Chapter 88: Worries and Celebrations

Saturday, April 20, 1985

Everyone got up around the same time, which was unusual for us. Cammie and Mel were usually the first to get up (and the first to go to bed).

Angie produced the card after breakfast, saying, “I’m sorry if this wasn’t okay, but I saw this when we got home and figured it could wait until morning.”

Cammie looked startled when she saw the card.

“I ... what?” she said. “Who?”

“We have a guess,” Angie said.

“Um...” Cammie said, her face falling a bit. “Yes.”

“With your permission, I’d like to open it,” Angie said.

Cammie sighed and nodded.

“Go ahead,” she said.

Angie carefully opened it, then pulled it out. A tiny part of me wanted to say something about ‘preserving evidence,’ but this was 1985. There was no evidence on the card worth preserving, and it wasn’t illegal to leave a card on someone’s doorstep.

Angie opened it, scanned it, then closed it.

“You don’t want to see it,” she said.

“That bad?” Cammie said.

“It’s ... more of the same,” Angie said. “If I remember right, the handwriting matches. It’s ... yeah. You don’t want to see it.”

Cammie took a deep breath, then nodded.

“I’ll defer to your guidance,” she said.

I said, “We need to involve Elizabeth. She’ll know what to do. I think ... Ang...”

“Ahead of you,” Angie said.

Cammie started to say something, and Angie mostly cut her off, saying, “I was going to suggest giving this to Dr. Brewer for her opinion. She’ll know how much to share and when. It’s ... that’s her job. We’re your friends and we want to protect you. She’s your therapist and may decide ‘protecting’ is the wrong approach.”

Cammie smiled a bit.

“I like that,” she said. “Carly is ... yeah. I trust her to know what to do with it.”

“If we send it to her with you, do you promise not to read it?” Mel said.

Cammie blushed. It might have been the reddest I’d ever seen her.

“Um ... you give it to her,” she said.

Mel gave a little chuckle and hugged Cammie.

“I know you! Curiosity killed the Cammie,” Mel said.

“I need to know!” Cammie said, smiling again. “I can’t help it! It’s just who I am!”

“I’ll give it to Carly,” Mel said.

“Love you,” Cammie said, giving Mel a kiss.

“Love you, too!” Mel said.

After discussing it with Angie, we decided she should tell Elizabeth what the card actually said. Angie was more than qualified to see if there were threats or anything I needed to know. If she said there weren’t, I didn’t need to read it.

I called Elizabeth’s answering service and asked them to page her. It wasn’t really urgent, but I knew Elizabeth would be annoyed with us if we didn’t page her.

She was on the phone within two hours. I gave her official permission to talk with Angie, and Angie took it from there, with me out of the room. After their conversation, Angie called me back to the phone.

Once I was on the line, Elizabeth said, “I’m concerned, but not worried, if that makes sense.”

“That’s about where I am.”

“So far, this is just harassment. If there wasn’t a history of harassment, we’d have trouble getting a protective order. In this case, there is a past history, so we’re in a better position. I do want to talk to Cammie before proceeding. After that, I will send them a formal request for non-contact as a first step. With your permission, I’ll have a process server deliver it. It’s overkill, in that a non-contact request has no force, but it’ll hopefully impress them, plus we’ll be able to prove they received it and when. I’ll demand they either accept the no-contact rules or we’ll file for a protective order in two weeks. After that, the clock is running. If I haven’t heard from them by the deadline, I’ll file.”

“That makes sense. Thanks!”

She chuckled wryly.

“Don’t thank me too much,” she said. “Protective orders are better than the paper they’re printed on, but they don’t do anything if someone’s determined.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We’ll do what we can to stay safe. The worry is that Cammie and Mel will be here by themselves over the summer. Plus, both of them will be taking classes, and they’ll be coming and going at different times. It’s a quiet neighborhood and anyone out of the ordinary will raise eyebrows, but there will be many fewer eyes.”

“Good locks, obviously.”

“We’ve got that already, and we’re putting in a backyard fence. Well ... we were. It’s on hold. We got a demand to show proof that we’re allowed to put it in. I’ve given them proof, but the municipal court doesn’t quite know how to handle us turning in proof before they’ve even scheduled a hearing.”

“I could help...”

“Thanks,” I said, “But I’ve got Kyle on it already.”

She chuckled.

“I should have thought of that! You’re not lacking for lawyers!”

“Fortunately and unfortunately,” I said, chuckling as well.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll happily agree that it’s better to never need our services. That said, if you do need them, it’s much better to have them.”

“Definitely!”

“I’d say ‘don’t be a stranger,’ but I hope you’ll be able to do just that,” she said.

“Me, too!”

“Take care! Would you put Cammie on, please?”

“Happy to!”

I called Cammie to the phone, then stepped away.

She came out about ten minutes later and gave me a hug right away.

“Thank you! Again!” she said. “I owe you so much!”

“My pleasure, then, now, and always.”

She sighed, looking up at me.

“I love you.”

“I know,” I said, smiling.

She giggled.

“Thanks,” she said. “I needed that, Han!”

“Anytime, Leia!” I said.

Since working on the fence wasn’t an option, we spent most of the day on studies. That meant Claire and I saw each other before our date, since she was part of the studying.

The clock was running fast now. Dead Week (a week with no tests and little new material) started April 29th, with Finals the week of May 6-10. As improbable as it seemed, that meant our third exams were next week!

We could wrap up papers and other longer assignments during Dead Week, and most of us would. I was in good shape on mine, and I was pretty sure the others were on theirs.

It was a far cry from my first-life freshmen year, when I probably wrote at least one major paper from scratch during Dead Week.

With only a short time remaining, I had a feeling this was one of the last few dates Claire and I would have. It felt pretty clear that we would be ‘breaking up’ for the summer. We hadn’t been 100% clear about it, but close enough that I felt it was settled.

If she hadn’t found anyone, fall was an option, but I knew she wanted to make a break of things. As long as we were dating, she might not be looking for Mr. Right (or even Mr. Right Now), since she had me.

With that in mind, I changed into nice dating attire, then headed over to Mosher to pick her up. Best to make every date count.

When I got there, she was ‘indisposed,’ as had been the case almost every time. Given that, Kay, her guardian angel, had to talk to me.

“So,” she said, “First. Credit where credit is due. You’ve been really good for Claire.”

“Thanks!” I said.

She smiled and said, “I’ve been quizzing her. She’s clear you’re not ‘the one.’ That’s good. No leading her on! I think the breakup will be a little hard, but that’s normal, and it feels like you’ve done the best you can.”

“I’ve been trying,” I said, nodding.

“So. End of the semester?”

“That’s the plan as I understand it.”

“And as she understands it. Good again,” she said.

“That’s easier to keep to. She’ll be going home and we’ll be hitting the road for the most part. Hard to date when you’re in different states.”

“Long-distance relationships do happen,” she said, chuckling. “But ... yeah. Yours won’t be, plus your actual girlfriend will be right there.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything.

She hesitated, then said, “You’re still planning to be friends, right?”

“Absolutely, and that includes you. If you’d like, anyway.”

“Me?” she said, sounding surprised. “Are we ... friends?”

“Seems like ... maybe?”

She nodded slowly.

“Maybe. We’ll see how things work out with Claire. I’m not dating you!”

“Nor did I expect you to. Though I would have nothing against it, either. I mean, you did say ‘Maybe your pirate... ‘ a while ago.”

She blushed, giggling a bit.

“I guess I set that up! About as smooth as you could be with that one. You’re going to be a tough act to follow.”

“And I should be. If I was easy to follow, what does that say for Claire’s judgment now? And yours? And about the new guy?”

“You ... have a point. Again. I still don’t really get it — like, why Jasmine’s okay with all of this — but I accept it, and it seems to work for you two. And for Claire. She was all about ‘Rocky Horror’ this morning, including you and Jasmine being in costume. Even when it’s not a date, you all being open about things ... I just can’t imagine myself in that situation.”

“Most people can’t. It works for us, and that’s about all I can say.”

She sighed a bit, then smiled. It was almost a grin.

“I really didn’t want to like you, you know. You’ve got all the strikes against you: handsome, good with girls, good with people, really slick and confident, obviously at least comfortably well off, and then with a hot girlfriend you don’t even have to cheat on because she lets you cat around! I assumed a bunch of things about you and Jasmine that just weren’t true. I’m glad I’m wrong.”

I probably blushed a bit at that, and it sent ‘Impostor Steve’ vibes shooting through me. Gotta watch that! To someone who didn’t know who I was, that’s probably exactly who I seemed to be. That, in turn, meant it probably really was who I was in the most important sense. Sure, I would carry my first-life self around with me forever, but so much of him was in the distant past, never to return. Why should I allow myself to think that I was a clueless, heavyset (all right, fat) nerd who wasn’t good with girls? It wasn’t true, and continuing to fight with that was a problem.

I had already spent quite a bit of time working on this with Jane, but I probably needed to spend still more. As much as it hurt our ability to make progress that we were almost two hours’ drive apart, no other psychologist could help me with things like this. Not unless I was prepared to tell them some very important things I would likely never be ready to share, anyway!

I was quiet while that passed, but I’m sure Kay just assumed I was having trouble figuring out what to do with what was, after all, a fairly big compliment followed by an apology.

I said, “Thanks. It is, but it’s good for me and Claire much more than for you. If I was the sort of guy who’d be okay with you being right in how you first felt...”

“You’d suck, and I would have been right to be on the warpath!” she said, grinning a bit.

“Fortunately, you were never on the warpath,” I said.

“Let me check on Claire,” she said. “She’s probably in there listening.”

I chuckled, and Kay headed in. I could see no sign of Claire. Still, if she had been listening, Kay had given her just enough time to get clear.

Claire came out just a few minutes later, dressed in a pretty spring dress and low heels. I offered my arm, she took it, and we headed off to the MSC.

Once we were in the stairwell, she said, “She was right. I was listening!”

I chuckled.

“Seemed likely,” I said.

“I didn’t hear all of it, but it all made sense. We’re good for each other, but it’s a for-now thing. I want a guy of my own. Right now, sharing is fine, partly because Jasmine got there long before I did! Long-term, though, I would have trouble sharing more than maybe once or twice. Few and far between!”