"Good morning, Chicago!" Local morning personality Shelly Jamison-Daniels shined and greeted her viewers from TV station KDCN. "Wanna guess which mysterious Detroit apparition appeared just yesterday in our city? For the last two months, Detroit has been a buzz with stories about a young lady in a Supergirl costume saving people and punishing the evil in their grand city, but yesterday, she seemed to pay us a visit. Twenty-one sightings in our city alone within two hours as the Kryptonian cutie caught shoplifters, saved people in near accidents and even stopped to say hello to the kids at Montgomery Doss Elementary School before rushing off again." Shelly grinned excitedly. "Supergirl, if you're tired of Detroit, Chicago sure loves you!!!"
"Bridget, we've barely seen you." Becca Weller sat on Bridget's bed in her Detroit home. "You never go shopping anymore."
"I went shopping yesterday." Bridget told her pal.
"I meant with people…." Becca added to her statement. "Bridget, look, my dad is taking me on an early skiing trip up to Canada. That's like a whole other country. I would really like it if you came with us. Don't make me go skiing with my brothers and sisters."
"Becca," Bridget sorted and matched her outfits. "I don't know. I've got a lot of stuff going on in my life now."
"Oh, you got to be kidding me." Kerry entered the room half-heartedly eavesdropping to get her book. Bridget looked back at her then back to Becca.
"I'd have to get my parents to say it was okay." Bridget turned to her classmate. "I can't exactly sneak out."
"I can't believe I heard that." Kerry mumbled out loud. Bridget had made sneaking out a form of art… at least the old Bridget had.
"What's wrong with your sister?"
"She just discovered she's adopted." Bridget claimed. Kerry made a face of disgusted annoyance and Becca dropped her jaw believing it. Unwilling to listen to this colliding of blonde thoughts, she departed from them into her bathroom if but to separate herself from them.
"I knew you two weren't really related." Becca absorbed the ungrounded accusation. "So what about it, Bridge? Do you wanna go?"
"Yeah," Bridget thought it over. "And, you know, I think we ought to separate when we get up there so we don't cramp each others style. That way, we can meet twice as much boys without getting in each other's way."
"Oh my god, Bridge, that's like so genius." Becca beamed liking the idea a lot. "You're like a scientist or something!"
"Oh, god," The blonde one realized Becca was almost a window into the person she once was. "Did I once really sound like that?" She asked herself then looked back to her friend. "I'll call you tonight and let you know if I can go."
"This trip is like so happening!" Becca perceived Bridget as already having permission and excitedly hugged her with thoughts of their itinerary already in her mind. A giddy laugh, a tight bond of friendship and Becca was off down the back stairwell of the Hennessy house ready to give the news to her parents that there would be six for the trip to Canada instead of five. A cursory good-bye to Bridget's father later, and Becca was off for home. Paul watched the scatter-brained young lady vanish out the back door and head for home then glanced to his daughter.
"Daddy…"
"What…." Paul's voice screeched prepared for the worst.
"Becca's family is taking an early Christmas skiing trip up to their cabin up in Canada this weekend and invited me along. Can I go?" She really wanted this trip to cover up her excursion to New York to meet the police captain.
"What about school?" Paul heated up dinner.
"It's a five day weekend." Bridget answered. "Some teacher meeting thing and I'd be back Monday morning ready for school."
Rory looked up from the living room floor and his video game on the TV.
"But Bridget, who's going to protect the city while you're gone?" He mumbled stagnantly with a look of confusion. "They never did catch Doctor Doom." Paul threw a dishtowel at him to shut up.
"I don't know, Beej…" Paul loved to keep his daughters close. Even with her seemingly reformed, he wasn't sure about losing Bridget into the snowy wilderness of another country. "I'd have to check something like that with your mother."
Practically announced, Cate arrived home at that second wearing her jacket over her hospital scrubs. Dropping her purse into the chair by the door, she looked to her family across from her and announced the obvious with a certain air and attitude of annoyance and personal aggravation.
"She's back!!!" She announced.
"Who?" Paul asked. Bridget grew quiet. Cate stopped halfway cross the room and posed with her fists entrenched to her hips.
"Super Bridget?!" Rory guessed. Bridget looked away expecting an explosion.
"Rory, toss me the dish towel." Paul called for the towel as his son sent it back to him. Upon touching it, Paul reared it back and flung it at him again for the dumb crack.
"That's impossible!" Bridget responded with the obvious. "She's in Chicago now."
"Is she?" Cate strolled over plucking the folded newspaper from her purse to a certain article. "Mystery Blonde Saves Youth From Drowning." She read the article. "Twelve-year old Cody Paterson, a student from George Dewitt Elementary, was fishing with his father off the Oakwood Bridge when he slipped and fell off the bridge into the turbulent waters of the creek yesterday…" She didn't notice Bridget looking away and brushing her hair back. "The waters under the bridge were five feet deep and too much for the youth to handle as Jim Paterson dived in to save his son. Bystanders rushed to help but young Cody was nowhere to be found until twenty minutes later he came running up the street. He reported he been plucked from the waters down river by a flying young lady in a red cape and Superman shirt." She broke from reading. "Oh, look! There's a photo too!" Rory dashed to the kitchen counter to see the picture put down to his sister and father. It was a black and white photo heavily distorted by the newspaper printing process. The face of the girl in the superhero costume was indiscernible from the distance the photo was taken, but the shape of her body and the poise of her stature were obvious. Paul and Cate looked to their eldest daughter.
"She looks like Reese Witherspoon." Bridget voiced without looking up.
"Not only that…" Cate stood up straight pulling her jacket off her body. "But today in the hospital, I helped the police by treating one drug-pusher, three shop-lifters, one and two carjackers of broken bones to their bodies along with severe cases of underwear burn, as if someone had tried pulling the back of their underwear up over their heads, and they all reported that they had been attacked while breaking the law by the exact same young lady wearing the exact same costume!" Cate stared at Bridget as she was trying her in a court of law. Paul drew silent trying to think. Rory just watched the events unfold.
"She's got this thing with underwear, doesn't she?" The one answered.
"Bridget," Cate took her daughter lovingly into her arms, hugged her and then held her at length to look into her eyes. "Please, please… Is there anything you want to tell me?"
"Can I go skiing with Becca Weller up in Canada?"
Cate didn't say a thing but inside her head she was screaming at the top of her lungs.
"You flying up there in a cape or a plane?" Rory quipped. Without a dishtowel, Paul swatted him with the oven mitt.
"Fine…" Cate stifled her scream. "Go ahead…" Bridget squealed excitedly and pranced happily for the back staircase. Cate began going through frustrated annoyance as well as fearful stress to her sanity. She knew that was her Bridget. She knew it, but how to prove it. How to bust her? The need to know was killing her. She just had to know if it was her daughter or if there was another blonde young lady out there that looked just like her. She just had to know if she should feel relieved or proud of a daughter saving the world.
"Cate, you just breathe it off…." Paul pulled her close and placed her heartbeat close to his. "Just breathe it off." He kissed her neck and changed the subject. "What's with the money in the tin hidden above the refrigerator?"
"What money?" Cate pushed free from him.
"This…" He reached up above the cabinet above the refrigerator and opened the cabinet there. Filled with designer cups and old dusty movie glasses, he pulled down an old tea container made of golden tin and opened it up to reveal it was full of money. Mostly fives and ones with several twenties and a random fifty-dollar bill, it looked like a major haul.
"How much..." Rory started asking.
"Six hundred and eighty seven dollars…" Paul had already counted it.
"I haven't squirreled money away in there in years." Cate pulled a fifty out. Rory slapped Rory's hands of a twenty.
"Could you have forgotten that this was up there all these years?" Paul rationalized things rather than think the worst.
"No…" Cate forgot about Bridget for the moment. "I distinctly remember using the last of it to pay for the water heater when it broke down."
"Mom, did you hide any more money in the house?" Rory asked.
"I think I once put a can up the fireplace."
Rory dashed over and launched himself into the fireplace pulling out the screen and fake wood used as decoration and started feeling around for secret booty in his house. It hadn't been used since he was a kid. His father just hated cleaning it so they had stopped using it. His fingers danced and glided around every niche that he could reach for another tin or anything that could store money.
"Hey, Santa Claus!!!" Paul yelled at his opportunistic son. "Get out of the fireplace before you damage the flue!"
"Too late!"
"Could someone else be hiding it up there?" Cate asked her husband.
"Who?" Paul scoffed at the idea over his strained noodles. "The one who maxs out our credit cards or the one who donates large sums of our money to charity?"
"How about the one who used to maxs out our credit cards?" Cate revealed she had a brain too. "The same person who has mysteriously stopped asking for an allowance? When was the last time Bridget asked us for money?"
"Bridget asked for money just the other…." He started thinking back. "What a second… It has been a while hasn't it."
"Mom…" Rory stuck his head between them. "Did you ever hide money anywhere else in the house?"
"Once in the attic…" Cate mumbled without thinking as her son raced upstairs to the door for the attic. "Paul, we have got to figure out what has happened to our daughter. This…" She picked up and held up the newspaper briefly. "… is one thing. If she is hiding money in the house, where is she getting it?"
"God…" Paul stopped what he was doing and leaned against the counter. "Throw a bald guy and a fat guy in here and we'd be an episode of Lost!"
"Hey!" On the second floor, Bridget had dragged down a suitcase and travel case from the attic, but Rory grabbed the drawstring for the hatch from her and pulled it down in his mad run for free money. Watching the seat of his jeans dashing up into the rafters, she paused, stepped back and pulled a long lock of her hair behind her left ear as sounds reached her mind. Someone in the neighborhood was making daiquiris, someone else was trying to figure out their new TIVO and her own parents were whispering about the cash she had planted for them to find to help pay the bills. Instead of freely accepting it, they were somehow linking it back to her. She didn't worry about it. It would all play out to its inevitable logical conclusion in the end. She carried the suitcases into the room. Flipping the big one on to her bed, she popped it open and looked upon the quilt stored securely within it.
"I'm going skiing… Skiing…" She sung under breath to herself. Kerry looked up reading from her bed. She looked at Bridget with the luggage pulling out her winter clothes.
"Moving into your Fortress of Solitude?"
"My what?"
"Spiders!!!" Rory screamed in the attic over their heads. "Get them off me!!!"
"Bridget… please…" Kerry rose up and implored to their sisterly bond. "You've got to tell me. I can keep your secret. I can help cover you against mom and dad. You just can't shut me out like this. I'm your sister."
"Kerry…" Bridget dropped her jaw and looked into Kerry's eyes. "I wish I could tell you, but… she's not me."
"I still don't believe you." Kerry lowered her head defeatedly and turned away disillusioned. Her sister was no longer taking her into her confidence. Whatever bond they had seemed to be over. The auburn-haired middle child descended down the back stairs to the kitchen. Her mind filled with guilt and regret, Bridget realized for the first time that she might be pushing her sister away. She didn't want to do that. She pressed her bedroom door shut and started considering possibilities and alternate options. Her back to the door, she took a few steps into the middle of the room and seemingly rehearsed to the mute and speechless door.
"Kerry…" She whispered to her own ears. "It's me. I'm Supergirl." Her voice was delicate and breathless. "You were right. I can fly and lift cars and do all sorts of things - incredible things I'm still discovering. My mind and soul have been changed. I can see things I never saw before." Her voice drew silent, her breath slowed. Tears rolling down her face. "You were right all along. I wanted to tell you from the start, and I wanted you to bust me, but… You see," She paused taking a deep breath, another tear sliding down the left of her face. "I'm not allowed to tell."