Jen's Legacy.

That evening, Mrs. Prescott shared her bed again with her granddaughter as she related the events of the day and they sipped at their hot chocolate this time.

Mrs. Prescott was still not comfortable with the way that interview had gone at the end, with its personal questions about Claire.

“Damned media, digging, prying into things that don’t concern them.”

“It’s all grist for their mill, Gran. I listened to the radio just before you got in. You actually told the media we were engaged? What if Royce heard that? He might think that I’m trying to railroad him into marriage. What will he think? And you invented a lot of other things about that accident.”

“I had to, to get her off my back. What else was I to do; admit that you’d gone missing for almost three days, and we had no idea where you were, or even if you were alive, and that I was almost going mad with worry? If the media or other adventurers had got wind of that, there could have been hundreds out looking for you, hoping for some reward, and we could do without that kind of publicity when they ran across you.”

Claire could imagine that, them getting into a tug-of-war with Royce for possession of her.

“I had to become inventive, even to the point of suggesting that you’d planned on meeting each other.”

They hadn’t, but that possibility did not seem too impossible to believe if Jen had played a role in it, except if she told her gran that, she would begin to sound irrational.

“One surprise after another. You were very flexible with the truth, Gran.”

“Yes, I was, wasn’t I? I felt proud of myself. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was expecting a call from your father all day after that, asking me what is going on; engagement? Marriage? but he hasn’t called. He’s probably in shock. Or he’s letting me deal with a problem of my own making.

“Your father and I had an agreement years ago after you were born. He couldn’t raise you and run the business too, so I gave up control of the business to him and your mother, while I took on the task of raising you, and I have regretted not one minute of it, though with a few heart stopping moments, as when I heard you were missing, and especially when I walked into that motel room and saw the damage there. Personal, real-estate, damage.” She wouldn’t be more outspoken than that.

“Was it fair on Royce, telling them that so soon, Gran? It will come as a shock to him when he hears that.”

She smiled at Claire. “Not as much of a shock as you think, my dear. I didn’t say anything earlier when we drove back home from that motel, or your father would never have let go, but before Royce walked away from that motel, after turning you over to me, we had a very brief, but to-the-point, conversation.

“He told me that he was in love and he asked me if I would consider letting him marry you.” Claire hadn’t known that, yet she’d had that feeling from the way their conversations had gone.

“I damned near fainted. He took me completely off guard, but I should have known how things were shaping up after that call you made to me on Thursday. That call was shocking enough all by itself. I agreed of course, what else could I have done after he’d save your life, and after what I’d heard you doing with each other when you called, and not giving a damn that I would be able to hear you?

“Then, when I walked in and saw the state of that motel room I began to rethink it. No mother would want to see those details; able to envision her poor daughter getting violated for the first time when some great hulking brute of a man with a gigantic hard-on, violated her sweet little thing’s... tight little thing with that bloody big thing.”

No longer such a tight, little thing.

Claire chuckled and blushed at the same time. Her gran could be too outspoken at times.

“No longer such a little thing, is it, after that rigid digit of a horny man has gone at it a couple of dozen times? It looked like a sexual tornado-- a Roman orgy-- had ripped through; especially with you, shorn, as you were, and leaking a man's sperm, like a spigot, yet not complaining about a damned thing. I was shocked. What was I to think? I wanted to rethink what I’d too readily agreed to.”

This was vintage gran, always ready to express shock and outrage when she was neither shocked or outraged. She’d guessed what she would be walking into.

Claire expressed her own shock. “Gran!”

“Well what was I to think?” Her smile, and the way she patted her granddaughter’s arm, defused any awkwardness in that remark, but there were other questions she wanted to ask that she knew she couldn’t. The first time was almost the most traumatic, but there had not been any trauma, and no blood that she had seen on those motel sheets, but then that hadn't been the first time, either.

She relaxed and sipped at the chocolate, Claire had brought them both. These were just like old times, when Claire had been about ten, but that feeling, and this relaxed mood would soon be gone again when Royce showed up. There was no question about where he would be sleeping, after being in the Motel with Claire, and there would be no stopping that pair. Not only that, she’d now just thrown gasoline onto that blaze with talk of an engagement; an informal invitation to freely plunder her granddaughter’s no longer little grotto, at will; a license for licentiousness.

She’d better change the subject.

“I take it you are making good progress on your albums and your journal; keeping yourself busy.”

“I’m getting there. I got all of the photos printed out with captions printed beneath the ones I know about. I should have the first reasonably good pass at them done by tomorrow.”

Mrs. Prescott wouldn’t ask to see them. She’d already glanced at a few of them and there were some scorchers in there.

“At least one of us is achieving something then.” That interview still rankled, but she wasn’t sure she could have handled it any differently.

“We spoke last night and the night before, and you started to tell me many things, except I went to sleep both nights almost as soon as I put my head down to listen. I doubt I’ll sleep so well tonight. Not after all of those surprises today, so we can talk until we drop. This is all winding down anyway. The last media briefing will be tomorrow if the failing interest today was any indication. The accident will be forgotten in a week.” Then the hospital could get back to normal.

“I must say you have been one never ending surprise after another since I signed you up for that rafting expedition. I almost regret it in some ways, but considering what happened—bringing you and Royce together to save your life and to meet you as he did— I don’t really.”

She looked at Claire. “Do you regret anything?” Stupid question. Claire didn’t regret any of it.

Claire decided not to answer. She regretted none of it.

“You go missing; which I, fortunately, did not hear about when it took place, or I might not have survived three days of worry; one was enough. Then Elinor, in the next breath after telling me you’d gone into the river, mentioned a man throwing himself down those slopes to the river. She was convinced that he had been heading down like that to get to you. I held out some hope she was right, but I also got a search party started, just in case, though they were not optimistic about finding anything. Then a few hours later I heard of that message written in the sand and, soon after that, your lifejacket had been found. I was teetering on believing you were safe, and then I get a call from you, confirming it, and telling me you were with Royce and asking me to call off the search. What a relief. When you mentioned that he had been married and had lost his wife just three months earlier in a plane crash, I knew exactly who he was. Royce Healey. Someone I knew.”

Claire should have been the one doing all of the talking but she was sitting their listening. It was different to hear it from another person’s point of view.

“The surprises kept coming at me. That call on Sunday morning was the first confirmation that you were in Culver and that Royce knew of that accident and had to get to the hospital, but didn’t want to leave you alone. Then I understood why when I saw you and that motel room. I doubt many concerned parents wanted to learn what I learned so quickly about their daughter and the man she was with, as I learned then, but I’d had some warning of it from that call you made to me a few days earlier. I knew exactly what you were doing, even while you were talking to me. How did you manage to carry on a calm telephone conversation while he was doing that to you?” That was another one of those questions to which there could be no answer. "Though your conversation was a little bit disjointed every time he pushed at you.

“Then there were those damned questions by that reporter; Melissa…” Back to that again.

Clair could now add something to the conversation. “Melissa Bragdon. Her sister was on that rafting party with me.”

“Ah! So that was where she’d got all of that ammunition. Damn! She must have known those responses I made to her questions were all a concocted set of semi-truths, but at the same time she couldn’t prove them wrong without talking to Royce, and that wasn’t going to happen.”

She swore again. “Ah well. No one believes what they read in the papers anymore. You can’t even believe what you see on the TV half the time, with the special effects and splicing and animation and the deliberate lies those people tell.

“Too late to worry about that now. It was a real tragedy that he lost his wife in that crash, but if he hadn’t, where would you be at this moment?” Neither of them wanted to think of that.