Chapter 15

Tina's turn:

We're packed. The day just took soooo long in coming. Now we were leaving Tennessee. Oh, not for good, you know. This little corner of the state is going to be in my heart forever. A year ago, well not even a year ago, a worried girl showed up here from Louisiana, sitting beside a guy she hardly knew but who was certainly more decent than the man her mom had been with when she got arrested.

Now that young girl is not the same. That's me. And besides Tennessee being the first place I felt safe since Grandma died, it's the place where I fell in love and married the guy who rescued me. It's the place where I learned about friends and caring families and how two people become a family and, oh, there's too much to tell.

We'll be back. Susan's my first sister and her mom and dad live here. I can't see myself not being attached to them.

And along the way I got a daughter. Daughter. Ten years younger than me. Technically a step-daughter. In real effect, I'm on a cusp between being big sister and mom. I was watching that blonde child packing her suitcase. In a little exercise in logistics, we'd gotten all our stuff into the back of Jason's pickup truck. My Alan was going to tow his trailer with our pickup, and the goose-neck hitch sort of kills the use of the pickup truck's bed.

A moving company was going to haul the big stuff from Jason's apartment which became OUR apartment when Terri showed up in our lives. And Susan married Jason and they took over the little travel trailer that was the nest of my Alan and me. It was going to be a big production. We had to move two families, two households, a travel trailer, two pickup trucks, two cars and two airplanes three hundred or so miles south.

At least we had some infrastructure already there.

Our husbands had the business going. That office was already open. I've seen pictures: A sign. Desks. Workstations. Racks for real paper drawings. A huge scanner-printer. A kitchenette. Real office. Of course the pictures I saw had a little redhead smiling at one of the workstations and a slightly older, taller brunette at another. And a big banner on the wall that said "TIna and Susan: Hurry! We need you!"

The apartment building behind our little strip mall was finished. Finally! And it was time for what Cindy termed "The Gathering of the Clans" like it was some big metaphysical event.

"It is," Alan told me. "I've never seen nor heard of a more unlikely group of brains hitting a college at once."

"Uh-huh," I said. "What about your engineering start-up?"

"Guys start up companies all the time. Three or four engineers with a business plan and a few clients, it happens. But you four girls, you're something else. Made even more spectacular by the fact that I absolutely adore one of you."

"Who?" I giggled? "Cindy? That red hair and those freckles? Or Nikki. Or Susan? She seems like she glows since she got married."

"I married a beast." He laughed.

"Yes, Dad. My step-mom is such a beast!" Neither of us heard Terri walk in on us.

"And I become more beastly every day because I have to put up with this horrible child," I giggled, pulling Terri close.

Terri's blue eyes sparkle when she smiles. They were sparkling now as she hugged the two of us. "I am a most unfortunate child," she said, displaying that precocious turn of phrase that made her adorable to me and the rest of us. "I must wander this world alone and unloved."

Yeah. Terri is unloved. Since she moved in with us, I have found a happy, bright little companion. That's good. Better, she's become an attachment to Susan and Jason, and she and Susan's mom and dad have entered into an agreement for them to be Terri's grandparents. I suspect that when Susan produces her and Jason's first child, Terri will have the sense to get out of the way, but right now it's funny to have Susan or her mom call up and haul Terri off for an afternoon. And Terri is Jason's excuse to go to the movies and enjoy animated features that he's too embarrassed to be seen at without an appropriately aged child escorting him.

"It's time to load up your stuff, Terri," Alan said. "One more check, and then we're closing the door on this place."

Terri rode with me to Mister Mike's rental business. We parked my car in the back lot alongside his big rental equipment, Terri went looking for Len, Mister Mike's shop mechanic. She found him working, greasy, in the innards of a ditching machine. He stopped to clean himself up enough to accept a kiss on the cheek and a hug. Mister Len said that Terri reminded him of Susan when she was young. Susan was curious and smart, too.

The three of us piled into Alan's pickup and we made the drive to the RV park for the last time. Jason already had the trailer disconnected from the park utilities. Alan backed up and dropped the hitch into place. We stopped by the park office and I tearfully said goodbye to Mizz Lillian.

"You just go off and have a good life, baby," she said. "I've been glad to have you and see you turn all happy an' married. Drop me a card every now and then."

"We will," I said. Alan gave her a hug. Thanked her. And we pulled out onto the road. There's been a lot of water under the bridge since last fall when we pulled in, me sitting all the way on the side opposite Alan, not knowing what was going to happen to me next. I was still on the side opposite Alan, but I had a gold band on my ring finger and instead of the fold-down console between him and me, there was a seven year old blonde child.

She was smiling. She took my hand with one of hers, her dad's free hand with the other, clasped them all together. "Adventure, huh? Like a quest. Or better yet, a migration."

"With people who love you."

"Family," Alan said.

I knew Alan was having the normal second thoughts. New business was one, although he was already doing work under the logo of 3Sigma Engineering. Second was me and my sisters. Nikki and Cindy had shown themselves to be a bit ahead of Susan and me on the ladder to engineering degrees. The four of us, though, sort of lost our summers this year. Auburn gave me and Susan a lot of credits for the work we did in Advanced Placement classes in high school and they'd laid out a series of tests to see how much of the other things we could leap over.

"CLEP 'em," Alan said. 'CLEP' has a specific meaning, but it also is a generic term for taking tests on coursework to get credit for the courses without actually having to sit through a semester of classes. I'd talked with Alan and the other guys and I talked with my sisters and we pored over the course descriptions and Susan and I did a lot of reading and we got Nikki and Cindy in on it. I think this is going to work. I might not be in the academic stratosphere like NIkki and Cindy, but I'm gonna be up there.

Terri reached for the truck's sound system and punched around until she found something she liked. Smiled. Imitating her mom's voice, "There you go listenin' to the crap your dad likes." She turned to me and smiled. "The stuff my dad likes. And my Tina. And me. Dad," she said, "Mom really said it would be better if I stay with you?"

That was the development late last week. Carole, Alan's ex, had gotten out of the hospital. She was back with her husband, Martin. Medicated. Between Martin and Carole's doctors and with Alan's (and mine too) input, Carole had decided to sign over custody to us. Yes, there would be visitation. Alan said he'd pay for Terri to fly to California to visit her mom every summer for a month. But not this summer. Maybe Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Alan and I spent an evening consoling and talking with Terri. "Does that mean that Mom doesn't WANT me?"

"Terri, sweetheart, you're too smart to think that," Alan said. "Your mom still loves you, but she's sick. It's very difficult for her to relate to people. She has..."

"Episodes," Terri announced. "I know about 'em, Dad." She snuggled against me. "My own mom has episodes and can't stand me or anyone else. I know. But Tina's not my real mom and she never has episodes, even when I made a mess in the kitchen or walked in on y'all."

"Sometimes people are sick in different ways, baby," Alan said. "It's not your mom's fault that she's sick. It's not your fault, either."

I kissed my daughter. Yes, okay, silly, I know. For Terri to be my natural daughter I would've had to give birth when I was ten, but maybe I will never have a natural daughter of my own and I think that this one is a superior specimen. "It's your fault, Terri," I said.

She and Alan, BOTH of them snapped their eyes to me, astonished. "It's your fault that I love you and care for you so much, baby. Evil step-daughters are supposed to be ugly, stupid, evil, jealous little beasts."

A week later I got a real, actual letter in the mail.

"Dear Tina-

I know this is a strange thing for me to write down, but I trust you with my daughter more than the other options. There is no way that I can trust myself with her. It's very difficult for Martin to stay with me, and if I was alone with Terri and I had an episode and he wasn't around, it could be bad. Terri's grandmother, my own mother, is not in a state in her life to take care of Terri. That leaves her father. And you.

I am surprised at your age, but I am also surprised that Terri came back from Christmas vacation with raves about how the two of you get along. I was jealous that Alan found somebody who my daughter reports as young and smart and pretty and I was jealous that she likes you as much as she does.

Now I must be happy for both of these.

Tina, be a good parent for my daughter. For Alan's daughter. And forgive me in advance if you hear words to the contrary from me in the future. I know what this condition causes me to do. That's why I cannot keep Terri with me here.

Be good to my daughter.

Respectfully,

Carole Davisson

I showed Alan. "Do you think we should show this to Terri?"

"I think so," he said. "She worries that some of this is her fault, you know."

"I know," I said. "And she's such a perfect little thing to try to carry that."

"Mom asked me all those questions after Christmas, you know," Terri said. "I told 'er the truth, that's all."

"You're not the only one that worried about that," I'd told her.

"Oh, I know," Terri said brightly. "I watched some of those same movies about step-moms. Some bad. Some good." Giggle. Hug. "Tina. Really. You're a good one. The best!"

Now we're on the road to our new home together.

Moving is a blur. New furniture is a good thing. So is giggling with Susan over her new bed.

"Darned straight I want a new bed," she told me. "Who knows what manner of debauchery has taken place on that thing since you moved into Jason's apartment."

"Oh, yeah," I said. "And what have you and Jason done in my poor little trailer?"

Susan grinned broadly, blue eyes sparkling. Said one word. "Everything!"

And from the living room, Terri's voice. "Tina, am I gonna have to look up 'debauchery'?"

"Oh, lord, Susan! Did you hear that?" I said.

"You'd better explain to her before she Googles it!" Susan squealed.

Terri and I had a little discussion about adult jokes.

"Debauchery," Terri grinned. "Is that what you and Dad do?"

"Not actually. Sort of. It's..."

"It's normal for a married couple to have fun with each other. I know that," Terri said. "That's why I go to Shauna's sometimes. Or to Mike and Kathy's. Or with Susan and Jason. I KNOW that. So what makes it debauchery?"

"A best friend who wants to make a smart-assed remark," I said. "Oops! I shouldn't put it that way."

Terri smirked. "Exaggeration is a tool for humor. That's what we're talking about, then."

"You knew that all along, didn't you?" I said.

Grin. "Yeah. Sorta. Just wanted to have a conversation with you. You know you actually started sweating?"

I rolled her onto her back and tickled her until she squealed. "You're an evil, deceitful child!"

When she caught her breath, she said, "Yeah-huh! I'm your evil, deceitful child."

"Promise me you won't use 'debauchery' in everyday conversation, you little beast," I said.

"Now Tina," she giggled. "Don'tcha think a diverse vocabulary is a GOOD thing?"

"I'm gonna tell your daddy," I retorted.

She leapt up and hugged me. "I love you, Tina-sister-mommy," she said. "You make my life good!"

"Because you make my life, our lives, me, you, your daddy, all our lives good."

"And I am aware," she said, "of the appropriate use of vocabulary."

"I love you because of your brain," I told her.

The miles passed by as the truck's diesel engine did its job. I remembered the first time I heard that engine. I was a far different person in a far different life.

"They painted my room blue like I asked?" Terri asked.

"We gave 'em the chip you chose," Alan said. "And we picked out the bedroom set you wanted, and your desk."

"And a big bunch of Care Bears and colorful ponies," I added.

"Daaa-aaddd! She's doin' it again," Terri feigned a whine.

"I never did get the whole 'pink bear' thing myself," I told her.

"I'm gonna talk to Cindy about that," she said. "Gotta be some sociological basis for it."