Was hoping to get one more scene in, but couldn’t manage it. I gotta tell you, I almost want to try to get back to updating more because I feel like I’m finally back into the story groove. I need to find time in the schedule. Or we need to add more hours in the day. SOMETHING.

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Monday, September 30, 2024

Hanley Federal Building: U.S Attorney’s Offices

“I think it’s a mistake,” Gia said, with a quick shake of her head. “I don’t think she’s a flight risk, and you’ll just piss everyone off asking for a bail revocation we can’t win.”

“First, she only got bail because I didn’t argue that hard.” Reynolds leaned forward, tapped his pen on the folder in front of him. “And having her out for the last few weeks hasn’t helped us one goddamn—and don’t start with me about her not being guilty. We’ve been over this—”

“And we’re going to keep going over this.” Gia lifted her chin. “Look, you and I work well together because we both push each other to face reality. To talk about the hard facts. And the fact is that Elizabeth Webber has a rock solid alibi with evidence that corroborates her statements. She ran towards the gunshots. She absolutely broke her shoe doing that —” She flipped through her folder and slapped down the still frames. “Caldwell’s interrogation of Jake Webber. Elizabeth comes in, and she’s wearing sneakers—”

“Maybe she has bad fashion sense—”

Gia slapped down another printout. “Brook Lyn Quartermaine posted a family shot from the barbecue. Elizabeth, wearing the sandals an hour before the shooting. You think Diane Miller isn’t reading the report and pulling the same information?”

Reynolds exhaled slowly. “Gia—”

“I know. I know. You don’t think she’s the shooter, you think Morgan did this. You think he set himself up with an alibi from his mother or the kids, and arranged for someone else to take out Cates. But you’re walking into court with a theory of the crime that you know didn’t happen—”

“Elizabeth has a short window to make the shot,” Reynolds interrupted coldly. “She knows it. She loses track of time with the kids, and has to run down to the boat house. Breaks her shoe. There you go. Done.”

“And the kids who saw her going off with Michael before the shooting? Not enough time for her to walk to the garden, then run to the boathouse and shoot John Cates.” Gia scowled. “Look, I’m not saying Jason Morgan isn’t guilty. I’m just—I’m not comfortable going into court tomorrow to argue before a federal judge a theory of the crime that I don’t think happened. I don’t think she’s involved, Noah. I think Morgan or someone else planted the gun or left it in her trunk afterward.”

“Then she should tell us what she knows—”

“You’re not listening—” She huffed when the phone rang and Reynolds held up a finger to cut her off while he lifted the receiver to his ear.

“Yeah? What do you have? Really? Wait—” Reynolds swiveled to his desktop monitor. “Yes, I see the email. All right. I’ll check it out and get back to you.” He hung up, then scanned the email, clicking an attachment.

“What is it?” Gia asked.

He grinned, then turned to look at her. “A police report connecting Webber and her kids to drug use in the home.”

She went still.  “What?”

Webber House: Kitchen

Cameron found his mother loading the dishwasher and remained at the threshold between the kitchen and living room. “Uh, everyone gone?”

Elizabeth flicked him a glance, then returned to rinsing out a coffee cup and setting it in the top rack. “Yes. Your brothers are at school, and Jason and Danny had an appointment at the hospital.”

“Oh.” Cameron came into the room, slid onto one of the stools. “I thought he was going back to school this morning.”

“He’s going tomorrow. Jason wanted him to see the doctor first.”

“Oh,” he said again, then folded his hands on the counter, staring at them. “I know you’re mad at me.”

“Mad? I’m not mad.”

Now he lifted his eyes to find his mother staring back at him coolly. “Mom. Can we talk about this?”

“I wasn’t aware there was anything to talk about.” She folded her arms. “You sounded like you had it all figured out yesterday. What do you need me to say?”

Cameron opened his mouth, then closed it. He hated when his mother did this — when she was all frosty and sarcastic. It was like building a brick wall of ice — chipping away would just give you frostbite. “I should have talked to you, okay? Before just…deciding.”

“I’m sorry, I thought we did the last time you came home. Made a decision to handle this. Was I confused, Cameron?” Elizabeth asked. “Did I imagine you making a deal with Jason that he’d take care of airfare for you to come home every other week?”

“No—”

“And the return ticket you had yesterday—wasted money. I raised you better than that.”

“You raised me to take care of my brothers,” Cameron argued. “I’m doing that. Circumstances changed—” When his mother just shook his head, he scowled. “No, don’t do that. Mom. Come on. Stop acting like this is something stupid I did, okay? I made arrangements to skip a few in person lectures. I’ll get the notes, and I’m going to miss one lab. That’s it. I can handle the rest of it. I didn’t do this lightly—”

“You did this without speaking to me—”

“You’re my mother, and I love you, but I’m not a kid anymore. I don’t actually have to get your permission.” He got to his feet. “And you’re going to stop treating me like I’m twelve.”

“You deliberately waited until the last minute to tell me you weren’t going — so that I wouldn’t have time to change your mind — if you want to be treated like an adult, then act like one.”

“You mean like you do?” Cameron demanded. “How about nearly getting thrown in jail for kidnapping, Mom? How about helping Uncle Nikolas keep a pregnant woman hostage? Is that an adult thing or—”

Elizabeth pressed her lips together, took a deep breath. “I made a mistake—”

“That’s not a mistake, Mom. You made a decision, and then you threw Uncle Nikolas under the bus to get out of it. I’m not saying I wanted you to go jail, and you know I don’t give a damn about Esme Prince. Not after what she did to Spencer. But she should have been in jail all those months. She never would have able to get amnesia and wiggle out of trouble—” He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to fight with you. I should have talked to you before  yesterday and I’m sorry. But I knew you’d do this. I knew you’d be angry about it, and you wouldn’t agree, and we’d go round after round like this. Because I fight like you do. We both go for the jugular because it’s quicker.”

She closed her eyes, then combed her hands through her hair. “Cameron.”

“Because  yeah, we had an agreement. Two weeks ago. When I thought this whole thing was stupid. I thought the next time I came home, they’d have, you know, found the real killer.” Cameron laid his hands on the counter. “But it’s worse now. Right? I’m not imagining that.”

“I don’t want what’s happening here to stop you or Jake—”

“I agreed to go back to California because I didn’t want you to cry. Not again. I was on the phone, Mom. When you got home after making bail.”

Elizabeth looked at him, her eyes shimmering. “I’m fine now—”

“You’re doing what you’ve done my whole life. You put on the mask, and you pretend for us. When Lucky walked out, when we lost Jake, when the truth about Jake Doe blew up — when Franco pulled his stunts and then when he died—” Cameron shook his head. “You put on the mask, you pretend to smile and hold it together, and for my entire life, I believed it was the real you. I just thought that my mother was like concrete. That nothing could break you.” His voice changed, thickened. “And then I was in California, on a stupid phone, watching you break down. Listening to you cry. And that was after five days in jail.”

She started to speak, then shook her head, folding her arms around her torso.

“I would have promised anything if I thought it would keep you together. Because that scared the shit out of me, Mom. I came home, I tried to keep everything light. I tried to focus on the good. But I’m not going to forget that night. Or the way you and Jason sounded when you didn’t know I was listening. What’s happening that made you scared again?”

She shook her head again and walked past him, heading for the living room and he followed. “Talk to me, Mom. I can handle it.”

“It’s not—” Elizabeth turned, lifting her hands. “It’s not about you. Okay? It’s me. I’m not putting any of this on you. I’m your mother. It is my job to protect you. You are going back to Stanford, you’re going to graduate, and go to medical school and have everything you ever dreamed about—”

“Mom—”

“So if you need me to sign some paper that says you can be Aiden’s guardian if something happens to Jason, okay, fine. I’ll sign it. But you are going back to school—”

“You can’t make me go anywhere,” Cameron said gently. “Not anymore. I’m not a kid. You raised me to stand up for what’s important. And I’m doing that. I’m not going to be three thousand miles away when my family needs me.”

The tears spilled down now and she turned away, holding her fingers against her mouth.

“Answer my question, Mom. What’s happening? What’s changed?”

General Hospital: Fletcher’s Office

Danny picked at a piece of his sweater. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Dr. Fletcher, sitting across from him with that stupid same patient expression on his face, balanced the notebook on his knee. “I don’t want you to do anything, Danny. I ask the questions. You answer them however you want. Or not.”

“You’ll just think I’m avoiding the whole thing.” Danny made a face. “I don’t know is an answer, okay.”

“We don’t have to talk about the hearing anymore—”

“We can’t talk about something I didn’t go to,” Danny retorted. “I told you. They wouldn’t let me. I know Dad said I wouldn’t want to go, and that it wasn’t even up to him, which, okay, fine. But I’m not a stupid kid, right? I should get a say in what happens to me. And not through some lawyer. She got to go and speak for me, but I should have been there.”

“What do you think would have been different?”

Danny frowned, looked at him. “What?”

“If you’d gone,” Fletcher clarified. “What would you have said? How would you like the outcome to have been different?”

“I—” Danny stopped. “I don’t know,” he answered, but the question was an interesting one. “I wanted to see my mother. And I got to see her the next day, but it just ended up in a fight like it always does. She has an idea in her head of how things are and she doesn’t listen when I talk. Maybe in a court, when she has to be quiet, it’d be different, you know?”

“We can do that, you know,” Fletcher said, and Danny furrowed his brow. “We can do a session with your mother where she has to listen to you. I can’t punish her with a fine if she doesn’t follow the rules,” he added, “so it won’t be the same.”

“The last time I asked her to come see you, she acted like it was a great idea until she remembered Elizabeth found you, and then she started that whole fight, and it ruined everything.” Danny shook his head. “It wouldn’t make anything better. No matter what I do, Mom feels attacked. And everything gets worse. Dad tried, you know. He didn’t want her to feel like a bad mother, so he didn’t choose the real supervised visits like Drew did with Scout. He said I could see her however much I want with my grandma or aunts around. He thought that would be better or maybe he didn’t want me to blame him.”

“And you think that was a mistake?”

“I don’t know. It’s not his fault, I guess,” Danny said begrudgingly. “But he’s always doing that, I guess. Trying to be fair to everyone, but you can’t do that, right? Sometimes people are just wrong. Like Mom was wrong to keep me from seeing Dad, and he just wanted to avoid the court thing so much he let her get away with it. But we ended up here anyway, and made it would have been better if we’d done it months ago.”

“Let’s talk about the visit with your mother.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. Mom was acting weird and being too nice—and then Grandma told I’d come back from seeing you, and she asked me questions but I didn’t really want to talk to her about it.”

“Why?”

“That’s a stupid question,” Danny retorted. “Mom didn’t want me to come here in the first place. She’ll tell you it’s because it was Elizabeth’s idea, and okay, sure, but it’s because she thinks you’re going to tell me she’s a terrible mother, and that’s, like, her worst fear. So she doesn’t actually want to talk about it. She doesn’t care what I say here as long as it’s not blaming her. She started to apologize about the fight with Elizabeth again, but it was like she was blaming me so I knew I could piss her off and make her say what she really feels.” He looked away, stared hard at the bookcase against the wall. “So I brought up Elizabeth—” His throat tightened. “I brought her up first,” he said, swinging his gaze back to the doctors. “I brought up the fight, not my mother. Because the only time my mother’s ever honest and tells me what she really thinks is when I piss her off, and it’s a shortcut when I talk about Elizabeth. So I did it. And it worked. My mom doesn’t care about anyone but herself. And that includes me.”

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