AN: A cyber cookie to anyone who can tell me what song the title of this chapter is from and who sang it. It is one of my new favourite songs, but most of you are likely more familiar with another song by the same female artist. I'm sorry for the long wait for this chapter. Life has been crazy. But I am now officially the third most skilled post secondary and/or apprentice for Automotive Technology in my province. Or at least third most skilled out of everyone who competed. I hope to have more time to update everything with my March break swiftly approaching. And more time to be online. I'm missin my cheerleader/guinea pig. I have to admit this has not been Cheer approved so I'm sorry if it sucks monkey ba…bananas giggles I normally give them to Cheer to read over first but she's been sick and I've been busy so we haven't been meeting up. Thus this is unbeta'ed. Please review if you read and please point out anything wrong with the story. I will be making notes and fixing issues in the final draft, which I will begin to write when this one is finished. When it's done it will be archived on my website, which is still in the coming soon stage at this point. I do own the domain name already, but don't go there yet because all you'll get is advertising until I get my act together and buy a webhosting plan someplace. Say, anyone know of any good cheap or free hosting sites? Just a bit of background on the movie, to help some things in this chapter make sense. Matty tells Taylor at one point that he was due to go hunting with his dad on November 14th, 1986 but they arrested his dad that night so they never got to go. It also tells you at the start of the movie that the date they take Matty to kill Bobby Boulevard is late November, 1987. Thus Matty, (Or in my story Matty and Storm) have been living with their uncle for a year. Matty is twelve when they try to make him kill Bobby and it's about twelve years later in the movie, making Matty about 24 during movie events. I'm assuming Taylor is about Matty's age or perhaps just a bit older. I know I need to fix up the ages of them from the first chapter and I'll get to it someday. So in short Storm is 20 in the movie, she was 7 when her dad went in and 8 when her uncle tried to make her brother kill their friend. Hope that clears up any confusion.
Velocity Shift
By TempestRaces
Chapter 11 – I, the Candid Castaway
"Why're you cryin Matty?" Eight year old Storm asked her twelve year old big brother as he sobbed his way into her room in the dark, obviously trying to be quiet and not quite managing it.
"They shot him! They tried to make me shoot 'im and when I wouldn't they did it!"
"Shot who Matty? Who shot who?" Storm got out of her bed in a tangled flurry of sheets, her new pink nightgown stopping just above her knees, revealing that they were still slightly dimpled by baby fat she was slowly growing out of, and crossed the room quickly to her brother's side. Her legs were growing longer faster then she could adapt to and it made her gangly and apt to trip over her own feet.
"Teddy and Clueless shot Bobby." Storm watched as Matty sobbed. "He tried to make me shoot him and when I wouldn't do it he told me he'd just move him outta town but then he shot him anyway."
"Teddy killed Bobby Boulevard?" Storm asked incredulously. Bobby Boulevard was like a second uncle to them, a man they could count on almost more then their blood uncle and even their own father. Storm watched as Matty only nodded as he tried to get his tears under control. Matty hated to cry because men didn't cry. He was always telling her he had to be a man. Their father always told him that he had to be a man for his little sister; that he was too old to act like a kid. If Matty was crying then Storm knew whatever had caused it was very serious. "Why?"
"Teddy says Bobby's the reason pop went away."
"He thinks Bobby ratted on pop! Bobby ain't no rat!"
"That's what I told him but he said it's always who you wish it wasn't and then gave me a gun." Matty crushed her to his narrow chest as he cried into her long, curly hair.
"Shush Matty." She whispered in a voice made slightly lisping by the fact she was missing both her front teeth, her adult teeth just starting to appear. She hated how she looked without them. "What did you do?"
"I just told Teddy I couldn't do it. He told me they'd just rough him up a little. Then he made me leave the room. Bobby didn't rat out pop. I know he didn't!"
Storm wrapped her arms around her brother's waist as he cried, weeping for an innocence he was too young to know he'd lost, but quite old enough to know he'd never get back.
"I just wanna go home." Matty gasped out around his broken crying.
"Me too. I want everything back the way it was. I want pop." She sniffled, on the verge of tears herself. She didn't really comprehend the enormity of what had happened. She wasn't really old enough to understand the finality of death. Matty fully understood what dead meant and how it meant they'd never see Bobby again. All she knew was that her uncle Bobby was gone away just like her pop and that meant she wouldn't see him again for a long time.
She'd looked up as Matty closed his eyes but opened them again quickly, seeing in his minds eye Bobby Boulevard with blood running down his chin. "Oh god."
"What Matty?"
"They cut his tongue out. He was tellin me that he didn't rat on no body and they cut his tongue out so he couldn't talk to me no more." Matty said as he gagged. He realized after saying it he shouldn't have told his little sister. She saw the fact he was worried about what he was telling her written all over his tear stained face. She used one chubby hand to wipe off his cheek.
"Don't cry Matty. You tried to help. Don't cry." She tried to comfort her brother as best she could.
"You should go back to bed." Matty tried to push her back toward her frilly pink bed. She hated it. It was pretty and girlie and everything she wasn't. Just like her room in her uncle's house. She hated it all. She hated how they cooked, when they ate, when they went to bed and how they made her play. She hated it all and most of all she hated how she never got to see her brother anymore since they'd been living with Teddy. It had been just over a year. Their father had been arrested in the early morning hours of Valentine's day 1986. It was now November 26th, one year later.
"How long 'til my pop comes to get me?" Storm asked Matty as he pulled the ruffled comforter up around her slim shoulders after he'd managed to get her back into her bed.
"Depends on if he gets good behaviour or not." Matty answered her question, trying to sound grown up.
Storm giggled, thinking of her father needing to be good. "If what everyone says it right he's in trouble then cause everyone says I'm just like him and I'm always in trouble for not behaving good."
Matty chuckled at her, and then made a slight hiccupping sound as he finally totally stopped crying. "Yeah, he's in deep trouble if he needs to depend on being good. Just like you."
"I love you Matty." She told her brother as she fought not to fall back to sleep so quickly, but her warm bed and the fact it was the middle of the night was making her eyelids very hard to keep open.
"I love you too Storm. Go to sleep."
With one last coherent moment she realized her brother wasn't likely to ask to stay with her but likely wanted to anyway. Even when she didn't know why he was scared she often knew with some sort of sibling bond no one understood that he was. She didn't need to know why. "Matty?"
"Yeah?" He turned to face her from half way across her room.
"I'm scared cause'a what you told me. Will you stay with me until I'm asleep?"
"Yeah. Sure." Relief was written all over his face. He was too old to ask his little sister if he could stay with her, but not too old to stay for her if she asked him to.
He told her the next day that she'd woken him up in the middle of the night, crying for her father once and Bobby the second time. She had no memory of it the next day. She did remember Matty crying himself to sleep beside her but once he'd been asleep she'd quickly followed and had no memory of what had happened after that. Just a vague image gnawing at the edge of her conscious mind of a man with rivulets of blood running down his chin as his eyes pleaded for mercy he knew he'd never receive.
xox
Storm woke up with a muffled scream in her rented bed, terror jerking her straight up. Always the same dream, an image of her 'uncle' with blood running down his face and the entry wound of a .38 slug between his eyes. She'd never seen it first hand but the image her brother had painted for her had been enough for her eight year old mind to paint the picture and the image of it had stayed with her from that dark night onward.
She lay panting for a moment and then rolled over. With in seconds she was back asleep. She'd never remember by morning. She never did.
xox
Storm woke up the next morning in her delightfully soft rented bed and stretched with a huge grin. The grin left her face when she remembered that she wasn't in her own bed, or her own house, or even her own state, and that her brother and Taylor were no where close to her. With a groan she looked at the red numbers of the bedside clock. It was nine am. Time she was on her way. Nagging flashes of something sinister clawed at her conscious, begging for acknowledgement but she pushed them down like she always did and sighed.
She got up and got dressed. She knew that she was going to meet her mother for the first time ever by the end of today so she took some time picking out her clothes. She didn't want her mother to know she was a total tom boy but she didn't really own any clothes that would totally hide the fact. She ended up settling on a pair of designer jeans instead of her usual no name, torn, ripped, and stained variety and one of her 'good' wife beaters. That meant a black one with no holes, stains or tears. She added a wide pink belt and figured she'd do.
She padded into the bathroom and stood in front of the vanity. She splashed her face with cold water and looked at herself. She wasn't sure she knew the woman staring back at her. It was like looking at a stranger. She still had the same dark, winged brows, same apple jade green eyes. Same mid back length, obviously bleached blonde incredibly curly hair and skin that always looked just a bit tanned, no matter how long New York winters were. She knew she still looked the exact same, but she didn't feel like she was looking at herself in the mirror anymore. It was time to finish her trip, meet her mother, and hopefully redefine who she was. She wanted to know herself again. She didn't want to live the rest of her life waking up to seeing a stranger in the mirror every time she brushed her teeth.
That decided she scrubbed her face and teeth quickly and scanned the room for any forgotten belongings. She found nothing out of place, nothing at all to tell anyone that someone had used the room at all, that a person with thoughts and feelings had lived here for the night. Only the slightly mussed bed gave it away, but that was certainly nothing to tell anyone anything about the girl who'd stayed.
A few minutes later, thanks to the fact she'd checked in with her platinum Visa, she was out in her car and underway. As she headed down toward Florida she tried to put her mind on autopilot and didn't have a lot of success. She couldn't keep the coming meeting off her mind, or the events which had precipitated it.
What was her mother like? Her father had told her they looked alike enough to be sisters. What about personality? Was her mother sweet and kind like her father had said? Storm wondered if she'd have the chance to find out. She knew there was every chance that her mother wouldn't want a thing to do with her. She'd be a constant reminder of what had been torn from her at the hands of Benny. All Storm could do was hope her mother would decide to at least tell her the full story behind what had gone down one stormy night in New York. That she wouldn't hold the sins of the father against the child.
That was the rub though, wasn't it? Storm thought as she drove. She'd committed so many of the same sins. Why didn't she deserve to be painted with the same brush as her father?
xox
Matty, Chris and Taylor all boarded a plane at nine thirty in the morning and got seats. They were sitting together across the whole right side of an isle. Chris had the window seat, Matty was in the middle and Taylor had the isle.
"What were you thinkin' askin' Marbles to do something so important?" Taylor asked Matty irritably. He was mad that Marbles had messed up so badly, he was mad that he was going into such a bad situation should the money not turn up, and he was mad to be out of his bed at such an early hour. He was worried about Matty, especially should the money be found, and he was worried about Storm, who was off on her own God only knew where. Of course he had a vague idea where, but he wasn't allowed to let on to Matty that he did. He was not having a good few days and he knew it wasn't fair of him to take it out on Matty. But when Taylor was in a pissy mood he tended to make sure those around him joined him there.
"I took him at his word that he turned it around. I bet he was high when he messed up, the little lying fuck." Matty growled. He had too much going on to deal with Marbles and his inability to stay off the blow.
"Maybe to him it really did seem like the right thing to do." Chris tried to stick up for his cousin, but Marbles' continued need to screw up like no one else could manage made him a hard case to defend.
"Only to Marbles would it seem like a good idea to drop a bag," Taylor lowered his voice so he was audible only to the two other men in his row, "with a half million in cash in it into a pile of Joe Commuter's luggage while he went into a building with the local sheriff inside."
"I guess pop was right when he said Marbles is half an idiot and that's the good half." Matty sighed. "I wish Storm wasn't off taking some secret trip. I'd feel better if she was here."
"What for? She's got no business dealing with this kinda thing." Taylor snapped. His bad humour was making him shorter with Matty then he normally would have been. He normally wouldn't get into it with his friend over Storm. Taylor knew Matty had a skewed view of his sister and how good she was at certain things. "If you wouldn't encourage her then maybe she'd settle down and act like a woman for once instead of some wild ass crazy kid working selling," Taylor caught himself before he gave Storm away to her brother, "stuff for the Russian mob."
"Please Taylor, spare me your shit for once please." Matty snapped, finally reaching his breaking point. "You know Storm's good at planning shit. Even pop knows that."
"Maybe but I'm just as happy she's someplace safe and not involved. First sign of trouble and her hot temper'd have us in hot water we might never get out of."
"I guess." Matty said, leaning his head back into the seat with his eyes closed.
"Hey cuz, we'll have this all sorted out by nine tonight. How hard can it be in a town called Wibaux?" Chris tried to cheer his cousin up. "Marbles is a fuck up but at least he fucked up in an area even god forgot about. Where could the money go? I mean what could anyone be spending it on in a town in the middle of bumble-fuck Montana?"
xox
Two kids on street luges went flying down a hill. Each had on custom leathers and helmets to match the racing apparatus they were each riding. At a corner in the road they went flying off, into the grass on the shoulder.
Getting off their luges unsteadily they hugged in sheer happiness before going off to smoke a joint together. Happiness was as easily found as a steep hill and a visit to the local weed spot to the two friends whom no one had let in on the fact that high school was long since over.
Feeling pleasantly mellow they went to the driveway of the house they shared to install the new sound system they'd also received via overnight freight just that morning into the bed of their pickup truck. The internet was a wonderful thing and COD was only slightly behind it in terms of things to be thankful for. Of course, at the top of their thankful list was whatever deity had seen fit to send them a bag filled with half a million dollars of sweet American currency. Yes, that was indeed one of the things they were very grateful for.
xox
The plane touched down at twelve. The three friends stepped off the plane into the harsh midday sun. They looked around and saw nothing to recommend Wibaux for an extended visit.
Chris did up the buttons of his suit coat as he looked around the area cynically from behind his deeply tinted shades. Look at this place! He mused. What a fucken joke! He glanced at Taylor and took in the disgusted look on his large friend's face, also partially concealed behind sunglasses. He then turned to Matty and saw the wonder there. None of them had ever been to a place as totally devoid of culture as Wibaux. New York had almost more culture then it could handle. Wibaux didn't even have a snack counter in the airport. If you could call the little building squatting at the edge of the air strip an airport. It was clear that the place was doing a number on all of them, and they hadn't even set foot off the airstrip yet. Chris had a strange premonition that the situation was going to get a hell of a lot worse before it got better.
Chris widened the scope of his field of vision for the area and found his cousin. "Look at this!" He said in anger as he watched his cousin do some sort of artistic movements off to the side of the airstrip, over where his plane was hangered on the tarmac. Chris led the way over to his cousin.
When Marbles saw them coming he stood up out of his lowered stance. Not that Marbles standing up made much of a difference when it came to how his height compared to his friends. "What're you doin?" Chris' cynical look was clear, even around his deeply tinted lenses. "What're you, a fuckin ballerina now?" Chris asked with a sneer as Matty and Taylor caught up with him and stood behind him.
"No, its Tai Chi. First off I'm refining my center. And it stretches you out. I'm all cramped up from sleeping in the fuckin plane. Plus it's a deadly art." Marbles pushed his arms down to his sides and cracked his neck, trying to look dangerous.
Chris looked at his cousin in disgust as he slapped him up side his head. "You're a fuckin hard on."
"That hurt, absorbed the impact though." Marbles smart mouthed back to Chris.
"Shut up. Alright," Matty growled, at the limit of his patience with Marbles, and the cousins' antics. "I go on the line for you, I give you a shot and for what?"
"Geese Matty I told you, there were cops. Felt like a setup, what can I tell ya?" Marbles said, sounding very defensive, like he knew he did wrong but he wasn't sure he wanted to admit to it. "Look I know I fucked the dog on this one-"
Matty cut him off. "No, you didn't just fuck the dog, you fucked me."
"Matty I swear, if I have to work the rest of my life I'll pay you back."
Matty waved him off with a look. "Where was the last place you saw it?"
"Right here, you told me not to take my eyes off it and I didn't. Now I thought it went to Billings and I was wrong but I scoped every passenger, crew too and I watched every piece of baggage come off. It's gotta be here somewhere."
Matty and Taylor turned to walk away. With a fed up glance at his cousin Chris followed.
"I'm coming with right?" Marbles called as his friends all walked away, leaving him alone with his plane.
"Do what the fuck you want." Matty said, not even bothering to turn around and address his comments to his friend's face. He entered the airport terminal and walked up to the lady at the desk. His request for information didn't go over well. Marbles interrupting him didn't help him any. Both Matty and Taylor shot him a look telling him to shut his mouth before Matty turned back to the clerk. "Do you know who I could rent a car from?" Matty asked the woman whose nametag proclaimed her to be Louise.
"You're talking to her." She said with a smile.
The four men rented a Jeep and moved on toward the town centre. They didn't know how long they were going to have to stay put in Wibaux but they knew one thing for sure. They had to find that money.
xox
When Storm came up for air from her thoughts, she realized she was about to miss her exit for Rocky Mountain, North Carolina. She had to exit toward Rocky Mountain and then merge onto I-95. And then she had 900 miles of driving down that one freeway straight through until Miami. She checked quickly for other traffic and shot the ramp at double the allowed speed. She thanked the fates for the fact she'd taken the Skyline, despite the seats that made in uncomfortable for long road trips, and not the Cadillac. The Cadillac never would have been able to execute the sharp turn nor hold the off ramp at such high speeds. The tires of the Skyline squealed around the corner, smoking as the car protested the sharp corner but still executed it like the race bred champ it was.
A few minutes later and she was on a straight away to Miami. It was early in the day still and she knew she'd spend the next several hours driving. She cranked up the stereo to keep her mind on the road and off the coming meeting.
She couldn't help but think of what her mother might think of her. Would she be a huge disappointment? By all accounts her mother had been the epitome of a lady. Would she be upset to find her daughter had been raised nothing but? She had no one to blame for it though, knowing her daughter was being raised by her rough father. But it didn't make it any better when she thought that her own mother might find her lacking.
Or what if her mother wished she'd never come? That rejection would hurt about more then anything else ever had. If her own mother didn't want her, what else could possibly come along and hurt more? It made Storm wish that Devon hadn't talked her into seeing the Britney Spear's movie 'Crossroads'. Not only had it been a horrible movie as far as Storm was concerned, full of bad acting and overdone story lines, but now it might parallel her own life. All Storm could think was her mother might have moved on. She might have a perfect family of her own now with another man and other kids and she might not want a child from her previous marriage coming along and messing up her new life for her. She might send Storm away, just like the mother in the movie had sent her daughter away.
She went to take a drink of her Pepsi and realized the bottle was empty. "Damn it." She muttered as she threw the empty into the back, realizing now she'd have to stop. It was time for a fill up anyway. She took the next exit advertising a service station and pulled up to self serve again. It was getting warmer and warmer the farther south she got. She pulled her jacket off and tossed it into the car before sticking the nozzle into her filler neck. She filled the tank and headed in to replenish her caffeine supply and pay for her gas.
Her name on her credit card didn't raise any eyebrows in the south like it had back home. She was underway without a fuss and back on the highway minutes later. She was hoping she wouldn't need any more gas before she reached her destination. Agitatedly Storm pushed her sunglasses farther up her nose and sighed as the wind in the open window tossed her hair around. She wished she felt as carefree as her hair looked. She just wanted the confrontation with her mother over with so she wouldn't have to worry about it any farther. Then if her mother didn't want her she'd just leave and go home. Since it was only Thursday, she'd be home in New York by Saturday night and back to work, ready to put the whole thing behind her and look for a place to live that didn't involve living with her old man.
Storm rolled the windows down as she accelerated down the freeway. She shifted into fifth and leaned her head on her hand, her elbow propped up on the window ledge as she steered with one hand and sighed. Only a few hundred miles to go.
Xox
"Look at this place. Guys like us could be runnin it in a week." Chris said as they drove through downtown Wibaux.
"First thing you do in an open town is control cart-out. I'd put my name on every garbage truck running through here." Marbles replied.
The four men found a diner and went in to talk strategy and try to decide what they were going to do about finding their money. Matty parked the Jeep and they all got out.
Taylor picked up on the looks they got from everyone they passed. They stood out from the local crowd. It could either work for them or against them but Taylor didn't have an especially good feeling about it. He knew they stood out. It wasn't just Chris's New York way of attiring himself or Matty's big town way of moving. It was their whole attitude, their whole demeanour. They all slid into a booth. Chris and Taylor lit cigarettes and Taylor took a moment to be thankful that at least here, in bumble-fuck Montana, a man could still have a cigarette with his coffee. Even if he chose to have his coffee inside a public restaurant.
"Listen, someone's got that money. Now my uncle would say we need to announce ourselves to them. Make them want to find us. Make them beg us to take that money back they're so scared as long as we leave them the fuck alone."
"Ok, how are we going to do that?" Chris asked Matty as they all sat around in their booth, half drank coffee's and the remains of Marbles' lunch on the table. Taylor took a drag off his cigarette and looked around, deep in thought. His gaze roved out the window and lingered on something he saw across the street.
Matty sighed, looking at the table. How did he manage to get himself into these situations? When would he ever learn? He wasn't cut out for this life. Now he'd tried to get in again and look how well it was going. If he'd just listen to everyone around him and let it go stuff like the current mess wouldn't occur. He wished for the hundredth time his sister was with him. Not because he needed her help, though he wouldn't have turned it down, but because he hated worrying about her on top of everything else.
"Like this." Taylor said as he met the eyes of first Marbles and then Scarpa, taking his eyes off whatever had held his interest outside. Matty leaned back in the booth, slinging his arm over the back as he turned toward Taylor. "We find the toughest guy here, I mean the worst guy they got. The guy all the other guys cross the street to avoid. Then we glaze this tough guy; give him the beating of his life. Way past the worst he's ever given."
Matty didn't look thrilled with the plan, but he nodded anyway. He hated the thoughts of being violent against some nameless man just because he was tough. To Matty, that was like the many guys who tried to fight with Taylor just because they saw Taylor as some obstacle in their way of being the toughest guy they knew.
The four of them were essentially looking to do the same thing to some other tough guy. They were going to beat him up just so all the people who were scared to mess with him would in turn be scared to mess with them. It wasn't pretty, and Matty didn't like it, but as usual when it came to the family, Taylor knew better then he did.
Matty and Taylor both looked up as the sheriff's car drove by and the two men inside looked up and into the window of the diner. Matty felt a chill creep down his spine. When that tall, lanky sheriff looked at him, it was just like the man knew every sin he'd ever committed. It was very unnerving.
"After we beat their worst guy we tell him that to get his control back all he has to do is find out who has our bag." Taylor finished outlining his plan.
"Where are we gonna find this tough guy?" Marbles asked.
"Where ever we find trouble in this town." Taylor's voice came out in his usual deep growl.
"I got this." Chris said as he stood up, buttoning his suit coat. He walked up to the cashier.
"How you doin?" He asked with a smile.
"Fine." The blond cashier didn't even look up at him as she answered. She remanded focused on her till.
"Listen, I need some information and I want you to take this." Chris held out a hundred dollar bill, folded in quarters.
"I can't break that! Your tab only came to 14.30." The slim blond finally looked up into the dark face of the man in front of her. She couldn't help thinking how handsome he was. He had a face made for breaking hearts, she mused as he smiled at her.
"Look, dear, what's your name?" The killer smile Chris was giving the little woman upped a few hundred watts.
"Bernadette." She answered his question and ducked her head, blushing more then she could remember since she'd been in high school. Something about his olive face and lively brown eyes made her just want to forget her whole life and run away with him.
"Bernadette, why don't you just tell me where I could find a little trouble in this town?" Chris asked, one corner of his mouth lifting in a sly smile, the whole expression on his face daring her to find a way to say no to him, laughter dancing in his dark brown eyes.
"Use to be you would have already found it." Bernadette told him as she showed him her wedding band, almost as if to remind herself as much as to tell him she wasn't available to get him into the trouble he sought. "But since I'm taken you could always try the Shamrock tonight." She smiled shyly and Chris smiled back playfully as he nodded, leaving the hundred on the counter as he walked away. He relayed the name of the bar to his friends and they walked out of the diner, feeling the eyes of every last person in the joint boring into their backs as they walked out the doors.
xox
It was about two in the afternoon when Storm pulled up to a pretty white house set well back from the road in a nice neighbourhood in suburban Miami. She parked her car at the curb and looked at the house, wondering what she should do. Should she pull up to the door or walk from the curb? It didn't really make sense to walk all the way up to the house when the big driveway only had one vehicle in it, a nearly new Land Rover SUV. She pulled the Skyline into the driveway and checked the number on her slip of paper against the number on the house. It was the right place, and if the car in the drive was any indication someone was home.
She got out of her car with a frown and walked up the path to the front door with a confidence she didn't feel. She raised her hand to knock and then paused. She almost walked back to the driveway and got back in her car. She didn't want to know. Really. She tried to convince herself she'd rather not know then know and find out the answer was her mother was just as happy without any ties to her old life.
Suddenly an image of her Uncle Teddy popped into her head. She might not like her aunt much, but her uncle wasn't so bad. Well, not so bad by times. Mostly when they were alone together with no one else around to see him teaching, oh sin of sins a girl, things they didn't think she should know. Her dad had taught her to shoot, to care for her gun. Her uncle had taught her how to never miss what she aimed at and select the correct ammunition for the job. Her uncle had helped her perfect her craft, even as he protested about her actions. He was just as bad as her father for saying one thing and doing another where she was concerned and she knew very well what he'd say to her if he could see her now.
"Now's the time for stomach Storm. Do you want to know what she has to say? You need to decide and go after it, no time for hesitating. Either you want to know and you go get what you want, or you don't and you turn around and go home. None of this fucken 'a woman can change her mind, it's our prerogative crap either."
When it all came down to it she did want to know. Like Lucy, if her mother told her to go away she'd find a way to cope. She'd go home and let Taylor hold her against that broad chest and feed her ice cream and take care of her hurts. It would only be fitting someone else got to be strong for awhile and lord knows Taylor had the shoulders to bear the burden for her. Before she could change her mind she raised her hand and knocked on the door firmly.
Her knock echoed through the interior of the house but no one came to open the door. Storm waited another few minutes and turned to go back to her car. No one was home, she figured. As she was about to step down off the front porch the door was opened.
"Sorry I was in the back." A woman's voice said from behind her. She turned around. It was like finding someone had placed a mirror in the open door. Sure her mother had dark mahogany coloured hair, just like Storm knew she would herself had she not dyed it blond, and the face on the reflection had a few laugh lines at the corner of the eyes, but the likeness was still uncanny. "Oh my god." The woman at the door sighed out as she looked at the young woman on her step.
"Hey. Sorry to bother you without calling but…um…" Storm didn't know how to tell her own mother she was her daughter. Were there words to tell someone you were the child they were separated from just over twenty years ago? "Well, I'm-"
"Arabella." Cara Miles breathed out, unable to believe the woman on her step could possibly be the child she'd hadn't seen since she was a squealing red infant. She couldn't deny it. Genetics certainly gave it away if nothing else did.
"Well, it's Storm actually, but yeah, close enough." Storm said, still not sure if her mother was happy to see her or not.
"He called you Storm?" Cara asked. She really hadn't figured that her daughter would ever hear her middle name, that it would be changed before she got old enough to know what it was.
"Not exactly." Storm fidgeted on the step, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
"I'm so sorry." Cara wiped at her eyes, trying not to cry. Her daughter. How many times had she caught herself day dreaming of the day she might get to meet the little girl who was always Arabella in her mind? And how many times had she admonished herself to stop with the silly daydreams that had no chance of ever happening because she told herself she knew Benny better then to think he'd ever take back his decree that she would never see either of her children again. "Come in. You must have some things you want to talk about." Cara moved out of the door and allowed Storm to pass her into the house. "Just go sit down in there." Cara pointed through a doorway into a living room done in white with red walls. "Can I get you anything?"
Storm couldn't help the chuckle that came out when she saw the living room. It was just like her room.
"What is it?" Cara asked.
"My room is all done in white with red walls." Storm sat on the couch and looked up at her mother.
"Well, I guess we have more in common then similar looks then." Cara smiled as she sat down on the opposite end of the couch from her daughter. "So, how did you come to be called Storm? I got the impression that Benny hated it when I named you that."
"Oh he did. He planned on calling me Arabella from day one. Then he brought me home from the hospital and as the story goes he couldn't make me stop crying. Then he let Teddy try and even Theresa but none of them could do a thing with me. Theresa even made me cry louder. She's still only making me angrier to this day. But anyway they had Matty sit down and let him hold me and the second I was in his arms I stopped crying. Matty asked what my name was and pop told him Arabella. Matty hated it and asked what my other name was and when they told him Stormianna he told them that his sister's name was Storm. Teddy agreed with him and pop gave up."
"Where is your brother? I always imagined that if I ever saw you I'd see you both show up here. I didn't imagine your father would ever let you find out about me, let alone meet me."
"Well, pop didn't have a lot of choice. He kept a file on you in his office and well…" Storm trailed off and when she thought of all the stuff she'd gone through in the last few days she started to cry. She didn't know what was making her so prone to the waterworks lately but she did know she hated it. She sniffled and tried to carry on. "Well, I was mad at him and I decided to try and get back at him by going through his stuff and I found the file."
Cara looked at her daughter crying on the end of the sofa and just instinctively knew crying was not something her daughter did a lot of. She moved closer and softly hugged the crying young woman.
Storm surprised herself by throwing herself into her mother's arms and holding her tight as she sobbed. "He told me you were dead. He let me think you died having me my whole life and you were really living here all along and I coulda had a mother but he's so selfish he let me think I killed you my whole life cause you died having me." Storm sobbed out broken.
"Shush cara mia. But you found me and I'm not dead. It'll be ok. What made you mad enough to snoop around in the sacred office?" Cara knew very well that the house office was Benny's domain and woe to anyone who forgot it.
"He slapped me the night before and I was still mad about it."
Cara held her daughter away at arms length and looked at her face. She could see the outline of the mar on Storm's face. The makeup couldn't completely hide it. "Why did he hit you?" Cara asked and Storm figured she now knew where she got her growly mad voice from.
"Oh, it's a long story." Storm caught her mother's look, knowing her mother wanted to hear it long or not. "He sent me out to a function with Teddy and Theresa and I had to take a date. I always take Matty but he was out of town so I had to find someone else and Matty sent his friend Taylor to take me. Taylor's mother is Jewish and daddy and Teddy only think he's good enough to do their dirty work for them not date me so Theresa started in about how long had I been dating Taylor and then went on about how I shouldn't be dating the help and how it was time I grew up and started to use my proper name and found a nice boy to marry all while the boy I'm dating already is sitting right there. So I sorta said I was going to take her out." Storm looked up in chagrin.
"From what I remember of my brother's wife I have no doubt you were justified in getting that mad at her. I don't think your father should have held anything you said in the heat of anger against you like this."
"Oh, he knew I was serious. I have thought about killing her in the past but Matty's always smart enough to make sure I'm not armed when I'm around her. Besides, that's not why he hit me. When he yelled at me over the whole thing I told him to, well, um…It wasn't very nice of me at any rate, what I said." For some reason Storm didn't want to admit she used the 'f word' in any sense, not even in Italian instead of English, since it was clear her mother was also bilingual from her use of Italian endearments.
"You're armed at other times?" Cara asked in shock.
"Yeah, of course. Daddy says that he couldn't let a daughter of his go around unable to protect herself. He gave me my gun for my eighteenth birthday." Storm saw the look on her mother's face. "I'm sorry. I'm likely shocking you. I guess I turned out pretty much like pop. I always had a head for the business and I guess pop kinda indulged me a bit."
"I guess it's not like you can help it. I always figured that without me around your brother would end up working with his father and uncle, but I never figured on you ending up there."
"You always figured it backwards then." Storm giggled. "Matty has a degree from college in sports marketing. My brother's really smart." Storm's face showed her pride about Matty and his 'real' education.
"Where does he work?" Cara asked, heartened to hear that at least on of her children had grown up to have a normal job.
"Well, no where." Storm frowned. "He won't leave New York because I won't and he can't get a job in New York because of Dad's name. But he still doesn't work for dad."
"Why not? From what I remember of Benny he was always planning to turn the reins over to his son." Cara still had Storm leaned against her even though the crying had stopped.
Storm realized someone was hugging her, which was strange enough, but even more strange was the fact she didn't want to pull away. The only person who had been able to touch her for any length of time without making her uncomfortable had been Matty until Taylor had entered her life. Those two were the extent of the list of people she could allow to touch her, until her mother. She just felt like she belonged there with her mother's arms around her. She decided to explain to her mother what had happened to Matty. "Well, that's another long story. When Matty was eleven and I was seven pop gotten taken into prison. He was gone three years and we got sent to live with Teddy." Storm took a deep breath to calm down. What had been done to her brother still had the ability to rile her like nothing else. "With in the first two weeks of us living with Teddy, Teddy and Theresa decided that Matty and I were too close."
"What do you mean too close?"
"Ever since I was born Matty's seen it as his job to take care of me. He's always watching out for me. But there came a time in our lives that I ended up taking care of Matty too. We were almost always together. Matty didn't have a lot of friends just because of who he was and I never had a lot because I'm too independent so we spent a lot of time just the two of us. Pop didn't care. I think he just liked the fact that he didn't have to bother with us too much if we had each other. But at the time we were living with the Deserve family Theresa decided that my tomboy ways had to go. She decided to 'take me in hand and make a lady out of me'. She decided that Matty and I shouldn't spend so much time together because in her mind that was surely what had made me think it was ok for me to run around like I was a boy. So she bought me dresses and made me play with dolls."
"Every girl's nightmare!" Cara said with a smile, teasing the daughter she'd never met before, but still felt like she'd always known.
"I guess this would be a good time to tell you that while I was with my father I pretty much ran wild and did what I wanted to. Pops always thought it was cute when I was mouthy and acted like a wild thing, a male wild thing at that. He's always moaning about how unladylike I am in one breath while he shows me off to some crony of his in the next. He didn't start to give me rules until he gave me my first car and even then they weren't exactly normal rules. I saw how the like 'normal' kids lived just from having friends in school but that wasn't how the Demaret household was run."
"Your father's household was never normal, not even when I lived in it."
"No I don't figure it could have been. Teddy's house played by different rules yet again though. His daughters definitely had rules to live by and expectations of what they would and wouldn't do. When they tried to make me fit into their way of living it was like trying to stick a square into a circle. It didn't work out very well. I got even worse, ran even more out of control. I mean, I was only eight when I went there but I was already the kind of girl who played with Hot Wheels not Barbies. I also already had a smart mouth. The rebellious attitude and back talk got a lot worse before it got better. My aunt and uncle decided that the best thing to do was to keep me and Matty apart as much as possible. Neither of us took that well since we'd hardly spent any time apart in the previous eight years."
"So where is this brother of yours now? He let you come down here alone?"
"He did but I'm worried about that. It was totally out of character for him. He normally would have insisted on coming too. But he doesn't know where I am. I was worried that you wouldn't want us and I won't expose Matty to that. He's had enough hard times. If you didn't want anything to do with us I wasn't going to tell him about you. That was what I was getting to. Teddy decided to pick one of dad's men and tell Matty and the world it was him who turned Dad in. He picked Bobby Boulevard."
"But Bob was Matty's god father! He wouldn't have done anything of the sort." Cara protested hotly.
"I know that. Teddy's point wasn't to pick the guy who actually ratted out dad and sent him away, it was to pick the person out of all the people he could pick from that when he handed Matty a gun and told him to shoot the person who sent his pop away would break Matty inside. He managed. They called him Matty Dimes from then on, because when he wouldn't shoot Bobby Teddy sent him out to make a phone call and gave him a dime to do it with." Storm started to get mad all over again. "I knew, even when I was only eight that they'd done something to my brother. There was nothing I could do about it. It was right around that time that Matty met Taylor. He lived in Teddy's neighbourhood."
"This Taylor, you like him don't you?" Cara asked with a soft smile.
"I think so." Storm wrinkled her nose in thought. "He's bossy. But cute. I'll never let him know it but I like it when he tries to take care of me and not let me do stuff he doesn't think I should be doing. I've been taking that kind of care of Matty for so long it's nice to let someone else take care of me for a change."
Cara changed the subject abruptly. "Does your father know you're here?"
"Not directly. He knows I found the file and took off the next day. He's been trying to make up with me ever since he did what he did and I haven't been having it. I'm too mad to be ok with him yet."
"I just." Cara seemed to think about something deeply for a moment. "I don't want him showing up here."
"No sweat, he won't leave New York. He can't. He had to let other people take us on all our trips as kids because he can't leave the state. He gets caught crossing state lines and he's gonna attract a lot of attention. Can I ask you something?" It was Storm's turn to change the subject.
"Of course."
"Why didn't you ever come back for Matty and me?"
Cara sighed. "I wanted to."
"Then why didn't you? I know why dad says but I want to know the real story."
"How do you know he didn't tell you the real story?"
"Because when he told me his version he always looked guilty. When you know daddy and you know what to look for a sure sign that he's lying is when he looks just a little too hopeful that you believe him. When he doesn't care then he doesn't have that look like he's begging you to buy what he's selling."
"You know your father very well."
"Until two days ago he was my idol." Storm said simply and sighed. "Now I don't know what I want to do with my life or what I should do for that matter. Everything was all planned out and now all my plans are wrecked."
"You could go back to school. Surely there's something you could study."
"Yeah, like law." Storm smirked to show she was kidding. "Seriously, I pretty much sailed through high school on the minimum amount of work I could do and my daddy's name. I don't have much of a foundation to base any further education on. I always knew what I wanted to do and a fancy education wasn't gonna help me there. I learned all I needed to know from Teddy and Clueless."
"So you fully intended to follow your father into his world then?" Cara asked, a frown causing her brow to furrow. She didn't like it one bit. Even if she had only just met her daughter for the first time in twenty years she still didn't want to think of her involved in her father's business.
"If he offered me the chance tomorrow I couldn't swear to you I wouldn't take it. I just don't know what else to do with my life. It's like Matty's trying to get into the life because he doesn't see what else he can do and I'm trying to get into the life because I don't want to do anything else."
"It's a dead end for a woman Storm and I can tell you that from experience."
"It's all I know."
"You could get to know something else."
"You sound like Taylor."
"I like him more and more the more I hear about him." Storm and Cara both chuckled. "In all seriousness Storm I was nothing but a mobster's daughter then the wife of another one until your father dropped my world out from under me. I managed to find something else and you would too."
"Maybe but Pop would never allow it anyway. Matty he encourages to get an outside job, me, he'd flip out if I did."
"I never thought he'd allow you to find out about me yet here you are."
"But he didn't allow me to find out, I found out on my own by snooping and if he thought he coulda stopped me I wouldn't be here. When Dad wants to get his own way nothing much will stop him. But I guess I'm not telling you anything you don't know. But none of that answers the question of why you didn't come back for me'n Matty."
"He never would have let me leave again. If I could have gotten away with it I would have gone back and taken the two of you away with me. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't go back to the life and I was still mad at him. You know once you're in you don't get out. If I had gone back I'd have been right back into the life and I never could have left again. I couldn't live with Benny again. If I'd just taken the two of you away he wouldn't have stopped until he found us. I felt like I was suffocating and I just couldn't do it. I'd been free for too long by the time it was safe for me to go back. I couldn't deal with his bossy attitude."
"I know the feeling."
"It wasn't just that. If I could have kept my own place and led my own life I would have found a way to make New York work. But he told me I had to move back to his house, had to make it seem like we were reconciled. I…" Cara trailed off and looked at Storm. Her daughter was twenty. More then old enough to handle the whole truth. Not to mention that it was 3:30 and very soon Cara knew she was going to have to leave and she couldn't leave Storm wondering over what. "I tried Storm. When you were seven. It must have been just before your father got arrested. He sent you and Matty on a trip someplace and I moved back for a week. It didn't work. He was worse then ever. I couldn't do it."
Cara looked so guilty that Storm couldn't take it. "I understand better then anyone what it's like to live under his thumb. I don't blame you for leaving again. You didn't know me or Matty anymore and you didn't want to live the life or be married to Dad. I understand he's not the easiest guy to live with. You don't have to feel bad for leaving again. You had a new life and we'd all moved on too."
"If it was only that simple Storm." Cara sighed. "I would really rather what I'm about to tell you did not get back to your father but, you have a sister. She's twelve and Benny has no idea she even exists. I was scared he'd take her away like he took you and your brother from me so I never told him. She was born nine months after the week we tried to reconcile."
"You have a twelve year old kid with my dad? I have a little sister?"
"Yes. Please tell me you won't tell Benny. At least that you won't tell him who her father is. If you have to tell him anything tell him that I was briefly married again after I came back to Florida. Just please don't let him know she's his. I can't lose her after everything else."
Storm watched as her mother started to cry. She had never been good at comforting anyone but her brother. It just wasn't in her. She awkwardly rubbed her mother's back. "I won't tell him. He doesn't need to know."
Cara nodded and tried to compose herself. "I have to go pick Tabitha up from her school. Will you wait here? I'd like her to meet you, like you to stay with us for awhile. If you don't mind?"
"My calendar is looking pretty open for the next while." Storm smiled, but it came off slightly self-depreciating. "I'd be happy to stay and visit." Storm worried she sounded too needy. "Until Taylor realizes he misses me and begs me to come home. He's pretty stubborn but it shouldn't take him too long to start missin me bad enough for my phone to be ringing off the hook." She smirked playfully, hoping to lighten the mood.
Her mother smiled back and turned to leave the room. Storm realized she didn't even know what to call her own mother. Should she call her Cara or Mom?
"Will my sister like me?" Storm asked in a small voice, suddenly worried about what someone would think of her for the second time in her life. First her mother and now a sister. The group of people she was scared she would let down was growing every day. She didn't like living her life worrying about what others would think of her. Mostly it didn't matter. With most people she didn't care.
Didn't change the fact that when she did care she cared big. Her father, her brother, her uncle, Taylor. And now a mother and sister. The more people she had in her life whose opinion she valued the more inadequate she felt. She always felt like no matter what she was going to end up letting them all down. The more people who moved over into the valued pile the greater the feelings of inadequacy. What did she have to offer a kid sister?
"Of course. I would ask one thing of you though."
"Shoot."
"Please don't tell her what your father does for a living. And remember that as far as Tabitha will be concerned you have different fathers. So you'll have to try to remember that as far as she's concerned you and she are half sisters."
"Hey, no sweat. Until this morning I only had a brother. I'm not totally clear on the whole sister thing as it is. I've always had being the baby to fall back on and now I don't even have that."
"I guess you'll just have to get by on your good looks then." Cara replied.
Storm wondered if her mother was being sarcastic until she realized she was playing off the fact they both shared similar looks. Storm laughed. "I know that'll work at least."
"Ok. I won't be long. Tabitha's school is only a few minutes away. I'll sort of get her ready in the car. Then maybe after you two meet we can all go out to dinner to get to know each other better. Would that be ok?"
"That'd be perfect." Storm answered and adjusted her seat on the couch.
"Feel free to watch some TV or whatever while I'm gone."
"I'll be fine." Storm said as she watched her mother nod and then walk out the door of the house.
She blew out a shaky breath when she was alone. A sister! She didn't know what to make of that. She'd thought to find her mother. She'd never dreamed on her mother having another daughter; that she'd have to share with another child. A child who, due to her young age, needed a mother more then Storm knew she did.
Matty had been such a wonderful influence on her life. She was humbled to think she would have the chance to be that influence to someone else and scared that she wasn't up to it. What if her sister hated her? Resented her stepping into their lives after all this time?
This was turning into both the best and worst experience of her life.