Middle Falls Time Travel Series Box Set, Vol. 4 [Books 10-12], page 1
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The Empathetic Life of Rebecca Wright
by Shawn Inmon
Copyright 2019 © Shawn Inmon
All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two | 1980s
Chapter Three | 1984
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen | Universal Life Center
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Copyright | The Many Short Lives of Charles Waters | by Shawn Inmon | ©2019 by Shawn Inmon | All Rights Reserved
Dedication
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten | Universal Life Center
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve | Universal Life Center
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen | Universal Life Center
Part Two
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three | Universal Life Center
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One | Universal Life Center
Part Three
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter One
“I love you, Mama.” Two-year-old Rebecca snuggled deeper into the arms of her aunt Donna. She closed her eyes and drifted off.
Donna froze. Rebecca was oblivious to the effect those words would have, but Donna was hyper-aware. She willed her eyes to glance at her sister, hoping against hope that she hadn’t noticed.
It was a hope in vain.
It was a too-warm day in Middle Falls, Oregon in August 1953. Donna, her sister Patricia, and toddler Rebecca sat in a small living room in an unremarkable brick rambler on an equally unremarkable street. A three-bladed oscillating fan sat in the corner. Its blades were moving, but it only pushed the stifling air around without offering any actual relief.
The house belonged to Patricia and her husband Mervin, though Mervin hadn’t spent more than a hundred nights under its roof since they moved in. They had bought it brand new five years earlier, using Mervin’s VA loan eligibility. Mervin spent so few nights at home because he was in the United States Navy and planned to remain so until he retired in another ten years.
Patricia had lived in the house essentially alone and quite content until she found herself pregnant in February 1950. She was not thrilled with the idea of welcoming a baby and taking care of it all alone. So, she had called Donna in Iowa and asked her to move in to “help out.”
The rambler wasn’t large, but it did have three bedrooms, enough to accommodate both Donna and a new baby.
Patricia and Donna were as different as two sisters have ever been. Patricia—no one called her Pat, or Patty, at least not more than once—was tall and thin. Donna was five inches shorter, but outweighed her by forty pounds. It wasn’t the physical differences that defined them, though. Patricia was a force of nature, with a sharp tongue and a willingness to deploy it at the slightest provocation. Donna was nurturing, kind, and always looking for a way to make herself useful.
Patricia’s pregnancy gave her the perfect opportunity to do just that.
She moved in while Patricia was still pregnant. She took over the household chores so her older sister could rest with her feet up. She cleaned, did the shopping, and prepared the baby’s room.
Patricia was not a happy pregnant person. She had always been proud of her figure and was dismayed to see what the imminent arrival of “the little stranger,” as she referred to the baby, was doing to her.
As soon as Rebecca arrived—Mervin was on a ship in the South China Sea, and so wasn’t present—Patricia happily turned the baby over to Donna.
Donna was a realist. She had never had a boyfriend, or really, so much as a date. She was aware that all of the beauty in her family had been unfairly divided, with one hundred percent going to her sister. She knew that Rebecca might be her one chance to shower all her love, affection, hugs, and kisses, so she took full advantage.
From Rebecca’s first day home from the hospital, it was Donna who got up with her in the night. At first, she would take her to Patricia in her bed, who would nurse her, then hand her back to Donna. That only lasted a few weeks, as Patricia soon decided that her sleep was more important than nursing.
Rebecca was switched to bottles
The little family adjusted to life with each other, complicated only by Mervin’s occasional shore leaves. During these few weeks each year, Patricia made more of an effort to be actively involved in Rebecca’s care. Being perceived as a perfect mother was important to her. The awkward way she changed and dressed the baby, and the fact that Rebecca was only really happy when she was with Donna, revealed the truth of the situation, but Mervin did not care to see it.
And so, life continued apace for the two women and the baby, until Rebecca uttered those four seemingly harmless words to Donna: “I love you, Mama.” Donna knew that Patricia would never abide her child calling someone else mama.
From the beginning, Donna had made it clear to Rebecca who “Mama” was—Patricia. Donna was simply that—Donna. If she had thought to give herself a nickname—Auntie, perhaps, or something easier to pronounce than Donna—the whole scene might have been avoided.
She hadn’t done so, though, and so, as Rebecca slipped off, all defenses down and her brain slowly fading into sleep, she had inadvertently spoken the truth of it.
I love you, Mama.
When Donna’s eyes met Patricia’s, her stomach sank. She had been a keen observer of her sister—studying her like an archaeologist does a set of unearthed tablets—and she knew what her life’s priorities were. She knew that although Patricia preferred to not spend time working and doing chores, that mattered less to her than her image. How she appeared to others was of paramount importance to her.
Patricia didn’t say anything, which Donna knew was worse. If she’d flown off the handle or made a cutting remark, it would have hurt, but it might have blown over. Instead, she stood and went into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of lemonade.
Donna sat nestling Rebecca against her, kissing the top of her head as she slept. She whispered, “Oh, my little one, what have you done?”
When Patricia came back to the living room, Donna met her with a faltering smile, as though nothing had changed from when they got up that morning.
“I think I’ll go lay down little miss here, then I’ll start some dinner for us.”
“That’s fine,” Patricia answered. “After dinner, I’d like to talk to you about something I’ve been thinking about.”
Donna nodded, but her shoulders drooped a little as she carried Rebecca to her room and laid her down. She pulled a light blanket up to her waist out of habit, mindless of the heat.
For long minutes, Donna stood still, staring down at Rebecca, who she had long-since begun to think of as her own baby. She watched her chest rise and fall in perfect rhythm, her chubby cheeks a touch red with the heat, and her dark, curly hair tinged with sweat.
“I love you, too, Becca honey.”
Donna took a deep, somewhat-shuddering breath and slipped out of the baby’s room.
After dinner, Patricia told her how much she appreciated that she had given up so much of her life, but that she just couldn’t take advantage of her that way anymore. “You have a life of your own to live, after all.”
Donna spent the next two days showing Patricia as much as she could about how to take care of Rebecca. She had been cast out, but she still wanted the best for Rebecca.
The next day, Donna found herself on a bus, rattling across the heartland of America.
As she rode, Donna turned the events of the previous days over and over in her mind, looking for anything she could have done that might have changed the outcome. She knew, though, that she could never overcome the strength of her sister’s personality. She had lost that battle as a young girl and never regained the higher ground.
When Donna was somewhere in eastern Wyoming, a new thought occurred to her. Perhaps Patricia would be overwhelmed with taking care of Rebecca. She was a good baby, but when everything is new and unfamiliar, it can be too much. Within a few miles, she had allowed herself a glimmer of hope.
A few hours later, as the bus passed into Nebraska, that glimmer had grown into a full-fledged fantasy. By the time they stopped for dinner in Kearney, she had almost convinced herself that when she got to Iowa, there would be a message asking her to return to Middle Falls. She wouldn’t even pretend to make a fuss and she wouldn’t even bother to unpack her suitcase. She would happily do anything to be back with Rebecca.
Just before the bus arrived in Omaha, it crossed a railroad track. The bus’s engine stalled. The engineer of the oncoming train did his best to stop, but failed.
The collision killed seventeen people.
One of them was Donna Gregory, most recently of Middle Falls, Oregon.
Chapter Two
1980s
From an outside perspective, Rebecca Wright had an enviable life. If the world of Middle Falls, Oregon had a tail, she appeared to have a firm grip on it.
She had come from modest beginnings, but she had moved up many levels. She had met Mark Wright in 1973, a year before he graduated with his Doctor of Dental Surgery degree. They married the same month he opened his dental practice in a new office building downtown. The practice grew and prospered and in 1978, Mark expanded, taking up an entire floor of the building and hiring new dentists to fill the empty chairs.
That success meant that Rebecca didn’t need to work, but she chose to get her real estate license anyway. Between Mark’s contacts in the business world and her own climb through the social strata of Middle Falls, she had a steady stream of upper-end clients to work with.
She hadn’t reached the peak of society yet—those spots were carefully guarded by old-guard family matriarchs like Dorothea Collins and Thelma Coleman. But Rebecca was still young and knew her day would come. In the interim, she volunteered for every committee and charity event that might give her a leg up.
In 1980, she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, Christopher William Wright, who was named after his paternal grandfather in an attempt to outmaneuver Mark’s two brothers in the chase for position in the family will.
Rebecca was not a natural parent. She muddled through three months of post-partum depression and a general feeling that she was never intended to be a mother before she melted down one night when she couldn’t get baby Christopher to sleep.
The next day, she called Dorothea Collins and asked for a favor. Did she know of anyone who was trustworthy and could be a good live-in maid and nanny?
As it turned out, Dorothea did. Her own cook, Juanita, had a niece named Maria who lived in Southern California, but who was looking for a more permanent position than she had at the moment.
After a few phone calls, it was all arranged. Maria packed her little Chevette up and drove north, while Mark and Rebecca called in more favors to have the room over the garage turned into a bedroom with its own small bathroom, all completed in the few days Maria was on the road.
The moment Maria walked in the house, Rebecca handed Christopher over to her and rarely thought of him again, except in respect to whether Maria was on her one night per week off-duty.
In the end, the situation worked. Christopher bonded with Maria. Maria fell instantly in love with the baby with the wispy blonde hair and laughing blue eyes. Rebecca was pleased to be relieved of the burden of motherhood. Mark, as he was about so many things, was mostly oblivious. As long as everyone was getting along, he skimmed along the surface of the household, mostly thinking of ways to increase the revenue of his practice.
For three years, the situation played out perfectly.
Then everything fell apart.
Chapter Three
1984
Rebecca Wright strode into the offices of Green Valley Realty carrying a small, stylish attaché. Her shoulder-length hair was perfect and she wore a white blouse and pleated blue skirt that went to her knee. She pushed through the glazed glass front door and stopped at the front desk. She laid the attaché on the desk, pulled a sheaf of papers out and handed it to the smiling woman who sat behind the desk.
“Would you file these for me, Nancy?” Rebecca asked. “Closing in five weeks. There won’t be any problem with these buyers, they’re golden, and I’m handling both sides.”
“Of course,” Nancy said. “Yours are always golden, and I think you double-side more transactions than anyone else in the office.” Nancy’s words could be construed to have a slight rebuke to them, but Rebecca paid them no mind.
“I don’t know why so many agents give away the other side of their commission. Personally, I’d rather make twice the money for the same amount of work, but that’s just me.”
“Oh, here are your messages,” Nancy said, handing a small stack of pink message slips to Rebecca.
