"Ruthie, Hope ... can we talk?"

That was from Rita, who was getting adjusted to her new home. She couldn't bring herself to calling either of her foster mothers "Mom" or "Aunt", so the wives agreed that for the time being all would be on a first name basis. It was three days after Sunday services.

"Sure, Rita," said Ruthie. "What's up?"

"Two things. One: Any word back from your sister-in-law?"

"Deena? She's still crunching the numbers. But she admires your bookkeeping skills. Any paper trail helps."

"Glad to help. And two ... well, I wasn't exactly honest with either of you at breakfast the other day, about a few things. I want to clear the air ... so as to prove to you I deserve to be here."

"Okay, Rita," said Hope. "Whatever it is, we can handle it."

"First, I lied to you about Daddy, when I told you he never touched me. I've cried so many tears about this that I'm not going to do that anymore. So here goes ... Daddy molested me, repeatedly, over the last five years. Let's just say he failed the bathing suit test dozens of times. And five or six times ... he penetrated me with you-know-what."

Ruthie and Hope were shaken to hear this. They started crying. They then gave Rita a hug.

"Rita, I'm so sorry that happened to you!" Ruthie said after a pause, her voice shaking. "Look, if you want to talk about this -"

"No offense, but I'd rather see a shrink, if you don't mind, Ruthie."

"Peter and Felicity know some good ones," replied Hope. "Technically the referral will be through your pediatrician, but they'll call her with some names."

"Thanks, Hope." Rita managed to smile, even though she was burning with fury inside.

"What's second?" asked Ruthie.

"I also lied to you about Rhiannon. We've been snogging at school for weeks," admitted Rita. "We've known about each other being lesbian for even longer, since last summer in fact. What I told her in bed the other night was about the abuse I suffered, not the fact I'm gay."

Hope feared what was next, but ...

"What did Rhiannon confide in you, Rita?"

"She's being molested by her gym teacher - a woman!"

Hope wasn't expecting that. "Oh my God ... this can't be happening! I gotta call Rod and Shelby!"

"She told them, tonight," replied Rita. "CPS is interrogating Ree right now. And any time tonight, they're going to debrief me so I can tell them what I know. Although ... it doesn't surprise me. I looked up the teacher and it turns out she used to sell her 'services' to premium clients. Actually she still does. Her profile is still up. Apparently, she likes guys with kids in school - that's what it says."

"To groom, obviously," said Hope in disgust. "Not that it's important -"

"A thousand bucks an hour," interrupted Rita. "And Daddy was one of her clients. Two hours at a time. He started cheating on Mommy around the same time he started raping me."

"They must be really paying teachers lousy money - " mused Ruthie.

"Shut up, Ruthie!" snapped Hope. It was the first angry words she had said to her wife since they had been married.

"Sorry, Hope ... but this whole thing is getting weirder and weirder. Where does your father fit into all of this, Rita?"

"You'll have to wait for Deena to explain it," replied Rita. "If my hunch is right ... your posse has been approaching this the wrong way all along. Right suspect, wrong motive."

Ten minutes later, the phone rang. It was Deena. Ruthie answered it. Deena wasted no time.

"Ruthie, your mother-in-law is a traitor."

Ruthie turned on the speaker.

"I have Hope here with me ... and your new niece, Rita."

"Hi Rita!" said Deena, with a voice that sounded welcoming.

"Hi, Aunt Deena!" replied Rita. "You're lucky to have these guys."

"Okay, Deena ..." said Ruthie, "would you please repeat what you just told me, for these ladies?"

"'Pastor' Prudence Anderson has betrayed the United States. High treason."

"How is that possible?" Hope asked in shock.

"Your old church is worth nowhere near as much as you thought," replied Deena. "Maybe twelve billion, not five hundred. The rest was as a holding fund ... for front companies. Which your mother ran."

"Acting on behalf of whom?"

"Iran."

"So they can get their hands on nukes, for real."

"Yeah. Plundering money from their own people to fuel their ambitions. My estimate is they already are past the breakout point. Way past."

"Are you saying they have The Bomb?" asked Hope.

"They have at least twenty MIRVs," Deena replied.

"MIRVs?" Hope and Ruthie asked together. The wives were confused.

"'Multiple, Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles'," said Rita. "It means you can fire a rocket and drop warheads from space on more than just one city - you can even pre-program those targets before launch. How many warheads are we talking about, Aunt Deena?"

"Twelve for each MIRV, Rita," Deena replied. "That makes it two hundred forty."

"Aimed at whom?" asked Ruthie.

"Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Armenia ... maybe Afghanistan."

"I knew she was up to something, from everything Rhiannon told me!" groaned Rita. "But I wasn't expecting this. I just thought she was hiding another dirty bomb. But ... it does explain what Daddy was up to late at night."

"What?" asked Ruthie and Hope together. At this point, they realized that their foster daughter was in even graver danger than all the other children in the posse.

"Daddy ... he was a computer hacker on the side. One of the good ones, the kind that looks for holes in companies' security systems and suggests ways to plug them. He made a ton of money just off of that. Seven figures, and from that alone I'm a rich girl. Not that I wasn't from all his other stuff! But anyway, when Mommy was at Stage Two but refused to get treatment - something I can't forgive her for - he cracked into a nuclear facility about a hundred miles or so northwest of Toronto. That was three years ago. He couldn't believe how easy it was to break in. But he didn't tamper with the flow of power. He just downloaded the blueprints. Then another, then another ... I knew what was going on and I pleaded with him to stop, but Daddy just stripped me down and belted me with his buckle, really hard!"

"That explains how Thompson got his copy of the blueprints," said Ruthie. "Probably from Prudence."

"Yes, she burned a copy and gave it to him. He told Roxanne during interrogation that he was going to deliver them to Israel, so they could find out Iran had already reached breakout, so they could finish Tehran off once and for all," replied Deena. "Thompson thought better of it, unlike Rita's father. My understanding is that a grand jury was about to indict her father on espionage charges when he died."

"So, Daddy was a foreign agent for Iran," said Rita. She shook her head. "How much was he going to get?"

"One billion dollars."

"Oh Daddy, how could you?" moaned Rita.

"Here's where it gets crazy," continued Deena. "Your father was in a lot of fringe movements, and one of the members of one of them was Prudence. One day, two years ago, during a rendezvous in Los Angeles, they merely switched CD-ROMs. Hers had hard core porn which your father liked."

"He did not!" screamed Rita.

"Uh, sorry, Rita - but if your father was into high-priced hookers, then he would have loved that kind of stuff. Well, his disk had all the blueprints, the original copy. She paid him ten thousand dollars. She flipped her new disk to an Iranian agent for a billion ... and also agreed to allow Iran to use her ministry to buy materials for a nuclear power plant, off the official books, for a one percent cut."

Hope rubbed her hands across her face. Finally she said, "When Patrick hears about this, he's going to go ballistic! Um ... pardon the expression."

"We're talking the death penalty here," said Rita. "Hope, I know you and your brother -"

"No, Rita, no!" interrupted Hope. "It was just talk. I don't care what we said. We'll never kill Mom, no matter how much we hate her! Even if she is a traitor!"

"Um ... which leads me to my other point," said Deena. "Not related to the security thing ... rather, about you and Patrick."

"What?"

"Your father got a hold of me and Simon. I don't know how he got our unlisted number, but -"

"There's no such thing as an unlisted number anymore," said Rita.

"Well ... yeah. But he wants you guys to fly down to LA to meet with him in lockup."

"Why?" asked Ruthie.

"Harry wants to tell Hope and Patrick that he's sorry. Face to face."

"Excuse me?!" screamed Hope.

"He wants to apologize to you for making your life hell, and not standing up for you when you were raped by Ed. And that you were forced to defend a ministry that was corrupt to its core."

"That won't be necessary. I'll call him and say I forgive him," said Hope in resignation.

"Why?" asked Ruthie and Rita together.

"I'll never totally reconcile with him at my end, there's too much that can't be forgiven ... but he is my Dad. Besides, I was a crook too."

"Your mother?" asked Rita.

"Fetal homicide? No, that is absolutely unforgivable. Nor is raping two hundred children. Yeah, Dad had his way with Patrick and ... Carrie. But it's obvious he's remorseful for that, too. Mom has no remorse for anything. There's nothing to talk about."

"What do you think Patrick will do?" asked Deena.

"I don't know," admitted Hope. "I doubt he'll even want to acknowledge them. He may even get into a big argument with me about Dad. But it's his decision."

"Have you called the FBI?" Rita asked Deena.

"They're on the way to pick up my computer so they can search what I found."

"Thanks for the help. Ruthie was right ... you're a genius, Aunt Deena!"

"Naw ... just doing my job. Bye guys ... and be careful." The call ended.

There was a pause of about thirty seconds. The foster mothers knew they had to ask.

"Rita ... do you love Rhiannon?" asked Hope

"Yeah. We love each other a lot," Rita replied.

"Well ... you two just take it one day at a time. Like we all have been doing the last year and a half."

Rita hugged her "mothers".