In Brist's Time - Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Brist opened her bag, took out her mini digital video camera, and inserted a blank DVD into it. She placed the shopping bag containing the rest of them into her bag which still had most of her stuff in it; seeing as how she hadn’t wanted to unpack yet and had ordered her maid not to because she wanted to do it herself.

Drew had been home when she returned from Belana’s. They’d sat down and talked for a few hours. Drew told her that he planned to go to the casino for a few hours, and then he was going to have the family jet fly him back to Minnesota. Brist sighed morosely.

“You miss Jesse, huh?” Drew asked. Brist nodded.

“What I don’t understand is if he really had someone else he was in love with, then why did he have sex with me just a few days before he broke up with me? I mean I would have known if he were in love with someone else… I would have sensed it, even if we were in the back of the limo. Not to mention, why would he give me a ring if he were going to break up with me? Something just doesn’t make sense.”

“Well if you ask me, I’d say you’d be in far more misery if Dad found out you were having sex in the back of the limo,” Drew remarked dryly.

“How’s he going to find out? Besides even if he did find out, it wouldn’t be until we were back in Minnesota, and by then it would be too late to do anything,” Brist said with a shrug.

“What if you are pregnant?” Drew asked.

“Nah, I’m on the shot, and we used protection,” Brist informed him. Drew hugged her and then re-announced his intention to go gambling. Brist had watched as he left, then ran up to her bedroom to find something to do.

So here she was, desperate for anything to keep her mind off Muskles. She decided to see how well her video camera worked. At 11:30 PM her parents came home, but she didn’t notice. She was busy walking around the house, as if recording the first exploration of some ancient ruin.

She descended the stairs around 11:45 and headed to the library. At first, the words her parents were speaking were so horrible that her mind refused to understand them. Even so, Brist felt her world shatter.

She simply stood in the doorway of the parlor recording her parents – who were so engrossed in their conversation that they hadn’t even noticed her presence. Her strength seemed to be depleted by just hearing this conversation of betrayal; the tiny lightweight video camera seemed too heavy for her to carry and so she set it on the nearest table, unknowingly giving it a perfect view of her parents. She stood – as if mesmerized – as the words her father was saying finally sank in.

“You want to know what’s wrong! I’ll tell you what’s wrong, Ellen. I went to surprise Brist after work one day and sent her driver home with my car, but instead of surprising her, she shocked me! She and that boyfriend of hers wouldn’t have noticed me if I had been in the back seat with them and when I pulled into his driveway…. Ellen she pulled her underwear out of his pocket practically right under my nose! Even with the privacy glass blocking my view of the backseat, I could well imagine what was happening,” Brist’s father said in a pained voice.

“So… I took care of the matter the only way I knew how. I paid the boy the money he needed to go to college to become a computer programmer. Damn expensive too, but it could have been worse, he could have been going to Harvard Law for 8 years. It was agreed that he would break up with our daughter immediately, and that he would stay as far away from her as possible. Which shouldn’t be too hard seeing as now that he has the money for college, he’ll be enrolling in the most prestigious school for computer programming in the country, which happens to be located in Florida.” Her father finally finished his explanation of why he had been in a bad mood lately.

Brist’s mother looked at him disapprovingly, but she never had a chance to say any thing.

“How could you! I will not live another moment in the same house as that man, Mother!” Brist shouted as she came back to her senses. She grabbed her video camera and ran from the room. Once she reached her bedroom, she remembered to stop the camera from recording, then she stuffed it in her bag. She was suddenly glad that she hadn’t unpacked and therefore didn’t have to waste anytime packing. With her bag strap securely circling her neck on the opposite side of which the bag hung – which reminded her that it was heavy – she prepared to leave the house. Making sure that it was secure, she was glad that it wasn’t likely to fall off if she didn’t hold on to it tightly. Then, as quickly as she could without tripping over her own feet, she raced down the stairs and out the door.

“Wait! Stop! Where are you going?” Her mother called after her frantically. Suddenly it was raining. Hard. “Edward! Go after Her!”

“Calm down Ellen, this storm will prove to be too much for her and she’ll be back in less than 5 minutes,” he reasoned, certain of his logic.

Exactly 5 minutes later, the old grandfather clock started its announcement of the midnight hour. At the first stroke of midnight, lightening lit up the sky and thunder started a series of deafening booms that got louder with each strike of the clock. Finally – just after the last stroke of midnight – the storm, the lightening, and the thunder stopped completely, as if it had been just a figment of an overactive imagination.

During the 12 strokes of midnight, Brist had finished saddling Cream, mounted up, and rode her out of the barn. She intended to ride to Belana’s house to spend the night, but the thunder had gotten so loud that it frightened Cream, who bucked and threw Brist to the ground a total of 20 feet from the stables, her bag landing on her with a muffled thud.

Renee, the stables master, had seen the whole thing from her apartment above the stables and rushed to where Brist had fallen, but Brist was nowhere to be found. Renee quickly assessed the ground to see if Brist had remounted and rode off, but there were no tracks on the ground other than the ones that came from the stables to this spot. Renee shook her head, she had come down from her apartment on stairs located on the outside of the stables and had had this spot in view the entire time. She was positive she would have seen if Brist had gotten up and walked, ran, or rode away, but there was nothing indicating Brist did anything other than disappear. Cream was nowhere to be found either.

“She hasn’t come back yet and now the storm has stopped!” Still inside the house, Ellen was hysterical. Just then, there was a knock at the front door.

“I’ll bet that’s her now,” Edward said, rushing to open the door.

“I saw her fall. She landed not 20 feet from the stables, but when I got there – to the exact spot where she had landed – she had vanished,” Renee informed her employers, half numb with disbelief.

Ellen was surprisingly calm as she placed a hand on her husband’s arm. “Edward, dear, isn’t it funny that at a time like this, I remember that there’s an envelope behind the painting of my great-great-great-Grandmother addressed to me? I am supposed to open today.” She went to the painting feeling as if absolutely nothing in the world was more important at the moment. She pulled the envelope out from behind the portrait and held it up for a second. “See.” She opened it, and quickly read its contents.

Mom,

In the master bedroom, above the fireplace, you must push in the center brick, then go into the closet within a minute and push against the back wall.

Your ever-loving daughter,

Brist

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