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Author's Chapter Notes:

If you’ve read my other stuff, you know I’m a fan of build-up and pay-off, so hang in there: I’ve got what I think are going to be some pretty fun ideas for this one.  Hope you like it, and please comment!

Anna squinted, leaning her head forward, as she struggled to make out the road in the pounding rain and mist as she drove through, exceeding the speed limit, in the pitch black of the fall night.  Her hands gripped the steering wheel, shaking ever so slightly with anger.  A tear rolled down her cheek, but she wiped it away quickly before her daughter, Alison, who was seated next to her in the passenger spot, could see it.

“Mom?  Aren’t you going a little fast?” asked Alison, somewhat worriedly, as she brushed a thin lock of dirty blonde hair from her face with a finger.  “I think the limit’s only like 40 or something in here…”

“What?” gasped Anna, shaken from her concentrated stupor as she looked over at her 16-year-old daughter’s concerned expression, then relaxed a little.  “I… I know, honey, I know, I’m just…”

                “On edge?” her daughter asked, half-jokingly, but still with a solemn face.

                “Yeah… exactly,” nodded Anna.  “I’m sorry you have to see me like this, honey.”

                “It’s okay Mom, I get it,” said Alison reassuringly, laying a hand on her mom’s shoulder.  “It sucks, I know… but… but are you sure this is what we…”

                “YES!” exclaimed Anne, a bit louder than she meant.  “I’m sure this is what we have to do.”

                “But… how do you know they’ll…”

                “They HAVE to listen to us, Alison, they HAVE to.   They have to see how much we need their help right now.”

                “Why did I need to come, then?”

                Anne looked over at her daughter for an instant before returning her eyes to the rain-soaked road.  “Well… because I think they’ll listen better when I have my daughter standing there with me, when they remember that I have to take care of you somehow.”

                “So you’re using me as bait?” asked Alison, sounding slightly offended.

                “No!  No, no, no, don’t say that, I just…”

                “Relax, Mom, I get it now.”

                “I’m sorry, Alison.  It’s just that… all of this is so…”

                “I know,” answered Alison, calmly placing her hands into her lap and looking down again.

                Anna sadly reflected on the terrible last six months of their lives.  Anna had been blissfully married to her best friend Tom for nearly eighteen years, as they’d gotten married when Anna was only twenty years old.  Both of them had known it was right, though, and they’d never looked back despite a few somewhat disparaging remarks from family members.

                Their world had been turned upside down, though, when Tom was involved in a massive pile-up car crash that had killed him on impact.  They knew it had been painless and that Tom had died as a peaceful and happy man in his life, but this was of course no way comforting to the widowed 38-year-old and her teenage daughter.  Anna and Alison had been heavily grieving ever since, and had had a hard time staying connected despite the strong bond they had.  However, they had recently started hanging out together more, rather than Alison disappearing into her room, or leaving to the movies with friends.  Despite the terrible situation, Anna and Alison were both comforted in the strengthening of their mother-daughter relationship.

                The newly downsized family, though, was thrown a flaming curveball only a month before that was threatening to take away their livelihood and everything that Tom had ever worked so hard to earn for them and their happiness.  Tom’s sister, Helen, and her husband Kevin, had never approved much of Anna because of her lower class background, and Helen had spent years trying to convince Tom to leave her, to no avail.  Nevertheless, things were patched up well enough for Tom and Kevin, both of whom were lawyers, to start their own firm together.  It struggled greatly at first, but finally started doing enough to make a decent living for both, although Kevin somehow had always managed to reap extra from the his cases, due to his more conniving and dishonest approach that he used over Tom’s very moral humility and truthfulness.

                Upon Tom’s death, the ties to Helen and Kevin were cut as business matters were dealt with.  Then, to Anna’s horror, she found they had gone much further.  They had not only managed to cut out Anna and her daughter out of the financial picture, they had actually managed to seize a sizeable chunk of the savings Tom had been building up jointly with his brother-in-law, a large portion that was technically his, but at his death, became Helen and Kevin’s through some slimy and underhanded legal maneuvering on Kevin’s part.  Anna and Alison were left with almost nothing, and it was only a matter of time before they had to start scraping very heavily into the savings to stay afloat.  It was far too much to have lost a husband and a father with no warning and very little explanation, but it was only a more painful and debilitating blow to Anna to realize that she was unable to provide for Alison.  Let alone getting her into a good college, which was what she used to discuss with Tom, she then had to worry about if she would have a house for her daughter to stay in.

                Kevin and Helen had answered no calls, and Anna knew that their deep hatred meant it was no accident.  However, out of desperation, she had made a choice to confront them directly, bringing her daughter along just to remind them what was at stake, and make an impassioned plea for her daughter’s future (and, in a way, her own).  Anna had no intention of trying to continue to get revenue from the firm; she was no lawyer, and despite the fact that the money would have been nice, she didn’t intend to try and suck her sister-in-law and her husband dry.  She simply wanted was should have been hers and her daughter’s until she could get on her feet well enough to get a steady job and support Alison.

                The car wheels sloshed a large puddle up like a jet ski on a lake as Anna continued roaring the vehicle down the road, enclosed on the sides by trees, to the well-to-do neighborhood Kevin and Helen lived in.  “You know, honey…” began Anna, swallowing hard.  “It might be nice if you tried to hang out a little with Ashley, just as a show of goodwill.  What do you say?”

                Ashley was Kevin and Helen’s eighteen-year-old daughter, and she and Alison had never gotten along very well.  “Do I have to?” groaned Alison.

                “Yes.  It will make this go along so much more smoothly,” answered Anna.  “I know you… don’t like her very much, but…”

                “Mom, she called me a bitch and she slapped me.”

                “Well…”

“She dumped punch on my new dress I spent four months saving up for at the family reunion.”

                “Alison, that was two years ago…”

                “She told me I dressed like a little prostitute.”

                At this, Anna became silent.  “Look, I know she’s horrible, all right?  I don’t like her either.  All I need you to do is make it work with her for half an hour, one hour tops, while I talk to Kevin and Helen.  You can do that, right?”  Alison wrinkled her nose, then nodded slowly, still looking down.  “That’s my girl!” smiled Anna, ruffling her daughter’s hair.

                “Mom!  You’re gonna make me all frizzy…” she said, laughing, batting her mom’s hand away and running her fingers through her hair to fix it.

                “Sorry, honey…” her mom chuckled, returning her eyes to the road as they finally emerged from the trees, into the more upper class neighborhood the family lived in.  “We’re about there.  Put on your smiling face, Alison.”  She looked over at her daughter again, who grinned cheesily at her, half to spite her.  She nodded at her, taking several more turns before turning a corner to Kevin and Helen’s house, pulling into the driveway.

                “Uhh, Mom?”

                “Mmhmm?”

                “They know we’re coming, right?”

                “Not exactly, honey, that’s why you gotta smile!” grimaced Anna as they stepped out of the car, locking it behind her, as they walked up toward the front door.  Anna ran a hand down her simple,cream white skirt and top for any wrinkles.  Helen was always critical of a single touch on an outfit being out of place.  There was a mirror on the door, so as she knocked and rang the doorbell to make sure they were heard through the rain, she began to examine herself quickly to ensure she was still presentable.  Her curly auburn hair was flowing well in pleasant, shining waves, as she’d gone specifically to her friend, who happened to be a hair stylist, to help her get ready to look good to hopefully impress Helen.  Anna next ran her eyes over the rest of her body in the mirror.  Her runner’s calves were looking reasonably toned and fit well with the somewhat curvy flow of her dress.  Anna was the farthest removed from being overweight, as she ran very often, but her athletic build helped fill her out nicely whenever she wore more form-fitting dresses or skirts.  Her white flip-flops, matching the simple esthetic of her dress, seemed well enough.  Helen appreciated simplicity.  Anna’s skin was a healthy color; she never tanned very well, but she was very far from being pale or pasty, meeting somewhere in the happy middle.  She knew Helen was annoyed by fake tans, anyway.  Her large hazel eyes, easily what she considered to be her best feature, practically glowed in the mirror, still somewhat wet from crying in the car.  Then, reminding herself, she quickly smiled wide, showing her straight white teeth in the friendliest manner possible, as she scanned her eyes over her teen daughter to make sure she was still looking Helen-presentable as well.

                Alison was the spitting image of her mother in so many ways, and yet in several that made them seem unique from one another.  Alison had the same deep hazel eyes and had received good genes in orthodontics from her mother, with equally straight and white teeth.  Her face, as well, was reasonably thin, and she had a pleasant peachy tone to her skin, and was dotted cutely with freckles.  Where they majorly diverged, though, was in their builds and hair: Anna’s thick and curly brown hair contrasted heavily with Alison’s thin, smooth, and flowing dirty blonde hair, and while Anna had an athletic runner’s build, Alison was very thin.  She wasn’t so thin that she had become close to anorexic or rail-looking, she was just light.  Alison, as well, wore a simple white top and skirt she had bought at the same time as her mother, although her flip-flops were pink rather than white.  Anna smiled, satisfied, that her daughter was ready to face Helen’s instant judgment.

                Anna and Alison had been waiting for about five minutes, but still no one opened the door.  “I don’t understand it, there are lights on in there,” said Anna, peeking in the window.

                “Mom, it’s probably because they just don’t want to see us.”

                “How do they know it’s us?  They can’t see us from here.”

                “They probably have a camera or something; c’mon, Mom, this is making me nervous, can we go?”

                “Sit tight, honey, we drove an hour to see them, and I intend to say my piece to them,” Anna answered, rapping more loudly on the door and ringing the doorbell twice in rapid succession.

                “MOM.  We don’t want to annoy them!”

                “Believe me, Alison,” her mom chuckled sarcastically.  “They’re not only going to be annoyed, they’re going to be downright pissed.”

                Alison giggled to hear her mother speak with such language, and tried to settle down, rocking nervously on and off the balls of her bare feet in her pink flip-flops.  All that could be heard for the next several minutes was Alison’s nervous rocking, the ball of her foot casually lifting her up before clapping her heel back against the foam shoe.  Finally, Anna hung her head, beginning to lose hope.

                “Mom, I know you wanted to talk to them, but…”

                “No…” breathed Anna determinedly.  “I’m not leaving without getting a few things sorted out first,” she finished, rapping on the door again, a lot less lightly this time.  As she did, the handle swung open, and the door followed, allowing Anna and Alison a clear view of the spacious front hallway.  They both gasped, craning their necks to look around without going in.  “Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to go find them ourselves…” said Anna finally, taking a few steps into the front hall.

                “NO, Mom!  What if they, like, get us for trespassing and stuff?  Do you want to go to jail?”

                “No, honey, but if we don’t, we might end up going to the streets instead,” she answered, sounding a little harsher than she meant.  She looked back to Alison’s dejected face.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.  But I need your help; if you’re not with me, they may end up even madder.  Just come with me, Alison, I know it’ll be okay.”  Shaking her head in disbelief and rolling her eyes, Alison quickly crossed the threshold of the house, gently shutting the door behind her.  Her mom smiled, holding out her hand for her to grasp it.  “We stick together, right, girl?” she asked, trying to sound a little more modern.

                “Mom, don’t say that; it sounds weird coming out of your mouth,” snickered Alison, taking her hand as they walked further into the hallway.

                “Oh, whatever,” she laughed, winking at her daughter and giving her hand a little squeeze to remind her to be strong in the faces of their extended family.  “HELEN!  KEVIN!” she called out, cupping a hand against her mouth.

                “Umm, Mom?”

                “What is it, honey?”

                “What if… they’re not home, and the lights are on and the door is open because burglars came in?”

                “I…”

                “Really, Mom, that might have happened; if we’re here, think of what they’ll say when they find evidence of us here.”

                “Oh, shi…” Anna groaned, starting to curse, but stopped herself for the benefit of her daughter.  “Sorry about that, honey.”

                “Mom… relax… I hear people say that like fifty times a day at school.”

                “Shh… wait a second!” whispered Anna, holding her hand horizontally and lowering it to visually indicate her desire for quiet.  “Do you hear that?”

                “No…” shrugged Alison.  “Mom, if we don’t go soon, I’m gonna have to get a job to stay alive.  C’mon, let’s…”

                “Just listen…” she said in the lowest voice possible.  Alison rolled her eyes and tried to hear.  After a minute or so of seeming pure silence, however, they heard a soft screeching sound.  It sounded like it was coming from the large kitchen, which was just on ahead of the lavish front hallway, with a winding marble staircase leading upstairs  “C’mon…”

                “MOM!” moaned Alison through gritted teeth, trying to pull her mom’s arm back toward the door.  “Please, Mom, please?”

                “Let me have a second… just ten seconds, and then we go, all right?” asked Anna, advancing into the kitchen, which still was fully lit.  She looked around the seemingly empty room, along the gleaming marble countertops, the polished tile floor, and the ornately carved wooden cabinets.  A large floor-length window along one side overlooked a pond behind the house as it continued raining reasonably hard.  “Loaded…” murmured Anna under her breath so her cautiously advancing daughter wouldn’t hear.  She shook her head, in awe of the room, reflecting on the fact she and her daughter would soon lose the house they had owned with Tom, while Helen and Kevin would probably be using that money to buy a new car, or redo the bathrooms.  Her fingers clenched together, cracking her knuckles.  It made her furious just to think of it, but she managed to keep her cool for the sake of Alison.

                The two remained silent, waiting for the sound again.  Just as Anna was about to speak up, sighing, and suggest they return home for the night, the sound was heard again, this time louder.  Anna’s eyes fell to the wide marble kitchen table, and her jaw dropped at what she saw as she dashed quickly to the table for a closer look.

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