Chapter 59: Family

The next week started pretty much as every week so far had done. I decided to go out for a run and noticed that Tom Prichard’s light was on in his house.

I’d never noticed if there was a Mrs. Pritchard and wondered about that. Did he live alone or was there a long-suffering wife hiding inside being constantly ‘controlled’ by her controlling husband? Had I made her life even more unbearable by eliminating his control of the neighborhood? I did think about trying to find out but then decided that if there was, it was none of my concern. Unless she specifically came to me for help, and I had no reason to think that she even existed let alone would do so, then I’d leave well enough alone.

I covered about ten miles that morning and arrived back at the house feeling energized and ready to face the week.

I was in the kitchen making breakfast when Marcia arrived.

“I see that your asshole neighbor is getting a security system installed,” she said. I raised an eyebrow then went to the front door to see for myself.

As Marcia had said there was a van from a security company parked on his drive, and they appeared to be installing cameras on the front of his house. It was a strange configuration though as there was one covering his front door, one covering the driveway and his car, and then a third being fitted. I had a sneaky suspicion what this camera was going to be tasked to do, especially since it seemed to be a different type of camera to the other ones. The third camera had a longer lens.

Marcia told me that the bathroom fittings, showers, and toilets were due to be delivered that morning. Since I had nothing better to do, I decided to stay at home in order to help her bring all the stuff inside, get it unboxed, and ready for fitting.

Melanie also was going to be around to help, so when the stuff arrived it took us little time to get it all inside and unboxed, with all the packaging being loaded onto Marcia’s van for disposal. By the time we had everything unboxed and ready to go, it was coming up lunchtime.

We spent the next couple of hours researching how we could get Melanie her GED. Apparently it wasn’t too difficult. She could sign up online, even take the four exams online as long as she had a decent computer, a quiet space, and good internet connection. We decided to go buy her a good laptop for her to work on and also for when she was ready to do any further study – if that’s what she wanted to do. If everything went smoothly, we might even get her enrolled into PSU before this semester was over. I had no qualms with her catching up on the work, I would be more than happy to get her all caught up on her first semester even if she was unable to do it herself.

In the end, I’d decided not to take her amulet off on the previous Sunday, deciding to wait just one more week, although I’d not told Melanie just yet. Her body was pretty much back to what it should have been due to a combination of a good diet, some exercise, and some assistance from my Healing. She was looking good.

We found a very decent laptop that she liked, and we took it home and got her set up in the living room. She started to work through the GED registration, filled out all the required details, and got set up for taking the exams. By the time she was through with that, the girls had arrived home and I was getting ready to go for my flying lesson.

I arrived at the airport about a quarter of five.

Arnie was just coming out of the office as I walked up.

“Dad’s running a few minutes late,” he said. “He asked if you wanted to prep the plane with me, assuming you don’t mind having a kid instructor?”

I grinned at him. “As long as I don’t have to change your diaper mid-way through, I think I can handle it.”

“No promises,” he said. “Let’s go and do the external checks.”

He stood by and watched as I completed the external checks of the aircraft, running through the checklist with me. Once again, I added in the extra checks that Gerry had always considered worth doing, even though they were not on the checklist.

Just as I was finishing up his father appeared. He looked flustered.

“Sorry,” he said. “Meeting went on longer than I thought it would. Are we all prepped and ready to go?”

“All external checks are complete,” I said. “And I didn’t have to change his diaper even once.”

Danny looked at me, eyebrow raised, but didn’t respond. Arnie just grinned.

I climbed into the cockpit and waited for Danny to take his seat, then we began the internal pre-flight. We, or rather I, flew around the area doing various required maneuvers for two and a half hours. Danny and I made small talk between steep turns and stalls.

When I got home, I’d had an email. Or rather, several emails.

Almost immediately after, there was a mail from Maggie.

“Bitch,” I chuckled to myself. “Talk about manipulation...”

I moved onto the next email.

I showed the emails to Melanie, who was overjoyed.

“Why don’t we get them all over here on Saturday?” she said. “Get them to come at lunchtime, they can spend the afternoon with us, and maybe have dinner too. Sarah can get to know us and E, and maybe you can take all our amulets off together?”

“Shit!” I said. “Release three new power users on the world all at the same time? That doesn’t really sound like a responsible thing to do.”

Melanie pulled her tongue out at me.

“You know you can handle it,” she responded.

“Why not,” interjected Ness, “invite Mom and Daddy too. Perhaps speaking to them will help settle Sarah’s parents down?”

“That depends on what they tell them,” giggled Amanda.

“True,” I said. “But I expect your parents and Sarah’s parents will probably have other things to discuss other than whether or not we ‘shared’ with them. It’s a long way for them to come though.”

“They have a jet,” said Jules. “And before you say anything about the cost, both my parents would crawl here over broken glass if they thought you needed them. I don’t think you realise how much they love all of you. If we were jealous types, we might be concerned that you are taking their attention away from us. But I, certainly, love the way you guys have adopted each other and we have become a family together.”

“Yeah,” said Ness, “I agree. It’s like ... Well, I don’t know what it’s like, but I know that I love the fact that we’re all together. I also know our parents are going to love Melanie.” She smiled across at Melanie who flushed slightly but smiled back at her.

“We’re going to need more furniture,” said Mary practically. “There’s room for us all to sit, but only just. If Sarah moves in there is going to be a shortage of seating in here. Thank goodness we got the bigger dining table already.”

“I think we’ve reached capacity,” I said. “With Sarah included there will be Mary, Amanda, Jules, Ness, Melanie, Josh, Louise, Gracie, Dana, her, and me making eleven. If Sarah’s parents and brother come on Saturday that’s fourteen, E and Connie makes sixteen. If Pops and Cheryl come that will be our dining table overly full – eighteen people. I don’t know where we’d seat them all.”

“The sofa holds six,” said Louise, “and there are two chairs. Most of the time, when you are in here, one or more of the girls sits on your lap in any case. If you got maybe another three-seater sofa and another chair...”

We devolved into planning out the living space. Fortunately, the room was large enough to accommodate the extra furniture and, when we went online, we found some that matched the existing so we wouldn’t have mismatched furniture. The TV wouldn’t be visible from all the chairs, but that didn’t bother me since I rarely watched the TV in any case. I also ordered a couple more chairs for the set out on the deck, bringing our seating out there up to ten. A couple of extra dining chairs would make the dining table a little crowded but it would then seat up to twenty. The additional pieces could live in the attic when we weren’t using them. If we expanded our household any more, we would seriously have to find a bigger place.

I sent emails to E and Sarah, inviting them both over for lunch and dinner Saturday. I told them both about the other, and that we would introduce them to our extended family. We could figure out what else would happen after that.

The next day after school we moved all the furniture back into the spare rooms. Marcia said she could work around it with no problem since she was working in the ensuites and had completed the install of all the furnishings in both. The rest of the week would be tiling and grouting. It was a part of the job she didn’t particularly like but, since we’d chosen quite large tiles, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. She was happy that she was on schedule to finish everything by Friday. She had a new job to move onto starting the next week, so she wanted to be finished in time so as not to have to work the weekend.

Gracie and Dana decided not to move back into their room until after the weekend. They would stay in the Den. We hadn’t decided whether we were going to change the den back into a den or keep it as a spare room although, if Sarah moved in, we would have no guest room if we changed it back. My preference was to keep the den as a bedroom. We didn’t need a den.

I was nervous as I approached our Ethics class on Wednesday morning. I’d used a lot of power healing the professor and others had felt it when I’d used that kind of power on them. Did he? Would he say anything? He certainly looked a lot better. He still thinner than he had been, but he’d carried a little extra weight so it looked good on him. His face was no longer drawn and his eyes were bright and healthy. He looked around the class, beaming at us all as we entered.

“Good morning,” he said. “Today I, once again, must apologise. It appears that my doctors were a little premature in their prognosis. It seems that, for some reason, they got it wrong. I went to see my oncologist last Friday, since I had been feeling much better, and after some tests over the weekend and at the beginning of this week, they now tell me I do not have the cancer that they had diagnosed nor am I, in fact, dying.

“I’m sorry to have worried you all and, if our time together last week caused you any distress, I also apologize. All I can say, in mitigation, is that I told you the truth as I knew it. They cannot tell me what happened, why they got it so wrong, and why they cannot find a single trace of any cancer either on my scans or in my blood tests.”

“You should sue them,” said one student. “They caused you a lot of emotional distress.”

“Ah,” said the professor smiling, “I think not. You see, they were acting in good faith and basing what they told me on information they had. Why that information was incorrect is anyone’s guess – maybe it was a mix up in the labs? A mix up in the radiology department? If so, how could such a mix up happen in both places at the same time in the same way? Or could it be that I did indeed have the cancer and for some reason it just went away?”

“We prayed for you professor,” one of the kumbaya crowd said. “Maybe God decided to answer those prayers?” My lip curled.

“And I thank you for taking the time,” he said. “I, personally, do not know what happened. Did a deity intervene? If so, why? I have certainly never shown any deference to such a being, having never been convinced of their existence. Some may even claim that this is proof, but is it?

“Let’s say, for arguments sake, that I was, indeed, sick and am now cured. It could be as much an argument for Miss Reid’s super powered Healer, someone who had the power to heal but couldn’t reveal their power, and I fully understand why that would be the case.”

He looked directly at me when he said this.

“However, if indeed it did happen and wasn’t just a misdiagnosis, I am incredibly grateful, as is my family who are overjoyed to find that I am going to be around for a while longer. So, as well as my apology to you for any emotional distress my announcement last week caused you, I would like to publicly thank any and all those involved in any healing I might have been in receipt of. In many ways I would almost like to think that the diagnosis was indeed correct. That would give me the hope that there are those with such powers around and that they are working to help those of us in need.”

The rest of the lesson passed in open discussion of the likelihood of such beings, against the more mainstream doctrine of a deity, and devolved into a theist/atheist debate which I thoroughly enjoyed. I have always loving dismantling bible thumpers.

I kept a careful eye on Dana though. Since her father was a pastor, I didn’t know where her opinions were on such matters and I didn’t want to hurt her with my ebullient dismantling of the theist construct. She didn’t seem to mind however, even grinning at me a couple of times as she saw how much I was enjoying myself.

“Mr. Stott?” said the professor at the end of the lesson. “Might I have a word?”

I stayed back while the others filed out.

“I’m afraid the substitute lecturer left a note on your record to say that you ignored instructions when she was taking the lesson.” he said.

I smiled at him. “I’m sorry, Professor,” I said. “We didn’t have a substitute lecturer while you were away.”

He frowned. “I was given to understand that Mrs. Breeman took my classes while I was out?”

“Oh, yes, she did,” I said, “but she didn’t teach. All she did was tell us to read chapters from one of our textbooks. If that is teaching, then sign me up – because it’s money for nothing. She sat in your chair glaring at us. Since I’d already read all the required reading, I chose not to waste time re-reading it, and made use of the time to read something I hadn’t read. It wasn’t related to the subject but that was not relevant.”

He smiled at me. “I see,” he said. “I take it she noticed what you were reading?”

“I suspect so,” I said.

“I’ll provide your feedback to the department head,” he said. “You are not the first to have been, shall we say, disappointed in her teaching.”

“Thank you, Professor,” I said. “While I’m here, I wanted to run an idea past you for my senior thesis.”

“Oh yes?” he said. “It’s good to have something in mind. What were you thinking?”

“I was intrigued,” I said, “by the session, and subsequent discussions I had with Dana, about the ethics of a superhero. I was thinking of writing my thesis on that.”

He nodded slowly. “Frankly,” he said, quietly, “you could write the instructions on building the Death Star with Legos and you would graduate with honors. I don’t know what you did, or how you did it, but I know it was you. I felt it. The question from Miss Reid was to get my consent for you to do whatever it was that you did.”

I opened my mouth to argue but he held up his hand.

“Please,” he said, “don’t. I have told no-one, nor will I tell anyone. I understand your need for secrecy, for anonymity. I want you to know how grateful I and my family are for what you did, or they would be if they knew. The only ones that do know, are you, me, and presumably Dana. Doing your thesis on the ethics of having superpowers sounds like a good idea, and something you might be uniquely qualified to comment on.”

I nodded and turned to leave the room. When I got to the door he spoke again.

“Caleb,” he said. I turned to look at him. “Thank you.”

Dana was waiting for me outside the classroom. Rather than explain it to her, I simply sent her the memory of the exchange. She frowned.

“He felt it?” she said. I nodded.

“It’s not the first time,” I said. “Others have felt it when I used a lot of power on them.” I told her about Christina, the six-year-old, and the woman with pancreatic cancer. “Even your mom thought that she recognized me, but she didn’t know why.”

“You need to be more careful,” she said. “The professor probably won’t say anything, but others...”

“I know,” I said. “But he liked my idea for my thesis at least.” I grinned at her and she shook her head, smiling wryly.

We ate lunch together and then separated for our afternoon activities. I went to the range to meet a new hypnotherapy client and Dana went to her afternoon class.

My new client was a security guard from the Mall. Apparently he was a friend of the guard who’d helped Melanie out. He’d been bemoaning to his colleague about being unable to stop smoking and had gotten my card from him.

I left that session a hundred dollars richer and able to speak Japanese, since the guard was second generation Japanese American, and had been brought up speaking the language at home. I was pleased about this. Japanese had been one language I’d wanted to learn, and not just so I could understand all the hentai porn I’d seen.

I made my way home and was met by a very excited Melanie who was hopping from foot to foot at the door into the kitchen as I pulled into the garage. I grinned to myself as I saw her so excited. I had an idea from her shouted thoughts of what she wanted to show me, but I pretended I hadn’t noticed.

As soon as I got out of my truck, she came and dragged me into the house and into the living room, pointing at her laptop which was sitting on the coffee table. I looked at it but the screensaver had activated and all I could see was a picture of a lake and some trees.

“That’s pretty,” I said.

She looked puzzled and then looked at the screen seeing what had happened. She scowled at me before unlocking the device and showed me what it was she wanted me to look at.

She’d taken all four of her exams for her GED and had gotten her results back only ten minutes before I’d arrived home. She’d passed them all with a score of 180 or more on each section.

I threw my arms around her hugging her to me. “Congratulations,” I said. “I knew that you could do it.”

“I would never have been able to without your help,” she said.

“Of course you would,” I assured her. “You’re an extremely intelligent young lady, even with your amulet in place. Imagine what you can do when you get full access to your metal capacity. Think what you could achieve.”

“But without you giving me all the memories of your’s and the girls’ schooling,” she said, “and then sorting my mind out so that I could remember it, I’d never have done all this in just a couple of weeks. I crammed years of study into two weeks. I would never have been able to do that.”

“Maybe not in quite so short a time,” I said, “but you would have done it. Have you any idea what you want to do next?”

She nodded. “I want to be a doctor,” she said. I looked at her wide eyed.

“Wow!” I said. “Talk about setting the bar high. Way to go.”

“I’ve been looking at the PSU catalog, and they have a pre-med major. I could do that and then go to med school. I just need to look at how much it...”

“Don’t even think about it,” I assured her. “John gave you enough to get you through college. I’m going to talk to Dean about investing money in his business. By the time you’ve graduated PSU, I promise there will be money available for you to go to medical school – wherever you decide to go.”

She looked up at me, her eyes bright.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” she said. “But whatever it was, I’m glad I did it.”

I gathered her into my arms again and held her to me. “You deserve everything good that happens to you,” I said.

Just then the door opened and the girls arrived home. Melanie wasted no time in showing the girls her results and they too were impressed and lavished her with praise.

Later I was in the kitchen, making dinner, when Jules came in.

“You see that Pricktard has a camera pointed directly at our house?” she said.

I nodded.

“Can’t we do something about that?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s his right to film anything he can see from his property. I could claim that the camera itself is a harassment, since it’s so blatantly pointed at our house, but I’m not going to waste any time on it.

“I have some other ideas.” I grinned at her, and she grinned back at me.

The next morning, when I got up to train, I scanned the local area. I wasn’t looking for people, rather I was looking for wildlife, and I found it for almost immediately. Just down the block there was a squirrel just waking with the dawn. Other than the dancing cow, I’d never tried compelling an animal before, but I went about it in the same way as I would a human. The effects were, predictably, just as potent.

In less than ten minutes, the squirrel had chewed through all the wires to all three cameras placed on Pricktard’s house. The voltages were so low that the animal was never in any danger of electrocution. With the cameras taken care of, I once again pulled the valves and the drain plug from his car, allowing the air to escape from his tires and all of his engine oil to drain out onto his previously pristine drive.

I went out onto the back deck to train.

It was just past seven when there was a hammering on my front door. I looked through the window and found Tom Pritchard on my porch.

I dialled 911 immediately.

“911, what’s your emergency...” the operator answered the call.

I told her about Pritchard being on my front porch, that I had a restraining order against him, and that there were several young women in the house who were now in severe distress from having a deranged neighbour hammering on the door. I also told the operator that I was armed and that, should he actually break through the door as he appeared to be trying, I would not hesitate to use lethal force in defence of my property and those inside.

I heard the sirens less than five minutes later.

Pritchard was taken into custody once again. His claims that I’d tampered with his cameras, and once more vandalized his car, were investigated, but the officer who looked at the cameras could see clearly that some animal had chewed through the camera cables.

After they loaded Pritchard into their car, one of the officers knocked on my door.

“Good morning,” I said smiling at the officer.

“Good morning,” he said. “Mr. Pritchard is claiming that you vandalized his car. He says that you have done so on several occasions.”

I shrugged at him. “I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “This is the first time I’ve opened this door today. I have footage from my security system that can prove that neither I nor anyone else has been out of the house today. He just had a new security system installed. Surely that will show whoever did it. One of the cameras is pointing directly at my house after all.”

The officer looked across the street and nodded. “It certainly appears that way,” he said. “I’m going to note that in my report. He seems to have a real problem with you. I’m not even going to bother asking to see your footage. But I would suggest that you ensure it’s not deleted. I suspect it will be needed as evidence.”

I nodded. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll make sure we keep a copy.”

He nodded and went back to his car where his partner was waiting. They drove off.

“How long are you going to keep tormenting him?” asked Mary.

“Until he stops harassing us,” I said. “We can’t have a camera pointed directly at our property. If he were to capture something on camera, through one of the windows, it could cause us all kinds of issues.”

She sighed. “It was funny at first,” she said. “But now it’s starting to feel much less so. Can’t you just Compel him to leave us alone?”

“Ask Dianna that question,” I said. “If she says okay then that’s what I’ll do. But I doubt that she will.”

Mary sighed. “It’s just starting to seem so vindictive,” she said. “Can’t we just...”

I shrugged. “I’ll leave him alone from here on,” I said. “As long as he affords us the same courtesy.”

She nodded. “I somehow doubt that this particular dick measuring contest is over,” she said sadly.

The rest of Thursday passed uneventfully. Pricktard apparently spent the night in jail and was released the next day on bail. One of the bail conditions was that he didn’t so much as look in our direction. The judge also directed him to point his security cameras away from our house. He considered that having a camera directly pointed at our dwelling, in light of the previous harassment, constituted further harassment and was in breach of the restraining order.

I got a really nice surprise on Friday afternoon. When I got home, I found Cheryl and Dean at the house. Dean grinned at my look of astonishment as I walked through the door and found them there.

“Well,” he said, “it’s nice to know we can still surprise you.”

“Jules said she was going to ask you,” I said, but she didn’t say you were coming in today.”

“We thought it would be easier than everyone arriving tomorrow,” said Cheryl. “Your contractor let us in.” I wondered where Melanie was.

Marcia came into the room looking a little nervous.

“Jules told me that her parents were coming today,” she said, “and asked me to let them in. I hope that’s okay?”

“Of course,” I said. “Where’s Melanie?”

“She said she had an errand to run,” said Marcia. “She’s been gone all afternoon. Would you like to come and look at your new ensuites now they’re finished?”

I grinned at her. “Perfect,” I said. We all trooped into the bedrooms and examined the two new bathrooms.

Marcia had done a great job and they were perfect.

“Don’t use the showers for 24 hours,” she said. “The grout needs time to dry. If you can stay out of here until this time tomorrow altogether it would be best.”

I nodded. “We can do that,” I said, and then turned to Dean. “I was going to put you and Cheryl in here. But you’ll need to use the family bathroom if that’s okay.”

Dean sighed theatrically. “If we must...” he said and then grinned at me.

I shook my head and we went into the kitchen. I started to make coffee.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Just about half an hour,” said Cheryl. “We’ve just been chilling on the back deck.”

“Where’s Gerry?” I asked.

“He’s staying in the city,” Dean said. “He’s going to look up some old friends.”

I heard the front door open and looked around to see Melanie entering. She had a huge grin plastered on her face as she entered, but that faltered a little when she saw the strangers in the kitchen with me.