"Thank you, sweetheart," he said without looking up from his paperwork.
She lingered, but he kept working.
"I changed the sign out front," she said as she squared up the letters, making sure to position the postcard front and center.
"That's nice, thank you." He smiled up at her then went directly back to his work.
She was going to have to try a more direct approach. "You got a postcard," she said.
Quincy put his pen down and looked up at her then down at the postcard with an odd sort of look on his face. He looked shocked, and a little bit... terrified?
She wasn't sure how to respond to his reaction, or even if she should respond, so she just stood there watching him watch the postcard.
He stared at it as though he were expecting it to leap off the top of the stack and attack. Maybe he had some strange phobia of postcards. It didn't seem very likely, but what else could explain his clearly neurotic behavior?
"Where's your mo—?" he stopped himself mid-mom.
"Front office. You want me to get her?"
"No," he said softly. "No." He held his breath and reached for the postcard. Then he just glared at it, occasionally glancing toward Jenny, and then back to the postcard.
She could tell he was debating flipping it over. It was like watching pre-showdown preparations with a Band-Aid stuck to arm hair.
"Do you want me to tell you what it says, Dad?"
He shot a panicked look at her.
"Sorry. I peeked. It's a postcard," she justified.
His hands were shaking as he flipped it over and read it. After what felt like an eternity, he turned it picture side up again and placed it back on his desk. Something was terribly wrong with the world. Her father was crying.
It's not that she'd never seen him cry before, but come on... it was a postcard.
"Dad?" She rounded the desk and put her hand on his shoulder.
He stared up at her with sad, hopeless eyes. "Go get... Nancy," his voice cracked. "Tell her it's time."
"Time for what, Dad?"
"She'll know," he said. He patted her hand on his shoulder then got up and crossed the room to his wall safe and began dialing the combination.
She had no idea what was going on, or what could have made her father behave so strangely. But there was definitely a very sinister feeling to all of this.
Nancy was on the phone, talking to someone about repairing the stained glass window. It had been leaking since the snow started to melt.
"Mom?"
"Did you decide you needed to talk?"
"There's something wrong with Dad."
Nancy ended her phone call. "What's wrong?"
"He's freaking out over some postcard. He told me to come tell you 'it's time.'"
"Time for what, sweetie?"
Jenny shrugged. "He said you'd know."
Her mother frowned and shook her head. And then her mouth dropped open in to a stunned 'o' shape, her eyes became wide, and she started to cry.
What was wrong with the world today?
"Mom?" Jenny hurried to her mother's side and put an arm around her shoulders. "Let's go find Dad."
Nancy covered her face with her hands as her cries turned into full-fledged sobs. Jenny had never seen her mother cry like this before. She hadn't seen crying this desperate since they tried to leave Joseph with a babysitter when he was three. Was all this over that postcard?
Quincy must have heard Nancy's wails. He came rushing out of his office toward them. "Nancy, control yourself!" he demanded.
Jenny had never heard her father speak like that to her mother. It startled her, alarmed her. Nancy choked back her wails and did her best to stand upright. She lifted her head toward Jenny, wiping tears from her face. "I can't do this." She turned to Quincy, "I can't do it Quincy. I just can't."
Quincy put his arm around Nancy and led them back to his office. Nancy took the chair behind his desk, turned toward the window that overlooked the garden and returned to her crying, though quieter. Quincy directed Jenny to the couch and pulled up a chair next to her.
"Dad?" she questioned, trying to remain composed. "What's going on? You guys are really scaring me."
"I don't know how to say this Jenny, so I'm just going to say it. But first let me apologize for not telling you anything sooner. We promised we wouldn't. It was part of the deal."
The room suddenly felt darker.
"What deal?"
A distinct sense of panic filled her. It could have been because her parents were behaving like crazy people, but somehow she knew their behavior was only the beginning of the bad.
"We're not your parents." Quincy sucked in air, choking back a sob as a tear streamed down his cheek.
"Are you trying to tell me I was adopted?" She was a little shocked, but being adopted wasn't a bad thing. And honestly, the idea had crossed her mind before. She wasn't exactly the spitting image of the rest of her family — not even close. Everybody but her and Davin were blond but even he had the same nose as their mother and aunt Janice. She'd never been able to see any similarities between herself and the rest of her family.
"No." Quincy's face became scrunched. "We didn't adopt you. We were just..." He shot a scrunched glance toward the back of Nancy's chair. No help there. "Keeping you," he finished.
"Keeping me? Like a pet?"
"No!" Nancy spun around in her chair. "No Jenny, we love you. We love you like our own. It's just that... you were never really ours."
"This is crazy!" Jenny shouted, as tears filled her eyes. "You're both acting like crazy people. What's going on? Why are you doing this to me?"
The postcard.
That's what had set this whole thing off. Somehow it had been about her. But what did it mean? She couldn't think. Her head felt heavy and light at the same time. She took a sharp breath in, leapt from the couch, and snatched the postcard from the desk.
"What does this mean?" she shouted.
Nancy flinched, but neither of them looked at her.
"It means it's time for you to leave us." Quincy's voice cracked. He took a deep breath and let a quick one out. "I don't know all of the details, but I know that your life was in danger, so your family sent you away. They gave you to someone who could hide you away, keep you safe. That's how you came to us. We're your hiding place. We were to raise you as our own, which we did, until they sent for you." He motioned to the postcard.
"Sent for me?"
All those nightmares, for as long as she could remember, made a little more sense now.
Final payment will follow upon safe arrival. The words pounded through her, settling deep in the pit of her stomach like a bad egg salad sandwich.
"Someone has been paying you to be my parents? And now your job's done, you're just going to send me back to them? Is that it?" Betrayal wasn't a strong enough word for what she was feeling in this moment.
"We were only trying to help," Nancy cried.
Jenny collapsed onto the couch, head in her hands, and cried. Her life — the only life she'd ever known — was a lie and everything she'd ever believed was wrong. But if she wasn't Jenny Taylor from Winner, South Dakota... who was she?
"How soon?" Nancy asked.
"I was just about to confirm." Quincy placed a shoebox on the couch next to Jenny and crossed to the desk. He dialed a number from a piece of paper he was holding and held the phone to his ear. After a moment, someone answered. "Confirming a reservation," he stammered into the phone then rambled off a series of numbers. He waited, avoiding her eye line. "Jennifer Hollis," he said after a moment, with a quick glance in her direction.
Jennifer Hollis. Is that who she was?
After a long minute Quincy said, "Thank you," then hung up the phone. "We have to be at the airport by six."
"What? So soon?" Nancy's tears started up again.
"We'll have time to cry later," Quincy told her. "There's too much to do now."
Nancy nodded and wiped the tears from her face.
She stood and he pulled her into his arms. Jenny looked down at her black shirt. She had been right not to wear pink. This was so not a pink day. This was a black day, a very black day.
Jenny turned her head away from her par— the Taylors. Why wasn't anyone bothering to console her? Sure they'd lost a daughter — that was never really theirs to begin with — but she was losing so much more. Something near everything just about summed it up.
They broke apart and Nancy hurried from the room. Her fath— Quincy returned to the chair next to the couch and lifted the shoebox into his lap.
"I know this must be difficult for you," he said in his most comforting tone. "And I'm not going to cheat you and pretend that I could even begin to understand what you're feeling right now. I can only imagine, but you've always been so strong, so resilient." He cleared his throat, and with it went all his comforting tone. He was all business now. "We have very little time, and a lot of work to do, so dry your eyes and lets get on with it."
This was not the Quincy Taylor she knew. She'd never met this version of him, but she knew she didn't like him very much.
"This is your new identity." Quincy handed her a stack of documents, which she only briefly glanced at. Birth certificate, passport, a social security card, there was even a driver's license — with her picture on it. How on earth had he gotten that, she wondered?
"So this is me?" she sniffed, "Jennifer Anne Hollis?" It had been a rhetorical question; she hadn't expected—
"No."
"What do you mean, no?" she eyed him. Maybe this was going to be one of those 'what's in a name' spiels?
"We were instructed to call you Jen or Jenny, because it was similar to your real name, but your real name is..." he paused. "I'm not supposed to know your real name."
"But you do know." She sat up, "Don't you?"
"It's not safe to have that information. Not yet."
Not safe to know her own name? "This is ridiculous. Who am I?" she yelled at him.
"Jenny—
"Stop calling me that!" She tossed the documents to the floor and started for the door.
"Wait! Please," he sounded desperate.
"Why should I?" she said with her hand on the knob.
"Please, I'm just trying to protect you — to keep you safe. You've trusted me as your father for nearly 19 years. I'm asking you to just, please, trust me now."
"I'm not a child anymore." The truth of her statement sent a chill through her core. She really wasn't a child anymore. "You can't protect me by hiding me — or hiding things from me — anymore," she stressed. "If you really want to help me — then arm me so that I can protect myself. Knowledge is power," she reasoned. "Tell me what I need to know."
He didn't respond.
"Do you actually think that I'll be safer being naïve and powerless?" she asked. "What a load of shit." She had never sworn in front of him before — and in his church — what would he think of that? But she didn't care. She was too angry to care. She kind of liked not caring. It had an odd sense of freedom with it.
"Please," he said. "Please sit down. I'll tell you what I can — what I know" he corrected. "Please, we don't have much time."
She folded her arms and leaned against the door.
"I'm not a hundred percent positive," he started, "but I believe your name is Genevieve."
A sharp chill ran down the length of her.
Genevieve.
It was a little hoity-toity sounding, but it meant nothing to her. It was just a name. "Genevieve what?"
"I don't know. I only heard Genevieve."
"So what makes you think that's my real name?"
"I could be wrong," he switched. "I probably am, in fact. Never mind. It doesn't matter."
"What do you mean it doesn't matter? How could who I am not matter?"
"It doesn't matter who she is. All that matters is that she stays safe and stays alive." He poked the air with his finger, to emphasize the important bits, like she had seen him do during countless sermons. "That's what I was told. That's what I believe."
"Do you believe everything you're told?" she sneered.
"Your life is not a question." His voice cracked but his tone was firm.
She had to remind herself that she wasn't the only one that this was happening to. "I'm sorry," she said, moving to the couch. She quietly waited for him to continue.
"You were — we guessed — a little more than a year old when you came to us. We didn't know your actual age or birthday, so we decided it would be the day you came to us, July twentieth."
He bent down and picked up the papers she had tossed on the floor. "These say March twenty-fifth, but that's not true either."
"How do you know?" she asked.
"It's an invented identity, just like Jenny Taylor," he let out a long slow breath, something between anguish and relief about finally being able to tell her the truth. "It was sent to us when you were about five, except for the driver's license and passport, those were more recent. A bit of a trick too," he mused.
She really didn't care for the reminder that her entire life had been a fraud. "But why?"
"I don't know the why's," he said softly. "Sometimes it's better not to know — safer not to know."
That made no sense to her. How could he be so content with his head in the sand?
"I don't know what's happened," Quincy continued. "I only know that you have to go."
"Go where?"
"I don't know," he shook his head. "It's safer if no one knows. You'll get your flight information when you get to the airport, and someone will meet you."
"Some stranger will meet me you mean." She narrowed her eyes at him. "How do I know if I can trust this stranger?" She leaned forward. "What if it's a trap?" Better safe than sorry. Probably best not to go at all if you asked her. No one was of course.
Quincy rifled around in the shoebox then produced an age worn, greeting card sized envelope. "This contains information about your contact." He passed her the envelope. "It came with you, and it's never been opened. It's information that only they can confirm, so that you'll know it's someone you can trust."
How he was able to link a dusty old envelope with some supposedly secret info in it and trust was beyond her.
"Oh." He rifled through the box again and pulled out a gold key with an odd shaped head and handed this to her as well. "They'll have a key like this one," he continued. "I'm pretty sure it's to a safety deposit box, not sure where or why, but there it is."
Jen-whoever-she-was looked at the small pile forming in her lap: phony identification, a mysterious envelope, and a small gold key. It was all very secret spies, very surreal, very... not like her life had ever been; except for in her nightmares. Relentlessly hunted, always on the run. Maybe different wasn't such a good thing after all. In fact, Jen-whoever was starting to believe that once you were able to really see different for what it was, it sucked.
The rest of the afternoon sped by with her in an overwhelmed haze of confusion. Quincy told her their cover story then gave her some money, she didn't notice how much. Then he watched her empty her purse and wallet and fill it with her new identity.
Nancy returned shortly with a small, packed suitcase for Jen-whoever's trip to wherever and they said their last goodbyes as mother and daughter. Nancy said something like, "Thank you for being a part of my life," or some such nonsense, that did nothing to make Jen-whoever feel better about all of this, and they cried. Then Nancy left in the van to begin the afternoon carpool runs. Life went on... without her.
Then Quincy and Jen-whoever got in Nancy's SUV, and they drove to Pierre. Quincy said his goodbyes in the parking lot of a cheap motel then called a taxi to take her to the airport. He waited down the street until the taxi arrived.
"Airport," she told the driver, handing him a crisp fifty-dollar bill.
Whoever Jenny Taylor had been, whoever she was going to be, was gone. She saw her normal, average ordinary life flash before her eyes, gasp its last boring, and ul
timately, pointless breath and die.
Goodbye Jenny Taylor.
Chapter 3
Fresh. Homemade. Fudge.
Hello Jennifer Anne Hollis, whoever you are.
It wouldn't be her first time on an airplane, but she was far from being a frequent flyer. She handed Jennifer Hollis's identification to the man at the check-in counter.
He typed, carefully eyed the license, then her, and then the license again, then his computer screen, and then he typed some more. "Okay..." he droned in happy polyester tones. "Ms. Hollis? I have you on our 7:15 flight to San Francisco, with a layover in Denver. Is that right?" he smiled his customer service smile at her.
San Francisco. Is that right? None of this was right. "Sure," she droned back at him.
She took her ticket and made her way through security.
Security.
Mike.
Nancy had said that she would tell him the cover story about her leaving to Sioux Falls to stay with her — err Jenny's – aunt Janice, who was supposedly in the hospital with appendicitis or something. She hadn't really been listening. It was their story after all, not hers.
But whatever... she knew Mike. She knew that he would worry about her, that he would try and call her, or email her, or... something; it was just the kind of guy that he was. And when he couldn't contact her then what? He'd probably come looking for her. No. She had to call him. She had to tell him the truth, whatever that was. Okay, maybe not the truth... but she had to tell him something. It was after six, he would be in class by now. She'd have to call later. Like during the layover in Denver.
She made her way to the terminal gate and sat in one of the seats facing the tarmac, placed her luggage in the seat next to her, and waited.
She pulled the aged envelope out of her purse and turned it over in her hand a few times. She stuck her finger under the corner of one flap and tore the edge a bit then she shoved the whole thing back into her purse. She wasn't ready. She was pretty sure she would never be ready, but she had time. Not a lot, but some — at least until she was airborne. Or maybe right before she landed in San Francisco. That sounded better.
Her stomach rumbled. She hadn't eaten since lunch and really didn't have much of an appetite, but somehow, her stomach did. Stupid stomach, didn't it know she was horribly depressed and not in the mood to eat?
The Aeon Star Page 3