Chapter 5

Two years later:

To comply with heath and safety requirements they installed a daycare center in the ARC. That was the beginning of the end. It became sort of an open secret at work that Abby's daughter was Lester's. All three of the adults stomped all over any gossip. Two of the three adults. No one had the bad sense to approach Lester about it.

There was a buzz for a few days but then it died down. It wasn't anybody's business. The majority of people at work assumed that they had had a fling and Connor was a big enough person to forgive her for it. When no one would talk about it the sheer juiciness of the gossip wore off. Jess kept her ear to the ground and she dressed down a few people for gossiping. Becker flat out ordered his men to lay off the Abby/Connor/Lester thing.

It helped that Connor and Abby were both well liked and popular and hadn't made any enemies at the office.

The minister called Lester into his office to question him about it. He got the same answer as everyone else. It wasn't his business and it didn't affect the office and he could just butt out. In much more polite language.

Late one evening about two weeks later James had retrieved Amelia from the day care when he was called to the operations floor. Abby had already taken Nick home, he had been planning to take Amelia out for ice cream after work. She had a very stressful day at daycare that afternoon. That plan was all shot now, unless he could leave quickly.

Connor, Jess, Becker, and dozen security people and techs were watching the screen. It kept saying there was an anomaly, then there wasn't. "What's going on here?" He demanded, ignoring their glances at his daughter standing right next to him with her hand in his. She looked more and more like Abby every day. Most of these people hadn't seen her until the daycare opened and then it was impossible to hide. He certainly wasn't going to ask a four year old to pretend that she wasn't his daughter.

"I'm not sure, it shouldn't be faulting like this." Connor tried to explain from under the desk, "Jess, try the reboot again."

"So it's broken then?" James was not impressed.

"Not broken exactly, there's no anomalies." The screen was screaming that they were up to their eyeballs in anomalies. James sighed irritably, "Connor, if there isn't one, but it says that there is, then its broken."

"It's not broken." Connor defended his system, "Something else is going on."

Even if James was ignoring the stares, Amelia wasn't. She tugged at his hand, "Daddy, pick me up." Absently, he did and set her up on the desk he was standing next to. Being eye level with everyone else gave her a little confidence. She didn't like being nervous.

Amelia watched her daddy and Uncle Connor argue back and forth before she decided that she really didn't want to miss out on ice cream because of Uncle Connor being silly.

"Fix it Uncle Connor." Amelia demanded like a queen. "So I can go have ice cream with my daddy."

Connor slid out from under the desk enough to look up at her. "Ice cream? What about your poor brother? Does he get any ice cream?"

She shrugged. She didn't really care if Nick got any ice cream. He had pulled the head off her favorite barbie today and she had gotten in trouble for hitting him for it. Brothers were a terrible nuisance.

"I see how it is." Connor slid back under the desk and kept shifting wire around. "Just fix it." James ordered them all, perfectly aware of the little slice of their life they had provided to all the people standing around.

"Yeah!" Amelia felt vindicated that daddy agreed with her. "Fix it you lazy layabouts!" It was the worst thing she could think of to call them. She even screwed up her face into her best mad face. James looked over at her, stunned that she was bitching at his people at the tender age of four. "Outstanding." He picked her up and carried her out of the room.

He wasn't quite all the way out when he heard one of Becker's men say, "Holy crap, it's mini-Lester. Talk about the apple not falling far from the tree."

Distantly he heard Connor reply just as the door swung shut. "I cannot wait until she starts dating. That's going to be a laugh!"

The end.