All That Blooms in Spring Ch. 03-04

"Sorry, Jackie," I yelled, "sounds like a Hollywood script to me. Do better."

"It's true!" she cried out. "They told us we all had to play our part. All except Amber, who was still recovering from her breakdown and some sort of acute anxiety. Make you believe you had just woken up from the original accident. If we couldn't convince you, they told me I had to do whatever it took to get you back in the fold, including threatening divorce. They even promised some college fund for our first-born child.

"What really happened to Amber?" I asked a little more calmly. "Why the mental breakdown, so kind of remorse?"

"No." Jackie replied as sadly as I'd ever heard her speak. "She liked you. Her parents were so upset, they verbally abused her about what happened to you. They didn't know why you wandered off, or what we'd all planned. But she knew. She liked you - a lot - and thought she was at least partially responsible for killing you."

"When Amber broke down," she continued, clearly trying to cleanse her conscience, "I spent as much time with her as her doctors allowed. She believed us all to be horrible. She said we all caused you to commit suicide. When I returned to see her, after you were found, she gave me a dire warning. She said the feds were only trying to get your story out of the press or they would have made a bigger deal of it. She didn't think they were going to give us any money. They just wanted you home, and then if we eventually split, and it came back around, they'd just put a different spin on things. Make me look like a slut, and you as a jilted loser with a thinking problem.

"The more I thought about what Amber said," she said with her voice getting stronger. "The more I was convinced she was right. You and I were finished. The rest was all about the government and your doctor friend. We were all collateral damage."

"And this shit?" I snorted. "Then why pretend you want us back to normal so bad if you're still planning on going behind my back? Why not just move on if you concluded we were done?"

"I don't know," Jackie said softly. "I was angry you left that night and spoiled our fun. Angry the next morning, thinking you'd just run off in a little snit, and left me. Angry you were missing. Angrier still when they announced you'd probably died, and strangely, that anger was still directed at you. I was angry when I learned you were shacking up with your doctor friend, and even angrier that you were coming home, and I'd have to play nursemaid and keep pretending that I was the loving wife."

"Wow!" I cynically laughed, "you really are a shitty partner. Did I ever do anything in our relationship that made you happy?"

"Yeah, plenty," she said with a sigh, and sitting a straighter in the chair. But the truth is I've figured out during this ordeal that I'm not ready to be married. I realize now, I wasn't way back then, either. Your disappearance forced me to take a hard look in the mirror. Even the... concept of it doesn't suit me. Once I found out about our friends swapping, just the thought of it made me yearn for freedom. Not from you, necessarily, just from those damned vows. If you'd have gone along we could have had some fun, until we'd both decided to move on. Obviously, that didn't happen so once you were completely well, I was going for a divorce. You and I want different things from life, Pete."

I just snorted in her direction and shook my head. What an incredible mistake I'd made.

"This," she said, motioning with her chin towards her friends, "is because I need it, and because you weren't going to ever come back to our bed. I think, subconsciously, Amber ended up paired with you, because the two of you are most alike. I think, deep down, I thought if you and she hit it off, then it might go easier on you when we split. Jeff is Jeff. He just left after her breakdown, moved back east and filed for divorce. I'm sorry my greed and selfishness caused everyone so many problems."

"Great," I replied bitterly. "Except you aren't. Not really. Where is she? Where's Ann? Why did Dalton send me a fake email and try to get me to meet him?"

"I... we don't know," Jackie answered, looking at the others. "He's only contacted me once to see how things were improving, and that was weeks ago. I was surprised, but Agent Rivers did show me compassion, whereas the other agents were just mean and threatening."

"Okay then, tell me where his office is," I said, losing steam. "Where did you meet him?"

Jackie told me where to find his card in her purse. I told her I already had everything from the house I wanted and she could do with it whatever she chose. I explained what money I'd taken from our joint accounts. She didn't argue about any of it. I walked over to Todd and leaned in close to his face.

"You, motherfucker," I spat with venom, "I better not ever see you again. You want to get even, approach me from behind, and do your thing. But I strongly advise against it. I'm gonna hold on to my rage, and you're lucky I didn't do any of the things tonight that I'd planned to do."

Todd had enough sense not to respond. I walked back to my wife and kissed her forehead.

"Once I'm settled, you'll get some papers." I spoke to her calmly now. I was done. "Don't bother me on my cell unless it's an emergency. I don't want to hear anything from you, period. You deserve whatever life throws at you, as far as I'm concerned. You try to cause me trouble, and I'll make you look like a fool on social media and with your family. Consider yourself lucky that my parents taught me not to hit a woman, or you'd be beaten and bloodied on our floor by now."

To Alise, I said nothing. I grabbed my backpack, and my gun case, holster and clip from my room. When I came back out, the three were looking haggard and defeated. I went to the fridge and grabbed a few beers. Then I loosened the nylon ropes securing Alise' hands. As I walked past my former wife, I said, "I recommend not getting involved with any guys for a while, you fucking heartbreaker. Now I'm going to show you my back, although I doubt it will have the same impact."

I had already signed one of those online leases for a new place to live. One of my coworkers needed a roommate to cover expenses at his overpriced condo, and I needed a roof and some privacy. He'd posted about it to the bulletin board at work, so there would be a trail. That didn't matter to me. It'd be a dead end.

Tracking Dalton Rivers down wasn't much of a chore. I drove to San Francisco and sat parked across the street from the FBI field office, in the parking lot of an automotive parts manufacturing plant. The first day I saw his car, and took his license plate - government-issue, of course.

On the third day, I followed him at some distance. He lived in a swanky condo across the Golden Gate Bridge in Sausalito. I took the better part of another week off work, claiming some problems with headaches and blurred vision. There was a parking structure across the main drag, which gave me an unobscured view of his enclosed garage. I made notes of all his movements.

He was definitely a man of habit, but it came across as discipline, not as autopilot. He was, I suspected, probably a very good agent. I never saw anyone else coming or going, so I guessed he lived alone. Dalton always opened the garage from inside his vehicle - except on Wednesday. That was trash collection day, and he had four different colored bins to place out front. That was my in. What I was planning to do was silly. It was dangerous and asinine. It was also a federal offense, and came with a hefty prison sentence. I checked. I also didn't care. I had to find her.

The following Monday, I took a leave of absence, citing personal and medical problems. My 401K, which was now down to about nineteen, I left, but took a second loan down to the max of fifty percent value. I took that and what I'd taken from my and Jackie's checking and savings, and moved it into an Alaskan credit union online. I kept three grand in cash, and told them I'd later set up an ATM card, when I knew my new address. It wouldn't last long - maybe half of a year. I'd prepaid my roommate, and told him I'd be back at some point. I wasn't sure if that was true, but I did expect to return if I couldn't find my doctor Angel.

There were two backpacks, and then two suitcases in the trunk with all my clothes. That was my life. I took my reconfigured laptop, plus the new one that Jackie - and, I presumed, Agent Rivers - had given me, but only after I removed all of the tracking software they'd laden it with.

Dalton, as I'd previously observed, was out of his garage, dragging a trash receptacle at seven-fifteen in the morning. I simply came around the corner unit and stepped quickly into the early morning shadows on the driver's side of his car. He was a lot better than I'd given him credit for. As he stepped in to grab the third can, he turned slowly towards where I was ducking down and stopped, as if on instinct alone.

I stood, knowing he'd had a sense someone was with him in the room, and made sure he saw my weapon.

"Put that away, before somebody gets hurt," he chuckled. " I've been expecting you."

"Where is she?" I commanded. "Why did you send me that email?"

Dalton put his hands up, but he was mocking me. "Come on inside," he said, motioning towards the door. "We've got plenty to discuss. But don't point that at me. That would be unwise."

He carefully side-stepped me, and then he opened the door and purposefully walked in first. I followed, still very apprehensive, but also curious. Things weren't going to plan, but he'd dangled the right bait. Rivers offered me a seat in his kitchen, and I took up a chair farthest from where he stood. Then he offered me some coffee.

"I'm sorry about what happened at Tioga Gas Mart," he said sincerely. "That wasn't intended, and it certainly threw a damned monkey wrench into the situation."

I didn't answer; rather, I just stared at him.

"Where. Is. She?" I asked with emphasis.

"I'll get to that, son," he replied, turning his back on me and pouring two cups of coffee, making sure I could see his hands. "Cream and sugar?"

I nodded. He sat down and slid the cup across the table. He was certainly much calmer than me.

"Didn't you ever wonder why Ann didn't report your accident?" he asked.

"Of course," I answered, trying not to let my agitation get the better of me. "I thought of almost nothing else those first few days, after I woke up. You're going to tell me, are you? I hope for your sake it's the truth. Obviously, I've already crossed a line, and I'm a desperate man with little to lose."

"Oh, I doubt that," he said, laughing at me. "What I think is that you're a man who's infatuated - maybe even in love - and, if truly desperate, then mostly desperate to prove he hasn't lost his mind. You're here, so I can tell you unequivocally that, you can check that one off your list."

"Why did you want to meet me?" I tried to maintain the upper hand, but I knew I was failing. He knew it too. He was the bigger bear.

"I wanted to set some things straight," he pronounced. "We know every single thing about Dr. Ann Pierce, and likewise, we know everything about Raphael Moreno. We pinged and captured an IP address within a few miles of his residence outside of Barcelona, and I pretended to be him. Would you have even shown up, if you'd known it was me that wanted to meet instead of Ann's ex-husband?"

I shook my head. Agent Rivers motioned slightly with his head towards my gun. As he did so, he slowly removed his own from its holster with just his thumb and forefinger, placing it on the table. I reluctantly set mine down and slid it towards the center. I'd never released the safety.

"Thought not," he confirmed. "Peter, I've been with the FBI for almost twenty years. In some jobs, that's not exactly a long time, but believe me, in the agency it's almost too long. I've been in semi-retirement for four years. That's the governments' way of sun-setting people who work at three-letter agencies. When I was transferred to the Bay Area, I was looking forward to a lot of fly fishing and a six-figure retirement package."

"And that has what to do with Ann?" I asked.

I'm getting there," he said, waving me off. "About four months after Ann Pierce moved to the California mountains, she also joined the California State Militia. Because of her parents' involvement, she was red-flagged as a person of interest."

"Like a terrorist?" I looked at him like he was nuts.

"Not necessarily," he replied, "just as someone who needed to be watched. And I did that periodically, up until your accident. The fact that no one could find a trace of you - alive or dead - got me wondering about her..." He paused, clearly trying to decide how much he was going to share with me.

"Listen Peter, here's the short version: the line between healthy federalism and Confederacy bullshit is pretty blurry, and always has been. It was a cold war by design, and cold wars involve nonstop espionage. Staties watch us, we watch them, and most of the time nothing of any consequence happens. So the theory goes, nothing much of any consequence happens because everybody's watching everybody else, and so we take it seriously.

"Okay," I said, trying to wrap myself around his words. "And you think Ann is one of those people?"

"No, not anymore. I was actually just about to clear her, and then you took your tumble. Suddenly, she's covering her tracks - your tracks, too - like an expert, and doing life-saving surgery with an ice cream scoop. Then she's keeping her patient hidden away from the rest of the world. All of that made her very interesting, and not in a good way. Also, not for nothing, but if things had taken a Misery turn, you'd probably be singing a pretty different tune about my interference."

"She saved my life," I said, getting emotional. "At home, I had a woman I thought was perfect. She turned out to be someone I barely knew. Conniving, selfish, and untrustworthy, is what she turned out to be. Now, I'll be dumping her, and will be forced to give her half my stuff. Somebody should be doing something about people like her, instead of Ann."

"Shit, Peter," Rivers said, chuckling hard. "That's just a part of life. Nobody ever said it was supposed to be fair. Most of us in a first marriage learn things about our partners that we likely never wanted to know. If it's any consolation, Ann had to go through the same with her ex-husband - the infidelity part - almost from day one of their marriage, from what I've read in her file. She'll be a lot more receptive to a man with morals."

"I don't know where to find her," I said dejectedly. "I've exhausted all the places and ways I know to look."

Dalton stood and walked down the hallway into the back of his condo. He returned moments later and placed a handwritten piece of paper on the table in front of me.

"That's where she is," he stated with an emerging smile. "After everything that's happened to you, I would be very disappointed if you didn't take full advantage of this opportunity."

"One last question," I started to ask, as I stood. "Why the theatrics and bravado at the hospital? You had to know I'd never believe that my time with Ann was some made-up dream. And how did you even pull that off, anyway?"

"Sorry, no can do," he said with authority. "I just gave you what you really wanted. The rest, you'll never get an answer to. But I'll leave you with this: we do the same thing to millions of people every single day who own a TV or smart device. The only difference is that you took your tumble and ended up neck-deep for a hot minute. Call it the unofficial policy of the federal government to give bystanders the option of going back to their old lives whenever possible.

Again, all the bystanders whose marriages were mostly fine would sing a different tune about what I pulled - well, the ones who figured any of it out at all. You know, like that guy in that movie: the blue goo that tastes like steak. Most people just want the steak back. You? You want your blue goo to taste like something different from now on, and you're willing to do what it takes to make it happen. Good for you."

"Incidentally," he told my back as I left, "Ann is your freebie. You can tell her about this little meeting. No one else. Not ever. At least we know she can keep a secret."

I left him chuckling at his own wit.

"Oh my god! Peter!" Ann Pierce shouted exuberantly. "What are you doing here?" She looked as much the angel as I'd remembered. Her hair was shorter, but the way it framed her face only added to her beauty. She threw her strong arms around me and squeezed tightly. I took in - no, I absorbed her touch and her smell, savoring how the memory and the reality overlapped. Finally, she lessened her grip, and stared into my face, waiting.

"I needed to see you, Ann," I announced. "I need to know if what we had was real. I think... I am... in love with you." Her smile disappeared as her face fell. My momentary concern gave way to jubilation as she leaned in to kiss me - not passionately, but desperately.

"Oh, Peter," she gasp-whispered as her lips attacked mine. But as suddenly as she'd come into the embrace, she backed away, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. The expression I saw was forlorn. It was hesitant and doubtful. Something had triggered another emotion.

"You don't feel the same," I told her, not really believing it. "I can see that. I had to know for sure."

She seemed shocked. That was not a good look for the overly-confident Ann Pierce. "I didn't say that." She replied, insistently. "There's just so much you don't know, that you don't understand about me. I'm afraid."

"Tell me then," I said, reaching for her hand.

We sat down in her small living room. She was anxious to get to it, not even offering a beverage.

"I do have feelings for you," she began, "strong feelings. The things you don't know about me - they could cause real problems for us."

"Is this about the militia," I interjected, "or Raphael? Or both?"

"It's not about Ralph," she replied quickly. "How did you know his actual name? Anyway, I told you everything about him honesty, in regard to being my former husband."

"I've been looking for you ever since the hospital," I said. "I knew you were forced to play games with me. Maybe 'coerced' is a better word. You weren't easy to find Ann. If it wasn't for Agent Rivers, I'd probably still be looking."

"I know," she responded, already sounding exhausted, "and that's what we need to talk about. Let's get something to drink and I'll tell you everything. I have to if we're going to have a chance."

First, she wanted to know about Dalton Rivers, so I rehashed my conversation with him. She seemed a little relieved that she wouldn't have to start at the very beginning. Her parents were members of the Texas State Militia, and the State Militia of Idaho.

"There are hours and hours of conversation about that, but you need to know that I'm also a member. I'm worried about that, as far as we're concerned."

"You could give me a little credit, Ann," I said with emphasis. I needed her to understand. "I think we got at least to that point of trust at the cabin. I've risked a lot to be here right now. My life looked pretty damned rosy, and then it all fell to shit in one night. That didn't stop me from falling hard for you, pun intended." That earned me a smile and then a laugh - God, how I'd missed that. "I'm following my heart, not my mind, because my mind says I should go stick my head in the sand and figure some things out. Tell me why you're so worried."

"Okay, that's fair," she answered. "I also get your hesitation. But I'm talking about something else too. I'm asking you not to judge, so it would be hypocritical for me to do so. Yes, you're young. Yes, we just met under weird circumstances, and yes, I have strong feelings for you too. But you work in Silicon Valley, for fuck's sake. We're from two different worlds."