Never Too Late (Resetter Series Book 1)

by Brenda Barrett

  She knew more about paternity testing than she should because of that situation. Ellie had Type B blood and Josh had type O blood and poor anemic Nelson had type AB blood.

  The doctor had taken Josh aside and asked him if he knew who Nelson's biological father was because the situation was urgent.

  She would never forget Josh's face when he came home that night. It was a few months before they left for the States. It had been a summer then too. Shattered was the word to describe her brother.

  Addi tuned in to the conversation going on around her. Josh didn't look shattered now. He was laughing and happy and completely relaxed, unaware of what was coming to him.

  Addi lost her appetite though the fry chicken was some of the best her mother had done.

  She glanced between him and Ellie. She felt like blurting out, "I know your blood type Ellie Dunn. It is B. My brother's is O, so while you are cheating on him, just remember that your kid's blood type might not be compatible with his."

  She kept her mouth shut though and forced herself to eat.

  Randy was looking at her puzzled when he saw her intense regard of Josh and Ellie. She tried to ignore him. But every time she moved her head in his direction she felt his stare.

  She wasn't surprised to hear him volunteer to help her wash up.

  "What's the matter, Witch?" He asked her while she silently filled the sink with water and dunked the plates in the water.

  "Nothing." She bit her lip. "You wouldn't understand."

  "Try me." Randy offered.

  "You like Ellie?" Addi asked the question not sure where the question came from. It was probably lurking somewhere in her subconscious. She had wondered at least once sometime in the other timeline.

  "She is nice." Randy shrugged. "Pretty. Why?"

  "You wouldn't sleep with her would you?" Addi asked suspiciously.

  "No." Randy squinted at her. "Are you saying that I slept with my best friend's girl in the future?"

  "No. I don't know," Addi mumbled, really sorry that she had brought it up now. "It's just that in the future. She did sleep with someone and had his kid. It would be nice to know who. She never told Josh who it was. I think she was protecting that person. If you were the one who slept with her, don't, okay?"

  Randy nodded solemnly. "Okay. But I have a pretty good moral compass and I am not even remotely attracted to her."

  Addi grunted. She didn't want to mention anything about his moral compass.

  Chapter Ten

  The next week was full of changes from what she know would happen in the original timeline. For one, Josh spent much more time with her this time. He volunteered to help her paint her room. On Monday he actually got her out of bed in the early morning. He came with sanding equipment and plastic to cover her furniture and helped her prep her walls for painting.

  She mislaid Monica's grandmother's books under the plastic coverings and got distracted sorting through old family albums when she had all intention of reading up about resetters.

  But the family album was quite an adventure in itself. She hadn't seen the albums in years. A few of the pictures were yellowed with age. She pulled out a picture of her and Sky when they were toddlers. They were sitting on the lap of Sky's mother. Aunt Ivy had her hair in a very high afro. She looked so much like a young Diana Ross. Especially around the eyes.

  When she got bored of inspecting old photos, she went to see Sky. Surely Sky would have come around by now, but Sky had pointedly and spectacularly abandoned her.

  "She is gone to Colleen's place to baby sit for a few days," Aunt Ivy said when Addi walked over to her house at midday.

  "But she didn't tell me she was going by her." Addi frowned. Colleen was Ivy's youngest sister, she lived in the same neighborhood, just several chains up the road from them.

  Ivy shrugged. "She said she wanted a change of environment and I agreed. She's been walking around here like a mad person for the past couple of days. I don't know what to do with Sky when she is bored and acting tetchy."

  "She could have told me," Addi said sprawling out on the living room couch—a more sophisticated couch than theirs. Everything in Uncle Stan's and Aunt Ivy's place looked better than theirs.

  The house layout was the same but that was where the similarities ended. Stan had put in crown molding in the ceilings. He had changed from terrazo that were popular in the eighties when they built the house to ceramic tiles.

  It was much easier to clean.

  Aunt Ivy was a decorating genius that was way ahead of her time.

  While Vicky had fake flowers, figurines and crochet pieces, Ivy believed in clean lines and earth tone colors and real indoor potted plants in giant vases. The living room wouldn't look out of place in a luxurious mansion.

  Addi had hardly come over to her Uncle's house because she hadn't wanted to break anything or sully the pristine floors. At her house she could do anything, but over here she had to watch herself.

  "Would you like some cake, Addi? You can take it over…share it for supper." Aunt Ivy said, "I have a whole pineapple upside down cake…made it today at school."

  Addi nodded eagerly. "Thanks, Aunt Ivy."

  She had forgotten that one perk of having her aunt as principal at a culinary school. The same school that Ellie was attending. Something she hadn't even taken note of before.

  She pointed out this new information to Ivy who nodded.

  "I know Ellie, she has a talent for cooking. She is one of the brightest in the department."

  "Josh is in love with her," Addi mentioned slyly wanting to hear her aunt's take on Ellie.

  "Is that so?" Ivy raised one finely arched eyebrow in the air. "Well, he is a guy, and she's a pretty girl with very obvious feminine assets. I'd dare say quite a few gentlemen are attracted to her."

  Ivy sat across from Addi and twisted her lips distastefully. "As a cook, there is no doubt that Ellie is quite good at what she does but as a person, I am afraid to say she is little better than a..."

  Her voice faded away. She wanted to say more but thought better of it. She used a classical misdirection method and fastened her gaze on Addi.

  "How is it going with you, Addison? Everything okay?"

  Addi sighed. Ivy wasn't going to make whatever it was that was disagreeable about Ellie, slip. If there was something to know about Ellie she wanted to know now. It was crucial that she knew.

  "What did Sky tell you?" She would humor her aunt for a while but the subject of Ellie was too important to ignore.

  "Nothing. Well, she let it slip that you were acting weird."

  "She is the one acting weird." Addi smoothed the settee beside her and avoided her aunt's sharp gaze.

  Aunt Ivy had the eyes of a laser. She was what people would call a handsome woman. She wasn't exactly pretty but she was interesting to look at. She dressed really well and lavishly. And she always wore her pearls. The colors would change according to the outfit but she was a pearl wearer and a tea drinker, who put the prim in prim and proper.

  Maybe it was her English upbringing. Addi thought ruefully. Ivy was a mixed raced woman with a white father and a black mother. She had spent half of her life, up to high school, in England.

  She still had the accent. And she pronounced her words with exact precision. There was no shortening of names for her. Sky used to tease her that she sounded just like Geoffrey, the butler, from Fresh Prince of Belair. And Aunt Ivy had despaired that her only child sounded a little better than a gangster's moll.

  "Well, I won't interfere in your little tiff with Skyler" Ivy finally said after a mounting silence.

  It was a wonderful tactic to get confessions or to get people to talk; most people didn't like the silence and needed to fill the space. It was a basic counseling tactic. Addi looked at her aunt and wondered how long she had been using these tactics on them.

  She almost laughed. She had done a course in counseling where she learnt the technique.

  "Tell me about Ellie." She brought the conve
rsation back to Ellie Dunn. Right where it should be in the first place. If she had any hope of resetting her brother's future she needed to hear anything and everything about Ellie.

  It was Ivy's time to avoid her gaze. "I do not know anything much about her... As a principal you hear things..."

  "Like what?" Addi leaned forward.

  "Like the fact that Ellie is... er... how should I put this, not in the best of positions at this time. Her parents are abroad. They left the children out here with family."

  "I know," Addi nodded. "Yesterday we picked up her brother from his family members in Black River. He is spending the summer with Ellie and other family members up here."

  "Her uncle and his wife do not have the best reputation as being charitable." Ivy sniffed. "I hear that she may be supplementing her income from other sources a part from her part time job with her tight fisted uncle."

  "I picked that up from yesterday—that he was not very kind." Addi nodded. "But how is she supplementing her income?"

  Ivy sighed and looked down at her hands. "It's not important. What I hear is just rumors. At least, I really hope so."

  She looked up at Addi. "I heard that Ellie's uncle loves young girls a bit too much, one teacher is worried that he may like his own niece in a not so familial way."

  "What?" Addi widened her eyes.

  "I know." Ivy sighed. "I don't want to believe it."

  "But if it is true, Ellie is in danger from her own uncle."

  "She may be." Ivy smoothed down her skirt. "She's a nineteen year old. She can take care of herself. She is a very street-wise, survival savvy girl. I wouldn't shed any tears over her."

  "But Aunt Ivy," Addi was shocked. "You can't just leave it like that."

  "I can," Ivy said firmly. "I hear these stories everyday, what am I to do about them. I didn't even hear this directly, another teacher told me."

  Addi sunk back down in her chair. She had never known any of this about Ellie before and probably wouldn't have known if she hadn't come looking for Sky or got Aunt Ivy talking.

  "I'll go and get you that cake." Ivy got up. "You liked the raspberry biscuits your grandmother sent from New York?"

  "Yes," Addi said automatically, "they were okay."

  "Well, I still have them." Ivy walked to the kitchen, "Skyler and Stanley hate them. You know I don't eat sugar."

  She packed up Addi with a whole stack of treats. It was only when she was heading back to her house that she realized that Ivy had done it again. Misdirected her with the news of Ellie's uncle so that she didn't have to answer the question about how she thougth Ellie was supplementing her income.

  Her aunt was good, a master of misdirection. The uncle news was worrying though. Had Ellie been a victim of rape?

  When she went over to her house and was packing out the goodies, Randall came into the kitchen.

  "Is there a supermarket nearby?"

  "No. Just my Aunt Ivy's bakings. Sky abandoned me quite unceremoniously and Aunt Ivy doesn't have anybody else to dump her goodies on."

  "Ah," Randy licked his lips when she put down the glistening pineapple cake on the counter. "Can I get a piece of that?"

  "Yes. Sure. Take what you what." Addi stood and watched him as he cut a piece of the cake and then devoured it like he was hungry.

  "So what's new with you?" He asked her with a grin.

  "Nothing." Addi shrugged. "I just learned something that I didn't know in the other time."

  Randy frowned. "What?"

  "Well, before this Josh and Ellie got married because she was pregnant. The child turned out not to belong to Josh."

  Randy folded his arms. "Good grief. Was that why you were cautioning me not to have sex with Ellie?"

  "Yes." Addi nodded.

  "I am still pissed that you think I might deal with Josh's girl. And now you are saying that I might be this not yet conceived child's real father."

  "Well, I have to look at everybody!" Addi sighed. "I can't have this happening again. It nearly destroyed Josh. He had applied for a scholarship earlier this year and in October he heard back from MIT. He got in."

  "I know about the scholarship. He said if he applied he wasn't going to tell anyone. He'd just do it and hope for the best," Randy said it slowly.

  "Well he got it, a full scholarship. He was supposed to start in January but Ellie was sick, and Josh chose to stay behind to support her. He married her in early December and gave up his shot at doing something that he had always wanted for a woman who quite possibly was stepping out on him at the same time she was with him."

  Randy wasn't even nodding he was looking at her without moving.

  "Addi..."

  "Don't tell me that you don't believe me and that time traveling isn't possible and that I am making up things. Just tell me, how are we going to find out who Ellie was having sex with, because that is what started the whole madness with Josh. She deliberately slept with him this summer so that he could marry her and she could give that kid to him!"

  Randy closed his eyes and then opened them. That was his only movement.

  "Nelson was born the first week of April 93. April 6th to be exact. If my calculations are right, Addi rubbed her hand over her face, the great conception will take place in late July, early August."

  "I remember Josh sneaking Ellie to sleep in before this in mid-August. We have just a few weeks to stop this, maybe days. Who knows who Ellie is sleeping with now, it could be anybody!"

  Randy sighed. "I met you a week ago. You refuse to shake my hand because you want nothing to do with me because of a supposed affair we had in another life."

  "Timeline," Addi muttered. "I prefer timeline. Another life sounds too reincarnation like."

  Randy chuckled deeply. "Addi, you are incorrigible. You are so...so...unique."

  Addi rolled her eyes and walked away. "Okay then, I think I am going to have to go this alone."

  "Wait." Randy grabbed her hand and pulled her back.

  She looked at where his hand rested on her arm. He didn't pull it away he drew her closer.

  "Listen to me," he whispered fiercely, his dark eyes alight with fervor. "You are crazy, and fifteen. And my best friend's kid sister and I can't believe I am so..."

  He let her go. "Addi, Addi, Addi. I can't be attracted to a fifteen year old girl. A crazy fifteen year old girl. You are just a child now but I can tell you are going to be one spectacular woman when you get older."

  Addi grinned. "I am a child now but I have a forty year old mind."

  Randy groaned and moved away from the counter. "Which would make me the younger man?"

  Addi chuckled. "Yes, I am a cougar."

  "A what?" He raised his eyebrows.

  "Twenty first century term." Addi shrugged. "Older women dating younger men. There is a proliferation of that in the twenty first century."

  "Oh." Randy inhaled. "I have to go back to the office. I have a batch of invoices to sort out."

  "Wait," Addi clasped her hands beseechingly. "When you find out that Bill Clinton's vice presidential candidate is Al Gore will you at least help me to save Ellie from her uncle? And in turn save Josh from their marriage?"

  Randy inhaled. "I don't know."

  "There is no way I should know that," Addi said pleadingly. "It's not something that a teenage girl sitting in Jamaica could know. I have no inside links to Washington, unless of course I heard it before."

  Randy grunted.

  "Oh I know." Addi hit her head, "Can't believe I forgot this. Today is July 6th. July 6 is the day when my cousin Hilda gives birth to twins at Mandeville Hospital. Hilda is my mom's niece from her brother. Hilda will give birth today to a girl and a boy.

  "But she will have complications and fall into a coma. My aunt and uncle will stop by at around seven o'clock this evening. My uncle, will come by asking for prayers and my dad and mom will have all of us gathering in a circle and praying like crazy that Hilda doesn't die. That she wakes up from her coma."

  Randy raised
an eyebrow.

  "She won't die," Addi said. "She woke up the next day and was discharged from hospital a week later. She went on to have two more children. I actually went to Nicky's wedding in 2016. She is the girl who is going to be born today. They named her Nicole and the son William."

  Randy nodded. "Well then..."

  "Well then you'll believe me?" Addi asked earnestly.

  "I don't know. Maybe," Randy said reluctantly. "If any of this happens tonight. You'll have to tell me how what you are telling me is even possible."

  He left the kitchen.

  Addi breathed a sigh of relief. He was almost there. She jumped around the kitchen like the fifteen year old she was supposed to be. Seven o'clock tonight could not come soon enough for her. And then she would have to sort out how they were going to track Ellie Dunn's movements.

  Chapter Eleven

  Addi volunteered to cook dinner. She needed something to occupy her until the evening—just one week back in the past she was not so enthusiastic about her mother's cooking anymore.

  The first night back she had struggled with the cabbage, the second night had been corned beef, the third night ground beef and macaroni, and then there had been one dish after another that she didn't want to revisit. Weekday meals had never showcased her mother's strongest cooking skills.

  Besides, her palette had changed. Her mother had gotten much better at cooking than she was now. They had even taken a course together in early 2010 when her mother had decided to retire and wanted something to do.

  She decided to do sweet and sour chicken, it was the one dish she was always complimented on in the future and she could do it with her eyes closed. In the middle of her preparations, her mother came into the kitchen a puzzled frown on her face.

  "When did you learn how to cook this?" She opened pots sniffed each one and looked at her daughter. "You've been spending time with Ivy?"

  "No, Mom. I was reading a cookbook, seemed easy enough."

  Her mother nodded and sat in a chair looking off into space.

  "You look worried," Addi said gently.