cooking?"

"Yeah, pretty much," he answered without missing a beat.

That… wasn't the answer she was expecting.

"If you need encouragement, let's look at this rationally: I know ya can't cook. That's not intended as an insult, it was clear you only offered to get some peace away from those two loud-mouthed yahoos that I call my aunt an' cousin. You didn't offer 'cause you actually knew how. But if you actually tried to make the meal, not only would you struggle with the act itself, you'd also needlessly prolong the amount of time you have to spend listening to their sh- melodrama, defeatin' the point of offerin'. The only other option would be to take it back an' tell the truth, which would accomplish nothin' and ultimately leave us right back at square one."

"Well… yeah, that's all true, but-"

"An' if you're worried about it bein' disrespectful, take it from me. She was my ma, I knew her. She was a con artist. This is exactly the sorta thing she woulda done if it was pa kickin' it first. Think of it as one final trick, one… uh, last hurrah."

Louise racked her mind to come up with an argument, but came up short. Whatever else had changed about her uncle, he was still smart. Maybe not the 'smartest guy in the world', but definitely on a whole other level from her. She had the same chance of winning a battle of logic with him now as she had fifteen years ago. So she was now in her twenties and she'd been to college, so what? She didn't even have her criminology degree yet. At her age, he was already a doctor twelve times over.

Every single word that came out of his mouth was true. The only possible avenues of argument she had were moral ones, and he'd even shot those down. She had nothing to work with.

Finally, she sighed and slumped in her seat in defeat. "Fine."

"That's what I like to hear. Also, O'Donnell's egg sandwiches are delicious, just sayin'."

"Yeah, I s'pose they are," Louise admitted, hearing her stomach rumble. She almost tuned it out, since she'd been so perpetually hungry, no matter how much she ate.

Uncle Stan had pulled over in the restaurant's parking lot as they 'debated', but it was only now she was noticing anything besides the restaurant itself - the sheer audacity of what they were doing had naturally shoved aside anything else.

Stanford began fumbling with the car's stick-shift, grumbling under his breath. Apparently the car was uncooperative - he said he'd been driving it around almost non-stop for the best part of a decade, 'seeking opportunities'. He was surprised it worked at all, let alone be sufficient to drive all the way to New Jersey from Oregon. Louise asked him why he hadn't just bought a new one, to which he made some non-committed statement about expenses and left it at that.

He must have been robbed or something - the Stanford Pines that Lou knew as a kid never mentioned money, not once. Now he was bringing it up every minute. At least he acknowledged his younger self's carefree attitude, dismissing it as youthful naivete. She'd be lying if she said she hadn't felt her heart sink at the thought of the uncle who encouraged her to shoot for the stars scrimping and fretting over bills.

She glanced out the window and sighed. She shouldn't think too deeply into this. Fifteen years can transform a person. She should know.

It was then, for some reason, she noticed another car on the other side of the parking lot. Some early 80s station wagon, the favoured ride of soccer moms all over Jersey. She probably wouldn't have even registered its existence had it not been for the passengers, which did not match the car at all.

There were at least four men, three of whom were dressed in jeans and flannel shirts, munching away on burgers and fries, looking oddly unsocial. The fourth passenger was some bespectacled, middle-aged Wall Street-looking man in a suit, chatting away into one of those 'cell phones' that are all the rage now.

Her SFU classmates keep telling her that, in ten years' time, everyone will have a cell phone. Maybe they were right, but right now it wasn't worth the investment. She's no day trader, she doesn't need to make phone calls so often she can't just pony up for a payphone like people have been doing for decades.

While she was distracted with thoughts of cell phones, she caught a flash in her eyes - sunlight reflecting off Mr. Wall Street's glasses.

She instinctively turned away, getting a bad feeling in her gut. Did he just look at her?

"Grrnghr," Uncle Stan grunted as he got the gearstick free, "there we go! I tell ya, this… adhesive bubble-based chewing… gum-like substance. Should never leave it in the car. Leave it anywhere, leave it on the underside'a the card table, that's what I always say."

Louise didn't even question that. He'd never once said it to her recollection, but it could easily have been a new catchphrase she missed out on. She just sat quietly as they pulled into the drive-through, doing her best not to think about that bad feeling…

"Welcome to O'Donnell's, home of the O-Wing, may I take your order?" a bored employee asked, speaking through an intercom inside a statue of an anthropomorphic wolf leprechaun.

"Salu-ma-tations! Now, I wanna be one-hundred-percent honest with ya. I'm gonna ask for something from the breakfast menu. I am well aware you don't serve breakfast after eleven in the A.M. However, this is an emergency. You have my personal assurance that you will be duly compensated for any inconvenience this may cause. I want you to inform your manager, should he 'raise a stink', that I will pay quadruple. That's gotta count for somethin'."

"Um… okay?" the employee responded, in a display of bewilderment Louise rarely heard from bored workers (she would know, as a library guard she's been in the same boat).

"Gotcha. So anyway, we need five O'ggwiches. Large ones. But the O'ggs are hard-boiled - slice 'em up and layer 'em. Also, extra pickles, by which I mean 'put pickles on it, but then some more'. And grill the pickles first, they gotta be cooked. Put it all on matzo bread if you have any lying around, otherwise normal buns will do. Actually, on second thoughts, cancel one'a the O'ggwiches, swap it out for an O'gg-an'-S'O'sage Muffin, but keep the pickles on it. You gettin' all this down?"

"Uncle Stan, that's not-"

"I know it's not kosher. Not observant," Stanford cut her off.

A solid minute passed as Stan and Louise waited for him to note everything down - they could hear frantic scribbling over the intercom.

"Got it. Did you want fries with that?"

"Uh-" Louise was about to say no, only to be cut off by Stan again, holding up a hand.

"Yes, yes we would like fries. Lots of 'em. But hold the salt. My cousin has this whole thing about salt."

"And what would you like to drink?"

"Five coffees. Three black, one with cream an' sugar - but hold the cream, my aunt's lactose intolerant - and, uh… Louise, how d'ya take yer coffee?"

Louise froze up for a few moments, her mind was still processing the absolute storm of orders and specifications her uncle had just rattled off. She was glad she wasn't the one serving him right now.

"Um… I-I'll just have a Sub-Cola."

Stanford turned back to the intercom. "Cancel one'a the coffees, my niece'll take a Sub-Cola instead."

"New or Classic?" the employee asked.

"Uh… is there a difference?"

"New," Louise answered for him. "...What? I had Classic the other day. ...Th-there's a difference, okay? I don't care what anyone says!" she snapped.

"Alright, alright, geez… "

Louise flinched, embarrassed at herself. Did she seriously just work herself into a frenzy over Sub-Cola? The hell is wrong with her?

"...I don't know why I did that," she admitted, flatly.

Stan only shrugged in response.

"Okay, so… four O'ggwiches, one O'gg-and-S'O'sage Muffin, all with sliced, hard-boiled eggs, grilled pickles, matzo bread if available, five portions of large fries with no salt, three black coffees, one coffee with sugar, and one New Sub-Cola. That right?"

"And a chocolate O'nut," Louise added.

Stan glanced back at her, brow raised.

"Don't judge me. This was your idea."

"Eh," he shrugged again, turning back to the intercom. "What she said."

The pair of them went silent for the next few minutes, as Louise imagined the employee going out back and scrambling to get that order fulfilled. She stayed alert at first, expecting the manager to come along and start berating her uncle over the intercom, but no such thing happened, and she started to relax again.

That question was bubbling up inside her again. It almost felt like she had word vomit threatening to come out any second. Instead, she opted to channel it into… hopefully something less incendiary. Hopefully.

"So…" she began, fidgeting, "what kinda tourism are you into, exactly? Hotels?"

"Eh? Oh, uh… nah, nothing so high-falutin'," he answered, nonchalantly waving a hand. "I run what pa would call a 'tourist trap', and ma would call a 'tchotchke shop'. I call it the 'Mystery Shack'."

Lou pursed her lip in apprehension. "Mystery Shack?"

"Yeah, Mystery Shack? Shack o' mysteries. Shack with mysteries in it. You get the idea. It's in this berg in the middle'a the woods: Gravity Falls. S'got a lotta legends associated with it. You know, werewolves, aliens, bigfoot, et cetera. Was why I was drawn to the place, I s'pose. 'Course, turned out it was mostly bull, but that don't- doesn't stop the trade."

"Gravity Falls?"

"Yeah, Gravity Falls. What is this, d'you have a parrot living in your mouth?" he joked, adding a quick chuckle. "Locals are pretty weird in their own ways, which is as good a reason as any to set up shop there. I heard they elect their mayor by throwin' bird-feed at the candidates while they're debating, an' letting some eagle choose the winner, but the current mayor's been there since World War One, so I never found out if it was true. I guess the eagle's been replaced a couple times an' they just pretend it's the same one."

Louise's mouth opened to say something, but then closed again. She wasn't sure what to make of that. At first it certainly seemed like Stanford's dream town, but 'election by eagle' couldn't be real, surely? That's too weird even for him. That's not even paranormal, just regular weird behaviour ...Maybe it's another wacky rumour to lure in the tourists? That's probably it. Besides…

"I see. I'm just glad it's not hotels," she blurted out.

"Eh?"

Louise winced. She shouldn't have said that. ...Oh well, if they were gonna play catch-up…

"My step-mom was in the hotel business."

"She was in the hotel business. Past tense. So, uh…"

"No, she's not dead. Prison. Tax evasion."

She heard Uncle Stan swallow hard, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel again.

"Heh, oh dearie me… I-I'm sorry to hear that."

"Don't be, I hate her," Louise bluntly stated, folding her arms. "She was a shallow, judgmental, micromanaging jerkass and I'm glad she's gone."

She could feel her face getting hot, and she began to tense up even more. The question was boiling over again. This was bad, this was going down a bad path. The word vomit was going to come out.

'Please, don't snap at him' , a voice that sounded suspiciously like her father echoed in the back of her mind. ' Control yerself. You're an adult.'

"You know, she wanted me to be an actress, or a model, or something," Louise added, in a tone sharp enough to cut paper. "She wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. Kept picking me up after school and driving me to whatever dumb thing she wanted me to do that week, otherwise she wouldn't take me home. Eventually I started ignoring her car and walked home instead. Across the centre of LA. In the summer. One time I had to stay off school for a week because my feet were covered in blisters," she shared, seething.

Uncle Stan shifted uneasily in his seat, shooting her a sympathetic look. "Seriously? How old were you?"

"Twelve."

Stan couldn't even offer a response to that - he could only turn away, sighing in clear disgust.

'Not that he has any right to be disgusted, not after he abandoned me for fifteen years-'

Louise felt her hands clutch the ends of her shorts tightly. Made her hands hurt a little. Good. Distracted her from that thought.

"Sir? Your order is ready," the drive-through employee spoke up, snapping them both out of their respective stupors.

"Huh? Already? Whew..." Stanford said, exhaling in amazement.

The car lurched forward as Stan drove a little way up the road to the drive-through window. Louise barely moved in spite of the momentum - she was stiff as a board.

From where Louise was sitting, she couldn't see whoever was there, and she had no inclination to turn her head right now. "Thanks, pally," Stan said, gruffly, as he leaned out the window to grab all the food he ordered, filling the car with the wafting scent of egg. Pickle, too, but mostly egg. It was a very sharp aroma. Stingy, almost. Made her nose twitch. Didn't help the heat building up in her face.

In the corner of her eye, she could see her uncle shoot a sympathetic glance her way. He was probably about to ask her to hold some of the food, but instead he opted to inelegantly shove it in the footwell beneath her, giving her legs a warm, greasy cushioning.

It occurred to her that she probably looked like her grumpy teenage self right now - sitting up straight, barely moving, with her arms folded tight across her chest and her lips pursed. It was as though ever since she'd been reunited with Uncle Stan at the funeral, her mind had re-lived her whole life up to that point. First she'd thought of their last encounter as a child, and then she thought of what came afterwards. The move to LA, the… situation… with her step-mom.

For just a moment, she almost felt a phantom pain all over her feet. Those blisters hurt.

Sometimes she wonders if she didn't do it on purpose, because it was the only way she'd get step-mom to understand what 'no' means. Not that it worked.

Suddenly, the car lurched hard, much harder than before. This time she actually felt herself get forced back against the seat. For a moment, she was snapped out of her stupor.

Uncle Stan had driven away fast. Tires squealing, the smell of rubber filling the air, mixing with the smell of egg. Looking at his exasperated yet slightly smug expression, she furrowed her brow, frowning.

"What just happened?"

"Eh? Whaddya mean? I got the food."

A realization hit her.

"...Did you pay?"

"Sure I did. In a manner'a speakin'. I tossed 'em a wad of paper."

Silence.

"Don't look'a me like that, Miss FBI. They're a big corporation, they can take the loss. Besides, it's their own fault. I said to the guy 'tell your boss I'd pay quadruple'. I never said I'd actually do it. That's the trick with society - lotta stuff is just assumed, but unsaid. Ya can get away with a lotta stuff - an' a clean conscience, to boot - if ya remember that."

She felt her eye twitch. She'd meant to say something like 'that's not the point' or 'stealing is wrong all the time' or something, but it's not like Uncle Stan was in the wrong, either. Once again, he was making… sort of logical points. She couldn't really argue with him about this.

But she really wanted to argue with him, just so she wouldn't be the only one feeling all hot and stiff. She had run out of diversions. The first thing came out of her mouth… it was that question.

"Why didn't you come back?"

"What?" he asked, sounding genuinely confused for the first time that day.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU COME BACK?!" she finally snapped, making him jump. "YOU HAVE ANY IDEA- I-I… IT'S BEEN FIFTEEN YEARS, UNCLE STANFORD! I TRIED TO FIND YOU! I NEEDED TO TALK TO YOU, BUT YOU VANISHED!"

"Uh…"

"I HAD SO MANY BLISTERS, I COULDN'T WALK! I HAD SO MUCH SUNBURN, MY SKIN WAS FLAKIN' OFF! I HAD, LIKE, SUNBURN ON TOP OF SUNBURN! STEP-MOM DIDN'T CARE, ALL SHE CARED THAT I WAS 'UNGRATEFUL' AN' 'WASTING HER MONEY', NEVER MIND THAT IF SHE'D JUST LISTENED TO ME SHE WOULDN'TA SPENT ALL THAT MONEY IN THE FIRST PLACE! DAD WAS ALL 'YOU'RE HURTIN' YOURSELF FOR NO GOOD REASON!' A-AND HE WAS RIGHT, BUT HOW WAS I S'POSED TO-... I NEEDED YOUR HELP! I EVEN WROTE TO GRANDMA AND YOU DIDN'T EVEN GIVE HER YOUR ADDRESS?! WHY?! WHAT WAS SO IMPORTANT?!"

This time Stan didn't even try to answer back - probably knew it was a futile effort. Louise had thought she was over this - had been for years, after she finally concluded she'd never see her uncle again - but she'd just buried it like so many other things, and now it had finally risen through all the distractions, the interference, the mental garbage.

"DID… DID YOU EVER EVEN CARE?!" she kept at it, now feeling tears. "I THOUGHT I MEANT SOMETHING TO YOU!"

For just a moment, she could have sworn she saw her uncle's eyes get shiny, too.

"W-woah… okay… I-I didn't know I meant that much. I mean, I'm only your uncle. It's not like your dad abandoned you or whatever…" he considered - sounding more like he was thinking out loud than anything.

"That's… that's not the point!" Louise wheezed, finally being forced to lower her volume. "Yanno how much I looked up to you when I was a kid? You were the 'smartest guy in the world!' I-if it weren't for you, I probably woulda never gone to college! Hell, I'd probably be stuck in some drug-fuelled beauty pageant circuit, gettin' five kinds of oil injected into my face, 'cause I'da never had the confidence to stand up to step-mom!"

"But you had your dad!" Stan tried to object, "Shermie's a good guy! ...Right?"

"Yeah, yeah he is. Too good! He was too nice to her, kept telling me to give her a chance; either that or he just flat-out didn't believe me when I told him she tried to physically drag me into a clinic to get my mole 'fixed'! It took her cheating on him when he lost the use of his legs for him to realize she never cared about him, either!"

Uncle Stan looked back at the road to consider everything he'd just heard. "I, uh… gotta be honest, I don't know what to say. That's messed up."

Louise finally slumped back into her chair, trying her hardest not to let the force of the tears reduce her to a sobbing mess, a hysterical basket-case, in front of her uncle.

"Yanno, I know the feeling," he added after some hesitation. "For your family to betray ya like that. ...I never liked pa. He only cared about me s'long as I could bring him cash. Didn't matter that I had twelve PhDs, oh no, 'can ya sell those?' he'd say. D'ya think he had any sympathy at all when I told him money was running dry? 'Course not - 'it's your own damn fault for chasin' bigfoot!'. But there was some part'a me, some dumb… irrational, traitorous part'a me, that thought I could somehow satisfy that cheap ass, get 'im to accept me back into the family. So I did some dumb things, an' I made some deals with the wrong kinda people, an' it didn't work out so well, an' I didn't… I didn't want it affectin' you, okay? You, or ma, or Shermie. I was tryin' to protect ya!"

Louise looked back at him. She had to admit, hearing his explanation - as far-fetched as it may sound - did get her temper to cool off a little. It did kind of explain a few things, if he was telling the truth. He hadn't outright said so, but she could read between the lines. His newly gruff mannerisms, the state he was in, the fact that he casually stole a bunch of food like it was normal…

"Someone wants you dead?" she theorized.

"More than 'someone'..." he replied, shaking his head. She could see for a moment, behind his glasses, as they'd fallen down his face; his eyes kept darting over to the rear-view mirrors. "And, uh… not to panic ya or anythin', but I have a bad feeling we're about to meet one'a those someones."

Suddenly she felt her anger… not dissipate, but put itself to the back of her mind, on hold, like all her bad feelings did. Her own gaze snapped to the rear-view mirror on her side of the car.

It was that station wagon from the parking lot, the one with the Wall Street guy inside. It was following them.