Nora nosed her truck through the gates, behind Noah's. The lights, stands, wiring, and generators that filled them both would turn night into day. The resources they represented, available at the drop of a hat, filled her head. Willy Wonka had everything. The blood left her knuckles as her hands tightened on the wheel. In no time, the move would be complete. The thought made her dizzy.

Terence had been wonderful when she'd voiced her concerns. He'd listened, with his hands in his pockets, head down, not interrupting, hearing every word. When she'd finished, he'd been silent. No telling her how to feel, no twenty/twenty hindsight, no telling her what she should do next. It was so unlike a man, but so refreshing … like Noah. Terence had asked her to fill him in on her evening with Dr. Grant as well, and she had, to more silence.

As they neared the school, she'd broken the silence herself, and asked his opinion.

His hands still in his pockets, Terence had looked up.

'Search me. For today, we're okay if he meets Charlie,' he'd said.

That was a little maddening. Willy hadn't met Charlie, and Nora had an inkling Terence had ideas. She swerved to avoid a jay-walker, hoping the items in the back of the truck survived the jostling. That man should pay more attention! So should she, Nora reflected, eyes back on the road. All these unknowns were distracting her, threatening to turn deadly something as dead simple as driving. Then she had it! She'd reduce the task to its basics. Make it as simple as the simple book Willy had quoted to her last night.

"See the back of Noah's truck," Nora recited out loud, her foot pushing smartly on the accelerator to catch up with it.

The light on the post half-way down the hill turned yellow, and tail-lights flared ahead of her.

"See Noah brake. Brake, Noah, brake."

The light turned red.

"See Noah stop. Stop, Noah, stop." The chant amused her. She kept it up, her voice becoming sing-song, and alive. "See me stop. Stop, me, stop. Stop, stop, stop."

This was fun. Nora checked the side-mirror as she waited for the light to change, one hand on the wheel, one hand in her lap. "See the factory in the side-view mirror. Hello, factory, hello."

With Willy's Factory filling the mirror, his words came back to her: 'a book any four-and-a-half, almost five'… the number he'd told her was so specific… Nora sat up with a gasp, her mouth an 'O', the hand in her lap flying to her lower lip. A four-and-a-half, almost five year old… that wasn't so! That book was a first grade reader, a book for six and seven year olds! Dr. Grant's words joined Willy's, ricocheting around her skull: 'he's never mentioned his mother, ever…'

Nora's heart was racing, because it couldn't be true, but maybe it was, and the light was about to turn green. She needed to calmly drive, but if she was right, Willy had told her something about his mother last night, or at least, about when she had left… when he was four-and-a-half, almost five years old.

The light hadn't changed, and Nora's mind was racing as fast as her heart. She'd asked Willy how he stayed so cheerful. He'd known what she meant: in light of the setbacks in his past. She'd not asked when they'd begun, but he'd told her. She'd had no idea he'd answered her question so throughly, but she could see through the shorthand now. Is that what Charlie could do? See through the shorthand? Because filling in the spaces, what Willy had said was, 'I was precocious, and loved reading. When I was four-and-a-half, almost five years old, my mother left, and life got hard. I escaped'—what was the word the book he had quoted had used? 'Run'. That was it! Well, she'd change it… 'ran' fit—'I ran to the worlds of my books.'

The light turned green, and Noah's truck began to move. Nora didn't need the coincidence of the changing light to know she was right. Terence had gotten to know Willy through his books. She was humbled by the confidence, but if Willy had taken a chance on her, she knew it was only because she was Charlie's mother.

As her truck moved forward, the honk from the car behind her, trying to get her into gear, and the growl of her own engine, erased some of her elation. Willy'd said she was a quick study, but Nora, wondering if she'd hurt Willy's feelings, bit her lower lip. This was the first time, as aloof as Willy always presented himself, that Nora had considered he had feelings. She'd understood so easily the shorthand that meant he was planning to give Charlie his factory, while missing so completely what he was sharing with her about himself.


Clicking was gonna be a problem. The sound filled the hall that led to his office, and he hadn't gone two feet. Two feet! Willy raised spider-silk gloved fingers to pursed lips, stifling his laughter. Sneaking up on Terence while he was sleeping was one thing; sneaking up on him while he was awake was quite another. Willy unconsciously touched his wrist, the slight soreness a souvenir of the lesson learned last night. If he got it done this time, he'd stay at least an arm's length clear until Terence knew he was there.

Willy bent down, and slipped off his boots.


Seeing Mina again … not Mina … but someone who looked so much like her … Dr. Wonka didn't know whether it was the past or the present that pulled him from his limo. The click of the latch on the car's door, announcing he was opening it, surprised him as much as his driver.

"I'll just be a minute."

"Yes, sir."

The driver left the motor running, for the warmth. Starting in his very bones, this place was making him cold.

Out of the limo, Dr. Wonka tipped his head, the better to see the scars in the surrounding architecture—save for some slight weathering—as fresh today as they were on the day he moved his house. What a coup! Compare that with The Boy, and his pathetic little team, at that dilapidated shack! They couldn't begin to match his feat! The smile that split his face was as cold and empty as the new moon.

The scars in the earth were smooth now, the lot landscaped. Dr. Wonka scraped across the sidewalk, halting at its edge. How pathetic was that? The space was too small for a park: the shrubs and plantings only made it more obvious a house should stand here. Dr. Wonka didn't wonder for a minute who'd done it. The trees along the back of the property stood like guards. The bleeding-heart responsible could only be The Boy.

Dr. Wonka turned his eyes to what had once been the garden, a sudden gust of wind catching and stinging his face. His hand went to his cheek, touching the spot. It had felt like a slap. If it was, he could guess who it was from. She had always been all about energy. Whose knows what form her energy was taking today… it might be from her, or it might just be the wind. Whatever, whoever, it was, it served him right, for being here. He'd always known better than to come back. But here he was, and he knew he wasn't leaving anytime soon. He'd make the most of this little detour; use the mistake to refresh his memory, hone his focus. Dr. Wonka stepped back to the curb.


The thumping noise was disconcerting; not least because he knew it wasn't his heart. Willy stood in the hall in front of his office doors, listening to one side of a tennis match. THWACK! Silence. Skerschlap! Silence. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Time to put his boots back on. He wasn't gonna sneak up on whatever this was.


Comparing the positions of the other stoops, in his mind's eye, Dr. Wonka estimated where the steps of his stoop had met the sidewalk. He moved in, searching. Ah, there it was! The worn depression he knew he'd find, shadowed in the concrete. His hand went to his brow, thumb and fingers spread. Remembering, he rubbed his temples. All those patients, up and down all those steps, all funneled to the same beginning and ending spot, day after day.

Dr. Wonka dropped his hand and looked up, imagining his younger self at his door, opening it to an unexpected knock. There Mina stood, the first time he'd laid eyes on her. A mousey little thing; one of those community college girls, he'd thought. She was nothing to look at, really: small bones; too thin to please; unfashionably short; unfashionably pale; but her sparkling eyes, the deep blue of a clear mountain sky, and thick, wavy, shoulder length hair, irretrievably marred by its depressing choc-o-late—he hated that word—brown color, cried out to be brought under control.

'Do you have an appointment?' he'd asked, knowing she didn't, the disinterest in his tone implying the lack of that prerequisite was reason enough to leave.

'No,' she'd answered, in a lilting voice annoying for its musicality. "But I've got a dilly of a toothache. Can you help me?'

Help her? He'd thought she wasn't much, but in the time she'd stood before him, the life bubbling beneath the surface, animating the very air around her as she spoke, meant he couldn't look away. He'd nodded, and not ten minutes later, he'd lost his heart.


Thanks for reading, enjoy your day, and if you'd care to, please review. I do not own Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in any of its many forms, and there is no copyright infringement intended.

Thank you reviewers: dionne dance, Linkwonka88, Alibi Nonsense and Ifwecansparkle. It's taken me a bit of time to get up this update, but your taking your time as you do to comment, means a lot to me. Thank you also to those of you who have made this story a favorite, and to those who are following.