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Chapter or Story
Part 17 - Con Spirito
Jarod kicked the door shut behind him and dropped the suitcases on the floor with a groan. "I knew I should have done a pretend as a body-builder." He looked up at his wife with a gleam in his eye. "It would have been the least preparation I needed to carry your bags."
"Aw!" She looked up at him from the top of the stairs, a smile on her face. "Poor baby! How terrible for you? Should I call Sam and ask him to carry them upstairs for you?"
He ran up the stairs and grabbed her from behind. "Not even Sam would be able to pick up those things. What did you pack, bricks?"
She shook her head. "Just clothes."
"I don't know how the Centre has money left after financing your wardrobe."
"Great," she rolled her eyes. "We've been home from the Bahamas for less than an hour and you're complaining already."
"Can I claim it on jet-lag?"
"Nope." She wriggled around so that she was facing him. "You slept for nearly the entire flight."
"In the very haven of comfort."
"On me."
"That's what I said." He leaned down and kissed her gently. "The very haven of comfort."
The new Mrs Ballinger walked in through the doors of her office to find her twin brother spinning happily in her desk chair.
"Angelo!"
"Married."
"Yes, Angelo." She came over to her chair and dropped her bag on the desk before bending down and hugging him. "And very happy."
"And Jarod happy."
"Yes, Angelo. He's happy too."
"And baby."
Maleah Ballinger laughed. "No, Angelo. No babies yet."
The savant shook his head and made her chair spin again. "Baby very happy."
"Sweetheart, do you know where I can find...?" Jarod walked into the office with a folder in his hand.
"Jarod, listen to this." Maleah turned back. "Tell him, Angelo. Say it again."
Instead of speaking, Angelo reached out and took one of each of Jarod and his wife's hands in his own and placed them on her stomach.
"It's not… Is it?" He raised an eyebrow as he looked up at her.
"Well, it certainly couldn't be for lack of trying." She smiled. "If he's right..."
"Do you have any reason to doubt it?" He leaned against the edge of the desk and looked at her. Angelo slipped to the door and, with one last glance, left the office. "Maleah, who is Louise Catherine?"
"What?" She sat down slowly in the chair and looked up at him. "Jarod, what are you talking about?"
"I was awake last night," he smiled. "And you were talking in your sleep. They were the only two words that I could understand. Who is she?"
"Hi baby."
Jarod looked down as his wife muttered the words. Shutting the book, he watched her for a moment before realizing that she was asleep enough for him to try an idea he had thought of that day.
"What's she like, Maleah? Tell me."
His voice was muted, calculated to sooth rather than startle slumber. He saw a brief smile appear on the sleeping woman's face.
"She's got lovely dark hair, like yours. And her eyes - they're like mine. She's tall and slim. And she's clever too."
The smile broadened slightly as Maleah rolled over onto her side with a sigh, her mouth almost touching Jarod's elbow. He gingerly lay down in bed and slipped an arm around her.
"She's going to be perfect, Jarod."
"She's our daughter, Maleah." He whispered the words softly and lovingly into her ear as she snuggled closer to him. "Of course she's going to be perfect."
"There she is, sweetheart." He used his free hand to hold hers as he guided the ultrasound over her stomach.
"Oh, Jarod." The mother fixed her eyes on the small movement on the screen that denoted a heartbeat. "How long?"
"At best estimate," he looked down at the paper on which he'd made several notes as a result of the tests he'd performed. "You're only seven weeks in. Your brother let us in on the secret a long time before we would probably have noticed, unless, of course, your inner sense told us sooner."
"Why," his wife's brow furrowed briefly, "do you think it doesn't seem to work properly?"
"Probably because you haven't learnt how to control it." Jarod smiled. "We should ask Ethan if he knows anything about it. He could have seen what you have in your dreams."
"And when are we going to tell the others?"
"I suggest we wait a little." Jarod's face became serious. "For the next few weeks you're still in the period of highest risk of losing it - although," he spoke, responding to the expression on her face, "I don't think you will. If you had been going to, I don't somehow think you'd know as much about it as you do." He watched as a tear appeared in her eye and began to make its way down her cheek. With a tender hand, he brushed it away. "If we can do anything to keep this baby," he promised softly, "we will."
Maleah Ballinger sat in front of her computer and stared blankly at the screen in front of her, one hand resting gently on her stomach. The security guard, several floors away, was alarmed to notice that the screen on which she could be seen appeared to be covered in static and, turning to alert somebody to the fact, he saw Ethan standing in the doorway.
"Mr Ballinger, sir. I think this..."
"Don't worry about it." Ethan's voice was firm and allowed no argument. "It will pass. Just ignore it."
"Are you...?"
"Ignore it." Ethan spoke firmly as he turned and left the room.
"And how is Louse Catherine?"
Jarod, leaning over Maleah's desk to check some papers, looked up in astonishment, as did his wife.
"Ethan, what...?"
"Oh, don't try to deny it." He shut the door and sat down on a chair opposite the desk. "She told me about it last night."
"I wish she'd tell me about it," Maleah grumbled. "All I get are hints. Even Jarod gets more than I do, just by listening to me talk when I'm asleep."
"I told you, sweetheart," Jarod placed both hands on the back of her neck and rubbed gently. "Just relax and it will work better."
"Dad told me the same thing," she retorted. "His advice hasn't helped either."
"Ethan," Jarod looked across at his brother. "How do you do it? How do you hear the voices and see things?"
"I don't know." Ethan looked frustrated. "I've lived with them for so long and I don't have any idea how it works. I just know that it does."
Maleah looked up at Jarod to find him staring blankly into space. "What?" She twisted around under his hands. "What are you thinking about?"
"I was wondering," Jarod's voice was slightly dreamy, "if our mothers ever talked about it..."
"Mom!"
Jarod poked his head in at the kitchen door and looked around to find his mother sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper. She looked up and jumped to her feet as her son walked in through the door.
"Jarod! Maleah! How wonderful to see you both. I thought," she added teasingly as they all walked through the kitchen and into the living room, "that you would have been too busy at the Centre to bother about me."
"Never!" Jarod kissed her on the cheek. "But we wanted to talk to you."
"Really?" She smiled as she received a similar gesture from her daughter-in-law.
"Yes, Mrs Ballinger."
"Now, Maleah," Margaret began. "Do you know just how confusing that is? It would be far easier if we use first names. After all," she teased in a manner so similar to her son that the younger woman couldn't help laughing. "I have every intention of being around for some time and so, I hope, do you."
"Absolutely." Maleah nodded as she continued to laugh.
"So what was it you wanted to ask?"
"Margaret, what can you tell me about - my mother?"
"Ethan, where were you? I've been looking for you for hours."
"With this place being the size it is," the young man smiled up at his father, "you could have been looking for a lot longer."
"Very funny, son." Major Charles walked into the office and sat down. "Do you know where your brother is?"
"Which one?"
"The one who isn't in school or in bed right now."
"As far as I know, Jarod and his wife went to visit your wife."
Major Charles nodded thoughtfully. "Any idea why?"
Ethan hid a smile. "None that I can tell you. Sorry."
"Secrets in the family?"
"I'm afraid so, Dad. I was sworn to secrecy."
"Hmm," Major Charles looked at him thoughtfully. "Is it good or bad?"
"Oh, good." Ethan rapidly assured his father on this point. "Very good."
"We-ell, okay." Major Charles' answer was hesitant and Ethan rapidly changed the subject.
"Was there something you wanted, Dad?"
"Oh, right." The older man smiled and dropped a piece of paper on the desk. "I want to know everything you can tell me about..."
"Your mother and I met," Margaret smiled faintly at the memory, "when we both attended the same school, many years ago now. It was a Catholic school - quite strict - and it was from here that Catherine was to go into the convent. I have to confess that I never fully believed that she would go through with it. But that's what she believed the voices she heard were instructing her to do."
"Her… voices? You knew about them?"
"Of course." Margaret looked surprised. "When she was having difficulty understanding what they might mean, she would always come to me and we would try to work them out together. The one over which we always had the most puzzlement was one where she seemed to be trapped in a building somewhere, and the image of her own mother would appear, holding out a hand..."
"...on which her ring would sparkle."
Jarod's mother looked up sharply. "You saw it, too."
"Once, yes. It helped save my life."
"It did the same for your mother. There was an accident when construction of some of the sub-levels of the Centre were underway - I had this information in a letter - and Catherine was trapped there before her husband finally freed her. He got to her just before the roof caved in."
"And...when she was pregnant? Did she write to you then?"
Margaret nodded, her face somewhat sad. "I got a letter of mixed emotions from her at that time. She told me what they had done to her, that the children weren't that of her husband, but that he had sanctioned it. But she was so excited at the thought of being a mother, you just can't imagine. She was only seven weeks pregnant when she wrote to me and said that she was going to have both a boy and a girl - the girl would be called Maleah and the boy would be Timothy. When you were born, she wrote to me again, telling me how sad she was that the boy had died and that she had been so sure he would survive. Her own mother had lost a child in pregnancy but she had the same gift - if you want to call it that - that you and Catherine share and the child she had lost had never presented a name for itself. The fact that the boy told Catherine his name meant that, when the doctor said he had died, she found it hard to believe him."
"Did she see anything else?"
"Once," the older Mrs Ballinger smiled, "she saw your father as he was involved in some dangerous work at the Centre. A phone call from her saved his life on that occasion. Otherwise he would probably have been assassinated by one of the other Centre staff members."
Jarod exchanged a look with his wife, but remained silent.
"Margaret, did my mother ever tell you how she got the messages and visions?"
"Of course, Maleah. It was hard for her at the beginning. Like you, she lost her mother very early and she knew nothing of her 'gift', as she called it, until she was into her early teens. We were both fifteen when we met at the school and she, perhaps hearing hints as early signs of that inner sense, was convinced that I would be able to help."
"And could you?"
"I suppose I could. I must have been able to, because her abilities in that area were certainly enhanced by the time she met her husband."
"And what...?"
"You want my help, I suppose." Margaret smiled. "In the same way that your mother did. You even have the same, indirect way of asking for it."
"And will you?" Jarod's wife reached forward and took her mother-in-law's hand, her eyes pleading. "Will you help me?"
"Maleah, I would love to."
"The most important thing is to relax, and Jarod," Margaret glanced over her shoulder to where her son stood, "if you say 'I told you so', I shall personally banish you from my home."
"My lips are sealed," he grinned "I wouldn't miss this for the world."
She smiled warmly at him and then looked back to where his wife lay on the sofa, her eyes closed. "It used to be helpful, in the beginning, for your mother to conjure up an image of her own mother. Once she had a clear picture of her in her mind, Catherine would try to imagine making contact - physical contact - of some kind with her, such as taking her hand or being held in her arms."
Jarod's brow furrowed, his mind going back over his desperate attempts during his time out of the Centre of trying to do the same with the woman who stood in front of him.
"She used to call this step 'grounding.' Your mother found that, when she had managed to obtain contact, it would seem as though her mother was speaking to her. Catherine could see her lips move and, sometimes, hear the voice that she could just recollect. Your mother," Margaret smiled, "did not look the same as her mother, but had the same voice and identical intonation." She paused. "Can you do it, Maleah? Can you see her?"
"Yes." The voice was soft and seemed to come from a great distance. "I can."
The almost ghostly tones made Jarod shiver and he saw his mother glance over at him with a look of concern. He managed to smile at her and she turned back, reaching over only to squeeze his hand gently.
"What do you see now?"
"There's… somebody else. I can see another figure in the background - a young girl. She..."
"Louise." Jarod finally felt himself able to speak. "Is it Louise, Maleah?"
"Yes." His wife's hand crept slowly from her side to rest on her stomach and Margaret turned to her son, her face this time expressing a combination of shock and joy. He nodded, answering the unspoken question he could see in her eyes.
"She's… talking to me. But I can't make out what she's saying."
Jarod stood up, reached out and, prompted by some instinct that he couldn't explain, laid one hand on hers. He could feel tenseness in her hand that relaxed almost as soon as she felt his touch.
"She..." Her voice died away and Jarod looked up at his mother in concern. She smiled and shook her head, approaching so that she could speak into his ear without disturbing his wife.
"No, Jarod. That's the way it's meant to be. She hears the voices, the words and responds to them in the same way. But you're helping." Margaret, too, placed her hand on that of her son and daughter-in-law. "You're helping her just by being there." Gently she kissed him and then got up and walked into the kitchen.
"Sydney?"
The psychiatrist looked up with a smile. "Hello, Steven. How was school?"
"Weird." The boy flung himself into a chair and it creaked in protest.
"How so?"
"It's just…everything's so easy! Even in the really high classes, it's still so easy for me."
"Are you surprised by that?"
The boy shrugged. "I don't know. I guess so. I mean I hadn't realized that they could be so…dumb!"
"Steven," Sydney folded his hands in front of him, "the main reason that we wanted you to go to school in the first place was for social contact."
"But..."
"Wait. Please. Your father, mother and brother felt, and I agree, that you need more contact than you can get with people here at the Centre."
"But I could get that without having to go to school!"
"Oh, really?" Sydney sat back in his chair. "How?"
"There's heaps of sports and stuff that people do after school and on weekends. I could do that kind of thing."
"And when would you learn?"
The boy looked up at him for a few seconds and Sydney believed he could guess what was coming. "You could teach me."
"Could I?" Sydney smiled, the words more of a statement than a question.
"Well, why not? You taught Jarod."
"I 'taught', if you want to use that phrase, him to use his abilities in certain specific areas. We never ventured into such subjects as science or languages."
"So how did he learn them?"
"Knowing your brother," Sydney smiled, "he probably read about them in books."
"Maleah?"
She opened her eyes and looked up at him, the hint of a smile on her otherwise serious face. Gently he reached forward and brushed the hair out of her eyes.
"Are you okay?"
He smiled. "I should be asking you that."
"I can do it, Jarod." Her face now bore an expression of near-amazement. "I can really hear her."
"I knew you could, sweetheart." He bent down and kissed her gently. "I always knew you could."
She rolled over so that she was lying on her side and he got up from the chair and knelt in front of her. Maleah reached out and took his hand, gently guiding it to her mouth and kissing the palm. He gently stroked her cheek with his thumb and then moved in closer, kissing her gently on the mouth.
"Do you want to stay here, or...?"
She nodded. "For the moment. Maybe your mother can..."
Jarod gently released himself from her hold. "I still have some things to do at the Centre. I'll come back when I'm done there and then we can go home, okay?"
She smiled at him once before rolling onto her back again with a sigh and closing her eyes.
"Son, your mother just called."
Jarod looked up in alarm. "Is Maleah alright?"
Major Charles smiled. "She's fine. Margaret just wanted to know if she and you wanted to stay for dinner."
"A family dinner?" The Pretender smiled. "How could I refuse? Is it just us, or...?"
"Sydney and Angelo are also invited."
"Sounds great. When?"
"Seven?"
"I'll be there."
He watched with a smile as his father left the office before looking back down at a piece of paper on which he had been making notes. For some thirty minutes he frowned over it, scribbling and crossing out things until, finally, he slipped it into a folder and emptied a glass of Dr Pepper that sat on his desk. Picking up a bundle of papers, of which the folder was on top, he left his office.
"Any luck, Syd?"
The psychiatrist stared blankly at the screen in front of him and then shook his head. "None so far." He looked up. "It's so frustrating."
"You're telling me." Jarod dropped the bundle on the desk. "This is everything I could find about the treatments that Raines gave him. It's not much, but it's all there was. He obviously decided, for his own safety, not to write much."
"It would make our job a lot easier if he had."
Jarod nodded in agreement and Sydney glanced up at him. "You managed to work something out last time..."
"I know." The Pretender sighed. "But I've spent the last two weeks thinking about what I did then..."
"The last two weeks?" Sydney raised his eyebrows. "Great honeymoon company you must have been!"
"Well, I thought about it whenever I wasn't thinking about her..."
"So you didn't think about it at all..."
"Sydney, please!" Jarod tried to hide the smile on his face. "I spent some time thinking about it, but not as much as I otherwise would, okay?"
"Yes," Sydney smiled. "I can believe that." He paused. "So what did you come up with?"
"At first, not much." He pulled a sheet of paper out of the top folder and unfolded it, turning it so that Sydney could see. "This is what I did last time - and as much of the results as I could tell at the time. You might recall," he smiled slightly, "that I only saw the end result."
"And I only saw the beginning," the psychiatrist replied. "So together we should be able to manage well."
"So I worked through what I did - and I think I might have found a small loophole that could allow us, if we adapt the treatment slightly, to again achieve some of what we did last time."
"Some?"
"I don't know," Jarod ran a hand through his hair, "how much of an impact it will have, if any. I sometimes feel that maybe I'm a little too involved. I'm going to talk to Steve about it tomorrow." Jarod got up.
"Where are you going?"
"To make a start on it."
"Have you forgotten," Sydney, with a small smile, glanced at his watch, "that we have a dinner date tonight?"
Jarod clapped a hand to his forehead. "If I'd forgotten..."
"...you would have been a very unpopular husband and son." With a wide grin, Sydney stood up and grabbed his jacket, placing one hand on Jarod's arm and steering him out of the office. "Now let's go before you get distracted by something else."
