Dollar Runaways

Chapter 10: Futures

"HELLO AGAIN," ROGER said to them as he greeted them. "May we go ahead and speak in your office again Gloria?"

"That sounds great," she said and led them in.

She expected Ashley to take a seat in the chair next to her again, but she found her sitting in her lap a few moments later, "You are getting to be much too big of a girl for me to do this with you," she whispered in her ear. She just smiled though and leaned into her. Megan gave her a hug and waited for Roger to start.

"Well, I have some good news for you, and some bad news."

"What's the bad news?" Ashley asked.

"Well, I wasn't able to figure out a good way to make you ten years old again on paper."

Ashley sighed, "How bad is it?"

"Seven, you'll be eight next week." He smiled at me.

"So, does that mean you were able to get a new identity for us?!?" she asked incredulously.

"Yes, and you're going to owe me a favor sometime," he said with a smile. "My friend was able to get these for you." He reached into his briefcase and handed her two birth certificates. One said Amber Marie Caffrey and the other said Ashley Marie Caffrey. Both had the birthdates that they had suggested and looked like they were the right ages even.

"How did you...?" Megan started to ask.

"I'm going to call that favor in right now, don't ever ask me that question. These are real and registered in the State of Texas. You were both born in McKinney."

"Wow," she said. She also noticed that Ashley had an 'F' for sex, something that wouldn't be easy to do for real.

"Here are your social security cards. Again, they're legitimately in the system. Uncle Sam will be expecting to see taxes from you." He smirked.

"Okay... Any luck with school records?"

"Here you go, Ashley is apparently quite the student, and I hope she can keep up her grades like she did before all of this." He said with a twinkle. Ashley looked at the report card that she'd been handed and blushed. Her grades from kindergarten through second grade were all Excellents or A's for the grades. "I talked with my friend about having her be younger and still being in fourth grade next year... He seemed to think your best chances of laying low would be to keep her in the lower grade. If for some reason you're able to stop hiding we should be able to get her back into sixth grade like she should be."

Ashley looked a bit down about it, but said, "That's okay, I get to be a little kid longer that way!"

He laughed, "Don't we all wish we could have done that," he said to Mom and Gloria. He sobered up though and said, "Okay, this next part is going to be trickier. You have full custody of Ashley according to this court order. The official record will state that your parents died in an accident next week."

That hit Megan like a ton of bricks. "Not my real parents though...?"

"No, no, no. These are your and Ashley's parents. Rachel and Paul Caffrey, they only exist on paper."

"Okay," she sighed relieved. "Sorry, I'm just a little bit scared for my parents right now."

Roger looked at her seriously, "I think you probably should be too. We'll talk what we might do about them in a moment though."

Megan nodded, "Okay."

"With all of that documentation you should go down to the DMV and get yourself a New Mexico driver's license. If you want to wait and get an apartment and do it then you can, or I'm sure Gloria would be willing to let you stay here for a little longer too. Try and pick an address you'll plan to be at for a while." He suggested.