Chapter 37: An Abrupt Detour

Monday, October 28, 1985

Our big discussion wouldn’t happen until tonight, but I pulled Angie aside just after Martial Arts and caught up with her about proposals. The Seilers were also on board with the new plan, and Tony was sure he had enough vacation time to make it work.

The timing worked very well. We wouldn’t see the parents until we all met at the Rose Parade grandstand. They wouldn’t realize there were no rings until that point, having likely assumed we wouldn’t phone with the news (guessing Jas and Paige planned to surprise them by showing off the rings in person).

They couldn’t very well ask us about the lack of rings during the parade, and we would pop the questions right after it. The girls would probably not expect it — they would expect Disneyland, most likely— and they would have just gotten two big surprises (the parents turning up, and the Rose Parade itself). Would they expect a third? Angie and I guessed no.

I would start working on travel arrangements as soon as I could. We had to keep them from overhearing, but I could manage that since there were times I was home by myself.

During a quiet moment, I gave American Express a call and asked them to see if they could figure out how to get us enough Rose Parade tickets for twelve. That included the four of us, the six parents, and two spares. Jess might be one of the spares, and one more couldn’t hurt.

They gave me some positive-sounding comments, anyway. For this, I had them call the Houston number Angie and I shared. Even a vague message from American Express might not be sufficient to ward off Jasmine or Paige if they heard it first, and I had no way of knowing that they would be vague. We could check the Houston number’s answering machine remotely.

I made sure Angie knew about the call so she could check as well.

I checked in with Amy mid-afternoon. We were happy to see each other alive and well, of course. After we’d established that, I proposed a date for this coming Thursday. Darla had Friday, as of now at least.

Amy also agreed to come to our Saturday night party. In a way, I thought that was as big of a thing as the date. Perhaps more of one, even. I got the feeling she had been to very few parties. At least she would know many people at this one, and would know they liked her and would be nice to her. That had to count for something.

I mentioned bathing suits, but I was pretty sure she wouldn’t take me up on it. She didn’t need one, but I guessed she wouldn’t be comfortable with skinny-dipping.

I might be wrong, though. Perhaps she would love the idea.

Earlier in the evening, we told Cammie and Mel the broad strokes of things with Sharon. Many details were omitted, but they needed to know there was progress and that there might be extenuating circumstances we had been unaware of.

That ... was an interesting thing, in and of itself. Seen from the outside, without context, what ‘extenuating circumstances’ could there be for exposing your 13-year-old daughter to drugs, potential rape, and assault and battery that would almost certainly have ended in murder (or, at least, manslaughter, but I was pretty sure it would be murder) if not for entirely unlikely events? It’s inexcusable.

Except ... keeping your daughter from a family that ... well. We had no idea what, exactly, they did. If there were legal issues there, it might all end in some spectacular series of arrests and trials. There were no guarantees, but we might learn something.

And ... well. If nothing happened, and if we continued to believe Sharon, people with significant wealth have a way of finding things out when they want to. I would bankroll some discreet snooping. Or Angie would. Or both.

If we found nothing, it might not even work out poorly for Sharon. God knows what she had taken and for how long. Some addicts’ brains never fully recover. She might believe every word of something that was merely a drug fantasy.

But ... if it wasn’t ... God help them. Because there were no extenuating circumstances that could justify what Sharon had hinted at. Praying for forgiveness was about their only hope, because I doubted I, or any of us, would find much for them.

Oh, we would just turn anything we found over to the authorities. Going after them personally would be a last resort.

Unless the statute of limitations had expired. That might necessitate some other tactics. Legal ones, but there would be consequences. We would, most likely, have the resources to accomplish that, and it was now a matter of principle.

Yes, one could argue that all of this was merely the universe’s way of having Angie in the right place at the right time to become Angie. But that’s too much ‘All is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds.’ It would be the same as saying Candice’s victimizer was fine because, without him, an enormous number of good things might never have happened. That might be true, but what he did was still horrendous.

Angie spent a while on the phone with Jane in the early evening. After that, she was off with Paige for about an hour. Both of them returned looking happy, and they said it was a good talk (both the one with Jane and the one with Paige) and that all was well.

Angie and I went off to bed around ten. As usual, she had her PJs and clothes for tomorrow. We got ready for bed before any real conversation and snuggled up with the lights off around ten-thirty.

“How are you doing, little sis?” I asked.

She sighed and hugged me.

“Good. Mostly. There are ... this is a lot.”

“It really is,” I said. “It really, really is.”

She sighed again.

“I thought ... you know. Daddy Frank and Sharon dating, her maybe not entirely sure of him or something, an old flame in town ... stuff happens, she cheats, but it’s not...”

She paused, then said, “Okay, it’s shitty, no doubt. But it’s some stupid cheating thing. She doesn’t want to hurt Frank, so she hides it, it looks like I’m his, and we’re all good. This ... well... Sharon didn’t say it, but if I read between the lines, she maybe got raped by her brother-in-law and that’s how I’m here.”

“Yeah, that’s what I got from it,” I said.

“And ... okay. It’s not like babies don’t start that way. Or that there’s anything ... you know... wrong with it. It’s not inherited.”

I shrugged and said, “It’s always been on the table for me. Probably not, but ... no proof. Most likely just two poor young lovers and a mistake. But ... could literally be anything. It’s not like I really found two ‘sides’ to my family, though I only went so far with the DNA. But I’m not sure the DNA was all that conclusive about me being a result of two families coming together instead of one family ... recombining.”

She nodded.

“So ... who the hell knows? And ... we don’t know just how fucked up her family is. Are they some evil child-molesting cult? Or are they just...”

She paused, put on a mocking tone, and said, “‘Just,’” putting on the finger quotes. “Now I’m saying ‘just’ about some ‘women should be barefoot and pregnant, subservient, seen but not heard,’ sister-in-law-raping morons.”

“Probably...”

“Yeah, yeah. Geniuses, not morons,” she said, sighing. “Pretty sure Sharon’s saying there’s real illegality and her therapist is saying, ‘I believe she’s telling the truth.’ So ... yeah, that’s just great.”

“Like you said, it’s not inheritable. You’re none of those people.”

“I’m also not the girl that came out of that tryst, exactly. I have no reason to really believe I even started then. Maybe — my birthdate is the same — but Daddy Frank died at a different age and a whole bunch of other stuff is different here than it was the first time. Maybe ‘I’ was Sharon and Frank’s kid. Maybe not just my soul got dropped in but all of me. It’s not like we have DNA from Old Angie. Who the hell knows? Anything’s possible.”

“And there’s a new can of worms. I’ve been going after it from the other direction,” I said.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Like ... first-life Steve couldn’t sing. I can. That didn’t come with my soul. Am I ‘me?’ Or is my soul in a genetically different body? I stay more fit. It’s definitely due to better habits. Is it also because I’m not genetically predisposed to be fat? I think a certain part of me is somewhat bigger. True? False? If true, why?”

She giggled and said, “Um ... on that point.”

“Sis? I know you generally have a positive opinion.”

“Oh, I want that thing!” she said. “We have perfectly good reasons to wait, but I want it. No, it’s ... let’s just say that Iceberg Steve was absentminded and didn’t always lock the bathroom door. I wasn’t trying to look, and he wasn’t at his full glory, but I think you’re probably right, if he’s you, which he might not be.”

“Which is all very interesting, but ... yeah. I’m looking at whether ‘I’ am who I am because my DNA is different. You’re wondering if ‘you’ are the original you, but weren’t before.”

“Toe-may-toe, toh-mah-toe,” she said, giggling. “We are us. Which is not Original Angie or Original Steve. I hope those two didn’t truly exist or are getting a second chance or in heaven or whatever other good thing the universe had for them. I seriously apologize for the inconvenience if I had anything to do with it somehow, but we aren’t them and they aren’t us. All of which is a very long-winded and digressive way of saying, yes, I am who I am, and if part of my getting here was some bastard of a ... um ... he’d be an uncle, I think ... raping my mother, then so be it. I’m not raping anyone or turning into an evil bitch. Biology isn’t destiny, and that’s not biology, anyway. Awful people are made, not born.”

“We are a particularly interesting set of case studies in nature versus nurture.”

“Oh, hell! I’m fascinated by Iceberg Steve. What went wrong? As far as I can tell, Mom and Dad are the same.”

“I agree,” I said.

“But that either means he’s genetically different or something else knocked him sideways from first-life you and Asshole Steve. All of the universes vary, so nurture’s still totally a suspect, but so is nature. I want to know, and I never will.”

“Could be ... sort of both.”

“How does that work?” she asked.

“My birthmother’s diet being different during pregnancy, maybe. Could be one world had better nutrition for poor desperate unwed mothers than the other.”

“Um ... well, yes. Very good point. Also, we are totally derailed.”

“We do that,” I said.

She took a deep breath, then said, “Sharon. The really good part is that this is what I wanted. Her owning up to it all. Man... asking for random drug testing for five years! I’m totally handing it to her. That was a serious trump-card move. Nothing says you’re taking this seriously, and are in it for the long haul, like putting yourself at day-to-day risk of going off to the slammer if you fuck up even once. Now, in fact, if she fails one of those tests, my bet is they intervene, not lock her ass up. I mean, that’s assuming she’s been clean for like six months, is holding down a job, whatever. Screwy test? Smack her and see if she rights the ship. But it means she can’t lie to herself and go, ‘Well, I’m gonna just get high this once. I can handle it. No one will ever know.’ Which is the real point of the thing. She could play the ‘Well, they tested me yesterday, and it’s always at least a week. If I smoke some today, I’ll be clear by the time they show up’ game. But I don’t think she will.”

“She seemed really serious.”

“And it’s not just that. It’s the rest. I was more than a little worried she would wind up suicidal. It’s a fucking bleak situation for a druggie to look at decades of sober life, especially starting out middle-aged and with a felony record. All the stuff that got you through the day is gone, you can’t play off being hot to get stuff, and employers tend to be openly distrusting if not downright hostile. ‘They’ can help, but you have to let them. She’s letting them. We can help, but she doesn’t know that. I know she’s not stupid, and she must have gotten access to some news about me, but ... hell, even if she knows about prom, or somehow the national championship or something ... that doesn’t even pay the bills, much less pay her bills.”