Series: Snapshots of the Past

Story: Phoenix

Chapter 18

Disclaimer: See Chapter 1

Previously: Jed realized how much Ellie missed Abbey; Abbey tells Jed about her confrontation with Maggie; Jed is dumbfounded and annoyed when Abbey dismisses his feelings regarding Frank

Summary: Jed realizes Liz is growing up when he's forced to stand in for Abbey on an important shopping trip; when Frank Crews makes a court appearance, Jed is in for a big shock

"That's it, Daddy!"

Loud and cheerful, Lizzie's voice rang through the store with a zing of eleven-year-old excitement. She ran towards the sheer pink material, bypassing several displays peeking out along the way.

"That's it?" Jed wasn't nearly as impressed. Then again, he had no frame of reference. Lingerie shopping with Abbey was nothing like this. This trip was odd and uncomfortable, just as he figured it would be.

"Yeah, that's the one Amy got! And the one Sara wants too!" Liz held the bra out in front of her, joyfully admiring the lace on the sides of the cups and the little pink satin bow in the center.

"I like it." Ellie nodded, giving a flare of reassurance that Liz appreciated.

"That's one of our most popular styles right now for younger girls," a sales clerk added as she observed from a close distance. "How old are you?"

"Eleven."

The clerk gestured with her index finger. "Come with me."

Enthusiastically, Lizzie complied. She cocked her head behind her to see her father and sister trailing behind just as they turned the corner. "Ohhhh."

"This one is what the junior high girls are wearing." The clerk placed a hanger behind Lizzie's head and allowed the bra to drape across her chest, the padded cups falling to where her breasts would be.

"I LOVE it!"

"No, no, no, no, no." Jed vehemently shook his head as he approached with clawed hands ready to take away her cosmetically enhanced attributes.

"Daddy, I love it! Really, I do!"

"No."

"Please!" Liz tilted her head and furrowed her brows in her plea.

"It is our fastest seller." The clerk smiled fondly until she met Jed's steely gaze.

"No, see, I don't think you understand." He closed the gap between himself and Lizzie. "Lizzie, Sweetheart, hold down your shirt."

Confused by the request, Liz stared blankly at her father. "What?"

"Hold it down." He demonstrated the move by pulling on his own shirt to flatten the line against his upper body. Liz followed his lead.

"Like this?"

"Perfect." He stood behind her and pushed her forward. "See? There's nothing there. Not even the start of breasts."

"DAD!" Lizzie immediately let go of her grip on her shirt. She had experienced various levels of embarrassment in the past, but nothing compared to her father's rather truthful declaration that a vital part of her anatomy was, indeed, underdeveloped.

"There isn't," Jed insisted, fatherly naiveté overshadowing his common sense. "She just wants to feel like she has them. She's still flat, just like a little girl should be." And to him, there was absolutely nothing wrong with that.

The sound of snickers drew Lizzie's attention across the aisle where two teenaged girls poked their heads around a circular rack, spying as they covered the corner of their mouths in a halfhearted effort to stifle their laughter and snippy whispers.

"I don't want anything!" Liz threw the bra back on the display and brushed past her father's shoulder.

"Lizzie, wait!" Jed grabbed Ellie's hand and stormed after her. "Elizabeth, hold on!"

"I can't believe you did that!" she shouted as she stomped her way towards the exit.

"All I did was point out the truth."

"You humiliated me in front of everyone!"

"Now hang on a second. What happened just now wasn't my fault and I don't appreciate you talking to me like this. We came to get a training bra, Elizabeth."

She spun on her heels to face him. "That's what that was!"

"Oh no it wasn't. I may not know that much about women's lingerie, but that, My Dear, was not a training bra. A bustomatic launching pad is what that was."

"I wanted it! All the junior high girls are wearing them."

"First of all, you're not in junior high. You're in elementary school. Secondly, I don't give a damn if you were in college at this age, I am not going to buy my eleven-year-old daughter a padded bra."

"I'm never going anywhere with you ever again!"

Already pushed to his limit by the stress of Zoey's condition, Jed's patience plunged to an unrecognizable low. "That's fine. You can go Christmas shopping all on your own then."

"I'll go with you, Lizzie." True to form, Ellie wedged her way between father and daughter to buffer the disagreement the second she saw the distress on her sister's face.

"Thanks, Ellie," Liz replied as she and Jed exchanged an icy stare.

"And Mommy will come too!"

"No, she won't. She probably won't even be around for Christmas. She'll be at the hospital just like she is now, like she always is." Usually, Liz was the vocal Bartlet daughter, but lately, she had done a good job of hiding her feelings. In fact, until this very moment, she hadn't expressed an inkling of disappointment or hurt about the situation with Zoey.

"All right, listen, I want to talk to you guys." Jed guided his daughters to the fountain bench a few feet away. He helped Ellie onto his lap and brushed Liz's hair away from the side of her face to take in her droopy features. "I know the past few weeks have been difficult..."

"Daddy, Mommy won't miss Christmas, will she?" Ellie's eyes sparkled with a subtle hint of tears. Jed gently stroked the top of her head with one hand as he held her tighter with the other.

"No, Princess, she isn't going to miss Christmas." The girls never dealt well with Abbey's absence during her residency, but this year especially, they needed their mother. He knew that and he was convinced that Abbey did as well.

"Lizzie said..."

"I heard what Lizzie said and Lizzie is wrong. Your mother loves you both and just because she's spending a lot of time at the hospital, it doesn't mean she doesn't miss you two with all her heart." He looked to Ellie first. "You know that, don't you?"

"Yeah," she said softly.

He looked at Liz next. "You know that?" He lifted her chin when her gaze fell to the floor. "Elizabeth."

"I know. I just wish she was here, especially now."

He could summon all his efforts, but Jed was no substitute for his wife when it came to these kinds of things. "I'm sorry I embarrassed you."

Lizzie embraced a softer reaction, shrugging as she turned her expressive blue eyes to her father. "You can't help it. You shouldn't be looking for bras. You're a Dad."

"Well, thank you very much."

Even though she didn't say it, she was quite proud that he was her Dad. The way he willingly chose to ignore his discomfort to take her shopping didn't go unnoticed or unappreciated. "I'm sorry I yelled at you."

"Yeah, me too. You sure did inherit my temper." He affectionately ruffled her hair to lighten the mood. "We're going to have to watch that."

"I will," she promised. "Will you buy me the bra?"

"The pink one, sure."

"The white one?"

"No." With that short response, any glimmer of hope still drifting behind her jaded frown, instantly dimmed.

"That's why I want Mom here." Of course, Abbey wouldn't approve either, but at least she'd understand the motivation.

"Do your friends have that bra?"

After a brief hesitation, Liz shook her head. "But they don't have to. They don't need it. They already have something there."

Oh, how he didn't want to have this conversation. With another sigh and a tight swallow, he forced himself to continue. "You will have something there one day."

"When?"

"When the time is right." Definitely not an adequate response. He slid himself closer to her and tried again. "Soon."

"I'm tired of waiting." Liz's head hung low, her posture crumbling to a deflated slouch.

"You know, you're not the only one who's ever gone through this. I went through something very similar." Her curiosity piqued, she looked at him quizzically. "I didn't say it was exactly the same."

"What?" The one-syllable word dragged with disinterest.

"Height."

"What?"

"I was too short."

She wiggled to straighten her back. "When?"

"All through school. I was always shorter than the other guys. You know what it's like to have to stand in the front row for every class picture and STILL be shorter than half the girls? Or to show up for basketball tryouts and have the other guys make fun of you because you're a foot shorter than they are?"

"They made fun you?"

"All the time."

Ellie squirmed, positioning her legs across his thighs. "I don't like it when anyone makes fun of you, Daddy."

"Thank you, Sweetheart."

"So what did you do?" Lizzie asked.

"I prayed that I would grow. I did all kinds of exercises. I hung myself off a tree branch in hopes that it would stretch me. One time, I even had your Uncle Jack tug on my ankles as hard as he could while I laid flat on my back and held on to the legs of the dining room table."

"What happened?"

"The table fell over and I got in trouble for not clearing it first." He tweaked the corner of her lip as it finally curved into a smile. "The point is, I know what you're going through."

She could accept that. Maybe he did understand, at least a little. To her, he was so strong and powerful that she had never even considered his height, but now that she did, she had to admit being short must have been devastating to a person like her father.

She momentarily let down her guard and softened her stiff frame in sympathy. But seconds later, as she replayed his words in her mind, it occurred to her. "But, Daddy, you didn't grow."

"I beg your pardon. I did so." And he was insulted by the implication otherwise.

"I mean, not as tall as the basketball players."

That was true. "Well, no."

"So what you're saying is that the praying didn't help. The stretching didn't help. Nothing helped you and nothing's going to help me. I may never have what Amy has! It may never happen!"

He silently noted the peculiar way Liz managed to spin the moral of the story. "That isn't what I said. They're two entirely different things, Lizzie."

"But you said they were the same."

"I said they were similar and they are, but in two entirely different ways. Do you understand?"

"No."

"Me either," Ellie agreed.

Obviously, the girls weren't the only ones who needed Abbey. Jed needed her too, if for no other reason than to help him get his foot out of his mouth and deal with Lizzie's crisis. He'd give anything to sit next to her and listen while she explained to Liz that, medically, she was exactly where she needed to be in the stages of breast development. But that wasn't going to happen, at least not on this day. He was on a solo mission and though the topic made him queasy, Lizzie's feelings came first. He cast aside his natural apprehension and continued.

"Lizzie, all girls develop there. And let me just add that if genetics has anything to do with it, then you're in pretty good shape. Just look at your mother."

"I guess."

"Amy started early, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you."

"What if there IS something wrong? What if I go to my first day of junior high without them?"

"That could happen. You're starting junior high in less than a year. You may very well not have them by then..."

Liz folded her arms in front of her chest, a clear indication that Jed's pep talk had detoured down a trail of negativity. "That doesn't help."

"No, I guess it doesn't." They were at an impasse, neither having the answers the other was searching for or the magic words to smooth a path towards another topic of discussion. So when all else failed, Jed relied on honesty to pull him through. "Lizzie, I don't know what to say to make you feel better right now."

She looked up after a few long minutes of silence. "That's okay."

"Because I'm a Dad?" He flipped her hair behind her shoulder, happy to see another smile. "I'm not going to buy you the white bra, but I will talk to your mom about it...and I'll leave it up to her."

"Thank you!" Liz sidelined Ellie and jumped into his arms before he even finished.

"You're welcome." Jed straightened the ends of her dark locks as she pulled away. "In the meantime, you know one thing that dads ARE actually good at?"

"What?"

"Sharing three scoops of brownie nut fudge ice cream with their daughters."

"I want ice cream!" Ellie declared, bouncing to the side to help her father rise to his feet.

"Then we better go. Mommy's going to be home in an hour to get you ready for your show tonight." He took her hand as they waited for Liz.

"Okay." Lizzie sluggishly stood up. "I want ice cream too. Maybe the fat will end up in my chest."

Chuckling, Jed yanked on her arm to drop a kiss to the top of her head.

"I like your boobs, Lizzie," Ellie assured her during their walk around the clothing racks towards the ice cream parlor in the back of the department store.

"I don't have boobs, Ellie."

"It looks like you do to me."

"Those are just buds. Amy says the mound is supposed get bigger any day now and then the nipples are going to get puffier."

More than enough information for Jed. "Hey, hey, hey. New subject please."

The girl walking beside him now wasn't the Lizzie he recognized. The Lizzie he liked to imagine was frozen forever in time, a little girl with round cheeks and baby fine chestnut brown hair. She was short and thin, so vulnerable and sweet, so dependent on her parents. But in reality, that wasn't the girl she was anymore. Sometime, when he wasn't looking, she had transformed into a beautiful preteen, so curious about the world around her and so eager to begin the journey towards womanhood.

Enjoying a scoop of ice cream wasn't the experience it was all those Friday nights on the pedestrian bridge overlooking the banks of the Muddy River in Boston. Back then, it was a time for five-year-old Lizzie to bond with her father. Now, it was simply a scoop of ice cream.

The harsh reality that simmered all afternoon, hit Jed like a punch to his stomach when he brought the girls home a little while later. As he braced himself to leave on an important errand, Ellie gave him a kiss goodbye, but Lizzie simply waved her hand, too distracted by her phone call to pay much attention. It had been a subtle change, but over the course of the past few months, Lizzie's priorities had shifted. She was standing at the brink of her teenage years.

Unprepared to deal with the rollercoaster of emotions creeping inside him as he was smacked with the image of a growing Lizzie for the very first time, Jed traded in his jacket for his long business coat, said goodbye to his mother-in-law, and headed out the door.

A kaleidoscope of wistful memories held his attention on the long drive to the courthouse. But as he turned the winding road that led to the newly renovated building, his car came to a crashing halt, immobilizing him and every stray thought that still lingered in his mind.

Jed sat in the driver's seat, his fingers folded calmly around the wheel in the misguided belief that he could will himself into submission - anything to prevent the timebomb that was ticking inside him as he looked across the courtyard. It was him. The faceless, nameless stranger who pricked at his veiled security, tore apart his wife's confidence, shattered her brave demeanor into a million pieces, and emotionally crippled the entire family, was standing only ten feet in front of him.

Frankie Crews.

He had dark, wavy hair and a sloppy beard that tightened his entire face. His six-foot frame would have towered over Abbey, her petite body no match for his bulky girth. Jed mustered his strength as butterflies invaded his abdomen and exploded into a force greater than his nerves, greater than his temper. Pure rage drove him now. It dictated his movements, motivated his actions, and pierced at his soul, pressuring him to get out of the car while his eyes remained glued to Frankie.

The orange jumpsuit seemed plain on this man. This was the man who violently swept Abbey off her feet and whisked her away to a private, deserted location where he taunted her with a knife, causing her to fear so strongly for her life that she detached herself from her past. This was the person who beat her, leaving marks so colorful that, to outsiders, they masked the deeper psychological wounds he inflicted on her. He stole her optimism and crushed it under a wrath that recognized no bounds or innocent bystanders.

The orange jumpsuit seemed too plain on such a monster. It humanized him, allowed him to blend in with the white collar criminals. This man needed something more, something to identify him to the world as an evil cretin, so unwilling or unable to live by the rules of society that he could emphatically rationalize hurting a woman.

His brain screamed for retribution, but Jed ignored the impulse. Instead, he entered the courtroom and snuck up behind the prosecutor's table. His right hand was stuffed in his pocket as he extended his left hand in a gesture to Mike Conroy, the assistant district attorney.

"Jed, you probably shouldn't be here," Mike warned as he slipped through the swinging door that separated the spectators from the front of the courtroom.

"I had to be here. I had to see him."

"Wouldn't you have rather just seen his picture?"

"No, I had to be here. I wanted to be here for this. I'm ready, Mike. I'm ready to face this creep during trial."

"Jed..." Mike patted Jed's shoulder to lead him out into the hall. "There isn't going to be a trial. He's pleading out to a lesser charge."

"What?"

"He took our plea bargain."

"What plea bargain?" Surely Mike was wrong. Jed didn't even know a plea bargain was on the table.

"I assumed you knew. He's copping to assault and battery with a deadly weapon."

Assault and battery. After everything Frank Crews put his family through, he'd get off on a single assault and battery charge. "You've gotta be kidding me!"

"Jed..."

"Mike, you've gotta be kidding me!" He spun around, away from Mike, his fingers running furiously through his light brown strands of hair.

"No."

Jed licked his lips, accepting the fact that he was losing the battle to contain his outrage. He took several steps closer to the double doors where he could steal another glance at the bastard, then turned to Mike. "This isn't assault with a deadly weapon! This is premeditated kidnapping, attempted murder, assault with intent to inflict permanent injury!"

"I know what it is."

"Then why?"

"Because I'm afraid we can't get a conviction," Mike admitted honestly, a slight twinge of annoyance to his voice.

"Why?"

"Maggie Holloway denies she ever confessed anything to Abbey."

"She didn't confess," Jed explained. "She implied it."

"She says Abbey misunderstood."

"Oh, come on!" He wasn't present that day in the elevator, but Jed was certain Abbey hadn't misunderstood. He dropped his head to the side, dumbfounded and disgusted by the insinuation.

"And she says that Frankie was with her the night of Abbey's attack. She's his alibi. Couple that with the fact that Abbey suffered from hysterical amnesia for several weeks..."

"It's a real thing, Mike. Check with the American Psychiatric Association. Hell, I'll hire experts to take the stand if you want." Abbey wouldn't be criticized for the psychological ramifications of her attack, not if he could help it.

"I know it's real, Jed, but the defense will crucify her."

"This is ridiculous."

"They'll say she couldn't possibly be sure that Frank is her assailant because her memories are jumbled and incohesive and that we can't be sure they're really HER memories, that they haven't been planted in her mind by you or her therapist. They'll say she is looking for a scapegoat, a person to blame, especially now that her baby is fighting for her life after a premature birth."

"And what about the evidence? Abbey wasn't the only one hurt that night. Frankie's blood was all over her clothes. What about that?"

"That's what Frankie's afraid of as well and that's why he'll cop to the plea. What he doesn't know is that we can't prove definitively that it's HIS blood. They only tested a small sample and until scientists come up with a way to conclusively use DNA..."

"Then lets wait until they do. Or at least until we know he'll spend some real time in prison. There's a bill that I'm working to pass in the legislature that will guarantee stiffer penalties for this kind of crime."

"If we wait, we risk losing him. If we dismiss the charges and he walks out of here, there's no telling that we'll ever see him again."

"Great," Jed muttered, angered by the choice between waiting for scientific answers that were still years away or pushing forward now with what they had.

"They're working on DNA testing, Jed. In the meantime, I know the system isn't perfect, but it works."

"There was so much evidence. The gloves and the blood. What about the knife cut? Abbey said her attacker cut himself with the knife. Does Frankie have a wound?"

"Yes, he does." Mike nodded. "He claims he got hurt on a hunting accident. He cut himself while cleaning the deer. His brother backs him up."

Jed's sarcastic laugh resonated through the hall as he lowered his weight onto the back of a chair. "His brother. Because his brother would never lie."

"Jed, my hands are tied."

"How am I supposed to tell Abbey? How do I look her in the eye and tell her the man who nearly destroyed our lives is pleading guilty to less than half his crime and that there's a possibility he could walk in less than a year?"

"You don't have to tell her."

"Yes, I do." Keeping Abbey in the dark wasn't an option for him.

"No, Jed. I mean, Abbey already knows. She's one reason I made the decision to offer the plea bargain."

"What are you talking about?"

"Abbey doesn't want to go to trial. She wanted this. She wanted a plea."

Jed tried to rationalize the words he was hearing. Mike couldn't possibly be right. There was no way that Abbey would want a plea bargain, no way she wouldn't want to face this man and personally see to it that he paid for his crime. Not the Abbey he knew.

Or would she?

Her recent behavior had thrown him for a loop. She no longer treated him like an equal partner. Since the attack, she had been making decisions without him, shutting him out of important milestones. Maybe she had done it again. Maybe Mike wasn't the one who was wrong. Perhaps Abbey knew. Perhaps this really was what she wanted.

Just the thought made Jed crazy. His restraint drowned under a wave of nausea that came from the remnants of a broken spirit as he caught another glimpse of Frankie, the arrogant bastard who triumphantly took his seat at the defense table. This time, he couldn't stop himself. He didn't suppress his fury, he embraced it, sprinting into the courtroom and pushing his way through a milling crowd. His hands closed so tightly into angry fists that his knuckles were turning white. Unstoppable, uncontrollable anger energized him as he lunged forward across the barricades between him and Frankie and prepared to take the first swing.

TBC