Author's Note. Are you ready? Are you ready for the EPIC CONCLUSION? Honestly, I was kinda/sorta dreading this chapter, because I just wasn't sure how to handle certain events that obviously had to happen. I just had to dive in and see what became of it, and this is it.

And it's another long one. I apologize. Perhaps the subject matter wasn't meant for a 5-part? I don't know. But I think it worked out. As always thanks for following, reading, and reviewing! Feedback is always marvelous, and I appreciate you all humoring my further endeavor into this universe, even though it's fairly far-removed from the movie.

Disclaimer. The characters of The Mummy are the property of Universal Studios. The title and chapter titles are taken from the song "It Ain't Me, Babe" by Johnny Cash (because what could be more fitting than a Johnny Cash song for the Americans?), originally written by Bob Dylan. The ranch and setting take a heavy cue from the film Giant. As far as I know, Blackbird, Texas is a town of my own invention.

IT AIN'T ME, BABE

but it ain't me you're lookin' for.

Lucas Dewitter Suits and Tailoring: Cairo, Egypt, 1941

"Jemima?"

She hadn't heard that voice in years, and the cautious, polite tone sent a chill up her spine. Jemima took a deep breath and turned away from examining her son's suit sleeve, following the curious gazes of the people around her.

There she was behind her, lovely and dignified the way age sometimes does to beautiful women. There she was with her glittering hazel eyes and an uncertain smile on her face, like perhaps she'd debated approaching her for a while.

Jemima tried to smile. "Hello, Evelyn. It's been a while."

Evelyn breathed a sigh of something like relief, and a smile touched her eyes. "Yes, it certainly has. You're looking well. Is this Lionel?"

Jemima smiled, giving his sleeve a little tug. "Yes. We're having one of Ollie's suits fitted for him. Mary was such a dear to bring it for him. You remember Ollie's sister, don't you? Mary Westhausen?"

Evelyn smiled, glancing at the severe, older woman sitting on a chair nearby.

"Of course. How are you, Mary?"

Mary let out a laborious sigh. "I must say I've been better, what with the Germans bombing us all to smithereens back home."

Evelyn's smile faded, and Jemima glanced down awkwardly. "Yes. It's dreadful, isn't it?"

An awkward silence fell between and around them; Evelyn shifted her weight like she might start to walk away, and Jemima was ready to let her, but then -

"Ma, they don't got any with the pink stripe like you want, but there's this one in the red. Is that close enough?"

Jemima didn't even look at the tie in Benjamin's hand; she barely glanced at him at all. She heard Evelyn suck in a deep breath, and watched her trembling lips go pale. She stared at Benjamin for much longer than was proper, her mouth gaping for something to say.

Benji frowned at her in confusion, glancing over to his mother for help.

"Evelyn, this is my son Benjamin."

She forced her best smile and tried to blink away the startled look on her face. "Of course it is. Hello, Benjamin."

"Benji, this is Mrs...?"

"O'Connell," Evelyn jumped in readily, before any slips might be made.

Mary frowned, somehow managing to appear even more stern than usual. "As I recall, it was Gabor."

Evelyn was so startled, she took a half-step back and turned her wide eyes to Mary emphatically.

"No," she said with almost a trace of harshness. "Not in some time."

Mary feigned ignorance. "But it was Gabor once, wasn't it? I'm not mistaken..."

"No," Evelyn said, straightening her shoulders. "You're not. But that's been over for some time. Surely you heard."

Mary shrugged and gave her a trifling wave of her hand. "Well. I can hardly keep all of that sort of activity straight. Your generation trades husbands like playing cards."

Evelyn's eyes narrowed, and the two women stared at one another evenly while Jemima struggled for something to say, and the boys looked on, too perplexed to be amused.

"It's been a pleasure, Mrs. Westhausen," Evelyn managed to say at last. "But I'm afraid I've a few more errands to run. Good day to all of you."

Jemima swallowed hard, and before she could stop herself, she said, "Let me walk you out. I've been wanting to have a cigarette, anyway."

Evelyn nodded, not even attempting to smile, and Jemima had to walk very quickly to keep up with her hurried steps over to the counter. She demanded something about Jonathan's suit in a terse tone, and let out an exasperated sigh when the clerk hurried away to the back of the store. She cast a dark glance back where Mary was sitting, and huffed.

"What a dreadful old shrew."

Jemima gazed at her apologetically. "I'm so very sorry about her. There's a good reason I haven't visited her or any of those Willoughbys in the last several years."

Evelyn sighed, glancing at the desk the clerk had just vacated. "They always were an imperious lot."

"Yes. All except for Ollie."

Evelyn nodded her head slowly, her eyes meandering back in the direction they had come. "Lionel looks just like him."

Jemima smiled nervously, waiting for it. When Evelyn didn't say anything more, she leaned a little closer and said pointedly:

"And I know you're thinking the very same thing about Benjamin, looking just like...him."

Evelyn blinked, startled. "I wasn't going to say anything about it..."

"There's no use in that."

Evelyn glanced around and lowered her voice. "I already knew he was Beni's. I just didn't expect..."

Jemima nodded her head. "It's been like seeing a ghost, every day, since he was born."

Evelyn looked up at her with some kind of unreadable but empathetic emotion in her eyes, and her lips trembled with a want for words she never had a chance to say. The clerk arrived with the suit, and she offered him a smile.

"I'm sorry I was so beastly earlier," she told him, taking the suit. She turned back to Jemima with a kind of uncertain, helpless smile on her face, and nodded towards the door. "Were you still having that cigarette?"

"Yes. Would you like one?"

Evelyn shook her head. "I don't smoke. But...but I'll stand out there with you a moment...if you like."

Jemima nodded. "I would like that."

They stepped out in the bright, oppressive heat of the late morning, and Jemima's hands shook as she fished out her carton of cigarettes and a lighter from her purse. Evelyn stood there holding the suit, trying to find a way to keep it off of the dusty ground even though it was zipped into a traveling bag.

"I'm terribly...terribly sorry, Evelyn," she said quietly, her voice quivering with the first drag of smoke. " If it helps at all, my life has been a ruin...just an absolute ruin..."

Evelyn stared at her with wide, pitying eyes. "Why on earth would that help?"

Jemima swallowed hard. "I shouldn't have done it. He was your husband. I shouldn't have done it."

Evelyn shrugged stiffly. "Well. It's done now. It's been done for nearly twenty years."

Jemima's eyes closed, and she nodded her head slowly, her mouth jerking against something that might have been a sob, though her eyes were dry when she opened them again.

"Benji knows now...and Lionel, too, and probably everyone here in Egypt..." She glanced up at her desperately. "Oh, Evelyn! How will I ever keep it from David now? What will I do when he finds out?"

Evelyn swallowed hard and shifted her weight.

"Benji's met him," she whispered quickly. "Just the other day. I can't very well keep it up now. I can't ask Benjamin to..." She choked back a sob, shaking her head. She stared into Evelyn's eyes with an urgent, desperate emotion. "He's a good boy. He's not at all like him. I mean, we've had our rough patches with him, of course...it's how boys are..."

Evelyn smiled a little, nodding her head knowingly. "Tell me about it."

Jemima's mouth twitched with an almost grateful smile. "You have a son?"

"Oh, yes." Evelyn dug a picture out from her purse. "There's my Alex."

Jemima smiled at the handsome teenager in the picture. "He looks like Jonathan."

Evelyn nodded her head and breathed an exasperated but affectionate sigh, tucking the picture away again. "He gets into trouble like Jonathan, too."

Jemima sighed, glancing over her shoulder at the door. She bit her lip, and looked back at Evelyn frantically.

"He isn't like him," she said again so abruptly that it too Evelyn a moment to realize she was talking about Benjamin again, and not Alex. "He's kind...he really isn't like him at all..." She blinked, staring bravely up at the sky to keep her tears from ruining her mascara. "But he's also just so like him, do you know what I mean? I can't hardly take it some days. Dave met him twice, you know, and sometimes I see him staring at Benji...sometimes I see him watching him, and I just have to hold my breath, because I'm sure - I say to myself, 'It's happened. He knows now.' I've been waiting seventeen years for David to realize it on his own. Every time he wants to have a talk in private, I think, 'This is it. He'll ask me about it now...' For seventeen years!"

The corner of Evelyn's mouth jerked with pity, and Jemima could tell she didn't know how to respond. At last she said in a tone that sounded self-conscious, "I'm so sorry."

Jemima sighed out a trail of smoke, and shook her head. "No. I'm sorry. This is positively mad of me, pouring all of this out onto you...I've done enough to you already, haven't I?"

Evelyn met her eyes and offered her a sad smile. She reached over and gave her arm a squeeze, and said after a moment, "I'm very sorry you've had to deal with this for so long."

Jemima glanced down at her shoes, and she felt Evelyn's hand drift away from her arm. She was vaguely aware of the awkward, anxious way Evelyn was shifting her weight, and the way her eyes kept darting towards the parking lot. It occurred to her that she should snuff out her cigarette and tell Evelyn she needed to go back inside - that she should save Evelyn from having to make up an excuse for leaving her when she was clearly such a mess. But she couldn't bring herself to say anything, and the last tired bit of the cigarette burnt her fingers.

"I'm sorry," Evelyn said. "Um, I've got to get this suit to Jonathan, and - "

"Of course," Jemima said as breezily as she could. She looked up and gave her a half-hearted smile. "It was so nice seeing you again, Evelyn."

Evelyn nodded, and stole away. The expression on her face lingered in Jemima's memory for some time afterward. She would have expected something like smug satisfaction, knowing the woman who'd formerly scandalized her family was now living with the unpleasant consequences of her actions. She could have accepted an expression like that. She could have even accepted some false, forced pity - a valiant if strained attempt to be the bigger person. But Evelyn looked at her with a kind of nervous fear, the way people look at someone who's not right in the head.

Jemima didn't know how to handle someone looking at her that way.

For a moment longer Jemima stood there outside the tailor. But the weight of the heat and the sun eventually forced her back inside. All of them were waiting for her to eye the suit and make sure it was going to fit Lionel the way he wanted, and she ran a dazed eye over it before agreeing that it looked alright to her. Lionel went back to the dressing room and put his clothes on, and they left the suit with the tailor. She was only vaguely aware of Mary assuring her for the hundredth time that they'd be so much happier they'd gone to Lucas Dewitter instead of having the alterations done back home; Just wait and see, dear. No one does work like Lucas Dewitter. You'll never even know it was an old suit -

Jemima did her best to look interested and ushered them all back to the car. As she drove back down many familiar roads and out to the Willoughby House, she felt like a person in a dream. She hadn't returned to Cairo since the day she left with David, taking that little steamer up the Nile and then on...and on...and on. She hadn't returned to Cairo. Not until now. And she hadn't missed it either.

She never would have come back, honestly. She had nothing and no one there. Nothing and no one...except the Willoughby House, more or less. Mostly less. The house had sat vacant after she moved, and she supposed there had been the usual squabbling among the Willoughby clan over whom should get it. Lawyers likely got involved. Stalemates ensued. The regular, boring, ghastly Willoughby behavior. And that was probably why, some agonizing seventeen years later, it had finally been entrusted to Ollie's younger sister, Mary Westhausen, who promptly decided she wanted to sell it. Mary was a Willoughby par excellence, and she'd hated Jemima from the very moment she'd first flitted her then only blue eyes in Ollie's direction and flashed him a coy wink. She'd put up a loud fight over the engagement, telling everyone, everywhere that Jemima was nothing but a gold-digging opportunist, and she didn't belong in the family. She said she wouldn't attend the wedding, and she didn't. That was basically the way things were left between Jemima and Mary.

So when a letter arrived a couple months ago from Mary, addressed to Jemima, she actually assumed it must be from someone else. She'd held up the letter to David; Isn't this funny? I used to know a Mary Westhausen! She was positively horrid, darling. And then she'd opened the letter and gasped. Mary had once sworn she'd never speak to her again. Well, actually she'd sworn it a few times. But eventually the threat stuck. Anyway, Jemima hadn't anticipated hearing much from any of the Willoughby clan in general, and certainly never dreamed of getting a letter from Mary.

The message was fairly clear and simple. It told her that she'd acquired Ollie's house, and that she was going to sell it at the end of March, but that there were several things of value belonging to Oliver that she felt needed to be passed down to Lionel. She invited Jemima to bring her family to Cairo, because I think Lionel might enjoy the opportunity to see his father's house. There was a lot of mention of Lionel, and Jemima was on her guard, from the moment she introduced Mary to him at the docks.

When they pulled up to the house, Jemima noticed that the car David had insisted on hauling across the ocean with them (Can't drive on the wrong side 'a the car like that, Jem) was parked out in front. She pulled in next to it, and the four of them hurried into the cool relief of the house.

David was sitting in the parlor with Betsy. They were laughing about some thing or another; probably a memory from back home. One thing was certain: neither David nor Betsy had any use for Egypt. One would think they'd be at least a little accustomed to heat and wind and nothingness, being from that grim stretch of Texas, but neither of them could take a foot outside without being utterly miserable in the sweltering sunlight. Betsy had no interest in a shop that only sold men's clothes, and David figured Jemima could handle the situations with the tailor on her own, and so they'd stayed behind.

Benji had been avoiding David for the past three days, ever since he'd met Beni Gabor, and he'd jumped at the opportunity to be out with his mother instead of nervously guarding his new secret in his father's presence. Ordinarily he wouldn't have had any interest in Lionel getting a suit tailored at all.

"How'd it go?" David asked.

Jemima sighed, dropping into the nearest seat and taking off her hat. "Quite well, I think. They shouldn't have to take it in much. What's that you're drinking there?"

David held up the glass of whiskey and frowned. "What else?"

She let out another sigh, and a lazy smile stretched across her face. "I would positively adore a mint julep..."

David jerked his head in the direction of the kitchen. "If you want I can go get that butler to make one."

Jemima gave him a bright, playful smile, and he got out of his seat. She turned her attention to Betsy and frowned. "Are you having tea?"

Betsy's hands flexed nervously on her teacup, and she sputtered, "Uh - yeah - "

Jemima's brow furrowed incredulously, and she motioned for her to bring the cup over. With a sigh, Betsy crossed the room and surrendered the cup. Jemima sniffed it, and glanced up at her daughter in disapproval.

"Did your father let you have this?"

Betsy stuck her hands on her hips, all Daniels. "Well, Ma, I am sixteen years old! And it's just one little ol' drink - "

Jemima raised her eyebrows. "It isn't even noon yet."

"Well you're havin' a mint julep."

Jemima scoffed. "Let me tell you something, young lady. When you've had three children right in a row, and have to deal with three teenagers all doing extraordinarily stupid things at once, you can have mint juleps for breakfast, and I'll not say a word. I'll fix them for you myself."

Betsy let out a long sigh and rolled her eyes before trudging back to her seat on the couch. Benji had already sat down in the spot next to hers. His back was stiff and straight but his fingers were tapping anxiously against his knees. Betsy raised her eyebrows at him.

"You have too much coffee or somethin'?"

He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment. "Yeah, maybe."

Just then Mary let out a loud sigh, probably only to remind them all that she was still there. She found a seat in the chair next to Benji and settled herself into it primly. Lionel gave Betsy a nudge and sat down beside her, squeezing the three of them on the one, spindly sofa. Jemima giggled to see them lined up like that, all of them hers but so very unlike her. She saw instead a Little Ollie, a Little Naomi, and, regrettably, a Little Beni...and the thought twisted sad and painful inside of her. She suddenly imagined, or tried to imagine, Beni at seventeen years old. What he would have been wearing, where he might have been sleeping, what he might have been eating. All of it was certainly so much less that what Benjamin had. She suddenly remembered a piece of an article she'd read...or perhaps a whisper of a conversation they'd once had...about how he'd been arrested for the first time when he was sixteen years old. Sixteen. She looked at Benji and for only a brief, painful moment tried to imagine him trapped in a jail cell with terrible and unsettling people. She gasped back a breath and shoved the thought as far away as she could.

"This'll do ya?" David's voice broke through the haze in her mind, and she glanced up at him and the drink happily. She took it from his hand as he sat down, and then remembered Betsy's teacup.

She eyed him sternly. "Did you give Betsy some whiskey?"

His gaze jumped across the room to his daughter. "I told you to be careful with that!"

"Well, Dad, she knows I don't drink tea - "

David shook his head at her, the glimmer of a joke in his eye even though his mouth was set in a grave expression. "Well now I'm in trouble. And you're in trouble if I'm in trouble."

"Jeeze, Dad," she muttered. She attempted to lean back in her seat, but her brothers were crowding it. She nudged them both with her elbows. "Can't ya'll find somewhere else to sit?"

"Here," Mary offered in a voice that sounded more than vaguely offended. "Take mine."

She stood up and started towards the dining room. Jemima sucked in a breath and decided she might as well try to be polite. "Oh, where are you off to, Mary?"

Mary straightened, her nose in the air. "It seems your family is only interested in engaging itself right now. I know when I'm not wanted."

Jemima let out a sigh and pulled herself out of the chair, actively fighting the urge to roll her eyes like her teenaged daughter had a moment ago. "Mary - "

She followed Mary's short, bustling form out of the room and through the dining room; despite Mary's shorter legs and age, she was remarkably hard for Jemima to keep up with. She didn't stop until she'd made her way into the kitchen, where she ordered one of the temporary house servants she'd brought with her to fix up a cup of tea. Jemima crossed her arms over her chest and stared down at Mary in a manner she hoped wasn't as impatient as she was feeling.

"What's the matter?"

Mary sniffed, somehow managing to stare down her nose at Jemima despite being several inches shorter.

"Stop treating me like a fool, Jemima," she said, her voice dropping all pretenses of politeness. She eyed Jemima with hard, gray eyes.

Jemima raised her eyebrows, perplexed. "I'm sorry?"

Mary shook her head, a disgusted expression on her face. "This business with Lionel dressing like a cowboy - and talking like one, too! It's obscene. He's a Willoughby, for heaven's sake. You've taken Lionel from his real family, and you've completely estranged him from them with this American nonsense. And I know exactly why."

Jemima blinked, straightening her shoulders airily. "You don't know anything about me. Not a single thing."

Mary's eyes narrowed, calculating. "I know why you married that American buffoon, and why you haven't shown your face in Egypt more than twice in the past seventeen years. And so does anyone else with a decent memory and the most elementary mind for numbers." She leaned forward before Jemima's bewildered mind could contrive an inncoent answer and said, "Believe me, I'm not the only one who can tell who that son of yours really belongs to."

Jemima pressed her lips together, staring back at her sister-in-law steadily. "Is that what this was all about?"

"I've suspected it for years."

Jemima's expression was unmoved. "Well, that's an ugly rumor, and it's entirely untrue. But even if it was, I don't see what business it could possibly be of yours."

Mary scoffed, her hard little glare flashing back, undeterred. "You think you're dreadfully clever, but you're not. You might have been more careful when you decided to go and play the slut to that piece of Bohunk gutter trash."

Jemima refused to flinch away from her gaze, smug and glinting though it was, and straightened her posture to stand just a little bit taller over her. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Mary pointed up at her accusingly. "You've taken Lionel from his family. You've turned him into an American and given him absolutely no sense of who he is and where he really comes from. And I wanted to tell you, personally, that he'll not be finding his way into Oxford. Not over my dead body."

Jemima's mouth twitched, and she stared hard into Mary's mean, gray eyes. She stared at her, and shook her head in disgust. "You know, Mary, if you've missed him so terribly, you oughtn't punish him for something I've done. But if you must, you might find yourself dreadfully disappointed when no one even notices. There are universities in America, too."

Mary let out a condescending little laugh, fluttering a hand dismissively.

"There are," Jemima said pointedly. "Oxford isn't the only place one can go."

"It's the only place a Willoughby goes."

"Evidently not."

Mary raised her eyebrows, tilting her head to the side. She gazed up at Jemima, her mouth twisted with suspicion. "Of course, one might wonder what Lionel's doing here with us at all. He's at a ripe age for conscription, is he not?"

Jemima's face went pale, and she glanced away. She could feel Mary eyeing her.

"All of Britain's boys are on the front."

She stared down at her feet and refused to take Mary's bait.

"Has he not been drafted yet?"

Jemima took a breath, and the words fled her mouth in irritation: "He's not a British citizen anymore."

Mary shook her head, her eyes glinting cruel and disgusted. "You little coward."

Her gaze flew up to Mary's angrily. "The war has nothing to do with him! Am I supposed to let them drag him back to Britain to die for a country he's never even been to?"

Mary just kept shaking her head, that horrid expression on her face. At last she took the cup of tea the servant had prepared for her, and sauntered out of the kitchen, threw the door that let onto the library. Jemima closed her eyes, and took a shaking breath. She wanted to cry and didn't want to cry; she reached her hand up to her face and rubbed that aching spot between her eyebrows. She never should have come. She should have told Mary she could ship Oliver's things. She already had the address...

"Can I get you some water?" the servant said after an awkward moment.

Jemima nodded her head. "And an aspirin."

She didn't know what Mary was plotting, and she didn't really want to think about it, either. Most likely, knowing Mary, she wasn't plotting anything at all. She just enjoyed the satisfaction of telling Jemima she knew all of her secrets. Jemima supposed the Willoughbys keeping Lionel out of Oxford was something of a disappointment, but she would just as soon he attended university in the States, anyway. Assuming the Americans didn't also get dragged into this bloody war, he might have a better go at school in the U.S., anyway...

She set her empty glass down on the counter and thanked the servant for his kindness and discretion. She imagined she felt better as she left the kitchen and found her way back to the parlor. The sound of her children arguing made her smile and roll her eyes at the same time.

"It ain't a centaur, Betsy!"

"It is so! I remember it. I learned it in Mr. Twogood's class - "

"Well, you weren't payin' attention, 'cause it ain't a centaur."

"Then what is it, Lionel, since you're so smart?"

She found the three of them craning their necks at the ceiling, and stifled a laugh.

"I don't remember," Lionel muttered. "I just know it ain't a centaur."

"Oh, you know that?"

"It ain't. Centaur's the one with the horse body and man...like...half 'a man's body..."

"Lionel, I don't even buy that's a real thing."

"Well, 'course it's not a real thing, stupid. It's mythology."

"You know what I mean. And don't call me stupid."

Jemima breathed a sigh, stepping into the room and glancing up at the ceiling.

"It's a minotaur," she said, settling it. "It's Theseus and the minotaur."

Lionel and Betsy started to squabble over who was right, or who was close to right, or who wasn't right just because he knew it wasn't a centaur, and Jemima chuckled as she found her seat next to David and got that first sip of her mint julep at last. She turned to share a warm and amused glance with her husband, but David's face was set in an expression she'd never seen before. And everything within her went cold.

He was staring at Benjamin, too focused on the ceiling to really notice the scrutiny. He was staring at him on that sofa, sitting in such a way, looking in such a way. And she saw what David was seeing, just exactly. She saw a rather unpleasant dinner party ages ago in this very room, and a rather unpleasant guest who'd been on that sofa, sitting in such a way, looking in such a way.

She saw it. He saw it.

David turned to her suddenly with that dreadfully unreadable expression on his face. Something like suspicion. Something like shock. Something like bewilderment and disbelief. He turned and stared at her and she had nothing else to do but stare back at him. She had nothing else to do, but to stare and to ask very weakly, What is it, darling? But the words never made it to her lips.

She knew. She knew what it was.

His brow furrowed up, asked a question. She bit her lip, and stared back, sorry.

So, so, so, so, so sorry.

David got up off of the sofa and strode out of the room. Jemima didn't even have a chance to take a breath. She rushed after him. He stormed out the front door and would have let it shut in her face, but she caught it just in time. She slipped out after him and tugged it shut, praying the children took it as a clear sign that they weren't welcome in this conversation. He started fiercely down the porch steps.

"David!"

He didn't turn around until she lunged for his elbow and made him. He'd exchanged that unreadable emotion for anger by the time he whirled around to look her in the eye.

"Did I see somethin'?"

She blinked.

" 'Cause I think I just saw somethin', and you sure as hell ain't givin' me much room for doubt."

"David - "

He planted his feet on the ground, squared his shoulders, and stared up at her. "Is Benji mine?"

Jemima glanced down, and tried to swallow the dryness in her throat. He was out with it like that. Well, of course he would be. David never did beat around the -

"Is Benji mine?" he said again, impatient.

She stared at her shoes on the porch step, a cheery mint against the dust-dirtied white wood. She told her shoes the truth, "No."

"No," he scoffed under his breath. She heard him kick at something on the ground, and then it was silent. She was deafened by the pounding roar of blood in her ears, and had to glance up.

He wasn't looking at her. He was staring at something far off in the horizon. But she could see the disgusted betrayal on his face. She could imagine the pulsing, red anger that had rendered him utterly speechless where he stood.

"I'm sorry," she told him, too weakly. Maybe not weakly enough. The words didn't feel genuine as they fell from her lips, even though they were. Oh, they were.

He scoffed again, shaking his head at that place he was staring at. He spat in the dust.

And then at last he looked up at her again. "I married you because you were pregnant. 'Cause it was the right thing to do."

"I know..."

"I ain't a man to shirk that kind 'a responsibility," he said, his glare boring into her. "I told you that. And what was the one thing I asked you when you told me you were in trouble?"

She swallowed hard. "I know..."

"What was the one thing? I said, 'Honey, I don't wanna embarrass you or nothin', but are you sure it's mine?' And you said, 'Yes.' That's what you said. And I said, 'Okay, honey, let's make it honest.' That's what I said."

Jemima closed her eyes against the tears that threatened to run down her cheeks. She nodded her head numbly, and mumbled again, "I know." She knew. She knew all of it. She'd been trapped in the vivid, guilty memory for years.

He kept glaring at her, piercing and intense. "That's all I said. I never asked you again. I put up with all the shit folks gave me and all of it, 'cause you said he was mine. 'Son don't look much like ya, Dave.' 'Get a good look at the milkman, Dave?' For seventeen goddamn fuckin' years! And I put up with it, 'cause you said he was mine!"

She glanced up and winced at the severity of his furious expression. She took a shaking step back up to the next stair.

"I broke off marrying Cara Lee for you, and I was in love with her!" he shouted.

Despite the guilt that had thusfar paralyzed Jemima in place, her mouth twitched, and her glare shot up to his. Just the same, her voice trembled more than she would have liked it to: "Oh? Really? Were you in love with her? I never would have guessed from the half dozen trips to Houston you've taken over the last year!"

David's eyes burned hard and earnest. "Hey! I am not sleepin' with her."

"Oh, aren't you?" she said, half-lidded and incredulous.

"No!" he shouted, and she knew from the look in his eyes that he was telling her the truth. "But right now you're makin' me wish I had been!"

Jemima straightened her shoulders. "I suppose that would make it better, somehow."

David's eyes narrowed. "Yeah, I'm real sorry you can't turn this fuckin' mess back on me."

Jemima's jaw tightened, and she glanced away. She could feel him staring at her, shaking his head in disgusted disbelief.

"Christ, how do you sleep at night?"

She huffed a little sigh.

"No, I'm serious," he said. "How do you dare get in bed with me, night after night, and go to sleep?"

Jemima pressed her lips together. She couldn't look at him for the weight of her own shame and guilt. God, how had she? How had this once been nothing but an inconvenient and nagging little secret? Here, in this moment, it was so much more than anything she could shoulder on her own. So much bloody more. She started to stammer a response, something rote she'd been telling herself for years. It was for the best...it was the only thing I could have done -

"Whose is he?" David demanded before she had a chance to say the words floundering on her lips. He pointed at her, or maybe the house, accusing a memory he could see just before his eyes. "It was that...that little weasel fella you just had to have over some night - "

"Major Gabor," she told him quietly, too frightened and ashamed to admit his first name was Beni.

David scoffed. He repeated it like the punchline of a joke, "Major Gabor." He shook his head, tracing back over an evening he'd thought he'd forgotten about entirely. He shook his head, and the longer the silence stretched between them, the uglier his disgust became. He glanced up at Jemima and said in a voice that was too bitter to be malicious, "Got his dad's good looks, didn't he?"

"Please don't..."

"His charm, too."

Jemima's gaze jumped up to his, alive and hurt. "Don't say that. Benjamin's nothing like him - "

David raised his eyebrows incredulously. "Well. You'll have ta forgive me if he's just a little too like him for me to abide this shit."

Her lip trembled. "What are you saying?"

He shook his head. He glared at the dust on the horizon again.

"You can't mean to throw us out - "

His eyes jumped back to hers, hard and angry. "Oh, 'can't' I?"

She gazed back at him with wide, pleading eyes. "We've built a life together, David! We have a daughter - we've been married seventeen years - !"

"Look," he cut in darkly, holding his hands up. "I ain't sure what I wanna do yet. But you're in no position to tell me what I can and can't do."

Jemima glanced at her feet again, and nodded her head. She'd always been sure, whenever this moment happened, that she would be sobbing uselessly. She thought she'd be perfectly pitiful, crying and begging for forgiveness. But now it had happened, and she just felt weary. She'd been sitting on the edge of her seat too long. She'd been drained so long ago...And while it hurt to see him hurt, betrayed and angry - while his words stung worse than she'd anticipated - she wasn't crying. The tears wouldn't come. She stood there staring at her shoes in the dust with dry eyes.

"So what's the story, then?" David said all the sudden, bitter and terse.

She glanced up in confusion. "What?"

He eyed her incredulously. "Ain't you gonna try and explain yourself? I mean, don't you think you at least owe me some kind 'a explanation?"

Jemima sighed. She was weary, in the sweltering heat. She was weary and empty for the first time in years. The secret had finally escaped her, and she didn't feel anything else locked up inside her. She knew while she didn't know, what David was asking. He wanted the details that she knew didn't matter. What difference did it make if she'd known all along that Benjamin wasn't his, or if at one time (before he was born) she hadn't been certain? What difference did it make if she'd once genuinely believed Benjamin was David's? None of it changed the fact that he wasn't David's son. None of it could ever change that.

"How long did you know?" he asked, impatient and fed up with her. "Did you know the whole time?"

She didn't look up. "Yes."

"The whole time?" he said again, his voice tightening up with anger. "You knew the whole time? 'Fore he was even born?"

She nodded her head.

"You tricked me into it," he said, not even bothering to make it a question. He knew the answer already. "Look at me."

Jemima took a deep breath, and glanced up cautiously.

"You tricked me into it."

She ran her tongue over her lips, and nodded her head.

His jaw tensed, and he muttered some curses she didn't quite hear. He shook his head at her, furious and disgusted as ever. "What was the deal? Your darlin' Major Gabor couldn't clean up after 'imself?"

Jemima swallowed, and said very quietly, "He was married."

David scoffed, glaring at her in utter disbelief. "Well aren't you just a piece 'a work. And I reckon he's still married, ain't he, goin' about his business here with the rest 'a Benji's brothers and sisters."

"No, he's - "

She clamped her mouth shut against the rest of her sentence, but it was too late. David raised his eyebrows in surprise before his eyes narrowed darkly.

"I take it you know what he's up to."

Jemima let out a little breath and attempted to shrug dismissively. "I haven't any idea what he's up to..."

His gaze leveled on her. "Now really ain't the time to try to keep up a lie."

She closed her eyes, and her shoulders slumped in defeat. "He's divorced..."

David huffed sarcastically, "Nice fella like that? What a shame."

Jemima tried not to glare. "He isn't well, David. You've nothing to take vengeance on. He's wasted away to practically nothing, and he's a ruin. Everyone despises him. He's bitter and alone and he's no one at all, except a sister who's probably only caring for him out of pity..."

The caustic and sardonic smirk hadn't quite fallen from David's lips. "And Benjamin, too, right?"

Her eyes widened. She shook her head. "Don't say that, darling, please. That man is no one to him - no one at all. You've been Benjamin's father, can't you see that? You've been everything to him - "

"I ain't his father, Jem!" David spat. "Christ, you think it's my job to raise him just 'cause his father's a bastard?"

Jemima huffed. "It's never bothered you that you're not Lionel's father. You've raised him."

"That ain't even kinda the same thing, and you know it."

She swallowed hard. She was suddenly aware of the intense and oppressive heat of the early afternoon, and reached a hand up to push her hair out of her sweaty brow. It was hot and dreadful and her whole life and just fallen to pieces before her eyes, and there was nothing at all she could say to her husband. He stared hard at her a moment longer before starting up the steps.

"Come on."

Her brow furrowed. "Where are we going?"

"You're gonna tell Benji the truth."

Before she could stop herself, she sucked in a little gasp, and David stopped in his tracks. He turned and stared at her suspiciously. "What?"

She didn't see any kind way to say it. "He knows."

David's brow jerked up. "He knows?"

"Yes."

"Since when?"

Jemima stared back at him desperately. "Only for a few days. It happened quite by accident - he overheard me talking to my sister...I don't even know how it came up..."

David shook his head. "Unbelievable." He glared up at her, cloudy with anger. "You are unbelievable, you know that? So he's in on it, too?"

"He isn't 'in on' anything!" she said, pleading. "He's just a child! It isn't his fault - "

David let out a scoff. He stared at the closed door thoughtfully, possibly remembering Benjamin in there with his siblings, looking so hopelessly like that grim and long-forgotten memory. He just kept shaking his head, like all of this was so much more than he could possibly comprehend. Like everything in his life had shattered before his eyes.

And it had, she realized. Just as much as it had shattered for her. Just as much as it had shattered for Benji. Their lives were broken into a thousand awful pieces on the porch steps, and they could never fit together again. Jemima imagined trying to pick up the pieces, only to have them slip through her fingers like sand. That life never was. The foundation was hollow, and it had collapsed in on itself at last. And there she stood in the midst of the rubble, under the angry and disbelieving glare of a man she'd been lying to for much too long.

Much too long.

Without a word, he turned around and started back down the steps, taking a gruff hold of her arm. He dragged her with him into the dust and the heat, towards his car.

"Where are we going?"

"You're gonna take me to this Major Gabor. You seem to be all caught up on where he is in life. I trust you know where he's keepin' his sorry ass."

Jemima shook her head, glancing back at the house desperately. "David, it's a three-hour drive to Alexandria! Over!"

"I don't care if it's a hundred-hour drive."

"It's lunchtime - the children - "

"Kids are more'n half-grown," he retorted, shoving her towards the passenger side and throwing open the driver's door. "If they ain't figured out how to feed themselves by now, maybe it's time we let 'em be so they can work that shit out."

Jemima huffed and threw her door open, too. She settled in her seat and stared at him with wide eyes. "So we're just leaving? We're not telling a soul where we're going?"

David glared back at her, hard and stubborn. "You can get out and tell 'em, but I'll leave without ya. You don't think I can find this som'bitch on my own, you got another thing comin'."

Her mouth twitched uncertainly. And then she sighed and closed the car door. She didn't want to be taking this trip at all, but she certainly couldn't let David go by himself. She couldn't possibly spend all day pacing about that big, haunting house under Mary's eye. She regretted that her children were trapped in there with her, but apparently there was no reasoning with David on that matter. She supposed the house was big enough for them to find ways of occupying themselves...

David sped down the long, bumpy roads between Cairo and Alexandria at breakneck pace. Jemima spent most of the ride braced in her seat for the collision she was certain would happen. They didn't speak. Every now and then she'd glance to see if the hard, dark glare had left her husband's face, but he was unmoved as a statue. Less than three hours passed in a dizzying whir, faster than they'd ever passed in her life, and much too soon Alexandria rose up on the horizon before them. Much too soon he was flipping turns through the narrow streets, shooting her impatient glances that demanded direction. Her reluctant mumbles wound them back to Tamsin's neighborhood. Back to the yellow house. He threw the car into park and they stopped with a jolt.

Jemima turned and gazed at him plaintively. "Don't do this, David..."

He sniffed, squinting up at the house in the afternoon sun.

"Please," she said. "I don't know what you're expecting...or what you're hoping for...but it won't be what you want."

He willfully ignored her and pushed open his door, heaving his stiff body out of the car. Out of options, Jemima followed after him. He strode right up to the front door and knocked without a moment's deliberation. The seconds they stood there waiting for someone to answer the door passed slower than the entire car ride from the Willoughby House in Cairo.

At last the lock jingled, and the door creaked open. Beni's sister frowned up at them, and didn't glance away when she yelled something into the house. Beni's voice drifted from somewhere nearby.

"You have got it already, my dear?"

Jemima sucked in a breath, but David didn't even waste a suspicious glare at her. He shoved past the woman and stormed into the house. Jemima tried to apologize to Beni's sister for David, but she doubted her efforts made much of a difference. The woman didn't seem to speak English, and, seeing as how Jemima had stormed into the house in a similar manner only a few nights ago, an apology wouldn't have seemed sincere, anyway. She slipped past the woman and hurried after her husband, coming to an abrupt stop in the parlor where Beni was taking his coffee.

The two men stared at one another, David's still set in that grim scowl, and Beni's eyes wide and startled and preemptively pathetic. He sputtered some kind of nervous greeting that didn't sound remotely innocent, and his eyes kept darting over to Jemima, suspicious and betrayed. Through the whole house and all around them was the heavy, spicy aroma of something bubbling in the kitchen, making Jemima suddenly aware of how hungry she was.

"W-what brings you all the way out here?" Beni asked with a forced smile.

David crossed his arms over his chest. "Well, Gabor, what've got to say for yourself?"

Beni gulped, his eyes still darting between Jemima and her husband. "I do not know what you are talking about, my friend, and I must apologize for any confusion - "

"You can shut your smarmy mouth right there, you slippery little bastard."

The grin Beni had plastered on his face dampened, and now he stared desperately at Jemima.

"I know all about you and my wife," David told him darkly. "And I wanna know what you got to say for yourself."

Beni edged a nervous glance at David, his lip wrinkled up distastefully. He likely couldn't help how flippant he sounded when he managed to say, "Nothing...?"

David's eyes narrowed. "Nothin'. Now ain't that a surprise."

Beni ran his tongue over his lips. He eyed Jemima for a thoughtful moment, and she saw the calculating little thoughts clicking together in his head. She saw them, and she expected it when he put his coffee cup down and stared up at David sorrowfully.

"What is there to say, my friend? I was as deceived as you were by this woman."

Jemima sucked in a breath. If he was expecting protection from her with this plan of his went awry, he was burning all the wrong bridges.

David stared back at him suspiciously. "What do you mean?"

Beni held up his hands, his shoulders rising in a helpless shrug. "What was I to do? She told me that she cared for me, and that I was the only man in her bed and then - not a week later, I find out she has been playing the whore to you, and all to cover up a baby I knew nothing about."

A strange look came over David's face, and he watched Beni a moment longer, measuring the earnestness of his woeful gaze. He pursed his lips thoughtfully, and turned his attention to Jemima.

"Is that how it went, Jem?"

Beni pretended to look surprised. "She did not tell you?"

But David was ignoring him, staring hard at Jemima. She let out a sigh, gazing back at him hopelessly. "I didn't know what else to do - "

David's face fell in bewilderment for barely a moment before anger picked it up again. "What in the hell kind 'a bullshit is that?!"

Her throat jerked anxiously. "I had a son to think of - "

Beni let out a loud, wistful sigh. "You see how deceiving she is..."

Her gaze flashed to his impatiently. "It's 'deceptive.'"

"Well if anyone would know, it is you." He turned back to David with a face full of pity and regret. "I am so sorry, barat'm. She needed somebody to blame it on, and you happened to be the richest."

Jemima's jaw dropped. Her hands balled into tight fists at her sides, and it took everything within her not to storm across the room and punch him square in the jaw. Wheelchair or no, saying such a thing was way out of line, and it wasn't fair of him to put her in that position with her husband. Her eyes turned wildly to David, and she cringed to see his face, pallid with something like pain. Something that certainly was pain, though he was ordinarily too stubborn to show it. They stared at one another in silence.

"Is that all I am?" he asked her in the stillness of the afternoon, in the heaviness of spicy air.

"No," she breathed desperately.

Beni pretended to be confused. "But that is what you said to me, was it not? I asked why not the smart one, and you said - "

"Stop it."

" - 'I decided to go with the richest instead.'" He chuckled nonchalantly. "You will have to forgive me; it has been a few years. Please, correct me if I am wrong."

Jemima closed her eyes before she could see what was certainly a pained expression on David's face. She couldn't bear to see it. She turned and glared at Beni's smug, self-satisfied leer.

"I suppose you made the right choice," Beni said. "A smarter man might have figured out he wasn't the boy's father much sooner."

David's glare snapped over to Beni, and the insufferable smirk fled his face. Beni gulped nervously, and his hands slipped to either side of the chair, taking hold of the wheel spindles in case he needed to retreat. David crossed the room in a few determined strides and scowled into his face.

"Look here, Gabor," he said in a quiet, threatening voice. "I don't know what happened to you to put you in that chair, but I already got half a mind to take you out of it for good, you get me?"

Beni's throat jerked, and he nodded his head.

"Give me a reason," David told him. He took a step back, but his glare didn't waver. "Just give me a reason."

Beni winced, and reached a shaking hand for his coffee. David heaved a sigh, turning back to Jemima. His eyebrows were raised incredulous, but his mouth was firmly set in a disgusted expression.

"I was sloppy seconds to this yellow-bellied fucker?"

Jemima took a breath. She stared, hopeless and alone, into David's eyes, desperate for some shred of the normalcy they'd shared only a few days prior.

"Darling, please...it was so long ago..."

She took a step towards him. "I love you. You must know that..." He glanced down at the floor. She blinked away the tears that had come at last. "You must know that, David..."

He stared hard a his shoes and shook his head.

"Don't you love me?" she asked. "Don't you love me back, at all?"

He breathed a sigh that looked like it pained him.

"I thought I did," he mumbled after a while. "I don't know anymore." He finally glanced back up at her, and for the first time in hours, his eyes weren't burning with rage. Just the same, he told her, "I'm so angry, Jem. I'm just so angry."

"I know," she whispered. "I'm sorry."

David sighed again, reaching a hand up to scratch the back of his head. "It's gonna take a lot 'a work to get past this."

Jemima had to bite back a gasp. She told herself not to let the flow of relief wash over it, but she could only stave it off to a trickle. She stared at him, her mouth itching to smile.

"You'd like to work it out?" she whispered.

He nodded his head. And Beni made a show of being impressed, reminding them both that he was still there watching from his wheelchair.

"Oh, how beautiful!" he said, too sweetly. "What an inspiration you are to all married people! This!" he said, raising a finger at them, "This is the kind of warm-hearted compassion that makes American great."

Jemima's eyes narrowed at him in disdain. "You know, just because you're incapable of forgiveness doesn't mean everyone else is."

He met her gaze with a kind of challenging smirk. He said innocently, "You are right. It would not in my nature to forgive my wife for opening her legs to another man, even if he was the father of her child..."

David raised his head and turned to stare at Jemima in shock. That terrible fury had returned full force in his eyes.

"But I am not so kind and forgiving as your Mr. Daniels."

"Beni, shut up!" Jemima yelled at last, her voice shaking with anger. "God! You'll not be happy until I'm every bit as miserable as you, will you?"

He met her glare with grim and vacant eyes. "You will never be as miserable as I am."

She hated him desperately in that moment, with his eyes and his soft, haunted voice. She hated him desperately, because there, even though she despised him, she felt sorry for him. For a moment she saw a young Beni cowering in a prison cell, looking like Benjamin in tattered clothes and sunken cheeks. She saw him there, defenseless and afraid, a wretched child on a wretched track to becoming an even more wretched man. She hated him because there was no rescuing him now. He was horrible and pathetic and mean, what was left of him. God, she hated him.

The door slammed shut and broke her out of her reverie, and she turned to see that David had left the room. Her eyes widened, and she raced out of the house after him, down to the car. She caught a hold of his elbow and dragged him to a stop.

"Please don't listen to him!" she begged. "He's just trying to ruin things between us! He just wants to ruin everything - "

"His name's Beni," David spat at the dust. He looked at her with hardened eyes. "You really do think I'm stupid, don'tcha? Go and name him Benjamin, after some made-up uncle."

"I do have an Uncle Benjamin - "

"Bullshit, Jem!" he shouted. "Ya know, you must not think he's so bad, namin' the kid after him - "

Jemima shook her head. "Darling, I didn't - I can explain it - "

"I don't give a damn, Jem," he threw back. "I'm done and over with givin' a damn."

"Please!" she said, grasping hold of his arm tighter. "I was an utter fool, and there's nothing on earth I can do to repay it. But I love you, David. I love you."

"Don't tell me you love me, crawlin' back to that bastard after we was already married."

"I love you," she said again. "Now I know it was wrong, but look at us. We've been married seventeen years - we have a child together - Darling, please. Darling, I'm so very sorry. Don't you think we at least owe one another a second chance? An honest chance?"

David stared back at her, his mouth twisting thoughtfully. At last he said, "I don't owe you nothin'."

Jemima closed her eyes against the tears. She looked down, and her hand loosened on his arm. She heard him let out a sigh.

"But I reckon we owe it to Betsy," he said, almost emotionless. He looked up at her, studying her with severity and suspicion. He looked at her in a way she was afraid he might always look at her, from now on. "I'm gonna keep takin' them trips to Houston. And you ain't gonna say a word about it."

She pressed her lips together, and nodded her head.

He glanced up and down the street, and sighed. "Any place good to eat 'round here? I'm starvin'."

Jemima swallowed hard, blinking away her confusion. "I can think of a place, if you'd like to go."

David kind of snorted, and opened his car door. "I could eat a horse."

He didn't get her door for her, but as she walked around and got in on her side, a new and fierce determination took a hold of Jemima Daniels: the very thing, perhaps, that had propelled her through a life she so far felt as though she'd only survived. He hadn't kicked her out. And he hadn't even uttered the word divorce. And dismal though her new arrangement was, she took heart. The clawing grip of her secret had finally released her, and she felt free and light.

She'd win David back. Even from Cara Lee. She'd win him back.

And even if it killed her, she'd never think about Beni Gabor again.

end.