Goldilocks Forever

Chapter 57

Walton, New York

March 2043

 "Well, did you?" Toby set his mug down on the coffee table.

"Did I what?"

"Have a great life?"

Beau didn't like the insinuation. His life wasn't over. He was still living it. He was still young. It couldn't be over. Not yet. "Then what happened?" He scooted to the edge of the couch. His legs tingled. He stomped his feet a few times and flexed his toes.

Toby slid deeper into the chair. "We moved around a lot. The IDF was crazy, gangbusters busy." He scoffed at the memory. "Literally busting up gangs. That's what finally brought us to New York. Things there got pretty ugly."

"No, I mean, what happened to Anna?"

Toby frowned. "It was a difficult time. We had to cut off all contact with Alex and Cleo."

"But you somehow falsified my birth certificate and adoption papers."

"Oh yeah. I paid some woman five grand to do that and then mailed the papers to DC."

Beau frowned. Toby's trickery had cost him a few months. He'd been angry at first, but now he understood. "What else?"

Toby shrugged. "We had to keep Anna under wraps for a few weeks. I didn't tell Vida she was with me. Asking for forgiveness rather than permission turned out to be an excellent strategy. I worked all the time. Anna was at home, alone, depressed as hell even though she was on meds. We moved from territory to territory depending on what jobs the IDF had. Each time we moved, it was a different drug. None of them were as good as the ones from L.A. That's still the case, unfortunately." Toby rose to stretch. He went to the window and pulled aside the curtain. "Snowing again."

Beau leaned back against the couch again. "So...you two lived together all that time?"

"Yup." He kept his back to him.

"And you remained friends the whole time?"

"Yup."

Toby's sudden lack of verbosity brought on a wave of panic in Beau and reminded him of the many tough interviews he'd had, people who, for a variety of reasons, didn't want to talk. Usually because they had something to hide and were protecting themselves or someone else. Who was Toby protecting now? Anna or himself?

Beau's phone tweeted in his pocket. He checked the messages. Parker. He sent a quick response. All ok.

Toby turned. "Feel free to take that."

"No." He looked at his cousin with firm resolution. "I want to hear more about Anna."

Toby sat back down. His feet tapped nervously on the rug.

How to get him to talk? "Toby," Beau began. He cleared his throat. "You're not my father...are you?"

"I wish I was, kid. You'd have the DNA for your transplant." He closed his eyes. "A transplant. Fuck." He let out his breath as he shook his head sadly.

"Do you know who my father is? Is there a chance he could still be alive?"

He saw it. A split second of hesitation, but then Toby said, "I don't think so."

"What happened to him?" His voice took on a more urgent tone. "What happened to her?"

Toby sighed. "After four years, we ended up in New York. The society was in a real shit storm."

"What does this have to do--?"

"Chillax, kid. I'll get to that." He glanced at the clock on the wall over the woodstove. "You have to understand how it all went down. Things will make a lot more sense when..." He froze, frowned. "The New York society, even during Max's time, was unfocused and disorganized. Max was a tyrannical bastard, so a lot of the Infected people were pushed even further underground. To make matters even more complicated, many of them had immigrated to New York from various countries of origin, so there were enclaves of ethnicity scattered throughout all the boroughs. Kind of like there were with the Aging, too.

"Essentially, there were gangs of Infected people fighting against each other for years. A real fucking disaster. One thing a lot of them had in common was a hatred for Max. A few months after his death, we rolled into town and tried to let people know he was gone. It's not as easy as it sounds. We couldn't exactly put his head on a stick in the middle of Times Square. It was years before everyone knew. Then one of two things happened: either a gang decided it was happy about the news and continued on as normal, or the gang decided it was happy and wanted to seize this golden opportunity to gain more power and fill Max's shoes."

"The fighting only escalated and was made even worse by the fact that without Max and his goons running the drug operations of the society, a shit ton of people were without meds." Toby shared a look of rue with Beau, as if he understood the ugliness that entailed. "Exactly. A real fucking disaster. So," he sighed again, "our fearless leader Vida, in her infinite wisdom, decided that this lawless shit had gone on long enough and something had to be done before one of those numbskulls did something stupid to bust us out into the mainstream. She decided the solution was to put someone in charge. The society needed a leader and preferably someone the IDF could influence so we could finish our work and get full cooperation and hopefully a sweet long-term contract."

"That's how we ended up back on Staten Island." Toby's face lit up in a charming smile. "I had an idea."