Disclaimer: Please see Chapter 1 for details.

Time to Consider
Chapter 5
By Callisto

Lakeside Bed & Breakfast
Lake Catherine, VT

Several hours later, after an awkwardly, tense dinner, Parker and Ethan ambled companionably around the inn, getting a better feel of their surroundings. Going up a staircase just inside the side door off the mudroom, they found a little used room and poked around, invasively curious. Parker truly liked her little brother. At this age, he hung onto her every word and looked up to her as a pseudo-parent. She hoped that one day, she would have the chance to tell him what a cute kid he had been. A brief smile lit her face as she thought about the last time she had seen the grown-up version. After Jarod left, Ethan kept looking at her apprehensively, as though he expected her to blame him for Jarod's behavior. She assured him that she would never hold anything Jarod did against him. Ethan breathed a heavy sigh of relief and happily served the remainder of her dinner, which had been expertly prepared.

Once alone and settled in her own room, she flopped tiredly on her own bed. Today had been extremely long. At the airport, on a lark she ditched her mother and brother for a few moments to satisfy her curiosity. However, the looks she kept getting from her mother made her uncomfortable, until the voices, ah…another aspect of her old life that remained with her like the tiny red-eyed amphibian hitchhiker, told her that Catherine had important news to share. Whatever it was, Parker felt quite equal to anything her mother had to throw at her. She knew Mr. Parker wasn't her father but she suspected that her mother wanted to inform her of this. What had started to tease Parker was the identity of Ethan's father. This time around, it couldn't have been Major Charles, since Catherine had left the Centre long before Ethan had been conceived on the other side of the looking glass but with the way Ben greeted her mother, she felt secure in her assumptions on that point as well. The book she had been reading fell unattended in her lap. She was thus wrapped up in her own thoughts when she heard a light knocking at the bedroom door. Suspecting her mother wanted to peek in to make sure everything was all right, she called out. If she had been able, Parker would've found the misunderstanding between her mother and herself as amusing. At the charity ball, Parker had unconsciously done what Mr. Parker had trained her to do—use her looks and sex to chat up the clients, while deftly convincing them to part with their money for a good cause. As her mother, Catherine neither understood nor would've ever approved of using her daughter in that manner.

The door opened slowly, finally revealing the dark-haired head of her little brother. Ethan's eyes were large and uncomfortable. A quick glance at the clock confirmed what she knew; it was after 10pm and way past his bedtime. The tired-looking little boy slipped into the room looking forlorn and came to a stop just a few feet from her bedside, ready to make his request. Before a word was spoken, he started tugging at the front, inside leg of his pajama pants.

Puzzlement furrowed Parker's brow when she asked abruptly, "What's the matter?"

"Nothing," said he in a small, tight voice.

Easily understanding what he was too embarrassed to say, Parker frowned slightly and replied, "Come here, where is the tag?" she asked reaching behind him. Obligingly, he turned while she read the size on the tag. "You're growing like a reed. Go in the bathroom and take off the underwear. We'll get you some that fit tomorrow."

Relief clouded his eyes as he practically ran from the room and down the hall to the bathroom. Only a minute later, Ethan came back and stood in the same spot. Looking up surprised, she asked, "What's wrong?"

"I don't like it here," he said simply.

The past two weeks had educated her in Ethan-speak. Translation: Can I sleep with you where it's safe? Nodding indifferently, Parker lifted her book, while Ethan crawled over her, one of his more annoying habits, to settle down on the other side of the bed instead of walking around. Without any prompting, he leaned his body into hers and snuggled close. Parker settled the book in her lap again, rested her cheek on top of his soft hair and began to read to him, while simultaneously scratching his back. They both were asleep within a few minutes.

Early the next morning, it was in a slightly modified position that Catherine found them. She assumed Ethan had gotten an early start but was slightly surprised to find him sleeping with Maritza. They were slumped together in bed sound asleep. A month ago, Maritza would've never stood for this. The teenager would have bundled up her little brother in the middle of the night and returned him to his own bed. Catherine shook her head at the many changes that had occurred in so little time. With gentle deliberation, Catherine sighed, determined not to put off the inevitable another moment and woke her children.

After a brief breakfast, Parker looked up in time to see her mother exchange a significant glance with Ben. The older man immediately caught the message and cheerfully induced Ethan into a quick trip into town. Catherine, taking no chances, walked over to her daughter and asked her to stay for a while. After a few beats, Catherine nervously spoke up.

"Maritza, there is something I need to tell you. Please try to hear me out before speaking your mind. This isn't easy and I regret waiting so long to tell you this."

Parker gave her mother a small, understanding smile but otherwise remained silent. Catherine wasn't sure how to take her reaction but was determined to blurt it out. "Darling, I brought you out here for a reason. I'm not sure there's an easy way to say this to lessen the blow, so I'll just come out with it," Catherine said softly. Casting Maritza an apprehensive glance, she said quietly, "It's your right to know that your father, your real father is Ben Miller. The man you've called Daddy all these years was sterile. We couldn't have children. At first I thought it was my fault and I didn't expect to ever have a child." Catherine was wringing the table napkin in her fingers tightly. "Then when our marriage began to fail and I finally confronted him with the rumors I kept hearing about his philandering, he abruptly confessed to everything." Her voice became stronger and her eyes had a faraway look as though the incident occurred just a few minutes before.

"By the time he admitted what I'd suspected, disgust and disappointment had long ago replaced any regard and confidence I had in him. He actually tried to claim that he was doing it for the good of the family corporation. Still, the idea of my marriage falling apart and being childless as well plunged me into a dangerous depression. A psychiatrist friend of mine recommended that I take a long vacation. That's when I came up here. And when Ben decided to flirt with me, like he usually did, harmless really--I took him up on it. Pushed it a bit to tell the truth and fell into having an affair with him. When I returned home from one of those trips, I found that I was pregnant."

Catherine looked at her daughter, waiting for the volcano of emotion to erupt. When Maritza returned her gaze composedly, Catherine breathed a sigh of relief. She and Mr. Parker had parted ways with as much enmity and hostility as either could summon. The evil Mr. Parker had done was such that Catherine could never forgive.

"I'm glad you told me but I must confess that I suspected this is what you wanted to tell me the second I met Ben. He looks at you in a way I've always wanted someone to look at me," Parker said sadly. Poor Tommy had been so close but she had waited too long.

"You will, I promise. God knows what you're feeling right now. I was determined to tell you the truth before he found a way to hurt you with it." By her tone of voice, Parker knew she meant Mr. Parker. "When I first met him, I was so happy. We'd been married for a couple years before I began to see the other, darker side of him. Oh Sweetheart, it was so ugly and manipulative. I pray you never experience anything like that."

Parker offered her mother a soul-weary smile as though saying, 'Too late.' This expression stopped Catherine short and made her stare at Parker with confused wonder. Actually, Parker was relieved to hear her mother's admission. She had been fairly certain that Raines was pulling her leg in declaring himself her father but there was another more pressing matter in her mind.

"Mama, I have a question for you. It's important to me and something that's been weighing on my mind…for some time," Parker began haltingly. She was about to say years but fortunately realized that wouldn't have made any sense. "It's sort of a hypothetical question that came up. If your back was up against the wall and you found yourself surrounded by people you couldn't trust—not even Da—Mr. Parker, you're pregnant and after an abortive attempt to rescue a group of children who were kidnapped and held at, say, the Centre for instance. Would you fake your death? Knowing I was close by to see your dead body? Why would you have put me through that?"

The words spilled from Parker's lips as she began what in a small, sane part of her mind she knew objectively must sound insane but her heart and her damaged psyche wouldn't let up. So drawn within herself Parker didn't notice how still her mother became as the hypothetical grew more convoluted. When she finished, Parker's eyes shifted expectantly over to her mother's face. A deep hunger to understand coupled with a youthful eagerness for mitigating evidence to free her own damaged, overburdened and exploited inner-self from the pricey reparations her sense of justice demanded of her loyalty and self-worth.

However the look on Catherine's face was a study. At once she looked guilty and confused. How her daughter could've found out about the child Dr. Raines had kidnapped after his failed attempt to capture another was beyond Catherine. The last part of her daughter's question had her flummoxed and a flash of anger suffused her mind as the quiet inner-voice of her mother softly imposed itself in her thoughts—calming and urging a full answer without question.

"I don't know how you could've known what happened and most of this isn't any of your business but this much I will tell you. My husband, Mr. Parker, has a close friend—a doctor, named Raines. Dr. Raines' wife was also a physician, a good friend of mine and I trusted her. Just before I decided to take you and leave him for good, I was a nervous wreck. I kept trying to convince myself that everything I knew and found out wasn't true. During my period of self-delusion, I wasn't able to sleep, I could barely think straight. That's when Edna prescribed a few pills to me. When I ran out, I couldn't find Edna but her husband refilled the prescription.

"Sydney, a psychiatrist friend of mine, caught me taking the pills and took a few to examine. He was curious because usually I never took medications. A few days later he asked for the full bottle of pills and confiscated them from me, explaining they were psychotropic drugs that would've made a normal person act irrationally. When I told him where I had gotten them from, he was furious. I swore him to secrecy and told him my plan for leaving my husband which included faking my own suicide. Sydney pointed out that I was being short sighted, forgetting about my little girl and to allow a few days of fasting to flush the drugs from my system. That did the trick because afterwards I learned something so devastating that I no longer had a choice but to leave and took the direct route—I grabbed you and ran."

"Oh my God, Mom. I knew there must have more to it. He lied, again and again," Parker replied blinking away grateful tears.

"He told you about this? When?"

Cover story in place, Parker explained with conscious sheepishness, that she had called her father about a year ago from a payphone asking how he was and if he missed her. This was partially true and based upon Estella's answers to her leading questions.

Catherine blanched at the explanation and closing her eyes, started rubbing her forehead to stave off an impending headache. Parker sympathized with her mother and tried to ease the hurt she just caused.

"I talked to him from a payphone and did just like on the James Bond movies, I didn't stay on the line any longer than a minute. I also put too much money in the machine so the operator wouldn't come on asking for more. I took precautions, but now, I don't think I'll ever want to speak to him again. Mom, there's something else I'm curious about—my brother. Not Ethan but my twin, where is he?" she asked bluntly. With a well-hidden shiver of disgust, she remembered the deplorable conditions under which Lyle had been raised into a cannibalistic sociopath all courtesy of the head ghoul himself, Mr. Raines. As she was completing this thought; Ben unexpectedly returned interrupting their chat.

"Excuse me, ladies but it seems that I forgot my wallet and I left Ethan waiting in the truck. Strolling over to a far counter, Ben retrieved his wallet from a cookie jar in the shape of an old-fashioned barrel. Just like the one she made for her father as a birthday present when she was a little girl. Like gears shifting and then falling effortlessly into place, the pieces of the puzzle finally fit. A blaze of white-hot anger lit her eyes from within as she stared at Ben.

When he entered the kitchen, the air seemed calm though Catherine did have the look of being suddenly blindsided. As he stuffed the wallet in his pants pocket he happened to glance at Maritza. Her expressive eyes held an anger and confusion that came up so suddenly he instinctively paused. If he had to guess, this was her delayed reaction to having him as a father, which made his heart ache sadly.

"What the hell is going on here?" Maritza asked with a shaky, rising voice. Turning to her mother, she asked accusingly, "Not you too. How could you lie to me about that? Why bother telling me anything at all?"

"I've only lied to you once and that was to protect you. I would never intentionally hurt you! How dare you accuse me of that?!" Catherine shouted at her daughter, proving to Ben it was from her that Maritza got her explosive anger.

"Mama, I'm not a fool. If he's my father than he has to be Mr. Parker's brother. Who's kidding who here!?"

Both Catherine and Ben's eyes widened in shock. They had planned on telling Maritza this part together. Having her accuse them of lying because of this disturbing detail caught them unawares. Catherine recovered first, calmly repeating, "I would never hurt you. I love you more than you'll ever know. How did you find out? We were trying to figure out a way of telling you."

Before Parker could reply, Ben said in a decisive tone, "Catherine, let me handle this. It's about time I sat down and had a long talk with my daughter. Seems to me we were worrying over nothing. She knows more than we gave her credit for." With that Ben opened the kitchen door that lead out to the rear yard and beckoned for Maritza to follow him.