Chapter 17

Joan's fingers trembled as she buttoned the last button of her blouse. She was trying her best not to show exactly how nervous she was, and thought she was doing rather well. Really, it was ridiculous! Here she was, a grown woman, freaking out about a meet-the-parents thing. Oh well, time to go.

"Joan," said Eric for the hundredth time as they drove to his parent's house,"you have nothing to worry about!"

"Eric, what makes you think I'm worried?" asked Joan in a voice that had carried her through countless difficult business deals.

"Oh, please," said Sally. "You can't hide it from us. I'm sure it'll be just fine."

Joan realized that was true. She couldn't hide it from them. In fact, no matter how hard she tried, she'd found it impossible to hide anything from these two. It wasn't like they pried or anything, but they always, always seemed to know her mood, even if sex wasn't involved. It was pretty scary, when you got right down to it.

Brunch was lovely. And wasn't that a cliche, thought Joan to herself, if ever there was one. But the truth was, it looked lovely. Davyn and Helen were the soul of courtesy, and did everything they could think of to welcome what was clearly soon to be their new daughter-in-law into their home and their lives.

The food had been excellent, and the conversation even better. Joan mentioned how good the food was, and Helen smiled.

"I have to confess, we had it catered. I mean, I can cook -- although Davyn can barely burn water -- but there's no way I could compete with Sally's expertise in that department! Hence, brunch, courtesy of Evan's."

Joan was impressed that they'd gone through the trouble, and said so.

"Nonsense," said Davyn. Then, taking the opening that she'd created, he added, "Nothing's too good for family."

Joan's hand shook a little while reaching for her orange juice, but otherwise she thought she hid her sudden terror well. Not well enough, though.

"Davyn, you're about as subtle as car a crash." Helen put her hand on Joan's, and smiled. "Joan, don't let my husband scare you."

"No, no, it's fine, er... I mean I'm fine, really," protested Joan.

"Nonsense," said Davyn again, moving the conversation forward with all the grace of a rampaging pachyderm. "You're nervous, and I just thought it was time you stopped being nervous. Helen and I think you're a wonderful woman, and we're looking forward to getting to know you."

Eric was holding his head in his hands, and Sally had a wry grin on her face.

"Well, Dad," she said, "I'm so glad that your amazingly subtle conversational skills kept this from being an uncomfortable talk."

Her grin grew wider at the 'what'd I do?' look on Davyn's face.

Not to be deterred from his path, however, Davyn started to say something else, but Helen kicked him under the table.

"Ouch!" he said in surprise. "What the hell did you do that for?"

Everyone broke up laughing, except Davyn. He sat there looking surprised, but inwardly was relieved that his wife had found a way to get his foot out of his mouth, so to speak. Once everything calmed down, Eric spoke up.

"Look," he said, "all joking aside, this is a decision that we have made. We think it's right for us, and we hope to have your blessing, or at the very least hope that you're not going to go nuts or anything."

"We're not going to go nuts," said Helen, "but Davyn and I are a little unclear where you three are going with this. Or do you even know?"

"We know," said Eric.

At this point, he was unsure how to tell them about the fact that their faith would allow them all to get married. But that was for later. They hadn't even broached the subject with Joan yet.

"Davyn, Helen," said Joan, "I know that this is a pretty unusual situation. I don't think that we ourselves know where it will lead us, but I do know that we're... we're very much in love. Not only that, but I've fallen quite hard for your little grand daughter as well."

Davyn nodded. "Relationships are funny things. If this works for you, and you handle the situation with Christine, as she gets older, without screwing the kid up, then I'm all for it."

Helen nodded her agreement. Then asked, "Have you thought of what will happen if you want more children?"

"That's not an issue, for me, at least," said Joan. "I'm too old to have children."

Joan was unprepared for the astonished look on Davyn and Helen's faces.

"Too old? You're kidding, right?" asked Helen. "I mean, women are safely having children into their forties! You should have no trouble at all."

Now it was Joan's turn to be confused. Had Eric lied about her age to them? Didn't they know how old she was? "Helen, I'm in my forties. I'm forty-two, almost forty-three."

Now Helen was embarrassed. This woman looked, at the oldest, to be in her mid thirties. She was usually such a good judge of age, but Joan looked, well, amazing.

"I... I'm sorry Joan. You just look so much younger..."

Joan got the sense that Helen was not flattering her. Helen really had thought that she was in her thirties. Sally and Eric both realized, as they looked at their lover, that being with them had changed Joan. She looked younger, glowed with a health that made her seem younger than she was.

The awkward moment was broken by Davyn. "Well, hell," he said, "If that's the case, you oughta be with us! You're wasting your time with those inexperienced youngsters."

Joan blushed, everyone laughed, and Sally and Helen jumped all over Davyn (verbally, to his disappointment) calling him a perverted old man. Davyn however, knew exactly what he'd done and winked at Eric who smiled back.

Once things had died down a bit, and they found out that Joan had a very large, and at the moment, mostly un-lived in house, Helen asked when they'd be moving out of the mansion.

"We haven't really talked about that yet," said Eric.

They hadn't, but he knew that there was no way they'd leave the mansion. By this time, he was almost certain that Joan would become a Priestess and if and when that happened, there's be no need to move.

"This is kind of new to us," said Sally, "so there are a lot of details to work out. The mansion has more than enough room, and Ken has no problems with us staying there. That was the original deal. We would stay there, I would manage the house, and Ken would help Eric get his Masters."

"Not only that, but Bill and I have some really cool things in the works which, once we market them, will be pulling in enough money so that I don't feel like I'm taking charity," added Eric.

Joan blushed, but added, "I guess I should also mention that I own my own business, which does fairly well. Money isn't really an issue, even if they want to leave the mansion."

She suspected that leaving the mansion was not in the cards for any of them, but was at a loss to say why. As a result, she didn't say anything about it out loud. The rest of the brunch went very well. Joan even loosened up enough to tease Davyn -- just a little bit. When they were at the door, ready to leave, he took her hands in his and looked her in the eye.

"We want what makes our kids happy. If that's you, never doubt that we'll always welcome you into our house," he said.

Joan smiled, once again somewhat embarrassed. She thanked him with a kiss and they left.

Genie and Bill had finally emerged from their room yesterday, and Ken had never seen Bill happier. Seeing them together made Ken smile. On this morning, the new Priestess found Ken once again flying his simulator. He paused when she entered.

"Am I interrupting?" she asked.

"Nope," he replied as he spun in his chair. "What can I do for you?"

By her demeanor, he could tell that something was on her mind. She sat down in one of the chairs and leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, looking away for a moment.

"Bill came to me and mentioned that you needed to find some things out about Arianwen's past," she said. "Have you told her what you're doing?"

"No," replied Ken. "I have reason to believe that her mother lied to her about how her father died. I didn't see the harm in trying to find out the facts. If her mother did lie and I don't think that it'll upset her, then I'll tell her what ever information we have."

"Don't you think she deserves to know the truth, regardless?"

Ken thought for a moment. "I suppose. It's just that these last months have been a real upheaval for her and Tina. But Ari, I think, had more illusions about her mother than Tina did. So when her mom threw her out, it hurt her more."

"Then why go hunting at all?"

"Because," he replied, "I have every intention of getting my pilot's license. Currently, any time Ari even sees me at a simulator, she freaks out. She thinks her dad died showboating in a small plane. As I said, I have reason to believe different."

After a moment, Genie looked at him. "You asked me what I wanted to do with my life. If I wanted to go to school or something."

Ken nodded.

"Well, I have no desire to go back to school. But I would like to continue to learn."

"About what?"

"Oh, c'mon," she snorted, "Bill talked to you. You know I'm a total math geek."

"Well, yes. But that was about all Bill told me. He said you were private about your skills and didn't like to talk about them."

"That's true," she said. "Let me tell you a story."

"I've always loved math," she continued. "I never had any problems with it, ever. By the time I found out that little girls weren't supposed to be good at math, it was way too late. Wouldn't have mattered to me anyway. Numbers, theorems, crypto, I love all of it. Naturally, I decided to major in math in college.

"Once I got into a good doctoral program, math was my whole life. I don't think I dated at all for almost four years -- not that I'd dated in high school either. Too much of a nerd. But then I started working with one of the top professors at the university on a project. It was odd, because while he was considered to be brilliant, I never found him so." She laughed a bit sadly. "I did find out why people thought he was, though. It's an old story. I was young and impressionable. He was handsome and very smooth. My lack of experience with men made me an easy target. He seduced me, and of course, little twit that I was, I completely fell in love.

"We ended up working for some Washington think tank. They gave the University a big grant. Based, of course, on my work. Thing was, only Bobbie's name was on it. He said it was because I was such an unknown, they'd never give us the grant if my name was listed as the primary researcher. " She chuckled, "I wonder if they ever found out who was really doing the work? Anyway, the government people weren't too bright. They never had a clue that his assistant was the one behind all the great work that Bobbie was doing. I guess things would have continued as they were, except that he never could keep his dick in his pants.

"I found him with another woman, surprise, surprise. The funny thing was, even back then, I knew I was bisexual. If he hadn't been such a complete asshole, he might have even scored both of us. As it was, I overheard them talking. He was laughing about how he was fucking me to get equations out of me. It was quite clear that he really couldn't have cared less about me. But without my work, the contract went nowhere.

"Of course, I agonized over this for days. Then I confronted him about it. He tried to weasel out of it, but there was no way that was happening. I had him cold. In the end, I just got disgusted and left. It was almost a year later that I found out that the bastard had told them I'd tried to steal his work and sell it. The feds had investigated, not that I knew that, but never found anything because there was nothing to find. However, those fuckers never forget anything and when I tried to apply for a government job, I was denied a clearance. That was my first computer break in. Since they wouldn't tell me why, I found out on my own."

Ken shook his head. He was sorrowed by how the bureaucracy was too stupid to get its act together. Not surprised, but he was sorrowed. He wondered how long it would take before the government -- hell, the entire country -- came crashing down under the weight of the ever-growing amounts of paperwork that covered everything.

"So, yeah, while I'd love to continue learning, there's no way I can get a job doing what I'd love to do," she said. "But Bill... has some projects he's working on. And I've been helping with some of them. We both think that there's a lot of money to be made, and we've been talking to Joan, Ellen and Kim about how to set up a small company. I'm kind of jumping the gun here, because I know that he wanted things more worked out before we told you."

"Why tell me at all?" asked Ken. "I don't have anything to do with the company."

Genie smiled and shook her head. "You're a funny guy, sometimes. I think I'll let Bill explain the why's and wherefores about this stuff. Otherwise, he'll be annoyed with me."

"Okay," said Ken, wondering what they had up their sleeves. Something sneaky, no doubt. "But where does that leave us with you trying to get the Ari's info. Are you willing to do it?"

"Oh, yeah. Been on it for a few days. All I've found out so far was that her mother's full of shit. Ari's dad was in the military -- that much I know. He never even owed a private plane, even though he had a pilot's license. But I've been unable to get the real records yet."

"The 'real' records?"

"Yup. He's dead, or at least I'm pretty sure he is, but the files containing the public information are BS. I've seen them before and they're in a database that, amusingly enough, is only for files that are a cover for something," she grimaced. "To tell the truth, I might not be able to find out the real deal. But I'll try."

"Why wouldn't you be able to get the info?" asked Ken curiously.

"Because anything that's really secure is on computers that aren't on the Internet. Those computers are physically separated so that no one can hack in. You'd have to get physical access to one. Plus, not even all computers that have classified information are on the same network. It's all compartmentalized. Hell, it's possible that it's not even on a computer at all," she finished.

That was something to think about. He'd hoped to be able to help Ari get over the small plane thing with the truth about her dad. But it appeared that that might not be possible.