A DAUGHTER'S LOVE
CHAPTER TEN - TRUE FRIENDS
After a hectic day that would always stand out in infamy in Becky's memories, she figured that the best thing that she could do for her horribly self-hating friend Laura was to give her a proper and well-needed dose of sheer normality, plus more than anything to make her feel loved and wanted again by those that truly cared about her. For this reason, she came up with the idea to tell everyone at school that she'd gotten to know so far, that she'd suddenly remembered that it was her own birthday, seeing as no one could know that it wasn't the truth unless their name was Dale Cooper, and they happened to be a Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. With the great chance of even crazier times being on the imminent horizon too, if there was ever a last chance to just kick back, enjoy some pleasant times and cast off their worries for a day, then this would surely be it.
As for the location, there was really only one place that it made sense to have a fake birthday party in, and it just so happened to be the same place that the soon to be born version of Becky ever since her very first years in the world, had always felt was her number one safe space, the Double R diner. When she thought back on her life so far, most of the monumental events in her life had happened either in there or around there and with her own grandparents either having died at a fairly young age (like her paternal grandmother had), suddenly vanished without a trace and never returned (in the case of her paternal grandfather) or being generally unlikable people to begin with (in the case of her mother's parents, whom she'd only met one time each and wouldn't want to ever see again, no matter what), the owner Norma had always felt like a spare grandmother to her. Not to mention the only one in town out of the many that she'd handed her embarrassingly bare CV out to after she'd gotten clean, who'd been willing to hire her or even give her a second glance, as far as potential employment was concerned. More than that, there was absolutely no denying that the love between them went both ways and in the case of her mother, Norma had been infinitely more of a caring parent towards her than Becky's maternal grandparents had ever come close to, even if they weren't related by blood in any way.
At first, it had only been herself, Donna, Audrey and Laura there, but to her great surprise, Bobby had turned up too to offer his well wishes and, as she'd expected from the moment that she saw him, to talk things out with Laura after their recent break-up. Before him, James had even briefly popped in to give her a small present, which (somewhat fittingly, she thought) turned out to be a keychain with a pendant that had a picture of the town sign on it, reading "Welcome to Twin Peaks" in large letters and its number of residents written in smaller ones underneath it. Okay, so it definitely was about as of a cheap a gift as could be found anywhere in town, but she was honestly rather surprised that he cared about her at all and of course had made sure to thank him many times. Even if he'd claimed that it was just some old piece of junk that he'd had lying around and it wasn't anything to make a big deal about, it still felt to her like it was a rather thoughtful gift all the same. Donna, who'd readily admitted earlier in the day that her worst pet peeve in life was having to buying gifts for people, because she never had a clue what to get them, had settled on buying her a sweet greeting card with twenty dollars inside of it and with a lack of spending money being one of Becky's biggest minor issues, she made sure that Donna understood how handy that it would come in for her. When it came to Laura, she'd (even if Becky had insisted that she hadn't needed to get her anything) given her a small bottle of gorgeous smelling perfume that her new closest friend had gotten at a nice discount at the Horne department store. Something that she could also only imagine that Audrey had for the pair of jeans and the warm sweater that she'd chosen as her gift for her and again, would come in handy seeing as Becky only had two pairs of pants and one sweater to her name and without easy access to a laundry machine, she'd had to wear them far too many days in a row for her own liking. Audrey shone too, when Becky hugged her tightly as thanks for her gifts, and it seriously made her wonder to herself if this was the first time in Audrey's entire life that she'd been invited to any birthday party, where it didn't involve celebrating herself or a close family member.
She also couldn't help noticing that Shelly was constantly keeping an eye on them from afar and she would have asked her to join them, if she didn't also have a half-filled diner to tend to.
"How old are you turning today, B-Day girl?" her future mom smilingly asked her while Becky was giving her a helping hand with clearing their table, exactly like it over time had become second nature of her to do back in her "Own Time".
"Eighteen" she lied to the, all kinds of wonderful, yet sadly just as short on self-esteem, girl that within a few years would be giving birth to her, who in return looked rather pleased on her behalf.
"And I'm betting that you have all of the cutest boys in town already lining up around the block to get a date with you, am I right?" Shelly sweetly asked her. "Anyway, you really don't need to help me with this. It is my job here, remember?"
"It feels like the least that I can do with us sending so much extra work your way tonight. As for those boys, I don't know what to tell you. I guess that what they're looking for isn't someone like me" she replied to her would-be mom, who (like she would become such a master at in the future that no one else could rival her) sent a heartwarming smile her way that like it always did in her daughter's case, made it feel to her like everything would somehow work itself out.
"An adorably sweet and stunningly beautiful girl like you? Somehow, I find that hard to believe!" Shelly stated and in turn, gave Becky a small boost of self-confidence. "Believe me when I tell you that girls like you are exactly the kind of girls, who lots of boys your age want to bring home to show off to their mothers".
"I've only had one boyfriend and let's just say that it ended in a way that no one would have wanted their first relationship to. I guess what I'm saying is that unless we're talking about a guy that I can see some perspectives for the future with, I'd rather stay single for now and wait for Mr. Right to come along" she "confessed" to Shelly, even if there was a hint of truth to it as well.
"How do you know that he isn't some shy boy at your school, who's been admiring you from afar and has been too nervous to chat you up? Those are usually the ones that made for the best boyfriends, if you didn't know already. In any case, you've only barely begun on your long road to adulthood, and you have your entire life ahead of you, Honey!" Shelly told her, coincidentally using almost the same phrases that the mother version of her would use around seventeen years and eight months later, on Becky's actual sixteenth birthday. "You have plenty of time to have lots of fun with playing the field first, before you need to think about settling down with one guy. It's what I would have done in your situation".
Shelly would have been right too, if it wasn't for the fact that the girl that she was talking to in reality happened to be twenty-six and not just turned eighteen, like she was pretending that she was. Not that being in your mid-twenties means that you're old at all, it goes without saying, but after the multi-year-long fiasco of her marriage to Steven and not the least, the depths that it had taken her to, Becky had learned enough about herself to know that in her own somewhat sad case, being in love comes with a high price to pay.
"Did you?" she asked Shelly while at the same time, hoping sincerely that she wasn't overstepping some invisible boundary by doing so. What it did though, was bring a facial expression full of regret on the mug of her mother, who obviously would have done a lot of things differently if she'd been given a chance to do them over gain.
"Does it look like I did?" Shelly asked her as she briefly showed off her wedding ring to her. "Do yourself a huge favor, Sweetie Pie, and don't marry the first guy, who tells you that he'll always love and protect you. The last thing that you want is to be left with a head full of regrets, believe me!".
"For what it's worth, Bobby has just broken up with Laura and I'm pretty sure that he's still carrying a big torch for you" she said to Shelly, if nothing else to test the waters on if the feeling was mutual on her mother's part.
"I'm guessing that Laura has told you about what happened between the three of us. Look, if things were different and I wasn't married already, then I'd jump into it with both legs instantly. It just isn't the world that we live in" Shelly told her with a tone of deep regret being evident in the way that she'd said it.
"If your husband wasn't around, what then?" she asked her dear mother, who put on a fake smile to pretend that it wasn't a big deal to her, like it clearly was in every sense of the words.
"You're sure a nosy little "Snoop-Arounder", aren't you?" Shelly lovingly asked her back, suddenly sounding a whole lot more like the mother that Becky had grown to love as much as life itself, than the insecure and understandably scared for her life girl that she was in 1989, who'd only made one terrible mistake in her life, yet in a cruel twist of fate had been made to pay close to the highest price imaginable for it.
"Life doesn't have to end just because you got married too young. My mom and dad got divorced and if they've managed to move on just fine, so can you" she reminded her would-be mother, who thankfully took her words in the kind way that they were intended to come off and not in a condescending way.
"Says the girl, who's eighteen and going on twenty-eight!" her mom teasingly replied to her and was far closer to being correct than she knew. "You really are a true to the word little sweetheart that just wants the best for everyone, aren't you?"
"I owe most of it to having had the most amazing mom that I ever could have asked for" she affectionately answered the teenage version of her mother that of course had no idea that she was the mother, whom her daughter was referring to.
After a splendid evening spent in the company of her new friends, who between them had made this version of Becky's teenage years everything that she'd wished that her real ones had been, it became time to call it a night. Until she caught a cab ride with Audrey back the Great Northern and her room there though, she got the chance for a short one-on-one talk with Laura, while Donna waited for her in her parents' car.
"Are you absolutely certain that you'll be okay by yourself for the rest of the day?" she worriedly asked Laura, who almost looked like she was expecting the question to be coming up.
"I don't need you to be my around the clock guardian, Becky. Anyway, we can both easily agree that if you slept over, we'd just wind up talking for half of the night again and if I don't get some proper sleep tonight, I have zero clue how I'll get through school tomorrow" Laura answered her and if there was one thing that Becky would readily attest to, it was that getting some serious shut-eye was desperately needed in her own case as well, after first having a wild night out with her fairly soon to be father and just to top it, the most eventful day that she'd perhaps ever had with her new best friend, the day before.
"Have the withdrawals been bad today?" she inquired, seeing as she'd felt on her own body how tough that it can be to go cold turkey.
"It hasn't been a picnic, but you've given me enough resolve to fight my way through them. If I don't say it enough, then it's only because I've always hated sappy speeches, but I simply can't come up with any words that can express what you're doing for me" Laura told her with a grateful smile that was more than enough in the way of repayment, as Becky saw it. "Just out of curiosity, how old are you actually? You can't be seventeen, I know that much!"
"Does it matter? All that I will tell you is this, Laura: If I'd been fortunate enough to have you by my side when I was seventeen, I wouldn't just have loved being that age, I would have savored every single second that I got to spend with you like they were the most precious thing in my life" she honestly admitted to Laura, who almost had to shed a tear again, only this time it was for a completely other reason than it usually was.
"I wish that I had a way with words like you do" Laura readily admitted back to her.
"I wouldn't be saying it, if I didn't mean it. I won't let you die either, if that's what you're afraid of. Anyone, who wants to get to you has to get through me first and I can be tougher than I look" she assured the girl in front of her that as the only one that she'd ever met, had a literal death verdict hanging over her head.
"No offense, but I'll believe it when I see it. I shouldn't keep Donna waiting any longer. Sleep tight and don't let those nasty little bedbugs bite you" Laura bid her goodnight, only moments before her and Audrey's ride home pulled into the Double R parking lot.
After they'd arrived back at the hotel, she excused herself to Audrey, who claimed that this evening, which to most people would have seemed pretty mundane, had been one of the best evenings of her life, probably because she'd finally felt accepted by her peers and not like an unwanted outcast among them. Audrey would be another one that it would be close to impossible for Becky to leave behind in this time period, that much Becky was a hundred percent sure of. Yet still, her sixth sense was also telling her that what Audrey had needed all along was just someone to truly listen to her and show her some much-needed love and affection, for her eternally lovable self to be brought out of her shell. Now that she had been and just as much, had slowly begun to believe in the enormous wealth of untapped potential that was so evident within her, there was truly no limit for her as far as what she could achieve in the rest of her life.
As she laid down on her bed at the Great Northern that was also far more pleasant to lie on than her old one had, all that she wished for was to fall asleep in an instant. As it so often happens however, when you've crossed that border of just being plain old sleepy, to being so over-sleepy that you start to feel fresh as a daisy again, it would take her a good while to finally get the one thing that her dead-tired body needed the most to keep on functioning.
While she laid there and tried to clear her mind to the best of her ability, it began to occur to her that more of her memories were starting to get foggy in the same way that it had happened, when she first couldn't remember if Laura had been murdered or had disappeared. Sure, there was a part of her that had to know what the real answers were to the things that she was now in doubt over. Still, with my muddied that her memories had become over the days since her first arrival in the Twin Peaks of the 80's, she legitimately couldn't tell you for sure if she'd imagined that Laura was murdered or if it was the other scenario that was just a figment of her imagination.
Honestly though, for as much as she'd feared not coming back to her own time period when her mission had begun, there was undeniable part of her that was beginning to dread leaving her new life behind too. Just when she thought about it purely objectively, there was little denying that if she continued to be Becky McCauley, a fresh-faced eighteen-year-old high school student without a dark past to hold her back and with the world at her feet, it would give her a once in a lifetime chance to start over without any of the scary amount of baggage that the former drug-addict Rebecca McCauley Briggs would have to go on living with for every remaining day of her life.
More than that, it was as if something deep within her was telling her that this (at least on the surface) cookie-cutter version of Twin Peaks was where she belonged and not the one that she knew from the future: A Twin Peaks where the influx in the meantime of a large number of mostly desperately poor outsiders had turned it from seemingly being a small slice of heaven, into a one of the most crime-ridden small towns in the North-West, in which there were parts of it that nearly all of the locals knew to stay away from after nightfall. Or, at least, if they knew what was best for them. Even if Becky was enough of a realist to know that this time period must have had its share of problems too, and that what happens behind the long lines of white picket fences in suburban America isn't always pretty, what had happened over the years since couldn't be called progress, it was that purest kind of regression. To add to it, there were all of the general problems that most people of her time worried about, be it the long-term effects of global warning that could one day wipe all of humanity out, the fall of the lower middle class with its resulting crime and homelessness problems, or a drug epidemic in their country that had been allowed to run rampant to such a degree, that the people of her current time wouldn't understand it, because they simply had no reference point to help them understand. Heck, with what she knew would happen across the world over the coming years here in this timeline, wouldn't it be certifiably insane to wish yourself back to a time period, where it had all changed for the worse and there was little in the way of signs that a turnaround was in the making anytime soon? In any case, she still had no way of knowing if it would be her choice to make, or it had already been made for her and no matter how you twisted and turned it, the future had two things that the past didn't.
Her real parents and not just the teenage versions of them.
END OF CHAPTER TEN