Recreating History, Repairing Mistakes

Part 19

Alice wakes to the sound of someoneworking in the kitchen and just for a moment she smiles, thinks it'shim making breakfast, before yesterday catches up to her again andshe remembers, FP's in jail. She's slept for maybe an hour or two,lying awake in turns crying, being angry and trying to come up with aplan. Archie and Veronica had stayed for a while, talking, plotting,finding a way to proof his innocence. In the end, they'd come to theconclusion, that the information that had been so relieving to all ofthem is probably nothing they can use with the Sheriff. It would onlyget the two teenagers in trouble for breaking and entering and it'sstill not irrefutable proof. The statement of two teenagers, who areobviously friends with his son, claiming the murder weapon had beenplanted doesn't hold as much weight as a police officer pulling saidweapon out off a closet in his house. Archie had, nevertheless,offered to ask his mother for advice, even if it means getting introuble * there *. Alice had appreciated all the help and she couldsee that, while Jughead hadn't been completely convinced of hisfather's innocence, he's been seriously relieved by the fact that thegun seemed to not belong to the man. It still doesn't mean he's notinvolved, as the boy pointed out more than once during their talk,but it's a huge step in finding out the truth and if there's just theslightest possibility that FP really did not kill Jason, then Jugheadwas willing to help prove that. After all, the man is still hisfather.

Hours later, they had gone to bed, morebecause it's something they should do rather than an actual want to.Neither of them was tired and thought they were able to sleep anyway,but the exhaustion had made them at least try. They would be no goodto FP if none of them was able to stand upright the next morning.Archie had promised to tell his father Jughead would be spending thenight at the trailer before the boy could even voice the thought andVeronica had promised to be by sometime tomorrow to help with therest of the clean up. Alice had never been so glad her daughterdidn't listen to her when she'd tried to make her ditch them. Theymight not be flawless, but right now they seem like the best friendsa girl could have asked for.

Alice herself had stayed up for anotherhour after sending the kids to bed. She'd aimlessly picked up somestray clothes or magazine and let it fall in the exact same placeagain, her mind not on her task at all but on the last few hours.She'd dealt with Archie and Veronica's break in by giving them apiece of her mind and extracting a promise that the come clean totheir parents before she would, but in the end she couldn't deny thefact that not so long ago, she might have even encouraged it. Andthen she reached the question of who would want to frame him formurder and that's when she decided to stop and head to bed, too. Heused to be in trouble with a lot of people back when he was sixteen,and so had she unfortunately, but she can't see any of them holdingonto a grudge for that long. But she hasn't seen or spoken to him inthe last twenty years, and so there's really no way to know ifthere's someone pissed enough at him to do that, or who. And theymight have talked about a lot of things since being back together,but asking him how many people might want to see him rot in jail fora murder he didn't commit has never really been anywhere on thatlist. For a brief angry moment she thought that, with FP, maybe itshould have but then she shook her head to chase it away. She's notmad at him, she knows she has the right to, for putting her throughthis, but she really isn't. It's one of the only things she knowswithout a doubt right now. The other is, that no matter what happens– with FP, with Jughead or with Betty and Jughead's relationship - she will be there for his son.

She likes the boy, had from the momentBetty had introduced him as her boyfriend and would she still be withHal, Alice wold still do everything to keep Jughead out of troubleand safe. He deserves nothing but the best and, after everything thathad happened that day, he definitively deserves a family that willtake care of him, even if it might not be his own at the moment.