What Lies Ahead, page 15
part #3 of Destiny Saga Series
“Me too.”
She pulled away, leaned in, and kissed me. It started as soft and tentative, and then slowly ramped up. Her hands gripped the back of my head, moving through my hair, as I started letting mine caress her arm and the side of her body.
She finally broke our kiss and stood up. I tried to stand up too, thinking we were done; but she pushed me back down on the bed.
Emily took a breath, paused, then opened and dropped her robe. She was wearing nothing beneath it.
She was gorgeous. Even though she was wearing more traditional clothes these days, they still tended to be on the baggy side. She had started putting on a little weight, which was good. Her parents had underfed her, and her grandparents had been worse. She was finally eating regularly for the first time in a long while, and the effects were great.
She had gotten a haircut over the weekend. Now her brown hair, that used to be long and stringy, was shoulder length; and, thanks to help from the other girls, was being properly managed.
“You are beautiful,” I said in a whisper.
She looked at me with those large brown eyes.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked.
“More than anything.”
Taking her hand, I led her to the bed. All the other girls had more experience and took the lead, but this time I had to take the lead, I did my best to make sure everything was as gentle and loving as possible.
Afterwards, as I lay next to her, I noticed she was crying.
“Baby, are you ok?”
“I’m perfect,” she said, looking up into me with misty eyes. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
I heard an ‘awww' sound and we both sat up, looking towards the door. At some point Vicki and Zoe had crept in, and were standing by the closed bedroom door.
“You two are so adorable,” Zoe said.
“And that was so hot,” Vicki said.
Both girls shed their clothes, and crawled into bed with us; Zoe behind Emily, and Vicki behind me. We all drifted off to sleep, and even Vicki smiled a bit, which was refreshing to see.
I hadn’t planned on going into the office during the beginning of the week, so I could be there with Emily as she went through the sickness that usually followed the first part of the change. I had called Ted and let him know I needed a few days and would come in on Wednesday, so I was surprised when Jonathan called Monday night and told me he needed me to swing by the next day before I went home.
I was more surprised when I saw Carter was in the office with him.
“What happened?” I asked, knowing something had gone wrong.
“Your preacher friend is starting to turn up the heat. You had asked me to keep an eye on him, and he has the community putting the full court press on the family over Judy.”
“I guess my warning didn’t take,” I said.
“Guess not.”
“Ok, let’s release what we have.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?” Jonathan asked.
“Not all of it and not the worst of it, but just enough to get him some negative attention. Call it a shot across the bow. I want him to know we are serious.”
“So, what should we release?”
“Good question,” I said, turning back to Carter. “What do you think?”
“The worst we have is the tape where he talks about the age of the girls he wants as his brides and the selling off of his old brides. Let’s call that the nuclear option.”
“Let’s hold onto that for now. If we have to use it, then we use it, but Tami’s parents are referenced on that tape, and I don’t want to hurt her family any more than we have to.”
“I guess next down is a record I got showing a payment from Taylor to a couple of state representatives. There was a push to look into Taylor and his group that seemed to evaporate shortly after the payment.”
“Let’s go with that. It’s sexy enough that it will get news play. We want him to get the message. Also find out when he is going to be away from his people, so I can talk to him. I want him to know this is the consequence for calling our bluff, and he needs to step away before it gets worse.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Carter said, standing up and left.
“This could get messy,” Jonathan warned when we were alone.
“I know, but what other choices do we have? Calling CPS or anything like that will turn Tami and Judy’s world upside down. The last thing I want to do is punish them for what their parents are doing.”
“Still, you need to be careful. While you’re here, I have the information on your school art program. You were right; there are problems with the art programs. Not just for Roosevelt, but the whole district. Some funding was cut at the federal level, and the district decided to shut down most of the art and music programs, except the marching band.”
“When?” I asked, since as of now there were still art classes.
“It hasn’t been decided yet, but my best guess is next year they will start phasing out the lower level programs. At least, that was the proposal floated for the next school board meeting.”
“Do they have any options?”
“Not really. There was talk about pulling some money out of the athletics program, but that was shot down pretty quick. There is another plan that would allow a small amount of funds to go towards enrichment programs, but it would only cover part of the cost. The rest would have to be covered by the students, and it would be an after school thing rather than something organized by the school itself.”
“That sucks.”
“It’s the way it is. When schools hit hard times, art programs are usually the first things to go.”
“How hard would it be for New Life to put up some money to help keep the arts and music programs alive?”
“For one school, not hard. Many high schools get private donations earmarked for particular programs. There might be some grants we could leverage. There have been a lot of these kinds of cuts around the country over the last few years, and I know some groups are out there trying to help. I’ll look into it.”
“Thanks, Jonathan.”
“You know, pretty soon I’m gonna need staff to keep up with all the stuff you throw at me.”
He said it in a joking way, but I knew he was mostly serious.
“Sit down with Ted and work something out. With the money coming in from the MilTech contract, we can afford it, and you’re right, I throw a lot of weird stuff at you.”
He seemed pretty happy when I left his office. I knew he didn’t mind all the random requests I made, but I didn’t want him to feel overloaded.
The next week started to get back to something of our normal routine. Vicki was still sad most the time, but she was coping. She and her mom talked to Dr. Snyder about what had happened, both to help deal with the grief from Mr. Hollabrand’s death, and to deal with being the victims of a kidnapping.
Dr. Snyder gave them things to look out for, signs of PTSD, but so far they seemed to be coping. Mrs. Hollabrand gave their servants notice, since she said she didn’t know when they would be going back to the house.
It took us a while, but we had convinced her that we were happy for them to stay with us as long as possible. I think having so many people around, all of whom were sympathetic, really helped her. Since she didn’t work, she started doing stuff around the house to help. She seemed very proud of it, in fact. If I had to guess, I would say she hadn’t done laundry or cooked dinner since her husband came into his money.
Mom was spending more and more time at the lab, although that was mostly getting up early rather than working late. She was making it a point to always be home to have dinner with us. Considering there were now seven people living in the house, dinner was quite the affair every night.
Almost two weeks after the events at Vicki’s, I got a message from Mom that she wanted me to stop by her lab, to talk to her and Alex. It was Friday, when I normally put in extra time at the office, but since they were now a division of Evolve, I figured it counted as going to work.
There were more cars in the parking lot than when I went to the lab weeks before, and I found they had someone working up front now.
“May I help you?” the woman asked.
“My name is Caspian Grey, I’m Angela’s … umm … son,” I said. I wasn’t sure what she would have told her employees and our relationship would have taken a while to actually explain.
Thankfully, I was expected.
“She said you were stopping by. I’m Donna Lambert, the new office manager. Follow me back.”
I followed her through a glass door, and down the hallway into the room Alex had pointed out as Mom's office on a previous trip.
“Mrs. Bell, Caspian is here,” she said by way of introduction.
Both Mom and Alex were in the room, going over some papers on her desk.
“Thanks, Donna,” Mom said as her office manager smiled and headed back up front.
“You guys have been busy,” I said.
“Most of it wasn’t us. That secretary of Ted's took charge, hired staff for us, and got all the furniture in. She is a whirlwind,” Mom replied.
“Yeah, she’s on the ball.”
“But we have been busy. Thanks to a sample of blood your new friend Officer Jawarski gave us, we were able to do a lot of tests on genetic negative reactions, and we have found some pretty interesting stuff.”
“When did you get a blood sample from Jawarski?”
“A few days after Vicki and her mother moved in with us,” Mom said. “She was actually very cooperative. You’d be surprised. When you’re not around, she is one of the nicest people I have ever met.”
“I’m actually not that surprised. I have seen glimpses of it, and the fact that she deals with me despite everything says a lot about her. I mean, compare her against Margaret, and it’s pretty obvious how remarkable she is.”
“Well, we think we have found something that will make dealing with her a little easier.”
“Ok,” I said, sitting down.
“We did some tests,” Alex said, “both on the samples she gave us and on her directly. We don’t have a CT or MRI here, but she has agreed to meet us at a lab later this week to get a few scans. Up until now, everything we have on genetic negatives has been conjecture. Now that we have someone we know is a genetic negative that has agreed to work with us, we have been able to gather some real data.”
“We won’t know until we run more tests,” Mom said, taking over, “but we think we have something that will, if not reverse the genetic effect you have on them, will at least dampen it.”
“Think of it as anti-allergy medicine,” Alex added.
“That’s great news. Do you think it could help Margaret,” I asked.
I still had some guilt from the way the situation with my adoptive mother ended.
“No. There was actual neurological damage done. This wouldn’t reverse that. It’s also not as great as it seems. This would require regular boosters to remain effective. It’s not a cure all,” Mom said.
“You also would never be able to change her. Any introduction of your blood would still have the same devastating effects as with Margaret.”
“Well,” I said much more subdued, “At least it’s a step in the right direction.”
“We think so. Beth has agreed to stop by later this week for some more tests. We might have confirmation of this within the next week or two.”
“Beth?”
“Officer Jawarski.”
“Ohh. Well, I hope it works. She’s pretty great, and has been really helpful.”
I spent about an hour with Mom and Alex, so they could show me everything they had done to the lab since my last visit.
It was a pretty impressive setup.
They hadn’t worked much on anything else, since their focus was on studying Jawarski now that she was in the know and available, but they were already moving pretty fast.
I had no doubt there would be some big breakthroughs from them in the future.
Chapter 13
Saturday morning Jonathan called, and said he was stopping by the house. He wanted to make sure the girls and Mom would be home, which was unusual. I was glad he called ahead, though. Mom was really getting into her work, and she had headed out a little early to do something that couldn’t wait until Monday.
She showed up at the same time as Jonathan, and walked him into the house.
“Caspian had asked me to look into a few things,” he said once we were all assembled around the dining table, “and since it dealt with Next Step, I figured the rest of you should be in on the conversation.”
“A few weeks ago, Caspian came to me with concerns about your school's art and music programs being cut. I looked into it, and he was right. Starting next year, the district is planning on phasing out the programs because of budgetary reasons.”
“How did you know?” Zoe asked.
“Mrs. Polaski said something to me when I went to ask about the number of absences we were racking up.”
“Oh.”
“He asked me to look into having Next Step help get funding for the programs,” Jonathan said, continuing. “One option was to fund the entirety of the art and music programs as they are now. That, however, doesn’t seem like the best way to go as it is a fairly large cost, even for just one school. After talking with a few contacts I have at the state house who put me in touch with a few folks at the Department of Education, I think I have a better solution.”
He pulled out a few packets and handed them around.
“There is a federal grant out of the DOE that allows for additional funding for districts to have basic art programs, which in this case covers music, as well. If the school district comes up with outside funds for additional programs, the cost would be actually only slightly higher than if we funded the entirety of the program for Roosevelt, but it will cover the entire district.”
“How would it work?” I asked.
“The state would give the district additional funds earmarked for arts and music programs. We would have to set up, and pay for, more advanced classes after school.”
“So it’d be enrichment type courses?”
“Something like that, yes. However these would be run by certified teachers and the schools would be able to give credit for the classes taken. There are requirements we would have to meet, but I talked to a district in New Hampshire that started this last year and has had some success.”
“I have a question?” Zoe asked, raising her hand.
“Just because we are talking about school doesn’t mean you have to raise your hand Zoe,” I said, teasing.
She stuck her tongue out at me before turning back to Jonathan.
“Can we use college students for these after-school classes?”
“We can have college students work with the program, but the classes themselves have to be taught by accredited teachers. The teachers' union like the idea since it gives another outlet for teachers to earn money. There has been a slowdown in pay rises and new hire salaries are down. And there are only so many summer school and driver ed classes available to teach.”
“Ok. We've been looking at ways to help kids who qualified to go to college, but couldn’t afford it. We were talking to several companies about setting up work study programs they could use, and this seems like a good place to start that.”
“It seems like a good idea, and it’s something we can work on.”
“Will these classes be free to students?”
“Normally no. That is why we can do it district-wide. There will have to be some costs, otherwise it becomes extremely expensive. Other districts that are running this charge a per class rate for each student. I know it will raise the costs, but we can offer offset and free classes for those students who can’t afford it. I would hate for this to be a program only available to more well off students. I can look into this, and see what the numbers are.”
“Ok. Let us know. I really want to do something to make sure these programs are still around next year.”
“I am confident we will be able to. Maybe not everything we discussed; but the New Hampshire district managed to make theirs almost revenue neutral, if you figured in the federal grant and class costs to students. I know we are talking about not quite going that way; but I think we can do it, and keep the costs down to a manageable point.”
“Let me know if there is anything you need from us,” Zoe said.
“I’d like to stop by next week and talk to you about how this would affect Next Step’s budget and about the college work study thing you were talking about.”
“I’ll be here,” Zoe said with a bright smile. “I was also working on setting up a real, funded tutor program for the school district, using college students along with what we just talked about. Is there a way to roll these together?”
“Maybe. I will look into that, also.”
“Jonathan, this is a lot of stuff to deal with. Are you sure you have time for all this?”
“I do, now. I took your advice and hired a few paralegals to help with both New Life and Evolve.”
“Good, I was worried.”
“Don’t worry about me. I spent my career doing just business filings and contract law. I’ve had more fun over the last year than I've had in the rest of my career.”
Jonathan headed out to take care of everything and we spent the rest of the weekend relaxing and doing stuff around the house. I got a reprieve from having to do much at the office, since half of the building seemed to have come down with something and were home sick. I felt bad for them, but I can’t say I hated my free weekend.
I was in a really good mood for school on Monday morning, right up until the phone rang.
“We have a window for you to talk to the preacher, kid,” Carter said when I picked up.
I really wished he would stop calling me kid. The story had broken in the local paper and was quickly picked up by papers in both Austin and Houston. By the end of the week I had even heard it mentioned on the national news, although in a relatively low spot in their lineup.
“When and where?” I asked.
