Chapter 12

To say Jim was surprised to meet his cousin Don's five girlfriends would be the understatement of all time. When he heard the story about the dreams, and the house he just had to shake his head. Jim had not seen his cousin since his parent's funeral, that had been over six years ago. Don had changed immensely. He was now a man, a man with responsibilities. Jim was hesitant to add his and Sara's problems, but Don and Jack Rimes had convinced him that there was no safer place for them to wait out their ordeal.

Where Don and Jim had an eight year gap in their ages, Don's girlfriends, and Sara had no such problem. Sara and the girls formed a bond in minutes and before they were together an hour they were already plotting a shopping trip. Beth, Angie, and Zara saw no good reason to be left out of such a project either. Beth called the office asking if there was a limousine service available capable of transporting ten people. The surprise came when a stretch pickup showed up to pick them up. Ann wasn't sure what she should do, but she didn't have a chance to worry about it. Sara grabbed her arm and escorted her to the obscenely long pickup.

Andy Wilson's luck had gone south. He had married Mary Downs for her money and while she was alive there hadn't been a problem, he had been able to get all he needed. It was after she was run down in a Las Vegas crosswalk by a drunk driver that things started to fall apart for him.

Andy liked to gamble and he was as good at it as the odds allowed. When Mary died he was left with her six daughters and a very large debt. Mary's death put her millions of dollars under the watchful eyes of Smith, Smith, and Abbot, and their army of lawyers. They made sure that every dime paid out went to the girls and had suggested quite strongly that if he wanted to continue to live in the family house he should get a job.

Work as far as Andy was concerned was a four letter word. He had lived off women all his life and had no intention of changing at this late point. The problem was that he was coming under more and more pressure to come up with the money he owed. The casinos had cut his credit as soon as news of his wife's death had got out. If he had been smart he would have quit gambling at that point, but no one had ever accused Andy being smart.

Not being able to go to the casinos. Andy had to do his business with the people who operated outside the law. With promises that he had access to the girls' trust funds Andy found a bookie that would give him credit. That was just the beginning of the end of Andy Wilson. Another of his less than stellar ideas was that Maryann, Mary's seventeen year old daughter would enjoy his amorous attentions. This idea occurred on the night that he had lost ten grand on a horse race that had been a 'sure thing'. To celebrate his loss which had brought his debt to his current bookie to an even quarter of a million dollars he decided to get drunk. Among his other endearing traits Andy was your typical mean drunk.

Maryann was considered, by pretty much all that knew her, strange, drop dead gorgeous, but very strange. Since turning thirteen Maryann had been experiencing a recurring dream. 'The Dream', as it became known in the Downs household, had been the cause of many hours of psychotherapy. In the dream Maryann and her sisters are chained together in a burning house. In every dream Maryann and her sisters are saved by a blue eyed hunk of a guy and five girls just in the nick of time.

Maryann fell in love with the handsome young man in her dreams and refused to have anything to do with the boys around her. Her mother had worried about her infatuation with someone she had been convinced did not exist. No one had been able to convince Maryann that her dream lover wasn't real, but Maryann had kept part of her dream secret from everyone. Over the last few weeks the dreams had become stronger and even more vivid. For a girl who was sure that she was decidedly heterosexual the part of the dream that had been disturbing her the most was the girl with the harelip kissing her. The faces in her dreams were so distinct the girl's last words, so clear, that Maryann had convinced her mother to hire a police sketch artist to draw their faces. From those sketches Maryann had convinced her one and only friend Tammy to paint a picture with all six of their faces. That picture hung in her bedroom standing guard over her as she slept.

It was two in the morning when Andy staggered into the house. Maryann had been asleep for over three hours. She was well into the dream and she knew what was going to happen next it was always the same, but suddenly the girls were right there in front of her, "Wake up, wake up," they screamed.

Maryann didn't feel Andy lift the bottom of her nightgown up, but she did feel his hands as they tried to pull down her panties. In the dream the girls had been joined by the guy as all six of them screamed at her to wake up. Slowly Maryann started to wake. When her panties stuck at her knees Andy's uncoordinated tugging finished the job of waking Maryann up.

Susie Downs had been dreaming as well, in her dream the six faces that graced the wall of her older sister's room were screaming at her to go and help her sister. For Susie it was almost too much, her older sister's obsession with her dream had caused her no end of teasing, and now they were invading her dreams.

Maryann's first act upon waking was to scream. That scream caused Susie to sit straight up in bed, the second scream saw her in action. Grabbing her aluminium softball bat she ran to her sister's room. There the moonlight illuminated her stepfather who was obviously trying to rape her sister. Susie loved softball, her small size kept her from being a power hitter, but she prided herself in being a contact hitter. Her .650 batting average was proof of her patience and control and while her adrenalin was pumping at maximum she took the time to line up and put this one out of the park.

For Andy he was rearing back to slap the screaming bitch with his right hand when a sudden blinding pain and ringing noise on the left side of his head sent him into the darkness. "Are you all right?" a panting Susie asked her big sister.

Thirteen year old Nancy had punched the panic button as soon as she heard the scream. Unlike her other sisters, Nancy was still awake, she had been chatting with a friend on the internet. Now the phone was ringing, the security company was calling. Susie answered, "Yes ... we need the police ... our stepfather just tried to rape my sister ... he's lying on the floor bleeding ... because I hit him with a softball bat that's why ... Okay we'll open the door when they get here." Susie hung up the phone and called Bill Smith, her mother's lawyer. He wasn't happy about getting a phone call at two thirty in the morning, but he was happy to hear that the girls would soon be through with Andy Wilson.

The police and EMT's arrived first to get the circus started. Bill Smith arrived at the same time the press was setting up in the centre ring. Knowing that the press needed dealing with first he walked over to the van where a leggy blonde approached him and stuck a microphone in his face, "Can you tell us what is going on?" she asked.

Bill glared at the woman, "This involves six minor, I repeat minor children, you have ten minutes to clear out." He turned and started to walk away but paused and turned back to the woman, "If I see any of their faces on TV you will have a big problem." He turned back and started back to the house.

Inside all hell was breaking loose. Maryann was sitting with a policewoman while the other five girls were sitting at the dining room table. "What exactly happened?" Bill asked as he walked into the room.

Maryann looked up through her tear reddened eyes, "Andy tried to rape me."

"Where is he?"

"Upstairs, the EMT's are getting him ready for transport," the policewoman answered.

"Does she need to go to the hospital?" Bill asked nodding towards Maryann.

"No, he didn't penetrate her. Will you be staying here with the girls? We have already called family services and they have someone on the way," the policewoman's response emptied the dining room table as the five sisters joined their older sibling and began their protests about being split up.

Bill trying to get things back under control put two fingers in his mouth and released an ear splitting whistle. After that the only sound in the house was that of feet as they pounded down the stairwell. Two policemen ran into to the room, "What was that all about?" one of them asked.

Bill held up his hands, "I was just trying to get the girls attention. Now that I have it," Bill turned to the lady cop, "call family services, tell them that they are not needed. In the event that Mr. Wilson was proved unfit a guardian, another that has already been appointed by the court was to step in. I called her on the way over here and she'll be here any minute."

"Is that Aunt Sue?" Shelley asked.

"Yes, it is sweetie," Bill replied to the youngest of the children. Bill sighed, as he thought back on the past year Mary, the girls mother, always saw the good in people regardless of how they acted. She had hoped that Andy would rise to the challenge of taking care of the girls. If she had thought him capable of raping one of her girls she would have washed her hands of him though, because no one was as important as her girls.

A policeman stuck his head in the door, "There's a Sue Curry out here that says she is supposed to take care of the girls."

"Yes, let her in," Bill responded.

When Sue walked through the door the girls mobbed her. As they were doing that the EMT's brought Andy Wilson down the stairs on a gurney. A detective walked up to Bill, "The crime lab boys will be finished in a couple of hours. You're probably going to want to get a cleaning service in to clean up the blood. I assume you will be getting a restraining order against him?"

"Yes, first thing tomorrow ... make that later this morning," Bill responded.

"Mister are you going to keep my bat?" Susie asked the policeman holding the blood smeared bat.

The policeman frowned, "I'm sorry miss but we will have to keep it for evidence."

"Damn! That was my favourite bat. Oh well, it was worth it to get rid of him." Susie walked back to her older sister and hugged her.

The girls' return from their shopping was nothing if not loud. Giggles, laughter and a plethora of packages and sacks, Don looked at the pile shaking his head, "Do I need to go and have the trailer washed out?"

Amber wrapped her arms around Don's neck, "If you do, we can go get the rest of the stuff we saw." Amber kissed Don, "Did you and your Dad get everything done that you wanted to do?"

"Yep, actually the trailer is full of fence posts, wire, and a bunch of other stuff we bought at Tractor Supply."

Rose joined Amber and Don's embrace and stood up on her tip toes to kiss Don, "Where are we going for supper and when?"

Don laughed as his stomach growled, "As soon as possible I hope, but I need to run through the shower first."

"Yes, please," Rose answered, "You got all sweaty loading that stuff up didn't you. Come on I'll help you." Rose started stripping off Don's clothes then asked, "Kim, you want to help me get our man all cleaned up?"

"You bet." Kim was stripping off her clothes as she answered.

Amber kissed Don once again, "Kiesha and I will go find out where we are going. You guys don't get too carried away." Just as Amber reached for the door knob someone knocked at the door.

"It's me," Missy called from the other side, "Sara is with me, are y'all decent?"

Amber opened the door, "Kim and Rose have Don in the shower, Kiesha and I were on our way to see Mom and find out about supper." A moan considerably louder than the shower caused Missy to giggle and Sara's face to turn red, the four girls walked out of the room to find Beth.

They knocked on the door to Beth and Jack's room and walked in when it opened. "Hey sweetie," Jim called out when he saw Sara among the girls coming into the room.

Sara moved across the room and sat in her husband's lap, "What are you doing?" she asked after kissing him.

"Well we were just discussing where we wanted to go for supper," Jim answered.

"That's what we want to know," Amber added.

Jack was sitting in a chair at the small table in the corner of the room opposite of Jim. Kiesha walked over and sat in his lap kissing him on the cheek, "Where are we going Dad?"

Beth knew she was going to have to answer because her husband was too choked up to respond. Jack was sitting there holding Kiesha his eyes misty. Amber walked over and stood behind Jack and put her arms around his neck.

For Jim it was a side of his uncle that he had never seen. Jack Phillips had always been just a gruff old cowboy to him but it was plain as day that he loved his daughter-in-laws, all five of them. It was also obvious that they could very easily wrap him around their finger and just as obvious that they wouldn't try.

Earlier Don had told him what the girls had been through. Jim couldn't believe that the five girls he had met could be as happy and well adjusted as they seemed to be after going through all that. Between his Sara and the five girls Jim had decided that the theory of people being molded by their environment didn't hold too well. The one thing that Sara and the five girls had in common was that they had thrived in spite of their environment and influences rather than succumb to them.

"What do you feel like eating Jim?" Beth asked.

Sara looked at her husband and knew he was deep in thought and probably never heard her question. Kissing him lightly on the lips, "Honey? Hey! Earth to Jim."

"I'm sorry, what?" Jim noticed that everyone in the room was looking at him.

"Your Aunt Beth wants to know what you feel like eating tonight," Sara asked.

"I feel like a steak, but I'll eat anything that won't eat me first," Jim replied. A short discussion and a couple of phone calls and a table at a nearby steak house was lined up. After that it was a mad scramble to get everyone loaded up.

The people at the steak house had set up a small private dining area. It turned out to be a very good idea because it was a lively, laughter-filled meal. It was a celebration, a celebration of life, family, and friends. That lasted until the restaurant manager came and asked them to leave so that they could go home, it was ten pm for crying out loud.

Back at the motel Don took the time to hook back up to the trailer, in just over eight hours they would be on their way back home and for Don and the girls it would be to spend the first night in their new home.