Echoes 05

"Oh my god, it is... it's so good to see..."

Chase could have been knocked over by a feather as he took in the sight of Elizabeth Ventris, the woman who was

technically

still his wife, getting teared up as she tepidly crept towards where he was sprawled on his sofa like a sack of suet.

"I'm sorry, I told myself I'd keep it together." Elizabeth... Bizzy--Chase would never stop thinking of her any other way--wiped her palms across her puffy red eyes. "You don't deserve to have me break down on you after all this time." She looked away, her voice dropping. "I'll add that to the list of things you never deserved."

Chase shook his head. Bizzy was still the gorgeous woman he'd fallen in love with before either had known what that meant. Still matched the vision of his bride of over four years--or nearly ten, depending on how you looked at it--and his soulmate for so much longer; but she had changed.

The last five years had worn on her, and there was no denying it. She was thinner, her face lined from what had to be a hard life. Her hair was lank and limp, and she was dressed in drab, unflattering, bargain-bin clothing... but she was still Bizzy, and whatever else happened, Bizzy would always take his breath away.

"I... Bizz...wh... what..." He finally found his voice, and he sounded like he'd suffered head trauma. He grimaced, then instinct took over and he gave a moronic, lopsided grin. "Who, where, when? Sometimes why." His face froze. "Oh god, I can't believe I just made a fucking joke."

Bizzy did cry then. Cried, and laughed. It was something else. "It's because you're my Cheese... and you always will be."

That was it. He was done.

The next time he was aware of... anything, really, he and Bizzy were sobbing into each other's shoulders, their arms around one another, squeezing hard enough to hurt. The crying was so harsh that it turned to coughs, wracking both of them, and they became one conjoined mass of phlegm and snot and tears and laughs and mussed hair and gripping fingers and it was one of the greatest things they'd ever shared together.

Finally managing to find a modicum of control, the pair reluctantly separated after a good few minutes, wiping themselves down ineffectually and smiling sheepishly at each other. Chase spoke up first this time. "Bizzy, I can't believe you're here. I'm so glad--"

"Wait." She held up a hand. "I'm hoping with everything in me that you'll finish that sentence, but I can't let you until we talk." She flinched, glancing down. "No. That wasn't a demand. I have no right... Please, if you're willing, I very much would like to talk to you."

He nodded. She was right. This was all so quick, and the hurricane of emotion was spinning him every which way but loose. They had to rein it in if they were going to do a single thing that had to be done. He motioned for her to sit down, doing so himself at the same time, but she hesitated and took a long, deep breath.

"I... wow. I knew this would be hard, but nothing can prepare someone for..." She swallowed. "Best to just get it over with." Bizzy turned towards the front door, which was still ajar. "Sweetie, you can come in now."

Chase didn't know what he expected to see, but a little girl in a pink dress shuffling through his front door was not it. The child, the spitting image of Bizzy with her blonde locks and sapphire eyes, looked around like she was being called into a dungeon. She went straight to Bizzy with arms outstretched, and Chase's wife scooped her up and hugged her to her chest. The kid gave one, quick, frightened look at Chase before she buried her face in Bizzy's shoulder, wordless the whole time.

Chase had many questions, of course, but some things were obvious. "What'd you name her?"

Bizzy gave him a look that wasn't far removed from her daughter's. "Chavelle."

Chase couldn't stop the little chuckle. "I never thought of looking for you in Detroit."

Bizzy eased a bit, even cracked a smile. "It's not exactly... okay, yeah, there's a similarity..." She sighed and stroked the blonde moppet in her arms lovingly. "I just hope she's not bullied too hard when she starts school." She paused, glancing away. "That'll be next year. She... she's five now."

Of course she is

. Chase knew it, just as he knew that the next moment was going to change his life forever, one way or another. "Bizzy... is she... am I...?" He didn't dare to hope. It was a good instinct.

Bizzy teared up again. "No." The word dropped like a stone. "That's why I ran. That's why I stayed away for five years, even though I never wanted to go, and wished every day I deserved to come back. I don't know what you remember about... that night..."

She stopped herself and grimaced, then set her daughter down and picked up a nearby game controller. "Sweetie, if you ask nicely, Mister Cheese here might let you play some of his games." She glanced up at him. "We need to talk for a little bit."

The girl's eyes lit up. "I, uh... Mister Cheese..." She giggled a little at the name. "Can I play? I had a friend who had some games, but I only got to play a little bit before... um..." The light left her eyes a bit then, and she watched him again with more of that fear she'd shown before.

Chase puckered his lips while tapping his chin and raising one brow dramatically. "I dunno... I need payment first, I think." At seeing the worry in the kid's face, he quickly held up a hand, palm towards her. "Five should do it. Gimme."

It took her a second, but Chavelle caught on and slapped her hand against his with a giddy laugh. Then, after Chase showed her how to navigate the system--and suggested the few age-appropriate titles he owned--the girl was off to the races. When he finally turned his attention back to Bizzy, she was a wreck, with tears on her cheeks and a hand over her mouth to stifle the noises she was making. She got it together quick enough though, and the pair made their way to the kitchen, taking a couple chairs at the dinner table.

"Cheese... I don't even know what to say." Bizzy started after blowing her nose into some tissue. "You're making this easier and harder all at once."

"Bizzy, I don't know how to handle all of this, I'm not gonna lie. I guess... I guess you should just pick up where we left off." He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to prepare himself. "You were talking about... about running."

While pregnant with another man's child.

Nope, not ready to say that out loud yet.

She took a deep breath. "Okay. So that night, I blurted something out in a panic, but it was about the truest feeling I'd ever expressed. I said that I fucked up so hard I couldn't even say it in words. Except, it wasn't just words. I couldn't even let myself

think

about what I'd done. How colossally brain dead I had to have been. How... how monstrously cruel. I honestly think it was survival instinct."

Bizzy paused then, and pulled something out of her pocket with automatic movements, the action nothing put pure muscle memory as she brought the item up, some kind of piece of cloth, and began playing with it in her hands, running her thumbs across it and looking like nothing less than a child with a security blanket.

"I puked. That was my body's reaction to my life dissolving in front of me," she reddened, "or so I thought. Then I thought twice and realized that there was probably another reason too." She glanced once back at the living room and the sounds of laughter issuing faintly from it. She gripped her strip of cloth tighter.

Chase spoke up then, asking just one of the dozen questions he'd been living with for years. "I... was it Shane? Was it seeing me..." He make a loose fist and gave a light shadow box.

Bizzy gasp, genuinely surprised. "Fuck no! Seeing you demolish him was the one and only good thing that happened that night." Her eyes widened with sudden realization. "Cheese, please believe me when I say that I've never spoken a single word to Shane since I ran out that door. If you think he has anything to do with me or my child, other than being the uncaring sperm donor..."

Chase winced then. He couldn't help it. She saw that and stopped talking to gather herself. "Okay, this is going off the rails." She shook her head, then gave a wry laugh. "I practiced over and over how I would try to handle this, so... here goes nothing."

She dropped the piece of cloth and reached out to take his hands in hers, locking eyes with him. "I will answer any questions you ask of me, with complete honesty. I will admit to anything. I will hold nothing back that you want of me." Her voice grew thick. "I will relive any and every moment to give you whatever closure you need. To give you what I was too weak to give you five years ago. I will start with this; anything I tell you is not an excuse. There is no excuse for what I did, and I won't ever,

ever

pretend otherwise. I can only give reasons, and even then, only the reasons I've been able to figure out."

Chase was on the verge of telling her that he didn't need to know anything. That he was fine with not knowing... but that would have been a lie. There was at least one thing, really only one thing he had to know. "Bizzy... after all the years we had together, why did you automatically think the worst thing possible about me?" He pulled his hands out of hers and sat back. "What did I do to make you lose faith in me? In us?"

Bizzy obviously expected this, but that didn't make it easy. She sniffed and wiped at her eyes, but held it together. "You did

nothing

. I'll say it a thousand time if you need me to; you didn't deserve a second of what I put you through." She closed her eyes. "The question you asked me is the exact one I've asked myself daily for years. This is what I came up with, and if it's too weak, well, I agree, but it's the best I have."

Bizzy instinctively grabbed the cloth again and proceeded. "I picture a house, a sound, flawless home built to last. Then a bomb goes off and demolishes the insides, leaving little more than the outer shell of the place. Before the homeowners can start rebuilding though, before both of them are even aware that any destruction happened, some slick contractor comes in with deep pockets and a lot of know-how, and starts the job himself. In no time, the house only looks the same from the outside, but the inside has been completely remodeled."

Chase's brow furrowed, but he signaled her to keep going. She nodded. "The instant I watched the video, I was... hollowed. I couldn't feel anything. There was no capacity in me in that moment to ponder, or question, or... or do much of anything. It was honestly like I'd been punched in the face and was going down for the count. I watched the thing in the morning, after you left for work to finalize the big contract. I have no idea how or why I got to the office after that, but I do know that, somehow, Shane saw me right away and was able to pick up on the change in me. He worked on me then, telling me things I shouldn't have listened to, but that made me feel better. God, all I wanted was to feel better. To be fixed." Her eyes were pleading. "He... remodeled me, and I let him."

She gave a sudden, bitter laugh. "The worst thing is, if I'd seen you at work first, you would have shown me how fucking wrong I was, and... and..." Her shoulders slumped. "But Shane was able to get to me before you. Fucking... the universe had it out for me."

Chase's eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. "Bizzy, that's because Shane was... he was..." He stopped. He felt like he was on a precipice, having to choose whether or not to jump. Bizzy looked at him quizzically, waiting.

I... fuck. I can't. I can't do it to... her.

"...he was smart. I hate to admit it almost as much as I hate him, but he was clever."

Bizzy nodded sadly. "And I absolutely was not. For the next two months, my life became nothing more than a pathetic attempt to numb the sharp, sucking sensation in my chest with revenge. I lost faith in us because I lost myself. There was no

me

in that moment because I buried the woman you married so I could take the easy way out. Between misery and righteous anger, only one makes you still feel human."

Bizzy took a long, ragged breath and locked eyes with him again. "Do you... are there any more questions..."

Do you want to know what the sex was like? How many times we fucked? How big his dick was? How often he made me cum?

The unspoken fear suffusing her body was absolutely heartbreaking.

"Yes." Chase saw her tense up, trying to steel herself. She had that piece of cloth in a white-knuckled grip then. "Why didn't you come back after you realized the truth?"

Her head drooped a bit, but she eased up and gave him a grateful look. "That one's easy. Because I didn't deserve to." When he opened his mouth, she plowed ahead. "Right away, I knew I was pregnant with that son-of-a-bitch's child. I thought about... you know..." She frowned. "But that's just... it's not in me. I can't even say why, maybe because I was... because my birth mother, by all rights, should have done it to me to save her own life, but chose not to. I don't know. It was the one thing I couldn't do, though. So after that realization, the next one was that I had nowhere near the audacity to ask you to both forgive me, and raise another man's child. I thought it was better if I cut myself away from you entirely and let you forget about... um... sorry..." Bizzy put a hand to her head then and closed her eyes. "...sorry. I'm just... I get tired..."

Chase got concerned and reached out to rub her arm. "Bizzy, if you need to stop, stop. There's no rush." He smiled at her. "I'm not going anywhere."

She smiled back, open and pure, then nodded. "I'm so sorry. I'm dragging this out, but... yeah. I really do need to... to rest." She looked around. "Maybe... can I use the guest bed?"

"Screw that noise." Chase stood and helped her to her feet. "You get the good bed."

Our bed

. The thought wasn't quite ready to be voiced. Close, though, he could feel it.

"Jesus, Cheese. How can you still be this..." The chiding was gentle and tearful. "Still be...

you

. I can't even imagine what I'd do if the tables were turned."

"Probably call Guinness to let them know that you came across the first man ever to give birth."

The laugh that burst out of her seemed to actually make the room brighter, and when she held that mysterious piece of cloth to her pink-cheeked face again, he finally recognized it. "Bizzy... is that my sleeve?"

She blinked like she wasn't sure what he meant. "Oh! God, this thing is so much like a part of me now, I don't even notice it anymore." She held the strip up. The ragged end, where it'd been ripped from his shirt by her grip, had been hemmed to keep it from fraying. It really was like a security blanket. "It used to... to smell like you." She blushed at that. "That went away, which sucked, but I still couldn't ever bring myself to get rid of it."

Chase had nothing he could say past the lump in his throat, so he just walked her to the master bedroom. Bizzy squeezed his hand once in gratitude, then slid under the covers where she positively luxuriated. He caught her holding his pillow to her face like it was a life preserver as she took deep breaths, and he shut out the lights and closed the door. He could wait for the part two he knew was coming; part one was more than enough to chew on for the moment.

__________

"Okay, see that guy... he's going to disappear and try to sneak around you, but if you... there you go! Good job Muscle Girl!" Chase solicited another high-five from little Chavelle, then watched her pause.

"Muscle Girl?" She scrunched her adorable little nose like she smelled something bad, then raised a thin arm up almost accusingly and poked it in demonstration of the misnomer. "You're a weird guy."

"And you're named after a certain type of car. That's not my fault. Blame your mom."

She huffed, indignant. "At least I'm not food. Cheese is food, and that's worse than a car."

Chase snapped his fingers. "Dang. You got me. Guess you win. Your prize is that you can call me... let's see... how about, Mousetrap."

Her answering nod was very satisfied. Her smile was very happy. "Yeah, I did win, so that's what I'm gonna--"

"I'm still calling you Muscle Girl, though."

Chavelle's sigh was full of all the drama that only a five-year-old can muster. "

Fiiine

. I guess I can have a nickname."

"Thank-you. Now, watch out for... there it is! He is outta there! Take that man--"

"To Bobby Parker!" Bizzy's delighted voice surprised both the gamers, and they turned to look at her at the same time. Her lips were tremulous as she drank in the sight of the two of them, and her voice quavered when she kept going. "Sweetie, are you being good for... for Mister Cheese?"

"He's Mousetrap now, and I'm being great, mommy." The child tilted her head and glanced shyly at Chase. "He's...pretty fun. I like him." Her cheeks became cherries, and she furiously began jamming on the buttons of the controller gripped in her tiny hands.

Bizzy had no words, and just reached out to Chase, silently pleading for him to follow her back to the kitchen. With a goodbye to the Muscle Girl, he vacated the couch and went to his wife, but before he could say a word, he was enveloped in another all-encompassing embrace. Her three-hour nap must have done her good, because she'd obviously gotten her strength back. His aching sides could definitely attest to that.

"Do you wonder why I named her Chavelle?" Bizzy eased up, but it apparently wasn't in her to let him go, so she pretty much just talked into his chest. "Nothing to do with muscle cars, despite what you think you think." She laughed. "I mean, really Cheese, they're spelled and pronounced differently."

"Accuracy is no impediment to bad comedy. Have I taught you nothing?" He gave her a squeeze.

A much heartier laugh vibrated his chest this time, and he melted a bit more, even as she declined to comment. "I liked the continuity; Elizabeth coming from Isabella..." Luckily, she didn't feel him tense. "So I looked up other forms of the name and saw Chavelle. It was perfect." Now she separated enough to stare up at him. "Like... well, you see it, right?"

"Chase and Elizabeth meshed together." It was obvious... now that she led him down the primrose path right to it. He declined to say that he absolutely had no inkling what it meant until that moment.

Bizzy finally stepped away then. "That... it was comforting. Like I said, I had no expectation that you would ever... ever think she could be... you know." Her eyes were cast down, once again unable to face him. "But I could fantasize about it. The little fictions I played out in my head helped me get through... um..."

She took a deep, bolstering breath. "Cheese... I have cancer. The same as my birth mom, Sylvia." She saw him open his mouth and turned away. "Please, let me get this out, then... I'll accept whatever you tell me, no argument.

"If you're thinking that I came here because I have no choice, that's not quite true. It's just that, you're my

best

choice. I'm not asking for money. It'd be no use. I had money through, well, using my talent to be shady as shit... and it all went into treatments and paying people to care for Chavelle when I couldn't. I've held it off as long as possible, but the end is coming. There's no stopping it. Right now, I'm only thinking about my daughter."

She put a hand on Chase's chest, almost cautiously. "When I'm gone, I want nothing more than for her to be in the care of the greatest person I've ever known in my life." She stepped back once again. "But I know I have no right to this, not after making every shitty choice it's possible to make. I can only beg. I will get on my knees and promise that, whatever price you want from me, even if it's to tell me to get lost and die alone... I'll do it." Her throat was well on its way to seizing up then. "I'll do anything if you say you'll take her."