At first the doctor didn't know what to expect when he saw the white SUV. It followed his daughter's little Hyundai along the long gravel driveway into his ranch. Ginny, seeing his full attention on the arriving vehicles, went to stand beside him on the creaky wooden porch and watch. "Who's that?"
"I have my suspicions, dear. She did say that Kate's adoptive family have a white Range Rover."
"Kate? Oh, you mean... Jenna brought the girls back with her?"
"I think so. She wasn't supposed to."
Jenna pulled up to her usual parking spot. She was quick to get out of the car and go to him as the other vehicle slowly parked by her. "Daddy, let me explain," she began.
"Did they catch you in the act?"
"Yes they did, and I couldn't stop them. They insisted on following me here."
"Oh, goodness me... we didn't plan for this." The doctor and Ginny watched as the Range Rover's doors opened. "Welcome, girls, to my ranch. You must be Amy and Kate."
They felt like children again hearing his voice. It made them go quiet. Slowly they approached, then stopped to stare up at him, his daughter and tall Ginny in her cowboy hat as they stood above on the raised porch. With the sun almost set and the house lighting them from behind, it was hard to make out much more than their silhouettes.
Though the girls were so shy the sight alone was enough to leave Ginny and the doctor dazzled. Jenna's descriptions hadn't done them justice. The brilliant color of Kate's hair and eyes were shocking, exceeding their old memories of her. She had grown tall, and from the way her t-shirt and jeans clung to her tattooed body they could see she'd trained herself into athletic perfection. Smartly, she had a sheet draped around her hips, obscuring the strangeness in her. There was no obscuring what had been done to Amy however, and she, having grown so incredibly busty yet without a single pound of extra fat on the rest of her, was maddening to behold. "Well, alright then, that confirms it. You're just in time for dinner, won't you come in?"
Seeing Amy's trembling features as she ambled up the wooden steps, Ginny was barely hiding her fascination, to Jenna's chagrin. How could Jenna blame her -- her jiggle and jostle in a massive custom made black bra beneath her transparent black top and the sway of her slender bottom end in tight jeans was ridiculously provocative yet completely unintentional, easily enough to cause a scene anywhere. Quietly, Jenna moved ahead to set additional spots at the dinner table for the two guests.
The doctor had only aged a little over the ten years elapsed. He was mostly still as they remembered -- grey hair parted to one side and a grey beard to go with it. Now that they were fully grown they could see he was actually a little short, his bad posture bringing him down to about the same height as Jenna or Amy.
It took Amy and Kate a while to feel at ease near him, but their meal helped to calm their nerves, and they relaxed into the situation and were able to make small talk. Sitting at the head of the table he had his daughter to one side and Ginny to the other. Amy could barely remember Ginny from the old times at the academy, but Kate, coming from the same group as her, remembered her well.
The blonde and sunkissed Ginny, now tall and statuesque and with her hat politely removed for the meal, was lively and extremely talkative. She dominated the conversation with her humor, warmth and midwestern accent, keeping things lighthearted. Kate would have to step in if ever she and Amy could have their questions answered.
"So, uhm, Dr Lipinski... you know what happened to us this week... we know that, based on the note Jenna tried to bring us."
The doctor wiped his mouth with his napkin and sat back. "Yes dear, I am. That must have been extremely unpleasant for you both."
"Oh it was. It's really made it clear to us, how little we know about the caretakers."
The doctor simply nodded, not very helpful.
"So why would they do that," Amy asked.
"Well, to see what you're like, of course. You must have by now figured out that every child of the academy is uhm, different from normal girls. That's no coincidence. You weren't adopted orphans, like we told you..."
"We were created. That's been obvious to us, even since we were kids," Kate said, and she had Amy and Ginny nodding in agreement.
"Right. So naturally it involved a lot of scientists to proceed with such an undertaking... and some of those scientists still have a lot of interest in their old work now that you're all grown up. So they, and I don't agree with how they went about doing so, obtained the two of you and placed you in an environment where you could be observed."
Amy started to blush and lowered her gaze to her plate. It hadn't taken long for she and Kate to give them plenty to observe.
"And you aren't involved with those guys anymore," Kate asked.
"Uh... right. Not long before the programme was canceled, there were disagreements. So now I'm not affiliated with them anymore. Ah, this is complicated to tell."
"Well please tell us," Amy said softly. "It's what we came for."
"What would you like to know?"
"Why was the academy closed?"
"Of course, dear. You would like to know that. I'm so sorry that it went that way, it must have been so hard for you to have to fend for yourselves, at such a young and confusing age. That is my greatest regret, and I would do anything I can to make amends for it."
Ginny was nodding her head at that, and clearly she had a story to tell, but it would have to wait.
"Now um, it began as you were all around age eleven, approaching twelve. Some members of the team were becoming quite disturbed at ah, uhm... how quickly, and drastically, some of you were beginning to develop at puberty's onset. It wasn't what they'd had in mind, y-you see. So there were... arguments. And meetings. And then escalations of the argument, to the point that word of what we were doing spread to other branches of the government."
Kate blinked. Their creation had involved a branch of the government?
"That lead to a whole controversy, and soon the work we were doing was pronounced illegal. It all happened so fast, too fast for us to find a way to accommodate all of you outside of the academy's doors. Most of you were scattered about to other nearby states, but in the rush of things a couple of you ended up in the same city. Such as you, Kate and Amy..."
"And it was you who helped us find each other," Amy said, more softly still.
"Ah, yes, I did... I found Kate through her university and... we did begin to leave you those notes."
The table went quiet. The gears were turning in Kate and Amy's heads. Even if Dr. Lipinski wasn't any longer affiliated with the awful scientists who had had them kidnapped, there would have been much less to observe, and therefore little reason for the kidnapping, if not for his intervention. Meeting each other again, they could feel, was the culmination of their run in the programme. And it was all thanks to him.
The doctor suddenly stood up. "Well, that's too much excitement for one day. I'd best be getting to bed for a rest now."
"But-"
"Jenna and Ginny can take care of you, dears. If you wish to stay the night you can use the cabin by the stables." He turned and headed into the dark hallway, to go up some creaky stairs to his room, never looking back.
Kate and Amy, after watching him go, turned back to Ginny and Jenna, looking surprised and disappointed.
"Uh, I'll take your plates," Jenna murmured.
***
"I'd like if he hadn't left so suddenly," Kate said lowly. She sat with her legs folded to her side on the couch, a hot mug of tea clasped in her hands. "We have so many more questions still."
Jenna and Ginny, seated across the coffee table from Kate and Amy on another couch, seemed to shrug it off. "He's older now. He needs his rest," Ginny said.
"Okay, but it was so sudden. I feel like he might be hiding something from us," Amy said. She had her own mug of tea, while the other arm was hooked into one of Kate's.
"I really don't think he's trying to hide anything from you. It might just be more information than he was ready to give, what with you two both showing up unannounced," Jenna said. "If you stay you can talk to him more tomorrow. He'll have had his rest."
"There are things we need to know."
Ginny's mug loudly landed on the table and she leaned forward. "I feel like you have the wrong idea. You seem really... suspicious about him. Now I don't blame you, after what you went through, but believe me, he's good. In fact he's the kindest man I've ever known."
She took a deep breath, ready to tell the story she'd been itching to tell since dinner: "When the academy closed they sent me to live in Minnesota-"
"I'd have never guessed," Kate said, which earned a round of chuckles from the other girls.
"Hey, are you making fun of my accent? Oh yah, that never gets old! Anyways, so I was alone in this town, and it's cold there most of the year. I guess a lot like you did, Amy, I just had to find a way to keep myself safe and warm and fed... and well, maybe I didn't do the best job. I had a lot of problems. Developed a lot of bad habits. I won't go into too much detail about what that was like, but let's just say, at this time last year I was at a really low point. And it didn't look like I was going to ever get out of it, that I would ever get better.
"But then one day Jenna and the doctor showed up. I was literally just lying there, out in the street, about to... I was in a really bad way. And let me tell you, it was like God had given me a second chance. I don't know if you believe in that sort of thing, but what you can believe is that it was that man's kindness that saved my life."
"That's incredible," Amy said. She struggled to picture it -- Ginny, a tall golden haired young lady apparently perfect in every way, homeless on the streets? She wondered if her strangeness matched that beauty.
"Yeah. Now I'm just this cowgirl, living clean and happy here on the ranch. He's a good man."
"Okay," Kate said. "Sorry. I guess we just need to be more patient. We'll stay the night and take things up with him again in the morning."
