I was just about to shut down my email program when Heather came into the room with a gun. I looked up at her and smiled and said, "I'll be with you in a minute. I just have to finish this email." I quickly opened up an email to Ranger, and wrote, "Heather with gun in our room now. I'll try to stall." I shut down the email program, then put my tablet aside. "Sorry about that", I said. "It was a bit of a time crunch."
"What could be more important than someone threatening you with a gun?"
"I was talking to one of my staff members, and his baby was starting to cry. I wanted to finish the conversation while, at the same time, we didn't want the baby to have to wait too long. That's the hard part about running a business from a different time zone. So what can I do for you?"
"Why don't you get upset? What is wrong with you? You have a gun being waved around in your face, and you don't fucking get upset!"
I smiled. "Well, I'm not happy about it. But getting upset won't help anything. Why are you waving a gun around in my face?"
"I have a record now."
"Not yet. You have to go to court and plead your case, and if you lose and are convicted, then you'll have a record. If, however, you talk your way out of it, you'll be fine."
"There is no way that I can talk my way out of it."
"Why not? I'm sure that you can be pretty persuasive."
"My mother told me that a man named Glenn MacDougall was my father. I searched and searched and finally found him. He said he wasn't my father, that he had never seen my mother before. I knew he was lying. Because my mother was a prostitute, no man alive would ever admit that they knew her. And my mother flat-out told me that Glenn was my father. He had me charged with harassment. The court ordered a paternity test."
"I assume he wasn't your father?"
"No. So I went back to my mother and demanded to know who my father was, and she said Colin Stewart. I told her that she couldn't be shitting me this time. She had to tell me the truth, and she promised. Shortly afterwards, she died of a drug overdose. But she promised that his name was Colin Stewart. She said he was rich. He was rich and he spent a lot of time with her until he found out that she was pregnant, and then he left her because he didn't want a baby."
"Did your mother take drugs all your life?"
"Yes."
"What about alcohol?"
"It's none of your goddamned business."
"I don't know a lot about drug and alcohol addiction, but it was my impression that you can't trust the word of an addict. Is that not right?"
"No, but my mum was telling me the truth."
"How do you know?"
"She wouldn't lie to me about that. She promised she was telling the truth."
"But she had said the same thing to you before, and had lied that time?"
"Fuck you."
"I'm just trying to make sense of why you believe that Colin Stewart is your father."
"My mother said so."
"Your mother who had proven to be unreliable?"
"She wouldn't lie to me."
I looked at her, and I thought that she was someone who desperately needed therapy. She wasn't a killer. She had just grown up with a shitty upbringing and she deeply needed somewhere to belong. She needed someone to say that she mattered, and she needed someone to say that she hadn't deserved the upbringing that she'd had. She probably thought that she found that in her fiancé – and then he broke up with her when she got pregnant. She would have felt the rejection keenly. She desperately needed someone to say that she had been treated poorly and that she was a good person who didn't deserve it.
And since it didn't appear as though Ranger had received my email, I was the person who was going to have to do it.
"Did you read the report that I ran?" I said.
"You ran that?"
"Yes. I'm a researcher."
"It said that Colin Stewart, who I know is my father couldn't be, as he was working in London while my mother lived here. You aren't much of a researcher if you can't work out that he was my father."
"I'm sorry. I looked into his tax returns, and saw that he'd been working in London. I traced his address, and then I looked at all the flights between Inverness and London for that year. Colin Stewart didn't appear on any of the flight manifests. Additionally, in talking to his sister and his nephew, they reported that he didn't come back to Scotland for thirty years, years that were both before and after your conception. I'm sorry, Heather, but there is no way that Colin was your father. However, if you have more details I can try to look into other alternatives for you if you want. I can understand why it would be disheartening to not know your father, to not know the circumstances of your conception."
"My father abandoned me."
"If he even knew about you. From my research, your mother was a drug user at the time of your conception. She was earning money through solicitation. In all honesty, she probably didn't know who your father was. She did, however, stop using when she was pregnant. It was a struggle for her. As anybody who has used will testify, stopping use of drugs is one of the hardest things in the world to do – but your mother did it for you. A year after she had you, she succumbed to drugs again. But for those two years, she stopped using. For you. In her own way, she loved you."
I looked at Heather, and tears were flowing down her cheeks. "She wasn't a bad mum. She tried."
"She loved you."
"When I was growing up, I just wanted to belong to a family. I would go to sleep at night pretending that my father loved me, my father would have enough money for food and could afford clothes that fit me."
"I understand. You wanted someone to say that you mattered."
"Yes. But the first person my mother said was my father got a restraining order placed against me."
"And the second person? Was that Colin?"
"Yes."
"Heather, you can't force a relationship that doesn't exist. Colin told you that he wasn't your father, and you insisted that he was. He asked you to prove it. You refused. Instead of tormenting an old man during his last days, you could have stopped this whole scene from happening by taking the paternity test."
She sighed. "Too late now."
"No, actually it's not. Colin arranged things so that he already did his half of the paternity test. You just have to do yours now. He was a good man, and it was important to him not to be branded as someone who could abandon his child."
"You're hoping that my mother is a liar."
"No, I'm not. For your sake, I'm hoping your mother isn't a liar. It would mean a lot to you to know that your mother had told you the truth. However, I suspect that the paternity test will tell you that Colin is not your father. Like you, I have his word. However, more than that I have scads of paper telling me that he hadn't left London, and scads of paper telling me that your mother didn't leave Inverness. There are no hotel room rentals, no restaurant expenses, not even any fees for a map. There is literally nothing that proves that they were in the same city for the year that you were conceived in. There is no way that he was your father.
"I know it hurts to hear this, but I suspect your father was a john that never knew that you were conceived. However, your mum loved you and as soon as she found out that she was pregnant she stopped using for as long as she could. She elected to keep you with her because she loved you, and she made up stories about people to give you the family that you never had. She thought she was doing you a favor."
Heather sat down on the bed, and I leaned over and slowly pulled the gun away from her. I hid it under the blankets, and then rubbed Heather on her back as she sobbed. "Heather, you are a good person. But you've got to stop looking for something in the past and create it in the present. Maybe that is connecting with people and developing friendships. Maybe that is through developing a romantic relationship. Maybe it is through adopting or having your own child. Maybe it is through becoming a Big Sister to someone. But what I do know? There is a whole lot of incredible in you. Now you need to shine it on the world."
She sniffled. "Do you really think so?"
"I do. Heather, your mum loved you and she tried to the best of her abilities, but she had a lot of mental health problems, a lot of economic problems, and no matter how much she loved you, it was a rough upbringing for you. You have come from that and made a success of your life. You have a job, an apartment, and you own your car outright. You eat healthily, you have chosen not to drink or take drugs. You have earned a college degree and are a success who is paying your own way in your life. You just need to stop concentrating on the person you wish you were and focus instead on the person you want to be."
Kai and Julie crept into the room. Kai tiptoed forward, grabbed her wrists, and held her hands behind her back.
"Oh God. I have to go to jail again, don't I?"
I smiled slightly. "You did hold a gun to me."
"What do I do now?"
"You get out on bail, you clean up your life, and you prove to the courts that you made a mistake but that you won't do it again. Start counselling to show them that you are trying to turn yourself around. That will be the biggest thing. Stop chasing men and telling them that they are your father unless you have a boatload of more proof than just your mother's word. And look forward. Build supportive relationships in your life." I patted her on her shoulder. "You're a good person, Heather. Don't ever forget that."
"Do you have cuffs?" said Julie.
"In my laptop bag."
Julie brought the cuffs back, snapped them on Heather's wrists, and said, "I'll get Dad."
"He's going to be upset. I sent him an email and he didn't see it."
"Oh boy."
Julie left and Kai looked at me. "You okay?" he said.
"Yeah. Desperately needing more pain relievers, but otherwise okay."
"You said there was a gun?"
"Do you want it? I'm sitting on it, and it's a little uncomfortable."
Kai smiled and held out his hand. I put the gun in it, and he took the bullets out.
"Why do you need pain relievers?" said Heather.
"I had a hysterectomy six weeks ago, and I'm still in a bit of pain."
She blanched. "Oh God, I hit you in your abdomen last night. You must be in agony."
"I'm not exactly comfortable", I said. "However, you didn't know and you didn't mean to do it. It was just one of those fluky things that happen in life."
Ranger came running in, a look of panic on his face. His eyes searched me when he arrived, and he looked reassured when he saw that I was okay and at peace.
He turned to Heather. "I understand that you held my wife at gunpoint. What were you hoping to accomplish?"
"I wanted Colin's family to admit that I was his daughter."
"Why?"
She paused and looked at me.
"Drop the bravado and tell the truth", I said softly.
She sniffled and sighed. "I wanted to belong. All my life I've been looking in, but I never belonged."
"Who told you that Colin was your father?"
"My mother. She promised that she was telling the truth. She promised that she wasn't lying this time."
"I'm sure that was important to you", I said. "That was almost just as important to you as finding family."
She sighed. "Yes."
"Why did you insist that he was giving you money and property?" said Ranger.
She thought and sighed. "To tell you the truth, I don't care about the money or property. I just thought that inheritance of it would be a recognition that I was a part of his family, a recognition that I belonged, a symbol that he cared about me. And that mattered to me very much."
"What do you think now that you know that Colin is not your father?"
She sniffled again. "I feel embarrassed. Steph said that I harassed an old man on his death bed, and I am ashamed of what I did. I was thinking of my own hurt, and I wasn't thinking about him. He didn't deserve that."
"No", I said, "but you didn't deserve to have to struggle throughout your childhood either. There are a whole lot of things that shouldn't have happened that did, and that wasn't right. I understand why you did what you did, and I'm sure if you had explained that to Colin he would have understood as well."
Ranger looked at me and sighed. He knew that I had adopted another person.
"What is your training?" I said.
"I put myself through uni", said Heather. "I took library science. Kind of a stupid course – there aren't many jobs as librarians. I've been putting myself through school to do my master's. Still kind of stupid, but I enjoy it and it allows me to cope. I'm almost finished the program."
"To cope?"
"It gives me something to think about, something to do that is positive."
"I understand. And you are a security guard?"
"Yes. I took the job to get closer to Colin. It's pretty boring, but I am now a supervisor so I am happy about that."
"So you have some things to be proud of, above and beyond a relationship with your father."
"I do?"
"Yes. Despite the odds, despite how difficult it was, you got your Bachelor's and are now working on your Master's. You got a good job and worked your way up to being a supervisor. You are a talented person, and none of that is related to a relationship with a family member. That is related to you personally, your drive, your intelligence, your personality, and that is far more important than anything else."
Heather thought about that for a moment. "I'm in a bit of a pickle. I was arrested last night, and I'm again being arrested today. Do you have any suggestions as to how to get out of it?"
"The most important thing is for you to start therapy. I know from experience that therapy can be very beneficial, and it will help you discover your true value and encourage you to discover your interests and strengths. It will help you also develop relationships with other people so that you belong, and you realize that your parentage doesn't matter in the slightest. Instead, what matters is what you choose to do with your life. In addition to what it will help you with personally, on a more practical level it will show the judge that you are trying to take control and make the changes needed to put yourself on a better path. It shows that you are taking responsibility for what has happened and you are trying to change your life so that it doesn't happen again. I definitely think that is your most important step.
"The next thing I would do would be to get involved in volunteer work. For you, I would pick something that got you working with people and developing friendships. I could see you being an awesome Big Sister. You wouldn't judge the person by the upbringing the person had, and you'd be a fantastic role model. However, if that didn't interest you there are tons of other organizations out there that you could get involved with. Holding a story time in a local library, volunteering at an old folks' home and talking to people and bringing a smile to their faces, reading to the blind, working with kids who are struggling to learn reading skills, whatever. I'm sure, if you think about it, you'd be able to find a volunteer job that would be interesting to you."
Heather smiled. "I like the idea of mentoring a teen, and I can see that therapy would be important."
"I know that it certainly has been for me and, in truth, it is a requirement for my top staff. They see a lot of shit go down, and it affects them. Therapists are trained people who can handle the stories, see a person for the wonderful person they are, and will give the person a safe place to talk without recrimination or upset. They help you clarify your thoughts, and that is always a good thing." I paused. "The other thing that I would recommend for you is some sort of physical exercise. Going for a run each day, participating in a self-defence class, there are all sorts of things that you can do. It would help extinguish the anger, and I would suggest that you do something every day."
Heather sighed. "I used to be a runner, but I broke my ankle a couple of months ago. I have just stopped physio on my ankle."
"You might have to work up to running distance again", said Ranger. "Just be kind to yourself, and you'll get there."
Tears dripped down her face. "What's wrong?" I said softly.
"I just feel so guilty. I have caused you all sorts of problems and you are treating me kindly and helping me out. I feel much more positive and enabled in my future than I have in years and maybe ever. I feel empowered, and it's been a long time since I have felt empowered."
I smiled. "Good. That's the way that it's supposed to be."
"Heather, do you mind if we move you to another room?" said Ranger. "I want to talk to Steph for a moment, and she isn't supposed to be moving much."
"Absolutely. You might want to put me a few rooms over so that I don't hear through the walls. Usually, old buildings have thin walls."
I smiled. "Good to know."
Kai sighed. "A month, Steph."
I sighed loudly, and Kai shook his head. But he was smiling at the same time.
