Chapter 2:

NOVEMBER 1981- CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

Jackie Burkhart sighed heavily.

She was sitting at her desk in her tiny cramped office on Friday evening, trying to finish up all her work so that she wouldn't have to think about it again until Monday.

She had been working for a lawyer at a prestigious law firm for a little over a year now. He was a nice man and had really taken her under his wing.

She was in enrolled in the pre-law program at the University of Chicago and her boss was invested in helping Jackie get ahead but that translated into lots and lots of work.

Though he was very lenient with her schedule and allowed her time off for exams and allowed her to study at work as long as her work was caught up and met to his expectations, which it always did.

Work was not something Jackie Burkhart was accustomed to but ever since she left Point Place and began her new life in Chicago she was certainly surprising herself with just what she was able and willing to do. She never understood the satisfaction people got out of a job well done until she had been forced to find out for herself.

She glanced at the clock, 6:04 PM.

Crap, she thought.

She had promised Brooke and Michael that she would have dinner with them and Betsy this evening. It was a pretty regular thing; she had dinner at their house at least three times a week and spent most of her weekends with the family.

They had become the family she no longer had. Brooke was like a sister to her and she adored Betsy as a niece, and Michael would always hold a special place in her heart. With them she didn't feel intrusive, they made her feel loved and wanted.

Finishing up the last bit of paperwork, she closed the file she had been working on and carefully filed it back in her filing cabinet. She gathered up her coat, purse, and keys before flicking off the light and locking up her door.

Jackie stepped out into the frigid November air and hailed a taxi.

She climbed in and told the driver her destination. She settled back against the seat and watched the buildings and high rises flit past her window.

Her mind wandered as it usually did in these unoccupied moments, and for some reason tonight it wandered back to how her life came to be as she now knew it.

Jackie had left Point Place shortly after Steven's Las Vegas whore waltzed through the Forman's front door the day after she came back from Chicago the first time. She stuck around long enough to see the deterioration of both the man she loved and the best friend she though would always have her back.

There really wasn't much more to it than that.

Her heart had shattered into a million tiny pieces that she doubted would ever be whole again. Without Steven there was nothing left for her in Point Place, Wisconsin.

So she left… she left and did not look back.

Jackie scoffed, her breath fogging the cab window. How naïve she had been, how completely and utterly stupid she had been. It was a wonder she had managed to survive once she got back to Chicago, she had no friends, she had no job, she had no one.

For the first time in her life she was truly on her own.

Not knowing where else to go she sought out Michael Kelso, the person whose fault this whole mess had been in the first place.

After punching him squarely in the nose, she informed him that he was never to speak of what happened that fateful night in the motel room, nor was he ever to ask her anything about Steven. He had whimpered at her and agreed before inviting her inside.

Poor Michael, she thought. She knew in her heart that it really wasn't all his fault.

In retrospect she came to accept that she and Steven were not meant to be, and that realization in itself hurt more than she could have possibly imagined.

She had claimed to love him with all her heart and soul. But still she had tried to change him, tried to push and bully him, and looking back on that with a wiser mind she knew that the relationship wasn't really what she thought it was.

Love didn't make want you try and change a person into what you wanted, she had realized. It made you want to change yourself into the best person you could be.

Things couldn't stay the same.

She knew that now.

She was glad that she had had Steven when she did. Being with him had helped her come to know that. Without that experience she doubted she ever would have grown up. She imagined she would still have her head in the clouds, wrapped up in fairytales and dreams that were too beautiful to be real.

She felt that she was different than the young girl who had pranced around in the Forman's basement demanding attention and proclamations of love from either Michael or Steven. She would never forget the time she spent with her friends in the Forman's basement but those days were so long gone and the life she had now so much more than she ever expected that she found it hard to miss it as much as she thought she should.

Upon arriving in Chicago in June of 1979, Kelso had allowed Jackie to stay with him and Brooke in their two bedroom Chicago apartment where Jackie spent four miserable months sleeping on a pull out bed in their living room.

Both of them had been kind to her and helped her in every way they possibly could and because of that Jackie would be eternally grateful to them.

After several dead end jobs failed, Jackie had enrolled full time in a community college. She managed to hold down a part time job to pay rent on the tiny apartment Brooke had helped her find close to the house that they moved into after Kelso was promoted to captain on the police force.

Jackie worked hard and within three semesters she received her paralegal degree.

She had been entertaining the idea of becoming a lawyer for sometime now. Her father had been a lawyer, it was in her blood and she just knew she would be good at it.

She had one semester left before she could apply to the law school at U of C.

All in all, she had really done a lot for herself. And she was proud of what she had accomplished.

The cab came to a halt in front of Brooke and Kelso's house just then, shaking herself out of her thoughts; Jackie handed the cabbie a ten and got out.

She climbed the steps to the front door and let herself in.