Meanwhile Grace, Alexandra and along for the ride Elizabeth were driving towards the Crashdown. Elizabeth having been warned by a friend at school that her next class had a substitute attached to it, well, she decided to take the long route back to school so she hitched a ride with Grace and Alexandra. Grace wanted to see her grandparents and the Crashdown as she missed being able to work.
“You may be crazy for liking school and by actually missing it,” Elizabeth quipped as they drove along. “But I can see why you liked working. There is a freedom attached to it, and it’s nice and freeing…”
“I know,” Grace nodded. “I miss it. So, I guess working at Aunt Isabel’s store has been exciting, huh?”
“Lots of fun. I am learning all kinds of things” Elizabeth remarked. “The money is a nice plus although you never spent yours.”
“It’s going for a good cause. University,” Grace quipped.
“Harvard or Yale is going to be going after you with full scholarships. So, it’s not like you’re really going to need that college fund.” Elizabeth remarked as Alexandra’s interest perked up. She always wished to go to a school like Harvard or Yale, and to know Grace was thinking along those same lines impressed her.
“The world is expensive” Grace laughed. “You do need money to go university these days, whether you’re on a full ride or not…” she said as she turned and faced Alexandra and saw an interested look on her younger sister’s face. “What?”
“You actually want to go to Harvard or Yale?” Alexandra asked interested.
“Maybe, one day. But truthfully, I have no idea where I want to go to school today. Once upon a time maybe I did wish it, but then life happens. So, you want to go there, too, right. Well, I guess Yale would be like a hometown university for you, right?”
“It’s been always a dream,” Alexandra admitted. “Yeah Yale is right around the corner it seems from our place and yet I like the idea of living away from home.”
“I know the feeling,” Grace smiled although she wondered if she did. The idea of being away from her family in such a short time was not something she was overly looking forward to… and just a few weeks before she knew she was counting down the months even if it meant being away from Jake.
Now the world was different.
“Hey,” Elizabeth asked as she interrupted Grace’s inner thoughts and she shook herself back to reality as they had taken a turn towards the Crashdown and was starting down a one-way street.
“What?” Grace asked as she got a strange sense that developed over the car.
“Why is the car speeding up?” Elizabeth asked as everyone’s eyes turned to the gears of the car as Grace also felt the car speeding and yet the speedometer indicated all normal signals. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Grace asked as she tried to figure out how to slow the car. “Damn it, I haven’t had a problem before now… Although I haven’t driven it much these last few weeks.”
“How long have you had it?” Alexandra asked as she struggled to figure out why the car had a mind of its own.
“Since my birthday,” Grace remarked as she struggled to get the car to stop. “Oh, god, it’s speeding up, yet again….”
“What’s going on?” Alexandra asked getting concerned as she sensed the tension rising within the car and in Grace and Elizabeth.
“Why is the car trying to kill us?” Elizabeth asked as they tried in vein to get the car to stop and yet it kept going, and there was nothing they could do stop it. All the machinery was breaking down, and there was nothing they could. “What are we going to do?” she yelled.
“I don’t know…” Grace panicked as it continued going towards a
“Do Not Enter” sign that was at the end of the road, on a black metal fence. “Oh god,” she whispered in a frantic yell as the car becoming out of control. “What are we going to do?” she yelled.
“We have to do something,” Elizabeth asked as she knew they only had seconds decide. “Quick, stop the car.”
“I am trying…” Grace yelled.
“Stop it, stop the car Grace,” Elizabeth asked. “You know how… We don’t have a choice… the car is not listening to us.”
“I know,” Grace muttered. “Okay, here goes nothing as she went to work as she maneuvered her hands over the steering wheel and put her other hand down on the geared and she yanked and prayed until finally they were slowing down. “Please work, please work” she whispered as the gate was approaching. “It might be too late…”
But then the car stopped in a complete stop with the car right at the nose of the gate but not before the car did a sharp bump as it stopped. “Oh god, that was close.”
“Too close,” Elizabeth said as she whistled at the close call they had, as she looked around the car and the other girls. “Are you okay, it was quite the whiplash feeling there”
“Dad is going to freak” Grace muttered as she quickly assessed the situation. “I am fine. But, how about you Alexandra” she asked as she looked over at her pale sister. “Are you okay?”
“That was close…” Alexandra whispered.
“It was…” Grace acknowledged.
“Why did the car go out of control?” Elizabeth asked.
“I am calling Jake…” Grace said. “The car won’t start, and we’re stuck. Damn it” she muttered as she dialed. “Jake, we need your help?”
*
“We can’t tell Dad, he’s going to freak” Grace asked forty minutes later as she sat in her chair at the car shop Jake worked at although was hiatus due to his injury but like Max’s ultimate reaction, Jake freaked when he heard of the near accident and the fact both Grace and Elizabeth were in the car. So, he called his boss and arranged for a truck to come and bring the car into the shop while he made tracks over the job and arrived just as Grace, Elizabeth and Alexandra arrived.
“You’re going to have to tell him,” Jake acknowledged to Grace. “It might be your car and your grandparents are paying the insurance, but your father still is on the ownership until you graduate. So, all decisions on the car need to also go through him. I know Uncle Max is going to freak but at least no one was injured, or current injuries aggravated” He said softly as he thought of how close they had been to disaster and with Grace’s already fragile condition, he didn’t want to think about how it might have gone.
“I guess you’re right,” Grace muttered as she got out her phone. “I guess we have to call Aunt Maria and Michael, huh”
“Yeah” Elizabeth muttered.
Knowing her own mother was going to freak out and have them on the first flight to Madison if she knew, Alexandra knew she didn’t relish telling her parents given how it was suspicious how the car broke down and given someone had already come after Grace, and ambushed her mother’s hotel room… she didn’t want to think about what might happen. So, she went for something light.
“I guess you might not have to worry about that date Elizabeth,” Alexandra smiled. “You almost died so your parents might think that is a better alternative.”
Elizabeth laughed at the idea, but Jake heard the comment and he glared, and she glared right back. “Don’t you start.”
“You have a date?” Jake asked.
“Yes, someone did ask me out today for a date. I know I need to run it through Mom and Dad, so I didn’t say yes, and really, it’s none of your business but Alexandra is right. Given I very nearly died, I think something ordinary as going out with Finn is pretty okay.”
“Whose Finn?” Jake asked as he turned to stare at Grace.
“It’s Elizabeth’s business,” Grace smiled as she frowned as she dialed her dad’s cellphone. “I wish I didn’t have to make this call,” she murmured as soon the call connected. “Dad, it’s me Grace. Yes, my appointment went well, and I am sore of course, but I have something to tell you, and you’re not going to like it…”
As tension seeped into the car shop as Jake tried to ignore the implications and stumbled over to the car on his crutches, and looked at it to see why it lost control…
*
“Are you okay?” Max asked as the question was the first thing out of his mouth fifteen minutes later as he, Beth and Carrie rushed over the car repair shop, and saw the three teenagers and the different degree of pale on their faces as they sat by a dead car. Max and Beth were still shaken at the news of the accident, and Beth didn’t know how to react. Carrie was also worried at the news but some of the worry was lessen when it looked like the girls were all doing okay, despite the scare.
“I am fine Dad, I promise. All it was, was just a very close scare. Nothing was aggravated, just my car.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at school?” Max asked of his god-daughter Elizabeth who could only smile, and nod.
“I had some news for Grace, so I wanted to share with it, so I stopped by her appointment and was on my way back to school when this happened” Elizabeth lied, and Grace only shook her head at the blatant misinformation.
Max wasn’t sure he trusted that given Elizabeth’s recent track record, but he would overlook. “Have you tried your parents?”
“Dad is out on a case. And Mom is not at the house, and her phone is on mute or something” Elizabeth admitted. “And it’s not like it was earthshattering, and we are doing fine.”
“That might be the case, but still it was something very serious and not to take lightly” Max admitted as he focused on his daughter and frowned.
“So, you called Jake, and not me?” he asked of his eldest daughter as he didn’t care to find that he may not be the number one priority for his daughter in a crisis like the one she found herself in on this day.
“I knew Jake works here, and while he’s on hiatus, well, I knew he might be able to help get the car and figure out the situation,” Grace murmured and knew how it looked to her father and she was sorry for it. “It’s not that I didn’t want to tell you, well, it’s just I knew you were going to freak.”
“Still you two are my daughters and I need to know as soon as something like this happens, okay?” Max glared at Grace as Alexandra nodded and smiled at the notion that Max thought of her as his daughter. She liked the feeling and yet she looked at her mother, and knew her mother was fretting and would be unsure of how to deal with his latest development and that poised to be bad news for Alexandra and Carrie and their wish to stay in Roswell longer… “Mom, I promise it was just was a scare. It wasn’t anything serious.”
“You nearly crashed, and the car went out of control. So, I say it’s serious” Beth asked. “So, do you know what happened?”
“Nope,” Grace said honestly. “We were driving, and it was all very normal, and suddenly it started speeding up and there was nothing I could do and then when I saw a gate, I knew I had to try something and so I used every method I could to get it to stop, and finally it did in the nick of the time, but the car died. So, I called Jake and had him toe it here…”
“Jake…” Max asked.
“Seriously Uncle Max, everything seems normal but the electrical system that makes the car run in this age of technology is fried. I am amazed it was working until it was…”
“Did Grace fry it with her use of “her method”?” Max asked as he knew what his daughter was referring to when she cited what she had done.
“Hard to tell…” Jake said honestly. “But this is just from a simple glance, so once we get a look at it, we will know more…”
“I appreciate it Jake,” Max said.
“Sure thing,” Jake said as he did like being back in the shop and doing something that was different than recovering from surgery and his injury.
“Call your mother again,” Max warned Elizabeth.
Elizabeth nodded.
*
Maria wasn’t at home or at the library working on her manuscript but needing a diversion, so she stopped by
Splurge to see Isabel and to get ideas of a potential gift for Elizabeth’s upcoming birthday. But most of all, she needed a time out from the manuscript. So many emotions these past weeks were playing with her ability to deal with the plot line that was the focus of this book. “You got some great new stock?” she asked of Isabel.
“Yeah, it’s that time of the year” Isabel said. “You couldn’t write?”
“I needed time away from it. My publisher is on me about delivering her a new draft and decided to come and see if I get any idea’s for Elizabeth’s birthday. I know it’s going to be difficult with her working here, but I thought why not…”
“I am glad you stopped in…”
“Me too,” Maria said as she looked around the racks. “I might even have to shop for
me…”
“Go ahead,” Isabel encouraged. “Afterall Elizabeth still has plenty of time before she turns sixteen.”
“Sometimes she acts like she already is,” Maria commented.
“I know,” Isabel laughed. “That girl is a chip of the block” she asked of her goddaughter.
“I don’t know whose block either,” Maria cracked. “These days she’s so Michael’s daughter that it scares me because the last thing we need is a teenage female version of Michael.”
“Michael did blur the line back then, but he had a good head on his shoulders most of the time” Isabel laughed. “So, I think Elizabeth will know when to get too rash…”
“Let’s hope,” Maria quipped. “So has Beth been in here?”
“No, but the twins have” Isabel said of Alexandra and Carrie. “They are pretty remarkable kids, identical and yet not.”
“I know…” Maria smiled. “Alexandra is so like Liz and even Max that it’s crazy. Carrie is a little wilder.”
“She takes from her parents need for adventure I guess,” Isabel quipped. “It’s pretty remarkable situation my brother is in these days.”
“Should we worry that Max is getting so close to Beth?” Maria asked as she took a hanger off the rod and looked a dress she liked and looked over at Isabel who frowned. “They are bonding more and more each day.”
“I don’t know if we can stop him,” Isabel admitted.
“One of these days she’s going to go back to Connecticut and it’s going to hurt Max like nothing has since the day we lost her the first time” Maria asked.
“Don’t I know it,” Isabel muttered. “Yet he has the ability to achieve something rare and special and I don’t know if we can deny him that. If she does go back, I am sure they can figure out how to make it work for them and that the situation they are in. I don’t see how Beth would keep him from the kids, and after all she’s learned here in Roswell, well, I can’t see how she can stay away from the life she could reclaim today.”
“She’s led a very different life. Maybe she likes that life” Maria asked.
“If she does, then Max will learn to deal with it. We can’t stop him from facing the pain and in the end maybe it will work out.”
“I hope so, because the longer she stays… the more I fear for both of them” Maria admitted.
“Me too,” Isabel admitted as they heard a cellphone ring and both checked and Maria confirmed it was hers, as she gave out a groan at the name that came up. “Oh god, what now.”
“Who is it?”
“Elizabeth,” Maria murmured as she accepted the call. “What happened. Why aren’t you at school?” she asked. “You wouldn’t be calling me if you were at school, so where are you, and why aren’t you in class” she asked as she listened. “What on earth, tell me everything” she said immediately.
“Fine, I’ll be right there… Don’t go anywhere as you have a lot of explaining to do.”
“What is it?” Isabel asked as Maria hung up, and dialed Michael’s number that he gave her for when he was out on cases and had his burner cellphone.
“My daughter has gotten herself into something,” Maria muttered. “It was some kind of near car collision with Grace, Alexandra this morning. They are all over at the garage shop that Jake works at and none of those who should be in school, are… and I am going to have their heads.”
“Whoa, what happened?” Isabel asked on alert.
“I don’t know,” Maria said as she went for her jacket in Isabel’s back room and came out mere minutes later. “But I am going to find out.”
“Call me,” Isabel said. “As soon as you do.”
“Sure thing,” Maria murmured as she talked to herself under her breath and prayed this was not something bad as she raced to her car and drove over the auto repair shop.
*
“Beth do you want to take my car and take the girls back home while I deal with this,” Max was asking Beth as they stood separated from the others. Jake was still pondering the car, as Grace was off in a corner talking to Elizabeth. Alexandra and Carrie were talking among themselves. “This could take awhile.”
“No, I’ll stay…” Beth said. “Max, what happened?”
“I wish I knew,” Max murmured as he looked over at car, and wondered what they would find when they did know because he had the car checked thoroughly before he bought for his daughter for her sixteenth birthday, and made sure to check it himself and by people he trusted and there was defects in the car.
“Dad, seriously I don’t know why the car reacted the way it did” Grace asked as she wheeled over her chair to her father and Beth because she knew his father had to be thinking about the car, he had only given her a few short weeks before… “It was just so weird, and unexplainable, and so unlike how it was earlier in the day. It’s not like I just got behind the wheel, because Alexandra and I were driving in the car to school, where I dropped stuff off and got my stuff from my locker and then we headed to the rehab facility.”
“And your appointment was an hour?” Max asked her daughter.
“It felt like a long hour but give or take a few minutes yeah it went according to schedule except Elizabeth joined us about halfway through.”
“Which was unplanned?” Max asked of Grace and Elizabeth, who only groaned.
“Yes,” Elizabeth muttered. “I was at the Crashdown working on paper for my class and I got some news, good news, but you know the kind of news I wanted to share with Grace and since I knew she had her physio appointment, well, I took the bus over to the facility since I don’t have my license yet.”
“Right,” Max said. “And I am sure your parents are looking forward to that day” as Jake gave an eye roll and loud groan from behind his sister and near the car that got Grace to giggle.
“Well, I am…” Elizabeth said. “I can’t wait for the day, today forgotten” she quipped as Grace only laughed.
Max didn’t envy his friends and what they faced when their daughter turned sixteen in June since he wasn’t already facing it with his own little girl as he took the board with all kind of papers from Jake and looked down and saw what Jake was writing. “The accident happened on Pennsylvania Ave?” Max asked as he read the accident report.
Elizabeth glared at her brother for giving the report to Max. She knew why Max was surprised. Her lie was coming unraveled.
“Yeah,” Grace asked.
“I thought you said you were heading back to the high school to drop off Elizabeth?” Max asked. “It sounds from here that you were headed towards Main Street, where the Crashdown is located.”
“So, my daughter is a liar?” Maria asked as she walked into the shop. “Why am I not surprised. Will someone tell me what happened here?” as she looked over the situation and saw Jake using one arm to hold up his crutch as leaned over the car, as he was investigating.
“Mom…” Elizabeth asked.
“Your father is on his way, so don’t think you only have to deal with me” Maria muttered as she looked over at the paleness on Beth’s face and knew the woman was overwhelming.
“I am fine Mom and I was going to be headed back to school, eventually” Elizabeth smirked as her mother glared at her. “I was only taking the long route there, as my class had a substitute assigned to it and I know fully well and so did you when you were in school. When there is a substitute, well, very little gets learned. So, I thought I had time. I visited Grace during my lunch hour, and we were headed to the Crashdown because she wanted to visit her grandparents and get something to eat. I was only going to stay a minute or two before I headed back to school.”
“I doubt that,” Maria murmured. “And just because a substitute was going to be teaching, doesn’t give you licence…”
“I promise you. I actually like the class I had following the class I was missing so I actually wanted to be there for it, and I wasn’t planning on missing it and Mom, I have had this particular substitute before, so I knew I wasn’t going to learn anything worthwhile…”
“You are your father’s daughter” Maria muttered with a shake of her head although truthfully, she wasn’t big on being in class once the great alien invasion happened, but still she didn’t want the trend to repeat in her children.
“I take that as a compliment,” Elizabeth smiled.
“Don’t…” Maria glared.
“But I will,” Elizabeth batted back to groans from her mother as Jake was talking to Grace who only shook their heads as they heard the back and forth between Elizabeth and Maria. “That can’t be true?” said Grace but too loudly as she got back into the conversation she was having with Jake, as she couldn’t believe what she was hearing him say.
“What can’t be true?” Max asked as he looked up from the files he was reading on the accident.
“Uncle Max, there is evidence Grace’s car has been tampered with…” Jake said loudly as the tension level in the room escalated to unprecedented levels.
“What” Max asked.
“Excuse me, what?” Maria asked loudly as everyone faces suddenly turned dark and none more so than Beth and Max couldn’t help but notice her reaction, and knew trouble was on the way, whether he was ready for it or not.