carl@fire

"Okay, just give a call if you ladies need anything else," Becca said with a smile.

"Thanks, Aunt Becca!" Bobby called, already leaning back on her comfy-looking floor cushion with the telltale relaxation that was common to anyone about to log in to New Era. Her two friends, Jen and Monica, were already zonked out, with one laying across the bed and the other propped up against it.

That girl is too adorable. Becca's gaze shifted to the final member of the room. But she's… I'm not sure what she is yet. At least she's not causing trouble.

Mina, or Isemeine, as Marianne had said the girl's full name was the other night when the sisters had shared a lengthy, awkwardness-tinged conversation and a bottle of Château Pétrus, was an oddity she was having trouble wrapping her head around. Having appeared with a degree of mystery on Wednesday, there were a lot of vague answers being given about her, from the non-answers given about her country of origin to the almost-answers about exactly how or why she'd come to live in this house.

The girl's arrival had come at the same time that other changes had occurred as well. Marianne had changed on Wednesday, and, for anyone who possessed any observational skills at all, it should have been obvious. The forty eight year-old woman, though she'd begun wearing her hair in a slightly different style to cover the sides of her face more, now looked exactly as she had in Becca's earliest memories, back when her sister had been in her twenties. The lines and wrinkles on her face were gone, her hands were smooth, and even her voice sounded a little fuller.

Moisturizer. Becca suppressed a roll of her eyes at the word. "I'm gonna go read over some files in the den," she announced as she lingered by the door, her eyes fixed on the full-figured blonde girl. "If you want a change of pace, feel free to join me," she offered. Mina had readily engaged in conversation over the course of the day they'd spent together in the house, but there was something going on there. When asked if she had a boyfriend, or whether she had her eye on any cute boys at school—just regular chatting like Sammy would get flustered by—the girl had practically shriveled up inside herself, her responses becoming one or two words and her body language screaming an extreme level of discomfort that had needed an hour of extra time and care to fully put to rest.

"I'll be sure to do so," Mina said, turning her head to show a small smile with the response before she returned to the computer screen that was displaying a spectator view of the other girls. "My thanks for your care once more, Becca. Ah, no, I was speaking to someone else," she added for the benefit everyone on the other end of the small earpiece she wore.

She's cute, but I don't get it. Becca shook her head as she moved towards the stairs. Nobody's acting like I'd expect. Even Bobby's getting along with her, and she's not exactly the outgoing, friendly type. If a girl with a body and a face like hers suddenly moved into my house, I'd be keeping at least one eye on my husband at all times, and Marianne's way more jealous and possessive than I am.

The fact of her older sister's extreme jealousy had been a constant ever since she could remember. Growing up, Marianne had been the awesome older sister she'd always wanted to emulate. Strong, independent, successful, and beautiful, she'd set the bar for Becca in every way. The two had never been that close, mostly due to the elder of them being off at school and then out on her own too far away to visit easily for a young girl, but it wasn't until Carl that there had been any real feelings of animosity.

Becca frowned as she considered the man in question, just as she did most of the times that she thought about him of late. The fingers on her left hand flexed absently. Stupid. This whole thing's fucked.

I'm fucked.

She grabbed her company notebook out of her work bag in her room and started back towards the stairs, her thoughts returning, as they so often did whenever she visited, to a well-worn track.

Her sister had set the bar for her in so many things, but then Carl had arrived and tried to take her away.

An eleven year-old Rebecca Stone hadn't known what to make of the huge, brawny man she was introduced to as "my boyfriend" by the sister she looked up to so much. All she'd recognized was that this man was going to take her sister even further away than she already was, and Marianne was already so impossibly far away that it felt like she may as well have been on another planet.

Thus began her short-lived campaign to drive the nice, sometimes awkward, fit, maybe even a little handsome man away from her sister, at least until she'd fallen off her bike near the house during one of their visits and Carl had put a bandage on her skinned knee. The twelve year-old girl had felt funny in her tummy when his big hands had efficiently stuck the adhesive on and smoothed its ends over her leg, and a new campaign had begun.

Marianne had set the bar again for her with Carl as a boyfriend, but, a fourteen year-old Becca had decided, there was no reason why all the benchmarks her sister set were ones she had to surmount. Carl was right there, after all, and she was pretty awesome, she knew, even if she didn't have any of that adult stuff like a job, or a college degree, or a driver's license, or the ability to drink alcohol legally, or, most importantly she knew from her friends, the ability to have sex legally.

Okay, so maybe in this case Marianne was the better choice for Carl, but she could still make a case for herself, she'd reasoned. Sure, they might be married, sixteen year-old Becca knew, and yes, maybe she was getting too much enjoyment from the annoyed and angry looks her sister shot her behind his back any time she "snuggled" up to his other side and pressed her curvier figure against him, but there was still a case to be made for a slow pursuit here given the divorce statistics she'd read about.

Besides, all the boys she knew at school were so grabby and small by comparison. They were okay for playing with, but her sister had set a bar that was far too tall, muscular, and broad-handed for any of them to come close.

Eventually, she'd made her most overt and blatant—and embarrassing, now that she was older and thinking about it—attempt one night when she was seventeen, slipping naked into bed with him after he'd turned in early during one of her visits to this very house. Her not-quite-practiced but also not-quite-clumsy groping had provoked the hardness she sought, and she'd foolishly thought her efforts were finally being appreciated, but then he'd mumbled her sister's name in his sleep, and she'd fled, feeling that her life was over.

Becca sighed and forced herself to focus on the notes she'd taken from the Look Ahead To Q1 meeting jamboree the day prior. Hard to believe I was ever that dumb, but now I'm in my thirties, and I'm still pretty dumb. Nick was decent enough. He might not have had much of a career in acting, but he was realistic about that, at least, and he could fall back on being a lawyer. Handsome enough too, nice smile. Generous, kind, thoughtful…

He wasn't, however, six-foot-five, and, no matter how she'd tried to focus on his other positive attributes without comparing like the psychologist she'd seen for the past few years recommended, he just didn't measure up to Carl.

Enough, enough. She flexed the fingers on her left hand and cradled her head in her right. Coming here so soon after breaking up with him was a mistake, even if I did want to see the girls. Teasing Carl a little to see if he'll react is fun, but this isn't healthy. I was just a kid then. I'm a grown fucking woman now. Why can't I just be normal?

The sensation of a broad hand on her knee from a memory flickered into existence, warped and twisted as she knew it was by time, and well-tread fantasies followed that she knew were most definitely unhealthy.

Nope. Nope, we're not doing this. Becca set the notebook down on the recliner and turned its screen off, then moved to sit on the floor. She closed her eyes and imagined the view of the ocean from the prow of her father's boat, the most relaxing thing she could think of. She recalled the sound of the waves lapping against the boat's hull, the sparkle of the sun on the water, the smell and taste of brine in the air, the feel of the damp, cool metal in her hands as she held herself steady, the way the wind blew her ponytail about.

Now calmed, she began to think more clearly. I should stop visiting. Marianne's already just shy of hating me, and Carl's always going to be Carl. I love seeing Sammy and Bobby grow up together, but I'm probably out of mind the second I walk out the door for both of them. The whole thing is too fucked to ever change. I always make things worse every time I try to fix them anyway.

A knock on the front door startled her out of her reflection and into a frown. Who could that be? Nobody mentioned expecting anyone, and the package drones aren't exactly going to bang themselves against doors to announce deliveries. She rolled to a side and then onto her feet.

Becca put one eye up to the door's peephole, as she always did after having been trained by years of living alone in apartments. Her eyes narrowed, then widened. Wow, who's that? A thought occurred to her, and she looked back towards the stairs. I wonder if that's Mina's mom? The hair color matches, and the figure definitely looks like it matches…

She unlocked the door and opened it. The statuesque woman outside smiled at her, and she felt momentarily dazzled even though time had made her certain that she had no interest in women. "Hi," she said. "Can I—"

The woman's hand came up and grasped her throat in sudden motion that was almost too fast to see, her grip just short of suffocating. "Hello, Rebecca," she said, her smile turning malignant.

What the fuck! Becca scrabbled at the hand on her neck, but the fingers holding her may as well have been steel girders for how much they moved from her efforts. She tried to scream for help, but she couldn't make so much as a whimper.

"My name is Lucia," said the tall woman with the strong grip. She yanked the sputtering, shorter woman out of the house with ease and held her up so their foreheads touched. "This won't hurt at all," the other woman said softly, her voice resounding in Becca's ears. "Physically, that is."