A DAUGHTER'S LOVE
CHAPTER FOUR - AMERICA'S OLDEST HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT
High school. From the ages of fourteen to eighteen, it would have been hard to find two words in the entire English dictionary that Becky more wanted to avoid hearing said in conjunction with one another, than those two. High school to her at that age meant almost constantly feeling like an outsider, getting numerous unwanted daily reminders of how much of a nobody, everyone else there saw her as and classes, which were for the most part so mind-numbingly boring that she couldn't wait for them to be over with, from the second they'd begun.
A short breakdown of her high school years would go something like this:
Freshman Year: Started out by getting bullied by some senior girls on the first day and for that entire schoolyear, they wouldn't stop picking on her. As an added bonus, the only friend that she thought, she had, heartlessly blew her off their friendship a few weeks into the schoolyear to become part of the popular crowd, and the two of them never talked again. Just to make it all even worse for her younger and very naïve self, her first flirt with a boy wound up leading to another and far more popular girl, stealing him from right under her nose. After getting her young heart crushed like that (probably not all that unlike how it happened to her mom too), it had made her swear off boys as a whole for over a year afterwards. The one great positive part was that during spring break, her almost unbearably shy self at the time had somehow make friends with a totally awesome girl like Vicki, the second favorite choice to be picked on by those senior girls and that the two of them had ended the schoolyear by (to some extent, at the least) getting even with them.
Sophomore Year: Now having a proper best friend again, her sophomore year turned out to be by far the best out of her four high school years. Her and Vicki during that entire year were like two peas in a pod, hanging out together nearly 24/7 every day that they could and thanks to the stories making the rounds of them getting even with those older girls, none of the older students dared to try anything against them. Other positives that year included getting her first romantic kiss (from a boy, who turned out to be a complete loser, but it was still a great kiss!) and her mom (the one time it had happened during her school years) telling her that she was proud of her, after she'd brought home the one and only A that she'd ever gotten, post-junior high. As a negative, especially in retrospect, this was also the year where she'd met Steven, whom at that time was an eighteen-tear-old high school drop-out, working on the town's road crew in the daytime and selling drugs for Red in the evenings. A few days after her summer vacation began, she'd also gotten high with him for the first time.
Junior Year: Or, as she'd called it at the time "The year of living two separate lives". Another way of putting it could be "Her year of living like Laura Palmer", just with more drug-taking and without any sexual adventures to speak of in comparison (going by the wild stories that she'd heard growing up about Laura). By day, she was keeping up appearances to those, who knew her and although, you couldn't say that she was popular in school, she didn't really care as long as she had Vicki there to help her through it all. That changed shortly before the year ended, when she'd convinced (or as some would call it: Peer Pressured) Vicki to try cocaine with herself and Steven. Her brilliant idea (as she actually thought it had been at the time), was that getting high together and inviting her BFF into that part of her life, instead of excluding her from it, would bring her and Vicki even closer to one another than they already were. Unfortunately, it hadn't taken long after they'd all done a few lines each, before things rapidly began to go all kinds of wrong. To make matters far worse, both herself and Steven had been so high out of their skulls that they'd panicked and in perhaps the poorest decision that she'd ever made, had dropped the by then unconscious Vicki off in front of the hospital after she'd become unresponsive, and they'd (in their paranoid minds) become sure that she must have overdosed.
After this, even if Vicki had never disclosed to the cops who was actually to blame for what had happened, she'd still called her the worst friend in the entire world and that had become the end, so far at least, to their friendship. From what Becky knew, and she believed it, when people told her, Vicki hadn't after that evening ever put any kind of drug in her body again that she wasn't expressly told to take by her doctor. The worst part was that Becky couldn't disagree with her former friend, on any of what she'd been yelled at by her, and her own bright solution to this was finally giving into becoming a couple with Steven and upping her drug taking to more than double of what it had been, prior to Vicki giving up on her. Arguably the low point of the last part of that schoolyear, was when she turned up so blasted in the brain on a pill cocktail of Oxycontin and Xanax for one of her exams that she couldn't remember having taken it afterwards. Truth be told, it was only by some divine intervention that she passed her exams that summer.
Senior Year: Drugs. That's pretty much how simply you could sum up her senior year. Following after a summer where she'd far spent more time being high than sober, every moment of every day had become about avoiding the withdrawals that she suffered horribly from, whenever she tried to get clean. Pathetically enough, the longest she went without doing some kind of drug for that entire schoolyear, wasn't even a whole day. By this point, both the drugs and Steven had near complete control over her, and after they'd (a few weeks before the end of that calendar year) managed to convince her parents to let her move in with him, things had only gone from "Absolutely Disastrous" to "Couldn't be Much Worse", before she reached the end of her high school years. She only just graduated by the skin of her teeth, and whereas most other girls celebrate the end of high school with a party of some sorts, herself and Steven "celebrated" by trying crystal meth for the first time. For the next five years and change, it would become the poison that controlled nearly every aspect of her mind and life and had led her down a veritable path of horrors, that could have so easily ended with her either dead from an overdose or, like it had for Steven, spending nearly all of the rest of her life behind bars.
Did she feel sorry for him? A little bit would be the closest thing to an answer that she could offer you. When she'd first met him, he hadn't been anywhere close to being as messed up as he would end up becoming by the time, they'd said their final goodbyes to one another (in a crowded prison visiting area, roughly ten years later). Looking back now, when they'd first talked to one another, he was just a dumb kid, who didn't feel like he fit in any better than she did in the Conservative haven that was and always will be Twin Peaks. The big change for the worse in his life had come when his visiting cousin from Montana had gotten him so high on what must have been some damn good weed when they were thirteen, that it soon began leading to an eternal quest for the ultimate high for that young boy. Even if Becky was somewhat of a sceptic when it came to the idea of weed being a "Gateway Drug", if there was ever a case to be made for it, it would surely be her ex-husband, whose "quest" had ended with him sentenced to rot away in jail for the next many, many years. If it wasn't still ongoing in "The Slammer", only with lower quality drugs like she highly suspected that it was.
For so many years, she'd seen him as the most important person in her life, even above her parents, but now that she'd left the utterly miserable life, she'd led with him behind, she could see the both of them for what they'd really been: Nothing but a pair of sad and pathetic drug-addicts, who were using one another as their best excuse to keep using when all common sense within them should have led to both of them admitting to themselves, where it was all going to lead to. They hadn't and therefore, he wound up getting thirty-five years and nothing more needed to be said, as Becky saw it. All that he was now was a best forgotten part of her past, one that she wished had never been a part of it in the first place and from the way that he'd sounded the last time they spoke, it didn't sound to her like he wanted her to be a part of his life more than she wanted him to be a part of hers.
Would school be a more pleasant experience for her this time around, though? There was only one way to find out!
Her "Return to School Day" began with a quick, but tasty, bit of breakfast in the hotel restaurant, before she was picked up in a car outside of the hotel by Laura and her father Leland, whom from she'd heard had (or, to be more correct, would, if she didn't succeed in her mission) killed himself with gunshot wound to the head in his car, on the one-year anniversary of his daughter's death. Meeting him for the first time, she'd therefore expected to meet someone, who might be on the brink of a depression or the like. To her great surprise then, he turned out to be just about the most friendly and cheerful man that she could remember ever having met before!
"Forget your troubles.
Come on, get happy!
You gotta chase all those cares away!
Forget your troubles.
Come on, get happy!
And get ready for the judgment day!"
As they drove towards the school, he also entertained the two of them by singing (in a wonderful singing voice, by the way!) an array of old show tunes, clearly all written to put you in the best mood possible. Laura, unlike most teenage girls in this situation, who would have been embarrassed at their dad acting this silly and carefree, just smiled to herself if she didn't join in his singing on a line or two now and again. Sitting there in the backseat watching them and occasionally giggling at their behavior, Becky couldn't for the life of her see them as a father and daughter, who (according to everything that she'd heard or been told about them) were both close to being clinically depressed and in another reality that hopefully would never come to pass, would both sadly be gone from this world in only a little over a year from where or when they were now.
"Have fun, girls!" Leland bid goodbye to them with a wide smile as they got out of his car in front of the school.
"Only if you'll do the same, dad!" Laura replied to him, mirroring her dad's smile for her.
"I'll sure try! Keep an eye on my daughter for me, will you, Becky? I'm not sure that I like some of the company, she's been keeping lately!" Leland joked, drawing an eyeroll from Laura.
"Don't you have a job to get to and clients, you have to meet with?" Laura teasingly answered him for her. Moments later, Leland drove off in the same direction that they'd just come from.
"You dad seems like a nice guy" she casually said to Laura on their way to class, both to make it clear that she couldn't help herself from liking him and also to see if she couldn't get some sort of dirt on him. Even if he seemed to her like just about the least obvious choice for a killer, especially considering his "fatal reaction" to Laura's disappearance, she couldn't rule anyone out entirely either until she was a hundred and ten percent sure of their intentions. Wait, why did she think the word "disappearance" and not "murder", just now? Laura was murdered, right?
"He is. Sometimes, I wonder why he married a stickler for rules like my mom, but that's another matter altogether. Now, he has to go and kiss butt on the Horne brothers, since they're by far his biggest clients and practically the sole reason why we have a nice house and unlike a whole lot of other families around here, never need to worry about money" Laura explained.
It suddenly reminded Becky of how her parents had told her about how the Packard sawmill completely burning down in the "Great Fire of '89", had also meant that there'd been nothing short of an exodus of former workers there, moving away from the town in the early to mid-90's, as the available jobs quickly dried up and there simply wasn't enough work to be found in the area to feed all of them, plus their families. It wasn't until it's reopening in the late 90's (which she could remember having attended with her parents as a kid) and thanks to a huge effort by the state over the years in between, to also create enough other new jobs in the area that Twin Peaks wouldn't be completely dependent on a few large places of employment anymore to keep them going, that things truly began to run around. By the mid-2000's, the town had gone from looking like it was slowly dying during the 90's to by the time, she'd gone back in time, having had such a large population growth over the past decade and a half, that housing all of its new residents suddenly became a bigger problem than the depressing unemployment figures around there once were.
"Someone at the hotel told me that he's a lawyer, I think?"
"They told you the truth. Let me explain in a few easy to remember sentences, how things work here in Twin Peaks. On the undisputed top, you have the untouchable and stinking rich Horne family, owners and founders of the Great Northern Hotel, part owners of the Packard sawmill, employers to at least a third of the town's population, and owners of so many other businesses both here and in the surrounding towns, that I'm guessing that half of those who work for the brothers, don't have a clue that it's actually them signing their paychecks! In the layer directly underneath them, you have a small handful of people like my dad, who in return for their loyalty and not the least, helping them with keeping their iron grip on the town, are handsomely compensated. Finally, there's the great majority of the town's population, who usually don't complain, as long as they're well fed on junk food, have a job, that they can stand going to five or six days a week and a roof over their head, that doesn't leak too much over the winter. It goes without saying that there'll always be a few, who fall outside of those categories, like Doctor Jacoby, Donna's dad or Bobby's dad, who's in the air force, but to most of the population here, those are the realities and there aren't any signs, that they'll change anytime soon".
"Speaking of your boyfriend Bobby. When do I get to meet him?" she asked, trying not to sound too curious, as to what her dad was like as a teenager.
"Soon, I'm guessing. He's probably just late again. It wouldn't be unlike him. If you ask me, he's probably ... no, forget that I said anything!"
"He's probably what? You can tell me. It isn't like I know anyone here except for Donna that I can tell, and she probably knows already, right?" Becky reasoned, drawing a small, but slightly sad smile from Laura.
"I guess not. If I tell you something about myself, where I don't come off all that great, would you hold it against me?"
"I'd never do that! Or at least, I don't think that I would!"
"I completely stole him from his ex-girlfriend Shelly. There's really no other way of putting it. Just to make it worse, she got so upset over it, that she allowed herself to be seduced by this guy named Leo, and all that I can tell you about Leo, is stay as far away from Leo, as you can! He isn't the sort of guy that an innocent girl like you would want to get herself involved with, trust me!" Laura warned her, and along with saying so confirmed the horrible things, that she'd already heard about the psycho, who'd turned her mom's life into a living hell, prior to him thankfully meeting his untimely demise, before this year was over.
"I'll take your word for it! If we meet him, will you warn me not to talk to him?"
"Luckily for all of us, he's a trucker and isn't seen around town all that often. Just remember what I told you, in case you run into him. I have to give Shelly, that she's pretty good actor, when it comes to keeping up appearances and she's told me, that she isn't angry with me anymore, but it isn't difficult to tell how deathly afraid, she is of him. Honestly, if it had been myself, I know that I would have felt the same way. I'm sure that he doesn't give a damn about her, apart from him liking having a maid at home, who he can beat on when he feels like it and doesn't have to pay. How's that for just about the worst thing, you can have on your conscience?"
"It was still her own choice to start dating him. If she were here, I'm sure that she'd tell you, that it wasn't your fault" she tried to reassure Laura, although she couldn't be sure if the way that the far more together woman back in her own time, than the messed up and still heartbroken seventeen-year-old that her mom was at this point, felt entirely the same way on the subject.
"Thanks for trying to cheer me up, but no matter how we try to twist and turn it, none of us can say that I've exactly been nice to that girl, can we? We actually used to be pretty close, her and I, back in those infinitely more innocent days in kindergarten, believe it or not. Sometimes, and it isn't that I don't like being with Bobby, but sometimes, I really wish to the bottom of my heart, that I'd never gotten between them in the first place. They both would have been far better off now, if it hadn't been for a mix of my immature selfishness and teenage hormones getting in their way. I can tell too, whenever we see her down at the Double R, where she works, that he still carries a massive torch for her. It's basically visible from the moon, that she likes him back the same way, but she's probably too scared out of her mind, of what Leo would do to the both of them, if he found out, to say anything to him. Coming back to what I was saying, my guess is that Bobby's probably late, because he's catching a glimpse of her, when she arrives at the diner for work. So, does Twin Peaks still sound like a snug and cozy little town to you now?" Laura asked, while making eye contact with her, probably to judge how she would react to a revelation like that.
"It sounds like it's just like everywhere else. Doesn't every town like this have it's good and bad and on occasion, things that you can't explain going on?" she asked rhetorically, getting a strange sort of giggle from Laura in reply.
"If it's the unexplainable, that you're into, then you've definitely come to the right place. Becky!" Laura dryly joked, just before they headed into a classroom, that Becky had last been in, when she was eighteen and from what she could remember, had been so high on horse tranquilizers, that she'd had to fight an extremely hard fight, not to fall asleep throughout that last class in there. This time, she could actually say that she was there for the reason that schools exist: So that she could learn something!
If there was one thing that Becky had done in her life, that she'd never thought would have turned out to be an advantage later on, it was to not have paid attention in high school. If she had, then taking lessons over again, that she'd already taken once, would have been about as interesting as watching grass growing, but thanks to her having practically never paid attention in her classes that first time around, she actually found herself enjoying them quite a bit. Plus, having a pair of friends like Laura and Donna to hang out with in the breaks in between classes, also made for a welcome change from the last of her original high school years, where (after Vicki had given up on her as a friend) practically no one talked to her and if they did, it was usually to pick on her for what a sorry excuse for a loser, even she had to agree with them, that she undoubtedly was.
One major thing that she'd been looking forward to, ever since she'd first "set foot" in 1989, was meeting her parents, when they were still teenagers. She finally got that chance just after second period, when her dad came sauntering in for school, looking like an early 90's version of James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause" in his jeans, army boots and leather jacket and in what struck her most about this young version of him, as if nothing could possibly faze him and the whole world was there for his taking. As he came walking down the hallway towards herself and Laura, she saw several teenage girls swooning over him and if she had to be honest, it wasn't hard to see why. For nearly as far back as she could remember, he'd had grey hair and for as authoritative and respect-worthy that his cop uniform looked on him, seeing him this way, with his youthful good looks and natural hair color still in full effect, not to mention so full of confidence in himself, there wasn't much comparison, when it comes to what a girl in her teens sees as the guy of her dreams.
"Hey, babe!" he smugly greeted Laura and gave her a small kiss on the cheek. "Sleeping took a little longer, than I'd planned".
"Is that what you're planning on telling the principal?" Laura playfully asked him back, obviously flirting with him at the same time. Which seemed a little strange to Becky, seeing as she'd already gotten her boy, but maybe that was just the way that most girls found themselves acting around him, without thinking about it. It wouldn't have been anywhere close to the first time, she'd seen it happen before.
"Why do you think I keep a flat tire in the trunk of my car? Who's your, if she doesn't mind me adding, far more attractive than most of the females around here, friend?" he asked Laura, although it was herself, he made eye contact with. An eye contact, that very quickly began to feel very uncomfortable! Was her dad actually blatantly flirting with her and not only that, doing it right in front of his girlfriend?
"She can answer for herself. Can't you, Becky?" Laura said, sounding more than a little amused at how uncomfortable, she must have been looking.
"There's really not that much to say. My name is Becky, I have amnesia and I'm new here" she quickly told him, while trying to avoid his flirty stare.
"It was all my pleasure to meet you, Becky. I have to catch up with Mike and find out how miffed the coach is at me, for blowing off morning practice again. Later, babe?" he asked Laura, who smiled flirtingly back at him.
"Later. Maybe, while you're at it, you could help Mike with growing a brain?" Laura playfully asked him, just before he quickly made his way down the hallway to find his best bro.
"Does he flirt like that with all of the girls?" Becky asked Laura, while hoping desperately inside, that she'd say yes. The alternative, that her dad had the hots for her, was simply too much to deal with! Even considering their very unusual situation at that moment!
"Only the pretty ones, but I've known Bobby far too long, to know that he'd never do anything behind my back with them. You should take it as a compliment, that you passed his "Prettiness Test". Just don't go getting any ideas in your head".
"I won't, believe me!" she blurted out, making Laura raise an eyebrow.
"Don't you think that he's hot? Almost every other girl here does, I can tell you that for a fact!" Laura puzzledly inquired, making Becky worry for a moment, if she'd been out of high school for so long, that she couldn't identify with high school girls anymore, the way she once could.
"He's just ... not my type. Far too boisterous for my liking! Not that I'm looking for a boyfriend, but if I was, I'd be looking for the opposite of him. No offense" Becky explained, as Laura nodded along in understanding.
"None taken. I know that he can seem like he's way too over-confident and a sort of smug sometimes, especially to someone like you, who's only just met him a minute ago, but he has plenty of good sides to him, to make up for it. Was that another bit of your memory, that just came back to you, that you remember what kind of boys you like?" Laura asked, clearly satisfied with her answer and buying every lie, she was being sold by her.
"Could be! Thanks for helping me out like this, if I haven't made it clear already. I know that it isn't like someone is telling you, that you have to" she gratefully told Laura, who gave her a small nod of appreciation for her nice words. It wasn't a lie either and compared to what she'd pictured, when she'd hear all of those insane Laura Palmer stories growing up, she had to admit that this real and far more lovable version of Laura, who was quickly becoming one of the best girlfriends, she'd ever had, was practically nothing like how she'd imagined that she would be.
"I already have plans with Bobby, so I can't hang out tonight. No one says that you, me and Donna can't after school go down to the diner, that I volunteer with meals-for-wheels deliveries for, and see if I can't convince my boss Norma to give us three free slices of pie, though? Believe me, Becky! Nothing that you've ever tasted holds a candle to Norma's pies!" Laura suggested, once again unknowingly helping her out. As they say, there's no time like the present and why shouldn't that afternoon be the perfect opportunity to meet the girl, who in circa a year from then, would become pregnant with herself?
Setting foot inside of the Double R of 1989 could only be described as a trippy experience for Becky, considering that it had been a second home to her throughout a great part of her childhood. Back when she was little, she'd spent untold hours sitting at the counter and drawing in her coloring books, while her mom (who was working at the same time) would regularly check in on her, in between serving customers and making sure that she didn't need anything. Years later, it had been the site of her first date and right outside on the parking lot, was where she'd had her first kiss with a boy, the weekend after. As an adult, she'd followed in her mom's footsteps and said yes to Norma's job offer (which wasn't a hard choice, considering that with her already damning criminal record, no other employer in town would dare to touch her with a ten-foot pole!), and in many ways, Norma had become more of a grandmother to her, than any of her biological ones had been, up to them passing away. In other words, there were few people in the world, who knew every square inch of that place, better than she did, so to come in and see it looking almost exactly the same, but not entirely, was a weird experience to say the least!
The jukebox was still clearly the same one, that they'd had up until 2004, when they'd had a break-in and someone had stolen it (probably just to get something out of it, since there hadn't been any cash or other easy-to-handle valuables to steal). She could still remember going from one store to the next in Seattle with her mom, while they searched for a replacement of the exact same type for Norma, who'd had the original jukebox, since she'd taken over the Double R in the mid 70's and had a great deal of emotional attachment to it. When they'd finally managed to find one and brought it back to the diner, Norma had been so ecstatic, that everyone in there got to eat for free for the evening and afterwards, they'd had an up-to-date alarm installed. Most of the inventory or the equipment behind the counter hadn't been replaced either and if it had, then it wasn't in any notable way. Still, there was just something different to the entire feel of the diner and it wasn't just that the haircuts and clothing styles were different, or that the smooth jazz playing from the jukebox differed from most of the music, it would be playing in the future, for those willing to put a nickel or two into it. The easiest way to describe it was that it felt like she was in an exact copy of the Double R. not the real Double R.
It took her a few seconds of looking around, until she saw the one, she'd arguably been looking forward to meeting a young version of the most. Her mom, grinning from ear to ear in her waitress unform, while she was chatting to James Hurley, sitting by himself at the counter and nursing a cup of coffee, along with what looked like it must have been the dish of the day. He looked more or less like himself, if you added a little more hair to the top of his head and subtracted the handful of wrinkles, that had made their way onto his face over the years. They clearly looked to her like a pair of old friends and if she didn't know better, she might have even thought that they were flirting, from how much they were smiling at one another!
"Shelly, Shelly, Shelly!" Donna sighed to herself, as they took a seat in one of the booths.
"What do you mean by that?" she asked, while trying to take her eyes off her mom and James. If it hadn't been for herself not being born, if her parents didn't wind up together, she would have probably found herself rooting for those two crazy kids, just for how cute they were looking together.
"It wasn't without reason that us other girls called her "Boy-Crazy Shelley" back in Junior High! She must have made out with at least twenty guys, before we got to high school!" Laura explained, while trying not to giggle.
"Let's just say that there aren't many of the guys that you see in school every day, who she hasn't at some point swapped spit with!" Donna added, though Becky guessed that she had to be exaggerating for maximum effect.
"Does it include the guy, that she's talking to? They're looking all kinds of flirty, aren't they?" Becky asked, while trying to take in that her mom had clearly been far bigger of an easy slut, than she'd ever admitted to her daughter, that she was!
"James? I don't think so!" Donna quickly interjected. "His standards are much higher than someone like her!"
"You'll have to excuse Donna, Becky! In her eyes, James never has and never ever will, do anything that falls outside of her, if you ask me, far too unrealistic and glamourous picture of what he's like!" Laura grinningly said, making Donna immediately look embarrassed.
"I don't do that!" Donna pleaded her case, even if it wasn't exactly a convincing plea!
"He's just a guy, Donna! Ask him out! If you won't ask him, then I'll have to do it for you!" Laura "threatened" her friend.
"No, don't! I'll do it soon; I just need to work up my nerve first! Okay?" Donna timidly asked and from the looks of it, Laura was ready to let her off the hook.
"Luckily for you, I'm sure that James is sensible enough to keep his paws to himself, when it comes to Shelly, so you still have time!" Laura stated, while trying to get the attention of the formerly mentioned waitress.
"What's so special about James?" Becky couldn't help herself from asking Donna, who smiled shyly to herself.
"He's just so cool!" Donna answered, as she in the most adorable way possible almost started blushing, from saying it out loud. "He drives a motorcycle, plays guitar, he's really sweet and nice and he's just always ... so cool!"
"He's cool, then? Did I get that right?" Becky jokingly asked, drawing a giggle from Laura, while Donna's face began to go into full-out "Red-Mode".
Moments later, she was let off the hook, when a certain waitress came over to them, ready to take their order.
"Have I seen you in here before?" Shelley asked her directly. "There's something strangely familiar about you!"
"I get that a lot!" Becky quipped back and they shyly smiled at one another.
Their sweet little moment didn't last long though, before a huge man with long, dark hair, that he kept in a tight ponytail, came barging through the door and steered angrily right towards them.
"Hi, Leo. Can I get you a cup of coffee or something to eat? We have an apple pie, that's almost fresh out of the oven" Becky's mom meekly tried asking the man, who along with hulking above her, also gave her a stare so icy, that it made every single hair on Becky's arms stand up instantly.
"I'm not here for pie, Shelly! You're coming home with me, now!" Leo ordered Shelly, who looked for all of the world, like she'd be more ready to try to make a run for it, than to come with him.
"But, Leo, I'm at work! I can't just leave Norma here to ..." she began explaining in a panicking way, before a pair of men thankfully came to her rescue. One of them was James, while the other looked a lot to her like his uncle, Big Ed Hurley (a towering man with a nickname that he more than deserved!), who at this time must have still been married to that complete and total nut-job Nadine, before she sold her idea for completely silent drape runners for a bundle of money and in was probably the relief of a lifetime for both him and James (who was like a son to him), soon after divorced him.
"You're not welcome in here, Leo! Didn't Norma make it clear enough the last time that you came here to cause trouble?" Ed cold and calmly asked Leo, who for once was face-to-face with someone of his own size, and not just a hundred-pound-girl like her mom, who likely would have no defense against a guy of his size.
"Stay out of this, Ed! It's between me and my wife, who's coming with me now!" Leo fired back and grabbed her mom's arm so hard, that it made her cry out in pain. Never in her life had Becky wanted to punch someone that hard, the size difference between them be damned, but in what was one of the hardest things, she'd done for a long time, all she could do was sit there and be a witness to this abuse of her mom, who deserved nothing less than a sainthood for how infinitely patient, she'd always been with herself.
"Get out of here or I'm calling the cops on you, Leo! You know that I'm not kidding!" Norma, who'd come out from the kitchen after hearing the commotion, steadfastly told this man, who looked like he was physically able to tear her entire diner apart, if he was angry enough.
"And Shelly isn't going anywhere with you, if she doesn't want to! You don't own her!" James also bravely chipped in with and now that a few more guys had come to Shelly's aid, seeing how many guys that he would be going up against, apparently looked like it was enough to make Leo see reason.
"This isn't over, Shelly!" he angrily told off her mom, before finally letting go of her arm. "You and I have a lot of things to discuss, when you get home! A lot of things!"
Just as quickly as he'd arrived, Hurricane Leo was gone again and almost instantly, an eerie quiet quickly began to sink over most of the patrons in there, as if it had never happened.
"Are you okay? That guy was scary as ... you know what!" Becky asked the younger version of her mom, when she finally got the chance to get a tiny bit of alone time with her, seeing as Shelly was wiping down their table, after Laura and Donna had already left with their boyfriends. Now that she'd gotten a first impression of Mike, by the way, she completely agreed with Laura, that he seemed like a dumbass, who seriously needed to grow a brain! Why a highly intelligent, albeit also clearly extremely naïve girl like Donna would give a guy like him the time of day, stood as a mystery to her, when a sweetheart like her could obviously do so much better.
"He isn't a bad guy or anything like that, he just loses his temper sometimes, that's all. By the time I get off work, he'll have cooled down again. Really, you don't need to worry about me. I'm fine" Shelly, like a poster girl for every battered wife that makes excuses for the bastard, who beats them up, quietly answered her.
"Are you sure? I can get you a place to stay for the night, if you want to ... give him a little extra time to cool off?" she (in the friendliest tone, that she could use) asked her mom, who smiled back at her for being so kind to someone that she must have believed, was still a complete stranger to her.
"Aren't you just the cutest little sweetheart? I appreciate offer, but he'll only be that much angrier with me, if I don't come home tonight. Again, I have to ask you. Are you absolutely sure that we haven't ... I don't know ... played together, when we were kids or something like that? There's just something so familiar about you and I simply can't put my finger on it! It's annoying as heck, if you want the truth!" Shelly blurted out, once again trying to remember in her mind, where they could possibly have met before!
"It could be. I woke up two days ago just outside of town, with no memory of who I was, except for my name. Since then, I've been trying to find out again, who I am and regain my memories, but I can't exactly say that it's going swimmingly. What I'm trying to say is that there could very well be a chance, that we've met before, I just don't have any way of confirming it for you right now" she tried explaining to "her mom", who aside from batting and eye at her story, also wasn't freaked out by it.
"Some people would see it as an advantage. Getting to start over from scratch again in a new place, with nothing in your past to hold you back. It all sounds kind of nice to be honest, if you ask me" Shelly sadly replied, and while her usually always plastered on smile for her customers was still there, it also wasn't hard for someone who knew her as well as Becky did, to see that at this point of her life, it probably sounded like a far more pleasant alternative, to what her life had become.
"Excuse me. My log has something that it needs to tell you", a woman's voice, that she'd heard countless times before, interrupted their little talk with. In the year 2017, Becky would be delivering food from the diner to her six days a week and out of all of the customers that she delivered to, the "Log Lady" (or Margaret, as her real named was) had quickly become arguably her favorite to visit, and she'd always plan her route, so that she had time for a cup of coffee with the somewhat odd (she did have an actual piece of lumber for a best friend, after all!), but extremely kind and wise old lady.
"Your log?" she answered, while trying to look her best at being puzzled at what was going on, like any sane and normal person in this situation naturally would be!
"She gets cryptic messages from it, from time to time. It's easiest just to roll with it!" Shelly dryly explained to her with an added eyeroll, as the Log Lady held her log tightly up to her ear and listened intently.
"My log tells me that the world and your memories are changing, but that you shouldn't be afraid. That's all, it told me", the at this time middle-aged Log Lady cryptically said, before going back to her table and stroking her log. As in literally, stroking a piece of log wood!
"So, the world and your memories are changing? For once, something she said actually made sense, even if it was like stating the obvious! I mean, isn't the world and our memories some of those things, that are naturally constantly changing?" Shelly rhetorically asked, before finishing with wiping down the table and getting back to tending to her other customers.
After leaving the diner, she'd done as she'd agreed to with Cooper the day before, and come down to the Sheriff's Station, so they could have a little talk one on one. When she got there though, Truman and Cooper were busy interviewing a suspect in a case, giving her some time to observe the rest of the staff at the station, some of which she already knew through her dad working with them and them occasionally having been over at their house, back when her parents were still married.
Like Hawk, the native American member of their small police force, who never spoke much, but was still one of the most highly respected men around town and someone, that even the rowdiest of high school students were willing to listen to, just for how cool he always carried himself and was with them. She'd never heard her dad speak a single bad word about him and she wouldn't be at all surprised, if Hawk was the one out of her dad's colleagues, that he respected the most.
You couldn't say the same about Lucy, their ultra-quirky and soap opera obsessed secretary, who at this time was still clearly doing "The Mating Dance" with her future husband Andy, but she couldn't claim not to have been well entertained by sitting there and overhearing their highly awkward flirting with each other. Andy, whom the image of crying to the end of "The Lion King" at the cinema, still for some reason was imbedded in her memories, was still the same old Andy. Goofy and not to any extent looking like the kind of guy, you'd want to have on your police force, but at the same time as naturally kind and warm-hearted, as the day is long. And to his credit, she herself (like countless other children in town over the years) had grown up with a kind face as the face of law enforcement in their town, and no one deserved more credit for this than Andy, who probably in his own unintentional way had stopped many of them from ever resorting to committing crimes in the first place.
Of course, finally, there was their "Head Honcho", Sheriff Harry Truman, who'd later go on to be succeeded by his brother at the post. She could recall meeting him many times growing up, usually when he would come down to the diner for a cup of coffee and a slice of one of Norma's pies, but she'd never actually talked to him back in her own time, most likely because he was always too busy, to waste his time shooting the breeze with the snot-nosed daughter of one of his officers. Her dad had a ton of respect for him however and had often referred to the sheriff as a father figure, who'd taken over that role in his life, after his own dear dad had disappeared without a trace. In addition, he'd also been the one, who'd convinced her dad to join the force, so in that way he'd had a tremendous impact on her life, it just wasn't something that she'd ever thought about before now. In any case, he was trustworthy and only wanted the best for her, so he was likely to prove a vital ally in the weeks to come.
By the time Truman and Cooper finally came out of the interrogation room, soon to be followed by the suspect being led to the cells in handcuffs by Hawk, she'd waited for almost two hours and to be honest, was starting to be more concerned with the rumbling in her stomach, than she was with how she was going to keep up her lies in front of a man, who'd been trained by the best of the best on how to spot a liar, whenever he saw one.
"Becky, I have to apologize to you, but I have to push our meeting forward a few days. We just got a huge lead on an important case, so I have to drive down to Seattle right away and stay there, until it's been properly followed up on" Cooper explained, as he was putting his trench coat on and getting ready to head out the door.
"It's alright. I don't have so much amnesia, that I don't understand, that I'm not first on the FBI's list of priorities!" she quipped to him, and he gave her a kind smile in reply.
"You are important to us, Becky. This other case simply has to take priority right at this minute, but I'll be back here, as soon as I can, you have my word. If there's anything, you need, I'm sure that Harry and his fine people here will more than gladly accommodate you" he explained, before turning his attention to Truman and the two men shook hands.
"Harry, it's been a sublime pleasure working with you! When I come back in a few days, you simply have to take me out to that fishing spot, you told me about!" a smiling Cooper told Truman, who almost didn't know how to react to someone being this overly friendly with him.
"Sure thing, Coop. Drive safely, you hear? The wise men say that it's going to start pouring down later tonight" Truman answered.
"I always do, Harry! Hawk, Lucy, Becky, Andy, it's been a pleasure! I'll see you all again, before you know it!" Cooper bid his friendliest goodbyes in the world to them. Moments later, he was out of the door and heading down towards his car.
Truman decided to call an end to his own workday as well, with him driving herself up to the hotel being his final assignment of the day.
"How are you liking Twin Peaks so far?" he asked her, making small talk, as he turned out onto the road that took you all of the way up to the Great Northern.
"It's ... its own!" was the best way, she could think of saying it.
"That's one way of putting it! Did you know that the old native Americans used to shun the woods just the north of the town, because they'd become convinced, that it was haunted by some sort of demon, who turned anyone that came face to face with it into insane murderers instantly? What am I thinking, of course, you don't! My point is that this place has had its share of strange occurrences, going back far before a town was founded here. I was raised by my dad to be a guy, who calls it like I see it, but even I have to admit that we've had things going on here, that can't be explained. If anything, you're just par for the course!" he dryly joked.
"Like the Log Lady?" she asked, drawing a small headshake from him.
"I pretty much only feel sorry for that poor woman, more than anything else. I don't know if anyone has told you, but her husband, who was everything to her, lost his life far too young in a tragic work accident and after he died, her mind quickly began to go off the rails. You've met her, have you?"
"Down at the diner. She told me that her log had a message for me":
"It did, huh?" he asked, and couldn't help himself from letting on a small grin. "What did her log, in all of what I'm certain is it's infinite wisdom, tell you?"
"That the world and my memories are changing, but I shouldn't be afraid of it. What to you make of it?"
"That it was the ramblings of a woman, who's very lonely and was using her log as an excuse to talk to someone, who didn't look like they'd instantly tell her to get lost, like most people do. I wouldn't put any value into any of what she tells you, to be honest. She's harmless enough, it isn't that, but that mind of hers clearly isn't what it used to be" he explained to her, making it clear that here she was with a guy, who believed in the messages that people get from inanimate objects, about as much as he'd be willing to believe that his neighbor had really been a Martian all of the time!
As she was getting ready for bed though, after she'd had a lovely late dinner in the hotel restaurant, the words that the Log Lady had told her kept repeating themselves in her brain. There was a substantial chance of course, that sheriff Truman was correct and that it had been nothing more than the rambles of a certified lunatic, and nearly anyone with a well-developed sense of logic wouldn't have considered any other option. With all of what she'd already seen and swallowed with a grain of salt so far however, was a woman receiving messages for her through a piece of timber really all that out of ordinary?
END OF CHAPTER FOUR