Chapter 14

Six days before Christmas...

Jessica Johansen stood at the gate waiting for the rescheduled connection to Green Bay. A man sitting near the desk kept glancing at her. She got on the plane and then scowled as he sat next to her.

"Hi, uhm, I'm..."

"No."

"Excuse me?" He looked confused as she glared at him and the bruise on his jaw.

"I know who you are, Andrew Hastings, and you need to sit somewhere else, or I will dot your eye like my sister should have," Jessica snarled.

"You're breaking your probation and you'll get arrested for leaving the state and assault," he reminded.

"I am not afraid to go to jail to avenge my sister. You and your bastard brother and biyatch mother hurt the wrong person and went at the wrong family."

"I know... It was a mistake. Just sit down, I need to talk to you about Lily. It's just forty minutes and I'll even pay for your uber to Oconto, if you will hear me out," he offered.

"I have a rental car reserved." Jessica declared, looking around the full commuter flight for another seat. "Move your legs or I will walk over them."

"Sit down." Andrew insisted, "There are no more seats this flight was overbooked and there isn't another today."

Jessica huffed and threw herself in the seat. "What do you want? Isn't it enough your mother got me fired and your brother ran my sister out of Florida?"

"It was very nice of you to let your sisters live with you when they moved to Florida and again after Marlana Basnet's murder," Andrew complimented as the air steward announced the emergency procedure then announced the weather at the end of the flight and that due to turbulence no one would be allowed out of their seat during the flight. "But that's where our confusion began."

"It was my grandmother's house, and their Aunt Evie took me in after she broke her hip, but you probably already know that now. Just like you know Lily and I aren't the same person but you still used the lie to get him divorced." Jessica folded her arms defensively. "I wish Kitty had broken your nose."

"Why? You don't know me. I made a mistake. People make mistakes."

"A mistake? As if. Your mistake was you hurt the one person in my family who tries the hardest to be a freaking Mary Sue. Lily isn't faking it, she really wants to be the best and kindest person in the world. She believes in PMA." She shook her finger at him, then gestured waving her hands, "She really tried to be a good wife, but nooo, your brother doesn't know what his own wife looks like mostly naked, so he dumps her the day she almost died." Jessica's hard accusation echoed in the plane above the sound of the engines as the other passengers quieted, listening to the drama unfolding.

"Keep your voice down," Andrew growled, and she laughed malevolently.

"Why? Embarrassed? You should be! Your whole family should be humiliated," she hissed loudly. "Would everyone here like to know what happened? This jerk is the lawyer who served my sister with divorce papers while she was recovering from an emergency c-section. My other sister said he convinced his brother that the five-weeks early delivery was because their baby wasn't his, so Ian didn't even bother to ask what happened or come to the hospital. FYI, my eight-months pregnant sister Lily fell decorating the Christmas tree and almost died, not that this arse cared. Their biyatch mother even sent her maid to clean up the bloody mess and pack my sister's things. She had a month-premature baby in the NICU and the maid was told to leave her packed car in the hospital parking lot like she was some kind of homeless person!"

"Jessica please," Andrew rubbed his forehead, "You're making a scene."

"You're lucky I don't throw your arse outta this plane," Jessica snarled. 

"Ma'am, is there a problem? Did he say something offensive?" The air steward asked, clutching a seat as the plane bucked in the turbulence. 

"The fact that he's breathing the same air as me is offensive. I want a different seat." Unbuckling her lap belt, she started to stand up, but the plane bounced, and she sat down hard.

"I'm sorry, I can't move you. Can you manage for the flight, so we don't have to turn the plane around?" The stewart begged, and people grumbled at Andrew to leave her alone.

"Fine." Jessica gritted her teeth.

"Sir, please don't bother the lady or I'll have you banned from the airline."

"Yes, sir."

As the steward struggled to get back to his seat, Andrew murmured, "Can I explain now?"

She snapped her seatbelt then pointed at Andrew, "Stop talking to me."

"Jeez, calm down. We thought she was a stripper like you." Andrew realized a moment too late he shouldn't have said the last as several surprised gasps echoed around him announcing they still had an audience of eavesdroppers.

Jessica rolled her eyes in annoyance. "Yes, I am a stripper. So what? I make more money dancing two nights a week than I did waiting tables for fifty hours a week. I don't drink or do drugs or solicit sex; I just dance, and I make very good tips. Enough that I am paying my way through college without taking any student loans. I even paid cash for my ticket from Florida, Mr. Black Card." Jessica announced loudly. "Not all of us have jobs with Mommy Dearest's company and grandpa's trust fund to pay our way like you do." Around them, some people chortled.

"I got myself through law school," Andrew defended himself.

"Yeah, right. Did you forget your buddy in the Tampa D.A. office is the one that threw me in jail when I wouldn't let him grope and rape me during a brawl he started," Jessica accused haughtily. 

"I don't know what you're talking about?!" But he did, he had read the information in the real Conklin investigation. .

"Liar... There's a picture of you two and three other guys in front of your frat house behind his desk. And another on the bookcase of you two and your posse at some beach resort in Mexico. You entitled trust fund boys are all the same. You think you can walk all over anyone who isn't as rich as you. Well, I am not going to betray Lily, even if your mom gets me fired from every job I get for the rest of my life."

He was exasperated to the point he considered throwing himself out of the plane just to get away from her methodically humiliating him as he admitted, "Fine, I know Todd is the A.D.A. you assaulted. First of all, yes, we went to college together, but he is not my friend anymore; he just likes using that we went to school together to up his social standing. And second, I will talk to my mother about the scene she caused at your job. If they fired you because of it, I will help you get your job back or compensation for wrongful termination." Andrew begged. "Now, can we please talk about Lily?"

"I won't help you hurt her more," Jessica insisted.

"I have no intention of hurting your sister. The whole thing was a mistake. We were given bad information."

"Whatever." Jessica stared out the window at the clouds.

He opened up his laptop and put down her tray table. "Look, this is what the first P.I. sent us. Please, read it."

Jessica huffed, but her curiosity got the better of her. By the third page, she was ready to murder someone. "I never did any of this and neither has Lily. Who the hell did he talk to?"

"As far as I and the other investigators can find, no one. He just made it all up. Now do you understand why we believed the worst when we got the message that Ava was born early." Andrew bowed his head, apologizing, "I am sorry for my part in it all. I was just trying to protect my brother after what happened with Carly."

"Who the hell is Carly?" She demanded as the steward announced the plane would be landing soon.

"If you'll ride to Oconto with me, I'll tell you," Andrew promised as he put his laptop in its bag.

Drumming her nails on her armrests, Jessica considered it, it would save her renting a car and having a paper trail proving she left the state, so she snarkily responded, "Fine, but I'm only doing it to learn the facts. It still doesn't excuse Ian for missing his daughter's birth, or you for forcing her to sign the divorce papers and calling her a gold-digging whore after her surgery."

Bowing his head, Andrew apologized again, "I'm sorry."

"Yes, you are," retorting sarcastically, her lips twisted in a smirk, and for a moment, he wondered why they looked so soft.

<<@>>

Kitty Johansen waited for the plane to board her group as she texted back and forth with her Aunt Evie about Lily. She was shocked to read that Ian had shown up again and was sitting with Lily, so she texted Jessica. She got a picture back of Jessica sitting next to a very familiar profile. Andrew was driving and obviously unaware she had snapped a pict.

WTF! Kitty sent back.

Jessica texted in response.

I'm sending you two documents.
It doesn't change what they did but it explains why.

Kitty's gmail pinged as they were calling for group C to board. She quickly downloaded the documents as she got on the plane. Once they were airborne, she began reading and was glad to have bought drink vouchers. She hated flying on a holiday, but the first report enraged her to the point she needed something to calm her nerves, then the pilot announced that they would be stranded in Denver for the night and her mood got even worse.

<<@>>

As Jessica discretely sent Kitty a picture of Andrew, she asked, "Can I email these to Kitty so she doesn't punch you again when she gets here for Christmas?"

He rubbed the bruise on his jaw. "Please do. My arse still hurts from landing in the snow."

Laughing malevolently, Jessica forwarded the two P.I. reports to her half-sister. "She has a mean left jab. When she was nine, she broke her mother's nose and ran away with Lily who was three and a half, then hid from the junkie biyatch. After she got out of the hospital, she testified before a judge about how Belinda murdered one of her boyfriends and might have been the one that killed our philandering father. Kitty has no fear."

"You sound like you really admire her," Andrew responded.

"I do. When she was sixteen and I was twelve, she helped Aunt Ava and Aunt Evie track us all down. She is the one who found me and our half-siblings. She is the reason we are a family. When my Grandma Ann broke her hip and then had a stroke, Kitty asked Aunt Evie to take me in so I wouldn't go into the foster system in Florida." Jessica tipped her head at Andrew. "Our dad was a polygamist who had a wife and family in Miami, Orlando, Pensacola, and Atlanta that we know of, plus his family in Salt Lake. Kitty and Lily's mom moved them from Orlando to Salt Lake to be with him, and that's how she found out she wasn't his only wife. She told all the other moms. Jack's mom is from Atlanta, and Leonard's mom grew up in Pensacola. Jeff, Julie, and Laura are from his Salt Lake wife. He had eight kids from five wives."

"That's..." Andrew didn't know how to describe it.

"Screwed up... It's screwed up. Honestly, Belinda did us kids a favor by killing him." Jessica's resentment spilled into her voice.

"You really hated him."

"I don't remember him enough to hate him, but we lived off welfare before he died. He had all those families and couldn't support them. My mom was an alcoholic before she found out she was one of five wives. She went nuts. She left me with Grandma Ann and went to Salt Lake to confront him, but he was already dead a week. She ran over a guy that looked a little like him and his wife. She didn't know them so she went to prison for drunk driving, double homicide." Turning, she looked out the window. "It's why I will never drink."

Trying to think of something else to talk about, Andrew observed, "You read those documents pretty fast."

"It's what I do."

"So I saw you were taking accounting and transcription classes. Are you going for a tax preparer job or... tax office something?" He hesitated when she gave him a look.

"I am working on becoming a CPA specializing in corporate tax law, and a forensic accountant with a masters," she declared proudly. "I have a 3.98 GPA."

"Beauty and brains," he declared, and she flashed him a smile that took his breath away.

"You know it," she sassed then pointed ahead. "Welcome to Oconto." She directed him through the town and to Harbor Road then onto Old Lake Road,. "That's your mom's rental, and the next drive is the Tiger Lily Inn."

Pulling up to the old Victorian, he stared at the historic building surrounded with lights and snow-covered topiaries. "You lived here?"

"Yep. In the late spring and all summer, there are hundreds of tiger lilies all around the Inn. It's beautiful. Evie and Ava worked so hard to make everyone who visited feel like family. This is my second home." She got out and climbed the steps then turned back. "Are you coming?"

Standing by the rental SUV, he asked uncertainly, "Is it okay? Your aunt threatened to have my brother arrested."

"Your brother is upstairs with Lily now. If you want to meet your niece..." She left the offer open.

Andrew quickly turned off the SUV and hurried inside. Jessica seemed nonplused by the frigid air but, to Andrew, every breath felt like he was inhaling ice. He had thought Alaska was cold, but it was nothing like Wisconsin in December.