Providence's Last Laugh Boo Three

"This doesn't make any sense, Dannie, and I think you're hiding something from us."

Danae's little sister did what Danae's little sister does... stampede ahead. When the rest of the family-cum-would-be-saviors were still trying to process the ins and outs of the tale they were being told, Tina shunted aside everything she obviously considered pointless to cut right to what she wanted. "You were forgiven? Is that what you're saying? Bygones, and all that? Did you forget why we even set this damned intervention up? We saw you with him! After all...

this!"

In a weird way, Danae thought the wave of her sister's hand to dismiss the story she'd just heard expressed more disgust than even the tone of her voice. It was kind of impressive. "We know what you've become, and I won't... I can't even begin to... aah! Fucking fuck!"

While lovely little Tina proceeded to try to rip a significant chunk of her own hair out, Danae—through long years of experience—knew to focus on the rest of the group while her baby sister wallowed in her histrionics. "Tina's given her well-thought-out, measured opinion. How 'bout the rest of you? I can finish the story, but there's no way I can guarantee that it'll be satisfying to you. In fact, I'm sure it'll piss you guys off to no end." She shrugged, attempting a nonchalance that she didn't feel in the slightest. "Or I can stop, and we can agree that things just are how they are."

Frank snorted out a laugh immediately, and Danae wanted to hug the life out of her brother. "Dannie, I don't give a rat's ass about what the rest of them are gonna say... sorry, mom, it's true... but I for one have a bet with myself. See,

I

think this has a happy ending... because

I

have functioning eyeballs." Unlike their sister's,

his

wave over Danae's prim, demurely dressed form was the opposite of dismissive. It was of an attorney presenting evidence in court. '

Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury... Exhibit A'.

While the others shifted in their seats, Dannie shot a beaming smile to Frank. "Love you to bits, little brother, but...

happy

is kinda relative." She shifted to the rest; her parents and the Alonsos. "Sorry, but I need a consensus, because I'm not going to censor myself..."

Anymore

. Danae still couldn't shake the lingering images of the things she'd done that she'd laundered in the retelling. "... and I will absolutely spit venom on anyone that interrupts me. Once I start, I finish, and you're just going to have to hold your peace."

It was like a time out as they conferred; Mister and Missus Alonso with whispers to each other, but her mom and dad with only a long look. Danae was actually surprised. She knew that if their roles were reversed, burning curiosity would knock out even a breath of hesitation. It was a testament to how unnerving to them her current existence was that they were actually considering

not

getting a full understanding.

Bad sign.

After a good minute, it was, amazingly, Danae's dad that answered. "Honey, you'd better finish, because I have my own promise to make. If I don't like what I hear, or don't hear, our family is going to... be upheaved. So it's better to just get to what needs getting to."

Aaaand there's the threat. Danae loved her father completely, but she had no illusions about his life's philosophy; end what needed to be ended, no matter what may happen. A bigger anti-politician, she was sure, had never existed. She'd be more inclined to think of him as a big old, gruff teddy bear if he hadn't all but promised that he'd do grievous harm to the man who now had her completely. That was something she could not abide.

"Father... all of you... understand me." The tendons in Danae's neck bulged with tension. "This isn't going to end how any of you are envisioning. It. Will.

Not.

I won't allow it, and I

will

make you pay if you react the wrong way."

"Jesus wept." Missus Alonso gasped out loud the second she got a good look at Danae's face. Her husband gripped his little gold crucifix even harder, and his own neck began resembling lashed steel cables... but they controlled themselves beyond that.

"Just finish, Danae." Her mom rasped out the command. "Right now we're in Schrodinger's shit box." She ignored the surprised looks at her uncharacteristic profanity, and gave a bitter little laugh. "Our family is both whole

and

shattered until your last word opens it up to see what the poison has done." She put a hand on her husband's twitching bicep. "I promise we won't interrupt."

Diplomatically—necessarily, truth be told—Danae ignored that her mother promised nothing else.

Fine. They asked for it.

"Okay then." She settled her butt in that comfortable chair and proceeded to make everyone decidedly uncomfortable. "So there I was, in my husband's arms, wishing with everything in me that he'd rip off my borrowed dress, suck on my big tits till they were glowing-red enough to guide a fucking sleigh, and then ram his dick so far into me that he could feel the back of my teeth with the slit."

The universally sickly expressions aimed at her told Danae that she was off with a bang.

"But it wasn't to be..."

__________

And I knew it as soon as Beatty managed to put actual distance between his body and my needy, needy arms.

"Danae, I don't have an ounce of trust in you."

Ever have the feeling that you've been dropped off a mountaintop by someone you thought was pulling you up the last few feet to join them in paradise before they ripped off their person-mask to reveal a snarling monster was underneath the whole time who was going to cackle at you right until the second you turned into a bloody smear five miles down? No? Just me?

"And I don't have the ability to stop loving you with every fiber of my being."

Ever have the feeling that your impending smear-itude had been halted by a monster that actually wasn't a monster so now you kind of hated yourself for feeling that other crazy feeling before? No? Just me?

"What does that mean, Beatty?" Virginia, having taken a few steps back to give us space... in

her

kitchen, no less... narrowed her enchanting eyes and tilted her exquisite head on that graceful, swan-like neck. Okay, maybe

some

things were lingering from the life I was trying to leave behind... mmm, that moment with her in Lucien's estate... All that aside; her question wasn't confrontational. It was an honest seeking of information.

Their expressions drove home their status as twins as they matched each other's stare wordlessly for long seconds. Hell, I think I even caught them blinking at the same time. When they, still without an actual exchange, got up together and went into the other room, I felt a bit lost. I'd known them both for so long that none of this was a surprise, was, in fact, a nice reminder of better days, but that didn't make my sudden solitude any better. Make my yearning for answers, for a hint of a path forward, any less sharp.

For whatever reason, I just stared at the clock on the wall. Maybe it was a kind of mini-punishment; this forcing myself to feel every second that ticked by. Maybe, just maybe, my subconscious was trying to prepare me for what it knew what was coming. Either way, it felt like an eternity before I was summoned into the living room to stand before my seated husband and sister-in-law; a supplicant waiting to see if her plea would be accepted.

"Danae, we're leaving you..." Beatty's face gave away not one hint of what he was feeling... right up until I was about a heartbeat from collapsing on the floor in a puddle of tears and snot. Then his eyes shot wide open and he jumped to his feet. "For a month! A month! Holy shit..." He began moving to me, hand outstretched, but when he saw that I'd managed to drop onto a chair instead of sink all the way through the Earth, he... stopped. Stopped cold. Then he moved away.

"A month." Beatty flicked his eyes to his sister, then back to my trembling form. "You... if you agree... will stay here. Alone."

"There's plenty of food." Virginia's reassurance was wan, but it was something. She sounded apologetic, but not hesitant. "Plenty of things to—"

"Do you agree?" My husband cut his sister off and proceeded to staple me to my chair with his ice-blue eyes.

I swallowed, my own green orbs rolling every which way. "Beatty, I don't even know what you're..." In that moment—call it yet another instance of my subconscious coming to the rescue—I absolutely murdered what I had been about to say when I clacked my jaw shut as tight as I should have kept my legs for the last year or so.

One definitive nod. That was my true response.

The surprise on Beatty's face was there and gone in a flash, but I could tell... hoped... he was impressed. Then he was a bit sheepish. It was fucking adorable. "Heh, well then. Full disclosure... I'm making this up as I go along." He scratched the back of his head while he gathered his thoughts. "Gin seems to think, so far, it's a good idea... Whatever. Okay. Okay." His eyes scanned the room. "...okay. So, yeah. We'll be leaving. Like... right now. Nothing to pack up..."

I kept my teeth glued together as I got up, but there was no hiding my anxiety. When I reached my arms out to him, though, he stepped back, his own hands up in a halting gesture. "No. No, Danae... I'm sorry, but we end here for now. A month. A month alone,

completely

, to... to really feel yourself. To think. To... decide." He cast his eyes down again. "For both of us to decide."

And... that was it. I could barely believe that such a monumental moment came and went with so little fanfare. Beatty gave me one last, long look, Virginia patted my shoulder on the way by, and then they were gone, with the last evidence that they even existed being the sound of Virginia's limo as it pulled down the dirt road and back into the world.

I numbly followed them out after a time, not truly believing all that had happened. I stayed there too... shit, I don't know for how long. Just blinking, really. When the noon-day sun finally started irritating me, I went back inside.

Then I stared at the wall.

__________

That month... it was something.

Day one? Well, that still makes me smile. Virginia had said that necessities were no worry, and she hadn't lied, but the finer details of what she considered

necessary

had never had a chance to be addressed. First on the list... what the hell was I going to wear? I'd escaped Lucien in my birthday suit, and had faced Beatty in a gifted dress, but a search of the cottage's closets and dressers turned up jack squat. Virginia, apparently, either traveled to this place with clothing, or...

I glanced out the window to the lake that covered the horizon. It shimmered in the sun, and, in that part of the world, even in April, I knew how pleasant it was out there. I distinctly remember smiling, then muttering, "You cheeky minx.", shucking out of the one piece of clothing within miles, running my hands up and down my nude form in an unexpected, even heady rush of freedom, then trotting out of the house and down to the water. The cannonball off the little pier gave me enough time to be absolutely sure that I was one-hundred percent following in Virginia's footsteps right then.

That was the last moment I was sure of anything for a very long time.

The swim was fantastic—cleansing and distracting both—but couldn't last forever, and that night I got a glimpse of my new existence.

Eat. Think. Sleep.

Sure, there were books, but taking walks had to either be done in the high heels that constituted my only footwear—no thank-you—or au naturale. Au naturale only seems romantic until about the fifth stick or rock stabs your heel... though, truth be told, it was

amazing

the rest of the time. God, did I ever love just being out there. And, oh holy hell, did my wriggly little fingers find out what their true purpose was.

It was like I was discovering myself. Don't get me wrong, I was no Mennonite or anything. I'd punished the little man in the canoe plenty as a gawky teenager, but I had stopped needing to pretty much the same week that Mary and Jane had their coming out the summer I turned sixteen. From that point on, I had subcontractors lined up around the block.

__________

"I take it back, Dannie. For the fucking love of God, I'm begging you. Please stop."

Danae pointed a finger at her brother, then shook her head once.

__________

Anyways... yeah. Masturbation station, what's your destination? Know what I mean? Thing is... what's the line from that movie? It only aroused my appetite without beddin' 'er back down. I would, technically, get off, sure, but every single time, right after

and

that night, I'd... yearn. Dream. I would think of what I'd had, what I didn't have anymore, and...

Things got dark for me very quickly. I was stuck in my own head, living day-to-day, even minute-to-minute, in the past. Remembering. What I'd done. What I'd been. I couldn't escape it. The montage replayed over and over and over and...

There... god... there was a moment that... that I even had the thought that

anything

was better than reliving my fall impotently. Even reliving it for real. As in, once I was able, I would leave the cottage and just cut away everything. I started telling myself that I truly had no other option than to embrace the fact that I was damned, and go. Go back. Go back to...

him.

I knew he'd receive me again, because he was always waiting. Gloating in the cold.

Like I said. Dark.

But it got less dark. I made it less dark. First, I tried to sweat it out through a lot,

lot

, of calisthenics. Exorcism by exercising. Didn't work, but I did like the way I felt afterward, and, not for nothing, I

really

liked the way I looked after a couple of weeks. It's hard to think badly of yourself when you can see your own abs.

Then I did the real work. As a kind of feedback, behavior modification regimen, I started forcing my thoughts to the golden when I got even a whiff of the ebon. When Lucien's face filled my mind's eye, I molded it with phantom fingers into Beatty's. When my traitorous brain hit me with the memory of the feel of Lucien inside me, I hurled myself back to my wedding night and the transcendence of having my chosen mate fill me in every way it's possible to be filled.

In that month, the schoolteacher taught herself, and she was an eager pupil. I forced myself to see where my triggers were. I faced my weaknesses. I dispelled my illusions. For the first time, I was vigilant. I was disciplined. I made myself my bitch, you could say. I made myself ready by... rebooting to factory settings. As blank a slate as I could achieve.

Good thing too, because when Beatty came back, he brought the biggest piece of chalk in the world with him.

__________

He also came on a boat. A big yacht that had to idle out on the lake while the... dinghy?... brought him to the cottage. He came at night too. I dunno, maybe to catch me asleep, to get close and observe me. Makes sense, but I never asked. All I know is that I was wide awake when he arrived, because the month was up, and I

knew

he'd keep his word and be back before midnight.

God, I can still see the scene; him standing up while one of Virginia's people piloted him across, the full moon at his back and shining a silver light over him, over everything, in as succinct a symbol of purity as I've ever seen in life. Awe doesn't even begin to describe the feeling I had then. Sublime... maybe. All I know is that my eyes were streaming as I ran out of the house, bare to him in every way.

He'd returned to me. I wasn't trapped in the center of the Earth.

He stepped off that boat and drank me in, very pleased with what was being presented to him; a wife who hadn't been idle. Who had, at least superficially, used her time productively. I know I was hot...

am

hot... but I'd never been in such a shape such as this in all our years together. Hell, he even licked his lips... uh, well, he started to before he had a better thought and whipped around to eye the boat-guy hard enough to get the man to take a good long look out across the lake behind him.

"Danae, I figured something like this was waiting for me, but I also figured it was waiting for me back inside." Beatty chuckled a bit before reaching into the dinghy and pulling out a long, thick robe. "Here. I suppose there's no reason to delay. Put this on and get in."

I didn't hesitate in slipping the thing on—strange as clothing now felt—but my husband wasn't done. He cupped my cheek as I cinched up the belt, forcing me to look up at him. "One last time, Danae Allen. Do you agree to this? Do you acknowledge that I will be taking you with me on a trip that you know nothing of, and will be making demands that you won't see coming? Last chance. Yes?" He pulled his hand away. "No? Right here and now, there's absolutely no room for anything in-between."

I swallowed. Then I decided. "History is my mortal enemy, so all I can do is try to stab it in the heart." I reached up and took Beatty's huge, callused hands in my smooth little mitts. "Right here, right now, I promise that everything I am... all I still have left of my fucking soul... is dedicated to this. To you. And I will stay as firm to that as humanly possible." My little act of bravery faltered then, and I dropped his hands. "For whatever you think that's worth, of course."

"I think we'll find out." His lovely, boyish grin made the ghost of an appearance then. "But we're off to a good start."

__________

I'll skip past the mundane stuff. The trip to Virginia's yacht was pleasant, but quiet, and the same can be said of the time it took to get off the lake, through the river, and out onto the ocean. Really, all I did was wait to be shown what was next. It was while cruising the coast that Beatty finally began, and he did so by coming up to me from behind while I was looking out on the water at the bow of the ship, and leaning close so his lips were in at my ear.

"Still, isn't it?"

I sighed and nodded while leaning lightly back into his big frame.

"Peaceful." He paused. "Boring. Dead, really."

My brows scrunched in confusion, and I rotated my face a little to try to get a glimpse of him. "Beatty? What do you—"

"You realize that neither you or I will ever be much of anything, right?" When I tried to complete my turn, he only gave me enough leeway to take in the ship, not him. "In the grand scheme of things, I mean. I'm a contractor. You're a schoolteacher. We might shift a bit, change course a little, but not in any kind of big, flashy, Hollywood type of way." He waved a hand to take in the yacht. "Borrowed luxury is the best I can give. My sister is big and flashy. Not me. I couldn't afford this in five of my lifetimes. With me... neither can you."

I began to see what he was getting at then, and I relaxed myself. "All right."

Beatty snorted lightly. "All right? Really think about that. A life of quicksilver, always on the go, always flowing from one point to the next, always coursing ahead... nope. That's not in the cards. You'll never be the subject of mass awe. You'll never have your image splashed online, or be the focus of a gossip piece. To everyone out there, you may as well never have been born." His voice dropped. "And we both know that kind of... of irrelevance doesn't appeal to you."

I had to fight, and fight hard, to keep myself from forcing his hands off my shoulders so I could clamp onto him like some kind of scared little baby monkey. I knew just from the tone of his voice what my husband wanted from me; sobriety. A staid, even cold, answer to his non-question question.