Chapter 5

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Third weekend of November...

Carefully climbing up the ladder, Lily Johansen-Hastings hung the last of the ornaments on the Christmas tree. Her husband Ian would be home tomorrow for their first December as a family. Stepping down, she admired her handy work. The living room looked like she imagined The Tiger Lily Inn in Oconto looked. Her great-aunt always went Christmas crazy, as Kitty would say, and had infected her grandnieces with a love of the winter holiday. She wished she could take him home. She knew everything would be white with snow and cold, instead of green and 90F, but Ian hated the cold. She tried not to be mad about Jess spoiling her plan to surprise their whole family at Christmas with her perfect family. Her daughter was due the week of Christmas.

Carefully, she unwrapped the lead crystal star that was from Kitty and climbed up the ladder one last time. As she leaned to clip the heavy star to the top of the tree, the ladder tipped. She screamed as she toppled into the tree. The tree fell against a wall with her clinging to it, then crashed to the floor on top of her. She laid under the nine-foot Carolina Fraser Fir, sobbing, before scooting and crab-crawling out through the minefield of broken ornaments. Looking down at her belly, she was horrified to see her sister's lead crystal star impaling her. Pulling it out, she flung it away and it slid under the sofa as she clutched her hand over her side while her amniotic fluid and blood leaked out.

She managed to make it to the phone. "9-1-1, what is the address of your emergency?"

Blurting out the address, Lily managed to hobble to the front door. She staggered into the entry table, knocking almost everything off it as she grabbed her purse.

"Please, hurry. It stabbed me... I'm pregnant... I think my baby is hurt too. She isn't moving."

She managed to punch in the code to unlock the door, before sinking to the floor by the door. Waiting through the longest twenty minutes of her life with the 9-1-1 Operator talking to her, Lily prayed for a Christmas miracle. Hearing the ambulance stop in front of the house, she failed to stay conscious as the paramedics rushed in.

<<@>>

Ian Hastings stared at the pictures his brother Andrew brought to him. They were a little out of focus, but it looked like Lily except with platinum blonde hair.

"Sorry, little brother, but Lily lied to you. She isn't a hotel and food service management major. She's been stripping in Miami under the name Jezzabelle for four years and moved to Tampa Bay for a few months before you met. She was a witness to her friend's murder two years ago. According to her last boss, she left about the time you two started dating. No call or nothing, just up and quit. He thought she was soliciting and took a job in Vegas at one of the brothels after she got in a fight with a customer." Andrew looked at the picture of the stripper hanging upside down from a pole and shook his head. "I... um... Mom demanded you give her divorce papers. I... I just need your signature."

Ian scrubbed his face and neatly trimmed, coppery beard. It felt like his soul was dying. "What about my baby?"

Andrew cringed as he answered, "Mom doesn't think it's yours. She thinks Lily was already pregnant."

"She wasn't!" Ian insisted, almost shouting, then he tried to calm himself. "I mean, I thought... She said..." He stopped when his text message chimed. It was Lily's OB/GYN.

Lily admitted to Miami-Dade General.

Baby girl and mother are recovering.

Call ASAP.

Ian held out the phone to Andrew. "Lily had the baby today."

"You've only been married for six months."

"Almost seven," Ian corrected.

Andrew opened his mouth helplessly as he watched his brother crumpling. It was Carly all over again.

Ian began shaking as he looked at the pictures, then he picked up the divorce papers and signed the copies. "Tell her I never want to see her again and draft up a restraining order."

"I'll get Uncle Fineas to sign it. What about her stuff?"

"Have Carlotta pack it all and put it in that Range Rover I bought for her to drive the baby around in and park it at the hospital. It's the only thing she gets to keep from me," Ian snarled then he went to the minibar and got out several tiny bottles of rum and drank the first straight. "I can't believe I fell for another Carly."

"I... Is there anything I can do?"

"Just get her out of my life." Ian sobbed as he choked down the alcohol.

<<@>>

Almost three years earlier...

Andrew looked at his brother lying in the ICU in a neck brace and leg cast. He cursed inside. Ian was lucky to be alive. His mother Hilary was talking rapidly on the phone while signing medical care paperwork. As she walked back toward him, a police officer in a suit came from the other direction. He had only passed the Florida bar a week ago and his first case might be defending his brother for drunk driving.

"Can I help you?"

"Detective Reynolds."

"Andrew Hastings, and this is my mother Hillary," he made the introductions.

"Your brother is lucky he didn't die or kill someone tonight," Reynolds announced the obvious as he looked into the room then he looked at Andrew, "The chief himself sent me down here to take his statement."

"As his lawyer, I can't let you talk to him while he is medicated after surgery," Andrew announced.

"I see, so should I expect a call from Judge Hastings to drop the charges of DUI, reckless endangerment, and the traffic violations," Reynolds scowled like he had eaten something foul.

"No," Hillary answered. "As this is his first offense, Ian is willing to enter a plea and surrender his license for three months pending rehab completion and two hundred hours of community service work over the next year in exchange for no jail time."

"Mom, you can't enter a plea for him," Andrew argued.

"My boy, you aren't the only one licensed to practice law in Florida. Detective, please take our offer to the D.A., I am certain Hal will find it agreeable," Hillary announced.

Reynolds gawked at her. "You aren't going to try to make it go away?"

"No. I taught my boys that our family name comes with responsibility. My youngest took his recent broken engagement very hard and your department still has not found that conartist who stole nearly one-hundred thousand dollars from several families including ours, even though we have given your department reliable leads and geo-tagged images of her in Manhattan, Tahoe, Steamboat Springs, and Aspen. My son will take responsibility for his actions so you can do your job to find that girl. Carly or Carla or Caroline, Simone, Simons, or Smith is still out there, and I want her arrested so my son can get over her and get his life back together. I am doing my job as his mother and lawyer, do yours." Hillary turned on her heal and went into Ian's room and closed the door.

"Is she serious?" Reynolds asked.

"Always," Andrew groaned.

<<@>>

Nov 19...

Andrew remembered how driven Hillary was to find Carly and she only stopped when they discovered she was in Prison in California for multiple counts of Identity Theft and Fraud. He had liked Lily but now he needed to make her leave before his mother went on the war path again, even though she hadn't technically done anything illegal besides use an alias to get a job as a stripper. Stopping just inside the door, it was time to be the scary shark his family educated him to be.

"Can I help you, sir? Are you Mrs. Hastings' husband?"

Lily woke up as the nurse spoke to a man in her room.

"Ian?" Her blurry eyes could make out her husband's family's red hair, but a clean-shaven face. "Andrew? Where's Ian?"

"We know the truth, Lillian. What you did before and after your friend's death, before you met Ian." His voice was hate-filled as he put a pen in her hand. "Sign this."

Lily groggily scribbled her name as she murmured, "Is he with Ava?"

"And here." Andrew moved the paper as the medication pump beeped.

She felt lightheaded as vapors filled her throat. "I need him."

"My brother is done with gold-digging sluts like you. We know that baby isn't his. Here is a restraining order. If you call or contact him in any way, we will have you put in jail and your illegitimate spawn taken away from you as an unfit parent. I have already submitted the paperwork to stop you from putting my brother's name on her birth certificate. Your Range Rover with your crap in it will be in the parking lot. It is the only thing you are getting from my family after you leave the hospital. Good day, Miss Johansen."

"I don't understand," Lily muttered in confusion, then the pain medications stole her consciousness.

"You know making her sign divorce papers while heavily sedated won't hold up in court," the nurse pointed out.

"My uncle is a judge. They will be filled and certified by the county before the lying whore even wakes up."

The nurse stared after him in disgust as Andrew took the papers and left. He honestly believed his brother found true love this time, but the private investigator his mother hired had found the truth and saved his brother from yet another gold digger after their grandfather's name and wealth.

Driving straight to his uncle's home, he got the papers approved and turned them into the courthouse. Taking the notarized copy back to the hospital, he left it on the bedside table next to the restraining order. Lily was still asleep. She looked pallid and he couldn't ignore his nagging feeling that something was amiss.

"Nurse, what is wrong with Miss Johansen?"

The older woman eyed him coldly then stated, "I'm sorry sir, you're no longer family. HIPPA forbids me from telling you anything about her condition. As a lawyer, you should know that. Please leave or I will have security remove you."

He walked out, not failing to notice every nurse and aide at the desk or in the hall giving him the stink eye.

As he stepped in the elevator, he overheard one ask another, "Is that the father? The baby's hair looks the same color."

The door closed before he heard the answer. While the elevator sunk, he considered going back up to the nursery to look at Lily's baby, but then he stopped himself, thinking, 'Everybody has a type. Lily's type must be gingers.'

<<@>>

Lying awake after breakfast, Lily remembered how she thought she was happily married and had good life with Ian Hastings. However, last night she woke to find divorce papers and a restraining order. He hadn't even come to see their daughter. The shock turned to rage while listening to the hateful rant on her voicemail calling her every name in the urban dictionary and some that weren't. The worst part was he called her a gold-digging slut, just like his brother had. Lily didn't want the money of the Hastings family. Their wealth wasn't why she married Ian.

She hadn't known about their family history the first time she met him, only that Ian looked like a Norse demi-god from the cover a novel she was reading. When they met at a Frat house party, she could barely tell him her name, so she rambled one about Buddhism and PMA, but now, to hell with positivity and peace, she just wanted to tell him off. Her affections turned as bitterly cold as the Great Lakes in December. She wanted to hurt Ian the way she was hurting. She seethed with her newfound hatred of the one she loved most in the world. Feeling almost guilty because she had never hated anyone before except Erik, who had murdered her best friend then killed himself.

"Mrs.... I mean Miss Johansen, are you ready to go see your daughter?"

"Yes, thank you." She groaned and struggled painfully to get out of bed and into a wheelchair with the nurse named Rachel helping her.

Rachel rolled her to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. While she looked at her daughter and held her tiny hand through the hole in the plastic box, Lily vowed, "It's okay, baby girl. I will love you enough for both of us."

Sitting in the NICU, Lily's angry resolve to hate her husband waivered as his russet brown eyes stared at her from under a halo of coppery fluff. Holding Ava's little hand as she sucked lazily at a premie bottle, Lily hated herself more than Ian. She didn't know what she did to make him throw her away. While she watched Ava drinking her milk formula, she wondered if she would find a way to get him to visit Ava, but then she remembered how much it hurt to wake up after almost dying to find divorce papers and a restraining order. The hateful voice of Andrew's nonsense accusations haunted her vague memory of yesterday, and she vowed that Ian Hastings and his whole family could burn for all she cared.

Later, after Lily left Ava in the NICU and was taken back to the post-surgery ward, she called to inform her oldest living relative of Ava's birth.

"Hello, Tiger Lily Inn Bed and Breakfast."

"Aunt Evelynn, it's Lily... I... I had my baby two days ago. She's was very early so she's in the NICU, but don't worry, she is doing well now. The doctor said I can take her home in ten days to two weeks."

"Oh, sweetheart. That's wonderful. What's her name?"

"Ava Marlana," she answered hopefully but also sadly.

Aunt Evelynn was quiet for a moment, then said, "I am glad you named her after them both. Have you called Kitty or Jessica or the boys?"

"I will later." She started to doze then jerked and groaned in pain. "Huh? Sorry, Aunt Evie, the meds are making me goofy."

"I asked is Ian happy to be a father?"

Choking back a sob, Lily answered, "Ian is insisting she isn't his. His brother served me with divorce papers and a restraining order yesterday while I was still sedated from the surgery. Ava and I almost died, and he divorced me." Anguished by the pain and terror she felt while waiting on an ambulance and waking up to his brother forcing her to sign the papers.

"Oh, sweet child, tell me exactly what happened?" Her gentle elderly aunt insisted.

"I... I fell decorating the Christmas tree and Ava came a month early. He didn't even tell me he wanted a divorce or if he has another girlfriend or anything... Ian's brother said if I contacted him, they would take her from me as an unfit mother because I was... you know... after Marlana's murder and put her up for adoption." Unable to soften the blow for herself, she just blurted it all out, sobbing. "I don't know what to do."

After a moment of silence, her mother's Aunt Evelynn demanded, "Lily, I want you to come live with me. We are all the family we have left, and you and your child need to get away from that city."

"Auntie, I couldn't impose... I... Ava is just a baby."

"You can and you will, Lily," Evelynn ​simply stated, "You will pack your things and my grandniece and come live with me at the Tiger Lily Inn. I will make the two-bedroom suite ready."

Lily couldn't say no, her mother's aunt had an iron will and Lily didn't have a better plan or anywhere to go. "Yes, Aunt Evie."

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A/N I know I've used the wise old auntie before but I love this archetype for a side character. 

She shows up in Every Single Story I write in some form or another. 

 Not Sorry! M.M.