Cocoa Tales

Episode 5

Her name was Carrie Gerald, and she was the world to her mother’s babysitter. Hired out of college for her early childhood development focus, Caroline Banter started working for the Gerald family even before Carrie was born. Resin Gerald was three months pregnant, and Caroline hadn’t seen her place a hand on her belly even once during the whole interview.

Spending the rest of Resin’s pregnancy earning her first responder certification wasn’t exactly what Caroline had in mind, but the moment she laid eyes on the brown eyes atop the little bundle of love swaddled in blankets, she knew it was worth it. The training, the schooling, the putting up with Resin’s chain smoking following the birth and her refusal to breast-feed, the first steps and first words and first oops: Caroline loved Resin’s daughter like a mother loves a daughter.

Most mothers, anyway. Resin carried her daughter as a burden and when she was done set her aside for another to raise.

And Caroline Banter wouldn’t have had it any other way.

"What are you looking at sweetie?" Caroline asked as she sat in the rocking chair.

"I don’t know," Carrie replied peering out the window. "There’s something in the forest."

"What do you think it is?"

"Is it an alien?" Carrie asked with wide eyes.

No surprise to Caroline Banter, after the movie she’d reluctantly allowed Carrie to see. It had had grown-up words, but Carrie didn’t seemed to notice. She was just obsessed with the aliens rising up from the ground and meeting the heroine in the foggy field outside the forest with the cure to the plague they’d inadvertently started.

It was a twist ending Caroline had seen a mile away. She was yawning by the end.

But Carrie had loved it, and had been seeing aliens in the woods ever since.

Turning back to the window Carrie said, "Do you think it might be a alien...oops..."

Caroline looked up to see the small puddle beneath Carrie. With a quiet sigh she said, "It’s okay, sweetie. Come over here, I’ll clean you up."

The Redding Police Department, bustling, hustling, so busy the day before, was quiet. The phones were resting, the officers and detectives were waiting. Sure there were plenty out in the field finding clues and evidence, trying to learn anything they could about the Redding Bomber, but there was no shortage of cops waiting at the station to learn about the next building to go up, the next disaster waiting in the wings.

As it was, Harold, volunteer for Feline Rehabilitation, had unknowingly sequestered the Redding Bomber in the mountains east of Redding and she feasted on canned salmon with reckless delight.

Problem was, no one at Feline Rehabilitation had ever heard of anyone named Harold.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

The Redding Police Department was surprisingly quiet, and the chief finally stepped out of his office, rubbed his hands together, took a deep breath and said, "All right: grave, go home. But if anything else explodes I expect each of your butts back in your desks in seconds, understood?"

Exhausted groans served as the response. Detectives Faber and Floyd, running on various naps and Moreland’s caffeine, were slightly more awake than the graveyard shift which had managed to keep the station alive throughout the night.

Leaning close to Faber, Floyd said, "Should we really be releasing a half a dozen exhausted people all at once to drive home? They say exhaustion is as dangerous as intoxication."