(A/N: While I will continue to write Changes as often as I can, updates might take somewhat longer in the future, as I foolishly decided that taking TWO writing intensive classes AND a new foreign language my first semester of college was a good idea! Oh, the insanity of youth… Anyway, I am by no means abandoning this story, and will keep up with it whenever I have the time. Once again, a huge thanks to everyone who's taken the time to give me a review. It's heartening to know that someone is interested in my take on things, and that my writing's not like Simone and her imaginary boyfriend…)
Ivy, left to her own devices, tried desperately to figure out what was going on. She'd been at her desk, writing a letter to Sam, one moment, and the next, some strange girl was saying she was her "daughter" (a strange joke, even for her sorority sisters to play—why would they get a girl approximately Ivy's own age to say such a thing?).
Well, whatever was happening, Ivy certainly wasn't going to stay right there and remain a sitting duck for whatever prank was being pulled over on her. Fairly irritated, she went to stand up—and found she couldn't! Try as she might, her legs simply didn't work; it was if she was…paralyzed. It was then that a sick revelation hit her: she was sitting in a wheelchair! What in God's name was happening to her?!
Fumbling with the controls on her wheelchair, Ivy eventually deciphered how to make the contraption start, stop, and run in various directions. Intending to leave the private library she was in and hopefully learn just where she was, Ivy passed a hand mirror on the desk and grabbed it, out of curiosity. What she saw in it was her biggest shock yet. It was her reflection, all right, only it was…different. The features were the same, but they seemed to be more drawn, and lined. It wasn't the face of a college girl, but that of a middle-aged woman. True, a remarkably well preserved middle-aged woman, but a middle-aged woman nonetheless.
Okay, the other Alpha Alpha Alpha girls hadn't set THIS up! As Ivy fought very hard to keep from breaking down completely, one thought consoled her. Why am I so worried? This is a dream, that's all. I fell asleep while writing the letter, and I'm having a really weird dream. It's nothing to get upset about!
Just as she was starting to feel better, a rather dashing brown-haired older man stormed in. "There you are, Ivy," he fumed at her. "Before you say anything, no I haven't made any further progress. It's only been a couple of days since we last spoke!"
She had certainly never spoken to this man before, and yet he talked as if they were familiar. Also, he acted as though he hated her with a great passion. "I have absolutely no idea who you are! And I certainly don't have a clue what you're talking about, or what I've ever done to you!"
The man glared at her even more disgustedly. "What twisted game are you playing now, Ivy?" He moved in on her, until he towered over her wheelchair. "Are you afraid that someone's listening in on us? Well, if they are, I'll tell them what a manipulative, lying bitch you are! I don't care anymore."
Ivy shrunk back, clearly intimidated despite her best efforts to appear unafraid. After all, this man despised her for some reason, and if he were to attack her, she would be practically defenseless, unable to either run away or fight back effectively. "Please," she pleaded, "I don't understand what's going on! And I don't know who you are or why you're so hateful to me!"
The man assessed her for a minute, until his eyes opened wide in amazement. "Why, Ivy Crane," he gasped. "I do believe you're telling the truth!"
Ivy was now more confused than ever. "My name isn't 'Crane,' it's 'Winthrop'! What's yours, anyway, and why would you call me that?"
"David Hastings," he replied, too dumbfounded to say anything else.
Before either of them could speak again, the strange girl Kay bolted into the library, red in the face and breathing hard. "You haven't spoken to anybody, have you? Because—" Kay stopped when she noticed that David was also in the room. "Oh, you're here," Kay finished unhappily.
"Yes, I am," David replied. "Something very strange is going on here, and I aim to find out what it is!"
"Me too!" said Ivy sensing that this girl was somehow the only one could explain the situation. "What's wrong with me?"
Kay gave David an appraising look, as if trying to decide whether or not to take him into confidence. "Fine, I guess I'll have to explain it to both of you. Oh well, I guess you were kinda in on this before, David."
"Get on with it then!" they both insisted in unison.
Kay took a deep breath, as if the explanation to this whole thing was going to be terribly long and convoluted. "You both have to promise not to say anything until I've finished, or else I'll never get it all out. First of all, Ivy, you have to remember: you are not nineteen years old. Except, you sort of are, but I'll get to that later."
Oblivious to the totally confused expressions on her audience's faces, she continued to speak. "Here's the short version of it all: It's 2002, and you're married to Julian Crane, well, were married anyway. This is the Crane mansion, your home, and you have four children, a son and three daughters, of which I'm your youngest. Not long after where you just came from, circumstances broke you and Sam Bennett up. Heartbroken, you married Julian Crane to please your parents and because you thought that he loved you, but on your wedding night found out that his father had ordered him to propose. You ran back to Sam, spent the night with him, but were apparently manipulated somehow into going back to Julian, even though you were carrying Sam's baby. You stayed with Julian and passed your son, Ethan, off as a Crane, but had three daughters with your husband. Meanwhile, Sam, not knowing he's the father, gets over you and marries this woman, Grace, who has amnesia, and they have three kids. Last year, a tabloid found out that Ethan is Sam's son, he got disinherited, and Julian divorced you. Since then, you've been trying to get Sam back, but he won't leave his wife, so you blackmailed David here into pretending to be Grace's long-lost husband and telling his son John that Grace is his mother. This is where it gets kind of unbelievable, but bear with me. Even that didn't work, so I offered to help you out. I found a spell that I thought would make Sam see you the way you were when you were nineteen, but apparently, it took the nineteen-year-old you and stuffed you into the body you're in now. I'm gonna try and fix you, but we need to make sure that no one else finds out." After having gone through all of that as fast as she could, Kay gasped for breath, hoping that it wouldn't be too hard to get them to believe her.
Both David and Ivy gaped at Kay incredulously. "That's completely ridiculous! What you say could never happen, since I would never do something like that to Sam, and anyways, I love him, and I'd never try to get him back through lies and manipulation!"
After hearing Ivy's words, David was more than convinced of everything that Kay had claimed. "You're a VERY stupid girl, Kay! You helped Ivy out in her scheming, by using black magic? You didn't even think this through, consider what the consequences might be? Well, Kay, you truly are your mother's daughter."
"Look, David," Kay replied angrily. "You have no right to lecture me, and besides, you're not so perfect yourself!"
Ivy startled both of them by laughing hysterically. "You expect me to believe that you're my daughter, I married JULIAN CRANE, my entire life has been a disaster, and you cast a spell that brought me into the future? Why, that's the most preposterous thing I've ever heard!"
Kay anxiously contemplated an argument that would convince Ivy. "I don't blame you for not believing me. The whole situation is insane, but it's the truth! Unfortunately, you haven't seen any of the freaky things that have happened over the past couple of years, so I can't mention those. Still, just look around, and you can see I'm telling you the truth! You're older, in a wheelchair, and people you've never met will know you. As I said, I'll do everything I can, but I need you to believe me, since we can't let anyone know and you'll have to pretend that you're the present you." As Kay finished, she hoped that last bit made at least a small amount of sense.
Ivy considered Kay's words carefully. Barring dreaming and/or insanity, she couldn't think of anything else that would explain her situation. The whole supernatural thing was extremely far-fetched, but Ivy somehow felt instinctively that the girl was telling the truth, and she was indeed trapped in her future body. This teenager, then, really was…her daughter. Not her child with Sam, though, but with Julian Crane, of all people! How could she be so stupid as to make the decisions that Kay said she had? What had gone wrong in her life that could have brought her to the point she was at?!
This was all too much for her to even begin to process or understand. "I believe you, and I just want to go home," Ivy implored urgently.
"You will," Kay vowed, though she secretly had no idea how this would eventually work. Would this Ivy get sent back? Or would her present mother's essence effectively "overwrite" this one's? She certainly couldn't be sent back to her place in time with any memory of her fate, or the timeline would be altered. Had her Ivy been transported somewhere, had she been overcome by this new one, or, and this was the possibility that terrified Kay, had the mother she knew been effectively obliterated? Until Kay knew more about this, though, she had to stay together and remain focused, and there was no point in scaring Ivy any more than she already had been.
"I'll figure this all out. I've got a lot at stake in this, too. After all, I want my Mom back," Kay said quietly. Trying to sound confident, she added, "And anyways, David is going to help us with this problem as well."
David immediately reeled back. "Just wait one second here! Why should I help her out, after everything she's done to me?"
"She hasn't done anything to you, David!" Kay countered. "This is Ivy Winthrop, NOT Ivy Crane. She's completely innocent of anything she might have done since."
David was not persuaded. "Even if that's true, I still don't see why I'd WANT our Ivy back, just so she could continue to force me to do her bidding, which is the essentially the end result if you succeed."
"Let me put it this way, David," Kay said maliciously. "My mother may be the only one who knows your big secret, but I could tell everyone that you were lying about being married to Grace Bennett. Don't think I won't, either; I have no loyalties to you, and I'll stop at nothing to help my mother. Besides, it would be kind of fun to see what it does to her and to precious John."
The icy glint in Kay's cold blue eyes convinced David that she was not bluffing, and he stared at the teen in astonishment, and more than a little anger. "It figures, I lose one blackmailer, and I gain another. Fine, I'll do all that I can. What do we do now?"
"Well," replied Kay, "Ivy still needs to be taught as much as possible about her life now. We'd better begin immediately…"
*****
Hank bumped into Gwen quite by accident outside of Sheridan's cottage. "Hello, Gwen, what brings you here today?"
Thankful that Hank had at least had the decency not to start by bringing Ethan up right away, Gwen answered him directly. "Sheridan and I were supposed to meet up for lunch several hours ago, but she never showed. I was hoping I'd find her here, but I don't think she's home. How about you?"
"Same thing, except I'm looking for Luis. We were supposed to play ball, but it's like he's just vanished. And it's not just him: Antonio's nowhere to be found, either. Pilar's getting really worried, and I promised her that I'd do my best to find them both."
"Hmm, I don't like this at all," Gwen mused. "Sheridan's not one to just bail out on people, and if all three of them are missing together? With the track record they have, there's no telling what could've happened to them!"
"I was thinking that, too," Hank replied. "Pilar said that the last time she saw them, they were all at the Bed and Breakfast. Maybe we should go there and see if we can find anything."
Although Gwen certainly didn't want to spend any length of time with Hank, her concern for her friend won out over her discomfort, and she agreed to go with Hank. The two of them drove over to the Bed and Breakfast, where they saw Luis' car, still parked in front. "It hasn't been moved in a while," Hank explained.
Suddenly getting an idea, Hank jumped out of his car, and started searching the ground around the police vehicle. Almost immediately, he found something telling. "Luis' car keys, just lying on the ground!" Hank exclaimed with grim satisfaction.
"What do you think that means?" Gwen asked, beginning to get alarmed.
"Well, as far as I can tell, Luis, most likely along with the others, was trying to get into the car, when something happened, something that made all three of them basically disappear."
"Do you think they could've been abducted, then?"
"That seems to be the most likely conclusion. I mean, Sheridan never did lack for enemies, and we don't really know all that much about Antonio's past. Plus, Luis is a cop and you sometimes run into dangerous personalities on the beat."
"Then, we have to alert the authorities right away!"
"They might not take us seriously, if we don't have any concrete leads, and even if they do, all that red tape will take up time that we just don't have. Besides, that might be the absolute worst thing we could do right now. We don't know who we're dealing with, and if a big investigation starts up, whoever has them might just decide to get rid of them and hide the evidence."
"But we have to do something!" cried Gwen. "We can't just sit here now, when we know that they're probably in horrible danger!"
"Yes, we do," agreed Hank. "And we will, or at least, I will. I'm going to get to the bottom of this no matter what, but I'll definitely have a better chance of succeeding and helping them if I have a partner. What do you say, Gwen? Are you in?"
"Of course I am!" Gwen replied without hesitation. "Sheridan's my best friend, and I'm not going to lose her again, not after we just got her back. Despite what you may think of me, I'm not a totally evil monster devoid of any feelings, and I do care about my friends."
"I never thought you were, Gwen!" Hank insisted. "Anyway, if we're going to find them, we're going to have to find out who their enemies might be, and the best way of doing that is to start by finding out what 'Brian' and 'Diana' have been doing this past year."