Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.
Chapter Fifty-Eight: Desmios
March 17th, 2012 9:30 AM
When Rachel's arms interlocked tightly across her chest, it was not in a display of petulance or even aggression. It was an attempt, however small, at self-comfort. Since she and her mom were making this trip alone, there was no Max, no Chloe holding her. They had left Arcadia Bay and the parking lot of Blackwell Academy behind several minutes ago and were taking the straightest path through Bruss to the interstate. Rachel did her best not to think of Stella as they passed through the town or the idea that the brunette might have been hiding out a block or two away from her and Rachel would have never known. She also did her best not to acknowledge the fact that she was sitting in the passenger seat of the car that used to belong to James for the first time in a surprisingly long time. Finally, she was trying to resist the urge to look at her phone and text Chloe, who she knew would not be able to answer while at work or Max, who was probably, if all went according to the photographer's plan, spending the day with Victoria Chase.
It was a bit laughable to consider the two of them hanging out together, not because they were wildly different people but because Victoria had been so standoffish toward Max and Chloe only a few months ago. I just hope she doesn't follow up on Chloe and Steph's idea that Victoria's got some sort of secret crush on me. Rachel was not a big fan of that theory. In some ways, though, considering what was going on in Arcadia Bay at that exact moment was of more comfort than simply crossing her arms. Even so, eventually even indulging in that comfort had to end. Slowly she turned her gaze from the window, the streets and buildings of Bruss passing by at thirty miles per hour and to her mom in the driver's seat. There was a lot of difficulty ahead of them that day, and Rachel understood that. She also knew that she had barely spoken since she got into the car and she would have to fix that posthaste if she did not want things to get awkward. Well, actually they're already awkward. Her mom did not immediately notice her looking, so Rachel turned her eyes to the road and tried to figure out how to start a conversation. How annoyed would mom get if I bring up talking with Sera today of all days?
For all of the respect her mom seemed to be giving Rachel's relationship with her mother, perhaps bringing her up that day of all days was a bad idea. Briefly she wished that maybe Sera could have been along for the ride, or maybe Max. Chloe had to work, but Rachel was kicking herself for not asking Max to come with her. I just don't think mom would've been alright with that. Fuck, this is crazy. I don't want to see this guy. If I could get lucky and never see him again, I'd throw a fucking party.
"So," Rachel finally said as they passed through the center of Bruss and approached the edge of town. "Did you have breakfast?"
"Oh, yes," her mom answered in that forced lilt that was supposed to mean that everything was fine. "I did build in a little time so that we could stop somewhere for lunch before we go in to see your father." James, Rachel wanted to correct her. Before we go see James. Instead, Rachel bit the inside of her cheek with just enough pressure that she did not need to bite her tongue and did not stress what was already a tense situation out by speaking her mind. "Have you had breakfast, dear?" Rose turned eyes on her that Rachel wanted to find deep care in. She wanted desperately to read real, true love in. When Rachel looked, though, she could not find anything behind the mask of the prim concerned parent. Nothing.
"Oh, um, yeah. Most of the usual weekend breakfast table was there. Not everyone," she glanced down at her hands in her lap. Actually, other than Stella being absent from the table, it was a fairly decent breakfast. The food had tasted better than usual, Jefferson had not been the teacher to draw the short straw and come in to help security watch the cafeteria and, to top it all off, Max had eaten breakfast for the first time in about four days. The girl's difficulty eating tended to fluctuate, worsening when she was feeling her lowest. Rachel tried to take it as a sign that Max was not feeling too bad that day.
"Yes." Rose frowned as she spoke and turned her attention back to the road. Rachel watched the lines in her face as she frowned. It was like the motion did not reach past her mouth at all. "That terrible business about your friend, Stella. I'm very sorry you've had to deal with that." The conversation was starting to stray into dangerous territory. She knew she had to get out of it fast, but not so fast that she aroused and suspicion. Fuck.
"I'm fine," Rachel lied, "It's Stella that I'm worried about." For not the first time, she wondered at exactly how her mom processed emotions. Once, near the end of her father's trial, Rachel thought she might have gotten a look beneath her mom's mask. Now she wasn't so sure. There was a part of her, especially on tough days like this one was sure to be, that wondered if her mom actually experienced emotions or if she simply mimicked them. There were people like that, she knew. Chloe had spoken in length about it, in that 'beat around the bush' way that people might when they didn't want to say anything. Rachel wasn't stupid, though: she knew Chloe had been floating the idea that her mom was one of those people past Rachel. Right now Rose was fairly stoic, her face had already returned to that 'stiff upper lip' pose. Rachel wasn't sure when she had uncrossed her arms but suddenly the urge to return them to their position struck her.
"The news report I saw suggested that the girl told her friend someone hurt her at a party," her mom continued. In that moment the one thing that was clear to Rachel was that this discussion had always been slated to happen. She had just moved things along a little faster. It was obvious when Rose was prepared for a conversation: she spoke more formally, more forcefully. "There's no one dangerous at Blackwell, is there, dear?" Despite the fact that Rachel had entered into the conversation in good faith and her mom apparently had not, she was immediately struck by guilt at the idea of lying to the woman. It was with a completely serious mindset that Rachel settled on just half lying to the woman.
"If there is, I certainly don't know anyone with enough proof to do anything about it." Rachel turned her attention to the floorboard, where her sneaker clad feet shifted uncouthly about. When she glanced back, her mom was turning away from her and nodding.
"I must admit that there are some characters there I don't much care for." A slight bit of excitement came to life in Rachel. Was it possible that maybe, just maybe her mom had seen something concerning in, say, a recent hire? Rachel could not entirely stop her hope from reaching her face. She did, however, have it together enough to notice the strange sensation of numbness easing into her fingers. Rachel tried to ignore it. "Honestly, I've always suspected that groundskeeper of some unsavory practices." Rachel sighed and rolled her eyes. What an asshole.
"Mom, Samuel is a harmless guy whose biggest secret is that sometimes he takes an early break in the mornings to feed the squirrels on campus, and trust me, I've heard Wells chew him out for it." While that was mostly true, Samuel was more than that. He knew things. Most of the time, as Chloe said, it tended to be the kind of thing that someone who was so bored by his work that he observed everyone around them might see. Other times, not so much. Max, in fact, insisted that he likely knew the full extent of her powers or, at least, as much as she did. It's actually kind of fucking weird we haven't followed up on that, Rachel told herself, making a note of it.
"Still," her mom insisted, waving a hand and then immediately putting it right back down on the steering wheel. "He has always felt a little off to me."
"You're off base on this one," Rachel insisted. Her mom had a bad habit of judging people for surface level things. In the same way that Rose used to (and Rachel privately suspected continued to) judge Chloe's appearance and social status, she likely based her judgments on Samuel on his gender, his appearance and his unusual speech patterns, none of which determined a damned thing about a person's character, as far as Rachel was concerned. As of yet, she had not heard her mom make any kind of offhand negative comment about Max but then, they did not talk too much about her partners.
"Still, if there was something going on at Blackwell Academy, you would tell me. You would, right?" Again, Rachel knew she was going to be forced to make trouble or lie to her mom and again she chose not to do so blatantly.
"If I had any kind of proof of anything going on, I'd have to tell someone."
"It's not about proof with these kinds of places." Rachel wasn't sure she understood exactly what her mom meant by that but she did not know how to respond. "Things have a way of getting swept under the rug in institutions like this one." Okay, stop sounding like Max and Chloe, please. There was plenty of truth to the statement but Rachel still didn't want to meet her mom's eyes when the woman turned back to her. Outside, the town had given way to a highway. They weren't far away from the interstate.
"Yeah, well, without proof, nothing can be done." This had been the unfortunate refrain she and her girlfriends had sung time and time again since October. Without proof, there was nothing to be done but wait for proof.
"Maybe," Rose muttered, though she sounded disgusted by the admission, "but, if something happens I still want to know."
"Alright," Rachel lied. "Right now, I just want my friend back." With that, Rachel decided that if she wanted to keep it together for the rest of what was sure to be a very long day, she had better shift the subject away. Her mom would not understand the truth of things and wouldn't have been able to do anything about it even if Rachel told her, that much Rachel was sure of. Instead, Rachel talked about the kind of things that day-to-day life at Blackwell brought her. In the process, she spoke pretty openly about her relationships with Max and Chloe. Her mom had not really commented on all of that, though she had tried to go out of her way to get to know Max once or twice since Rachel let on. As they hit the interstate that afternoon, Rachel watched for a reaction to any talk about the relationship. For the most part, things were mostly peaceful, though she did notice a frown once or twice that she thought was intentional.
"I'm glad you get to spend your time with such close friends, Rachel."
"They're my girlfriends, actually," she corrected her mom. "You know, you don't really have to understand it, just accept it and that's enough for me." This was not hostile, it was just her first chance in a long time to bluntly push the issue. "But yes, they are good to me. Very good. Every day. We take care of each other and even on the shittiest days, things are a little bit better."
"You know," Rose started, and then, with her voice low and almost mournful, she tried to explain herself. "I always hoped for a big wedding for you, one day."
"Who knows?" Rachel told her, turning out to watch the thick traffic engulf them as they merged into the right lane of the interstate. "I'm still in school. I'm not thinking about weddings and stuff like that. The farthest ahead I'm thinking is college, and even that's rare." Rachel had learned well from her mom. She knew exactly how to steer conversations, at least when it came to people who operated first and foremost based off of their own interests and desires. Rose seized the bait that Rachel had just cast out like a fish on a hook.
"I'm really glad to hear you're thinking about that," her mom exclaimed in that overly enthusiastic lilt of hers. Rachel again considered mentioning her conversation about the topic with Sera. Instead, she sat quietly and listened to her mom talk about the benefits of agreeing to go to UCLA, something which she had privately done but never expressed to her mom before. She wasn't entirely sure that she was going to do so, yet, with the presumptuous way that the woman was acting.
The prison before them looked imposing to her. Rachel stared out of the windshield, over a couple of stacked, styrofoam carryout containers and tried to take in the sight of various buildings on the grounds of the Oregon State Penitentiary. She knew from her mom's gesture as they pulled up what little glass door they were supposed to walk into. Still, she could not help but freeze in the seat, looking up at the building nearest them which had either been painted yellow or yellowed by the elements. Now that they were there, even the three or four bites of the burger she had managed to get down at the restaurant were threatening an unwelcome reappearance. In fact, she suspected that if she did not get herself under control she was not only going to be ill but possibly also cause some sort of unpleasant reaction with whatever one wanted to call these abilities she had.
"Rachel," her mom prompted her as the woman unbuckled her seatbelt. Rachel slowly did the same. "I wanted to thank you for coming to see him this once."
"This once," Rachel emphasized as quickly and aggressively as she could. "If I decide this is the last time, then this is the last time." It was important that they get this discussion out of the way, especially given that Rachel thought that they already had. She paused with her right hand on the handle of the door. There was no way in hell she was getting out of that car without her mom agreeing. The idea of seeing James again made her ill. The thought that her mom believed this might be the start of a series of visits was upsetting.
"I'm just glad you're giving your father another chance." At this, Rachel let go of the handle and turned toward Rose who was already halfway out of the driver's seat of the car when she saw this. It was important that her mom understand what was actually going on there. This was no golden hallmark moment. There would not be a heartwarming family comedy written about this in a few years and they would not be sitting around a Christmas tree one day laughing about the visit after James got out of prison, assuming he did get out before his time came up.
"I'm not giving him another chance, mom." Rose frowned and then pursed her lips as if to say that this conversation was not welcome. "I'm here to make you happy, this once. I am here to see if he has any genuine regret for what he did so that I know whether or not there is part of a monster in me." The pursed lips smoothed out, the frown did not return. In fact, Rose watched her from behind a blank face. "I'll be on my best behavior, but there is no scenario where the guy who tried to kill my mother gets back what he had." After a moment or two more, Rachel turned away from the woman and opened the door to the car. Her mom looked upset when she finally stepped out after Rachel. It was too late to prevent that.
"I see," Rose finally said and then turned to lead them toward the entrance she had pointed out a moment before with its tinted glass door. She doesn't get it, Rachel told herself. Is she delusional? The two of them joined a small line of other people, smaller than Rachel had expected at least. One after another a group of about ten people, one of them a child no older than ten or eleven, were lined up near a door and eventually processed by being asked to sign in and walk through a metal detector. When they got to the turning out of pockets, Rachel quietly thanked her stars she had predicted that and had not only left her phone in the car but also not brought anything that might get her into shit with her mom along on the trip. She wanted a smoke, though. I should have just toked up before mom even showed up this morning. The ride might have gone different if she had been coming down from a high.
Eventually, Rose, Rachel and the other people, many of whom Rachel had not gotten a good look at, were led through a long hallway and into a room deeper inside the building with several old tables laid out across the floor. The chairs at each of these looked to be fairly old and worn so Rachel eased herself into hers when the guard gestured for them to take an empty table and await their inmate. It was during this time, as the first prisoners first started to file into the room that Rachel, in lieu of looking at her mom, began to examine those around her. Many of the older men wore cheap looking tattoos that looked like they might have been done in prison, themselves. Rachel was not the most connected to things of the sort but even she was educated enough to recognize a couple of the tattoos, like the number 1488 inked into one pale, bald man's exposed arm or the teardrop beneath an eye on smaller, more stone faced man. It wasn't the ink that made her look away from them toward the door. Tattoos were fine with her, after all she had her dragon which she often enjoyed feeling Chloe trace with her finger when they sat comfortably together. It was the meaning of the tattoos around her, signifying alignments with less than savory forces or long prison sentences or even, in one case, attempted murder.
Eventually, the calm before the storm passed and Rachel watched as one jumpsuited man stepped aside to reveal James Amber behind him. At this, Rachel looked at her mom for the first time since they were led from the processing area. The woman only sighed and fixed onto her face a look of a devoted and dutiful wife. It took the man who had fathered her several seconds to spot the two of them, during which Rachel had plenty of time to observe the hunch in how he stood, the slow weariness in how he walked. It did not make her feel any pity for him, but it did make her immediately more uncomfortable than she had been in a way she could not really name. The guards, who were allowing handshakes, hugs and even kisses before the inmates sat down, barely even reacted as her mom rose to her feet. Rachel simply paid close attention.
When James saw them finally, his dark eyes lit up slightly, he looked relieved, excited. Proceeding perhaps a bit more quickly than the uniformed lady behind him looked comfortable with, James crossed the room and embraced her mom. The hug lasted long enough for the nearest guard to grunt as if to warn him to move on and certainly long enough that Rachel looked away from them and only looked again when James released Rose. It was when he made as if to reach down and hug her that Rachel scooted from her seat to the one her mom had just vacated farther away from him. The hurt on his face was palpable but his reaction was simply to greet her by name and slowly lower himself into a chair on the opposite side of the table, as if sitting down too quickly was dangerous. Not sleeping too well in The Can, there, old man?
For the next several minutes, she watched in silence as James spoke to her mom, asking her about how things were going with work. Rose, in turn, told him about how things had calmed down and she had been accepted as a higher up in the accounting department, how all was well and she was looking at a potential raise in a few months. Rachel wondered at this, not for the first time, how well finances were really going for the family, especially given the plan which had begun to develop in her mind for a way she might manage to treat herself, Max and Chloe. Generally, Rachel tried not to spend much money, anymore. Once in a while she might buy the cheapest things on a fast food menu, but otherwise she didn't touch the card her mom had given her for 'expenses.' Rose had commented on that a couple of times during their drive down. Rachel didn't know how to express that she was concerned about spending anything, usually. She also hadn't had a clue how to bring up her request about Spring Break. Maybe if things did not go disastrously, she would on the way home. As the conversation continued, Rachel found herself wondering what she was doing there, precisely. She did not care much for family conversations, not ones that included James. As such, she did not know what to do when he finally turned his eyes on her and spoke to her again.
"How are you, Rachel?" the man asked her, his voice low, caring, soothing. She did not know how to respond. What would manners dictate and how many fucks did she have to give about manners? It took Rachel longer than she expected to come up with a number for those fucks, but it was a nice round number, rather like a circle.
"I'm doing fine, my girlfriends and I got to spend a couple of hours with Sera last weekend." The energy at the table immediately shifted and this fact was marked by her mom clicking her tongue scornfully. "I can't imagine life not being able to talk to Sera, you know?" she continued, trying to keep her voice level and conversational even though she was already starting to regret how warm she felt beneath the leather jacket over her shoulders. "It'd be horrible if something were to happen to her." Instead of responding or exposing the full brunt of his reaction to Rachel, the man lowered his head and frowned at the table. Not fair, she wanted to tell him. That's not fair at all. "What do you want from me?"
"I want my daughter back," James told her. He lifted his head and stared at her from earnest, expressive eyes. For a moment, looking into James' face, she saw something she had condemned Joyce for some time ago. It was the quiet hope that someone's emotions would move the person they were talking to. It was emotional manipulation and James Amber dared to try it on her. He wanted his daughter back? What a fucking joke.
"Then you probably shouldn't have tried to kill my mother and turn my mom against me." That, then and there, was when Rachel first heard herself call Sera her mother. Her head whipped around as soon as the sentence left her mouth, looking for Rose Amber, looking for her mom. There was no keeping her eyes from widening, no keeping the surprise, the concern off of her own face. When Rose looked back at Rachel, it was as if the woman was evaluating how she was supposed to react to what Rachel had just said and then, surprisingly, nodded. Rachel did not think it was in approval of her attitude or even what she had just said, so much as acknowledging and accepting the fact that she had just called Rose her 'mom' and Sera her 'mother.' Technically speaking, it was true. Sera was her mother in the way James was her father: mechanics. More importantly, though, Sera was a confidant. The pale man, looking as if he had been nearly strangled as he stared back down at the table, was nothing to her except a reminder of what might be wrong with her. She stared at a small spot on his head where his hair was thinning to a very notable degree. This, along with other changes in him disturbed her, but she remained otherwise unmoved.
"And what do you want from me, Rachel?" he asked her in return. The thing was that she had come prepared with what questions she wanted answered from him. They were half of the reason she had finally relented to her mom's pressure to visit him instead of digging a trench and preparing for good, old fashioned warfare. Frankly, asking her such a direct question had been something of a misstep on his part and Rachel was not above taking full advantage of that. Frankly, it had been a long time since she had been able to talk to the man. There was only one thing she wanted to ask that could give her any peace of mind.
"I want to know if you're sorry." In response, James looked up and gestured around him, at his jumpsuit, at the room around them, at everything. "No," Rachel said and then she laughed, once, loudly. "No, not that you're in prison but that you tried to have someone killed, that you tried to have the women who gave birth to me killed." Again, James looked her in the eyes and again she saw the attempt to garner pity, but she saw something else forming behind that. Tired, not stony at all, his eyes betrayed him to Rachel, who had learned long ago that the best way to learn anything about her mom or James was to try to read their eyes. It was not the familiar gaze of the man who used to comfort her after nightmares that she saw, but the answer. Her father was a practiced liar, but she could see right through him. "Tell me the truth," she counseled the man. "I've been able to read you since I was eight. It'll be less embarrassing this way."
"Rachel, let's keep it calm and kosher," her mom counseled, trying to shush her with the scolding. When Rachel glanced about, the nearest guard, the woman from before, seemed to be looking pointedly away. It was watching her that tipped Rachel off to the reality of the situation. After maintaining his innocence all this time, James was never going to answer yes or no, anyway. The lie she saw forming in his eyes had not been an answer, but denial of guilt. Eventually, James looked back down and Rachel leaned back in disgust.
"That's alright," she told him, softly. This tricked him into lifting his head enough that she could again stare into James' eyes as she finished her thought. "I don't regret gathering all of the evidence up and dropping it off for the police chief to find, either." While this earned a grand total of no response, no reaction from her mom, James' face split into a perfect artistic depiction of betrayal and hurt. It was everything she could do not to smile. She did consider him a monster. Maybe not the same flavor as Jefferson or Nathan, but a monster nonetheless. His genetics were in her. She hated that. Her reaffirmed hatred for him, for his very DNA in her body robbed her of anything else to say.
He can't recognize his mistake. He can't own up to what he did. She thought that that might look bad at his first parole hearing, but who knew? Maybe he'll just bribe someone. Rachel had always suspected that he had money hidden away somewhere, at least since she realized he could move several thousand dollars without her mom noticing in order to pay a hitman. Rachel let her mom talk to James for the rest of the trip and quietly wondered to herself if she would have felt better if she had had Max waiting for her outside, or Chloe, or both. Eventually her thoughts came around to Sera and how she might react to being called her 'mother'. I'm going to go ask her her permission. It was only respectful and it might help her understand her own thoughts, too.
When they parted, James said nothing to her and she said nothing to him. Scared as she was of how Rose was going to act toward her, she still kept her distance from him until he left and then turned out her pockets in silence when she came out of the room and passed through the metal detector. She left the building a step or two ahead of Rose as the woman retrieved and shouldered her purse. Once outside in the late March day, she breathed easier. Glancing back at Rose revealed frowning, but no anger. In silence they got into the car together and buckled up. Though she felt gross, even still a little ill, the first thing she did when the silence did not break as the car started was to reach for her carryout container, pop it open and start on the burger inside.
"That did not go as I had hoped," her mom started as the car cleared the parking lot a minute or so later. Even once her mouth was free of burger or fry, Rachel did not laugh even bitterly.
"I'm sorry to hear that," she lied. "It went like I expected, mostly."
"Me as well," Rose told her, quietly, regretfully. "I always knew you were behind your father's arrest." at this, Rachel put her burger down in the container and listened quietly. She did not know what might have tipped Rose off on that front, but her mom did not seem interested in sharing with the class.
"How do you feel about that?" If she told someone she was unafraid of the answer, it would be a lie. Mostly what she was afraid of was hearing a lie and yet at the same time she desperately wanted to be able to tell when her mom was lying.
"I feel sad. I feel sad that he put you in that position and that we'll never be the family we used to be." She said the words, but Rachel heard grief that did not sound as if it had any more depth than someone who had lost a favored bauble.
"At least I still have one parent," Rachel said.
"Or is it two?" Rose asked. "Either will, you will always have me." Rachel wondered again if her mom would ever really come to understand her own emotions, because in this case she seemed fairly self aware, at least. "I don't mind it, in case you're worried, that you call her that."
"This was the first time," Rachel told her, feeling as if she needed to make some excuse for herself, for her 'slip up.' "I didn't realize-"
"It's not the first time," the woman cut across her. "You've done it before, several times. You just haven't noticed." There was no reason to lie, so Rachel took this as fact, internalized it and filed it away to be understood later, likely before she brought the concept up with Sera.
"I do love you, you know. I worry about you. I wish you would talk to a counselor- and don't ask why. You know why." Rachel did not want to have to say it, did not want to give voice to her concerns that maybe her mom was a sociopath or perhaps she just could not process emotion well enough.
"I love you too, and I worry about you. It makes me say and do things that upset you, but I'm afraid that's just the way it's going to be, sometimes." Rachel's response was to nod and then, with her left hand, reach for her cell phone.
Max
Stella's back. Wells and David basically interrogated her, Kate says. She doesn't want to see anyone but Kate right now. We're meeting up around six in Kate's room. Kate won't tell me anything. R u ok ?
Me
I'm relieved it's over
Max
The visit or Stella?
Me
The visit. Glad Stella's home but do not think that's over.
Max
Maybe not. Call me when you get close, okay?
Me
Okay XOXO
Max
I'm giving you my bad habits.
"My friend showed up at Blackwell while we were inside," Rachel told revealed, sighing. She hunched forward over the styrofoam container in her lap and closed her eyes. Her phone balanced on the seat beside her, forgotten for the moment.
"That's a relief," Rose noted. "It has been a few days, hasn't it?"
"About a week," Rachel answered. "And it's felt like three." Rachel was going to talk to Stella later tonight one way or another, but first was a somewhat lengthy trip home. To make it all the worse or perhaps all the better, Rachel realized she still had to ask her mom for help to pull off the spring break she wanted. Probably better do that after things calm down a bit. Rachel returned to the remnants of her lunch and focused on that. She had a couple more hours for the rest.