Miss Parker

Lyle had offered to hold my hair back while I was throwing up but I had slammed the door into his face at the prospect of a scene as humiliating as that.

Once I had stopped emptying the contents of my stomach into the toilet, I could hear his gentle knock. I was struggling for air, glad that the retching had stopped.

“Are you okay?” his worried voice filtered through the wood of the door.

“Sure! I feel excellent!” I replied, irritated, before I bent forward a second time to vomit some more.

I just wanted to get rid of Lyle. Get rid of everyone around me to be able to come to terms with what he had just told me. Jarod- a man who had been so obsessed with me that he would have done anything to possess me?

That would explain his reluctance to tell me about my past... but had he really taken advantage of my helpless state? Had he tried to start over with me by withholding his past attacks on me?

Whenever I tried to imagine it, the nausea grew stronger.

Esspecially when I thought about the fact, that I was pregnant with his child. For all I knew he could have even switched my contraceptives with placebos just to bind me to him.

Oh my god...

Even his anger and suspicions that I was just pretending to have amnesia did add up. He had probably really believed that I was just getting revenge on him. What a sick mind, I thought, my heart beating furiously inside my chest.

I placed my hand onto my stomach in an effort to calm it down, but did not succeed. But since there was nothing left there, I was just retching dryly and thus lowered myself to the floor, leaning against the bathroom wall.

I felt exhausted, still nauseous and absolutely frightened.

Would he come back for me now that he’d had a taste of me? Would he claim his baby and make my life even more unbearable?

I couldn’t decide what was worse: The fact that he knew where to find me, or the fact that I knew that deep down, I still loved him despite everything I had just heard. Who was the greater danger to me? He or I?

I drew my legs up to my body and buried my face in the fabric of my trousers.

“Don’t cry” a voice inside my head told me and I suddenly understood that the old Miss Parker, that person I had once been, was still inside me. Some part of her had survived and told me to be strong. I even had the distinct feeling that she would have despised herself for curling up on the floor to cry.

The thought of her comforted me greatly and that very moment I felt some of her strength... my strength return to my body. If she could do it, I could do it.

So I grabbed the edge of the sink and pulled myself back to my feet where a look in the mirror confirmed what I had already known.

I looked like living hell.

There was Lyle’s knock at the door. Again.

I frowned at my reflection. Besides the smudged make-up and pale complexion, there was something else that was wrong. I touched my own cheek and smoothed my hair back from my face, when suddenly something hit me.

It was as if I had been slapped in the face, like a veil being abruptly pulled from my vision. Suddenly it was there and I had no idea where it had come from, but I knew that I was right.

I was supposed to have black hair.

Of course the dark roots had told me that blonde wasn’t my natural haircolor, but now I knew with a strange certainty that I had never bleached my hair before. I felt my body tremble and clung to the sink. The woman in the mirror was the woman Jarod had had. The one who had willingly stayed with him and trusted him, not knowing what a twisted mind he had. She was weak and stupid and far too trusting.

I thought back to the suits that hung in the upstairs closet. The sharp stilletto heels and dark colors. That was who I really was.

And I would become her again because I knew that she was strong and independent. Just what I needed to be now. I ignored Lyle’s calls for me and rubbed at my eyes to restore the make-up.

“Sis, please!”

“Go away!” I called to him. “Just go away!”

“But I can’t leave you like this!” he protested.

“Oh you can!” I told him without taking my gaze off my reflection in the mirror.

“I might have lost my memories, but I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

And I was. Well… I would be.

Life at the Centre had become even more unbearable since Sydney and I avoided each other. He had always been the one person I had been able to talk to, but now the day was only filled with dull work.

At least I had finally completed the extensive check on the security system, but had now been assigned to a thoroughly boring job that was supposed to make the internal server’s firewall Jarod-proof. Futile attempts, I secretly knew. Nothing on this planet was actually Jarod-proof.

Brooding over those dark thoughts I stepped through the hall, carrying a paper-cup of stale coffee in my hand when suddenly I collided with somebody.

Hot coffee spilled over my trousers and when I looked down to survey the damage, I noticed that the hot liquid had stained the other person’s shoes, too.

I recognized them even before she spoke.

“Great. Moron. Do you have any idea how much one pays for Manolo Blahnik shoes these days?!”

I looked up into Miss Parker’s cold blue eyes. She had raised an eyebrow and tilted her head slightly to the side as if waiting for an answer.

“I… I’m sorry, Miss Parker! I am so sorry!” I apologized, at the same time taking in the image of her.

Her hair was as raven as it had ever been and although it was styled differently than usual, she looked far closer to her old self than she had the last time I had seen her. The stilletto heels and suit had done their magic.

My gaze slipped down towards her stomach and I couldn’t help but stare, although there was nothing to see. She was as slim as she had ever been.

“What are you looking at?” she snarled. “Now get out of my way, I have a meeting to attend.”

“But Miss Parker…!” I called after her. Desperate for some sign that she was fine, or that she had not fulfilled her evil plan, I tried to hold her back.

“What?” she snapped, emphazising every letter.

“I… are you… are you?”

She raised both eyebrows now and smoothed her jacket over her stomach in a motion that I believed to be automatic.

“You can try talking to me again, as soon as you have learned how to articulate yourself,” she said coldy, as if she had lost interest in me altogether.

She stepped into the elevator and turned around only when she stood inside. The look she gave me was almost pitying. As if she had never seen anyone more pathetic in her life.

I sighed. She was back. She looked like herself. But something was entirely different.

I looked up with the knock at my door.

“Come in”, I called, expecting my son with some more instructions on what he liked to call “The Taming of the Shrew”. I hadn’t been very happy with his latest progress on his sister, whatsoever. He had meant to bind her closer to him by telling her lies about Jarod so she wouldn’t trust him, should he try to take her away from the Centre. Since she had refused all contact to anybody since then, his move had obviously been not quite as ingenius as he had thought it to be.

Instead of him, the double doors revealed my daughter herself and I couldn’t stop myself from taking a sharp breath when I laid eyes on her.

For a second I was unsure whether she had unexpectly regained her memory because there was nothing left of the frightened woman that had been sitting on my couch last time. Her hair was black again and her fingernails blood red as she put her hand flat on the table.

“I would like to work again,” she said in a firm voice that once again reminded me of the fact that natural authority was in the Parker genes. She hadn’t just handed in a request. It was an order.

“Maybe it is too soon,” I said, then remembered the role I had been assigned. Occasionally appearing father.

The problem was, that I hadn’t appeared. She had taken the stage and ruled it.

“It is not too soon. I have my little ulcer related problem under control. The doctor gave his okay.”

“But your amnesia…” I began, but she stopped me midsentence.

“It’s fine. I may not remember personal details but my skills are all intact,” she said. “There won’t be a problem.”

I hadn’t realized that her voice had been higher last time, but I realized now that it had dropped to its familiar growl once again. That was what I had always wanted my daughter to become. Someone who appeared to be invincible. Someone who displayed authority and could pull people’s strings. It was just that those abilities were most unwelcome in the current situation.

“Lyle told me that I worked in corporate before I became Head of Security. I want to do that again.” She was not pleading, but negotiating.

And I knew that she was good at it. But I had always held a powerful weapon against her that I now intended to use once again.

“Angel,” I told her, cupping her cheek gently in my hand. “I am your father. I know what’s good for you.”

It seldom took more than that. A reassuring touch of her face, a few nice words and she softened to the point where I was able to talk her out of whatever she wanted to do. I had done this so often that it came automatically.

I had done it back when she had wanted to take the offer she had received from a prestigious law-firm, when she had refused to work for the Centre, when she had inquired about what had happened to her mother. It had always worked.

Today, it didn’t.

And for the first time I regarded her amnesia for what it really was: a major inconvenience.

She gave me a smile that I recognized to be the fake smile she usually gave as a formality to people she did not like.

“You might want only the best for me, but it’s me who has to decide what is good for me. And hanging around in that house of mine is not.”

I tried again. Sometimes it took a little effort.

“Angel, can’t you wait a little longer? You are only a few weeks along in your pregnancy. The first three months are the most dangerous. I don’t want you to miscarry.”

She swept towards me with two swift steps and leaned over the table to give me that intimidating stare of her that I was only rarely the object of. Her voice was firm and very low when she spoke, pointedly.

“My child. My responsibility.”

I regarded her, considering my options at the same time. There was no cupid reason to not allow her to work back in corporate. We just had to be careful about her nosing around. Should I really put the little trust she had gained towards us in jeopardy again?

“Well, if you feel up to it…” I finally gave in. “We can try it for a while.”

After a short pause I added. “Please tell me whenever you feel stressed and want to cut down on the workload.”

“Don’t worry,” she replied and straightened up again. Her stance was so much more familiar than the way she had hugged herself last time in my office. Now her arms were crossed in front of her chest and her eyes sparkled with awareness.

I had a definite sense of foreboding about what I had to expect next.

“When I was away from home I found out that the information on my driver’s license is wrong. Also I don’t seem to be listed in any of the registration offices around here. Can you explain that to me please?”

I frowned. We really needed to adjust to this situation. I realized that threatening her had been far easier than acting the concerned father. I should have really stuck to Lyle’s strategy, but now it seemed to be too late.

“Well, we’re a wealthy family. It’s a security measure to make sure noone is able to track us down in order to kidnap us or similar,” I gave her my standart response to questions like that, but it sounded weak this time.

I couldn’t determine whether she bought it because she just nodded curtly, then walked towards the door.

“Angel!” I called her back to which she gave me a look over her shoulder. Her blue eyes didn’t look at me with their usual loving and admiring expression. They merely wore the look you’d give an unwelcome stranger.

“Yes?”

“Lyle told me that we would be celebrating Christmas at your house this year.”

The hard gaze wavered for a second and I felt a surge of triumph inside me. She might look steadfast, but nothing in this world would be able to erase her wretched, ridiculous need to be loved.

“Yes,” she said, more softly now.

When she had left, I leaned back in my chair. She needed her family and she knew she did. As strong as she might appear to the outside world, I would be able to drag that scared little girl she was inside back to the surface. It was that frightened core of her that I usually despised, but now that it worked to my advantage, I needed it just as much as my daughter needed her strong outward appearance.

It was my advantage that I had known her for years and she had no idea who I really was.

It was usually not a good sign when my father summoned me to his office so I hurried along the corridor, buttoning my jacket in the process.

My father’s secretary greeted me with a bright smile but I was too weary to return to my usual flirty banter with her, since I had retrieved all the information I needed. She was useless to me and in consequence I just raised an eyebrow and her then went past her.

My father rarely shouted, and he didn’t either, today, but he raised his voice against me even before the doors had swung shut behind me.

“What have you done to her?”

“To whom?” I asked, although I knew damn well who he was talking about.

“Your sister!”

“She’s no threat,” I told him calmly, helping myself to an apple from his fruit basin on the coffee table. “She’s totally crushed with the news of Jarod being an obsessed stalker.”

I wiped the apple on my sleeve and then took a hearty bite. That idea had really been one of my better ones. The look in her eyes had been to die for. I just hoped that she wouldn’t regain her memories soonish because crushing her like that gave me a great sense of power. And satisfaction.

“No threat!” he echoed, furiously. “She marched in here today and demanded her old job back!”

I looked up from the apple and stared at him with some disbelief.

“Oh come on. The last time I saw her she was completely…”

He cut me off: “Not anymore.”

Damn. Sis was recovering more quickly than I had expected. That would take some adjustment to my plans. But they wouldn’t be mine if they weren’t adjustable. I was quite flexible after all.

“What’s so bad about her working again?” I asked, shrugging. “At least she’ll once earn herself that nice little sum you transfer to her bank account every month.”

My father had obviously lost his sense of humour and just eyed me with some disdain.

“Really. We just have to assign her to the corporate activities that don’t violate any laws. Trading and stuff. She’ll never know what the Centre is really about.”

As usual it was me who realized that we could actually turn this around to work in our favour.

“If Jarod finds out about the baby and tries to take her away from the Centre, she’ll won’t suspect anything was wrong and when he tells her the truth, she’ll never believe it.”

I grinned, chuckling at the thought of it.

“If he tells her that she’s actually working for an evil cooperation that holds people hostage or some delirious stuff like that, she’ll tell him to go to hell.”

“You mean this is working to our advantage?” he asked, frowning at me.

Wow, at least the penny had dropped with Daddy!

“Sure. We just have to keep an eye on her, so she’ll not have any contact with Sydney and Broots.”

“I can arrange that,” he said, solemnly. “Now get out, Lyle. I need to make a phone call.”

I turned around and left, remaining in front of the door while I heard him pick up the phone inside his office.

“Mister Raines. I need to talk to you.”

I waited patiently while he explained the situation to Raines, my ear close to the gap between the doors.

"I agree. We will transfer her to a sublevel if anything goes wrong."

Miss Parker

Obviously I had gained myself some sort of reputation in this place because when I asked for something, the employees usually tripped over their own feet to get it as soon as possible. Some even seemed to fear me.

I wouldn’t have thought so, but I sort of liked it.

Since I had lost all control over my life recently, it was quite nice to have some power over others. At least that made me forget that others had a lot of power over me in knowing things about my life that I did not.

For the purpose of keeping that reputation, I tried to hide my now regular morning sickness from them. Lyle’s story about Jarod seemed to have triggered something inside me and I now had the misfortune of experiencing the whole nine yards of early pregnancy symptoms. It really annoyed me.

I knew that although everybody around here seemed to think differently, the decision about this pregnancy was mine to make. Still I couldn’t quite decide whether to terminate it or not. So while I buried myself in work, I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind. Dealing with it now only seemed to penetrate that handy brick wall I had erected around myself. Displaying only a very cold and calculating person to the outside world was easier when you didn't have to deal with an inner turmoil. It amazed me how easy it actually was and that led me to the conclusion that I had done it before, but although it was useful to not have to be dealing with my feelings, I knew that it was wrong.

After one of my morningly escapades I stepped out of the Ladies Room, rebuttoning my jacket with trembling fingers. I stopped in my tracks to search my pockets for a stripe of chewing-gum but could only come up with empty wrappers for a while.

“Merry Christmas, Miss Parker,” a voice said and I braced myself for another encounter with someone who knew me and whom I had never before seen in my life. Instead, I was in for a rather pleasant surprise.

“Sam!” I said with a bright smile that we actually owed to me finally being successful in my search for chewing gum. He grinned when I hurriedly stuffed it into my mouth.

“How are you feeling?” he asked and I shrugged, not really willing to talk about my physical state with anybody. Not even a man I had grown to like. Funny, but somehow I felt that I could trust him more than my own family. Weird, I thought, acknowledging that fact for the first time. Where had that come from?

“You were so busy during the last days that I didn’t want to bother you, but…” he slid his hand into the pocket of his jacket and produced what looked like a photograph at first sight. “… I have something that is yours.”

He handed me the picture and I realized that I was holding the sonogram picture that had been made in the hospital.

“You put it my coat’s pocket,” he explained while I was still staring down at it. “Sorry. I should have returned it to you earlier.”

“That’s okay,” I replied weakly. I had been so occupied with trying to forget about the child that I hadn’t even noticed that I wasn’t in possession of the sonogram picture anymore.

“Well, I’ll see you later,” he finally said, then walked past me into the direction of the elevator.

I looked up to check whether anyone was around then leaned against the wall with all energy suddenly drained from my body.

There was just the shape of something in that picture and with my untrained eye I could only guess where the head lay, but something touched my heart and caused the icy exterior to melt away unexpectedly when the whole reality of my pregnancy came crashing down on me.

Having let my guard down, I glanced around again but the corridor was still mercifully empty. I tried to imagine myself as a mother to that child. I really really tried, but it was very hard to picture. Still… when had it ever been easy for a first time mother?

I thought back to the pictures in my living room. The one in which my mother gave her little girl a beaming smile, holding on tightly to her hand. Maybe she had been scared to death at first, too. Although I remembered nothing about her, I suddenly missed her with all my heart.

But then after all, the child was Jarod’s. The mere thought of it had fear welling up inside me. But not all children were like their parents, I reminded myself sternly. Was I like the man who called himself my father? I wondered. Were my eyes as cold and unforgiving as his?

I didn’t know him but as far as I was concerned the only thing that bound us together was, that we were both pretending to the outside world. I wanted everybody to think that I was cold and tough and he was trying to make me believe that he actually cared about anything beside his own agenda.

But I knew that he didn’t.

It’s how we grow up that makes us who we are, I told myself. And as comforting as that thought was when it came to my unborn baby, it made me fear something else:

I was suddenly very afraid of who I really was.

What was left of my education were just knowledge and a number of certain instincts and impulses.

What if I had been as twisted as this man before my amnesia?

I inhaled the air deeply and felt a lightheadedness creep up inside me. All I found myself wanting right now was my mother. Wherever she was.

This is too much. I can’t handle all of this.

Another sleep deprivation experiment to supervise and I would go insane. Spending long hours in the sublevels, deprived of daylight I felt myself growing more depressed every day. Esspecially since Broots’ words still seemed to echo inside my head. And everytime I found myself craving daylight, I saw pale young Jarod in front of me. He had never breathed air that hadn’t been filtered by the Centre’s airvents, had never felt the warmth on sunlight on his skin.

I carried the guilt with me at all times, but it was in those moments when I really struggled with it. I had just let it happen…

I rose from my chair and took the elevator to whatever floor it took me, just to get away from the depressing artificial light down where I was working day by day.

The doors slid open and revealed an empty hallway with two large windows through which the light of the pale winter sun streamed in and a piece of brilliant blue sky was visible.

I sighed and walked towards it like a moth that is drawn to the light. I just hoped that it could erase Jarod from my mind. He still hadn’t called and I wondered what Miss Parker had done to him so that he stayed away.

I had finally reached the window and leaned onto the window sill with both hands.

A soft groan snapped me out of my absentmindedness and had me swirl around. Miss Parker stood in a corner close by and stared down upon what looked like a sonogram picture, breathing heavily.

My insides felt as if they were twisting into knots when I looked at her standing there in her business outfit. Business. That was what her baby was for her.

For a moment I was tempted to just leave without her ever having known that I’d been there, but then another part of me got the upper hand.

“Miss Parker!” I called and she looked up, paling slightly, and let the picture slip into her pocket.

“Yes?”

Broots was right. I hadn’t done anything the last time. I had just let it happen. Maybe there was some way to turn this around. A way to rescue that baby from the grasp of the Centre. Or maybe this was just an outlet for all the fury I had been feeling towards her lately.

I made sure that she felt my disapproval when I snarled at her: “Shouldn’t you hand that over to your father? I bet they need it for their project files!”

She looked puzzled for a moment, then her face hardened. I took that as a sign that she had understood that I knew.

“No wonder you’ve been trying to keep it from Broots and me. What did they offer you, Miss Parker? Freedom to walk away? Or was it what all Parker’s have ever fallen for: Power?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” she snapped.

“How could you do that?” I asked her. It felt as if I was talking to a stranger. Didn’t she understand what she was doing?

“Do what?” Her anger was now audible in her voice.

“Miss Parker! Stop trying to make a fool of me!” I exploded which caused her to wince and take a step backwards.

“I’ll call security if you try to attack me,” she threatened.

“There’s no need to, Miss Parker. Have a nice day.”

While I angrily stormed back into the elevator, I already regretted acting like I had. Not that she didn’t deserve to be treated like that, but I had always deemed my ability to control myself my greatest weapon. Now that I had lost control, I felt empty and annoyed with myself.

I took a last look at Miss Parker’s face before the doors closed and was puzzled to see tears welling up in her eyes.