The door chime rang down the marble-floored hallway, echoing off the bookshelves, out into the parlor. Catherine Mary O'Connor looked up with a smile, anticipating a reunion she also dreaded. Dropping her dust rag, she hurried to the door.
Andrea and Katarina smiled back at her as the door opened. It had been five years, but at first they seemed not to have aged a day. As they hugged and smiled, Cate noted the beginnings of smile-lines on Kat's face, and the wedding ring on Andrea's right hand; but even so, the years had not touched them yet.
Brian and the girls were at school and Mikey was with his grandmother, so they had the run of the place until Allen got home this evening. After taking their compliments on her house (she beamed), she poured coffee and grabbed the cookies she had baked this morning. They sat down in the formal living room (all of her children would have marveled at this) and caught up.
"Meghan is expecting twins," Cate said, a bit louder than she'd intended. She was terribly proud of the young woman her oldest daughter had become. Smiles and congratulations followed. Kat smiled that secretive smile of hers and asked how it felt to be a grandmother-in-waiting.
"Wonderful," the lady of the house replied. More chit-chat: Morgan was in line to finish college early and was engaged; Rhiannon was maturing into a beautiful young woman (naturally; that's how she'd been made), and already had a boy wrapped around her finger. Brian and Mikey were the spitting image of their dad, twice-over, in looks and behavior.
Kat's turn. She rubbed her belly and admitted that Rick had finally managed to break down her resistance. She was due in August. More smiles and hugs and laughter.
Andrea showed off her wedding ring. She and Gabriela had finally tied the knot, and the long-suppressed urge to start a family was starting to show through. They were looking at potential donors soon.
In the end, Andrea had not come from California and Katarina had not set all of this in motion to catch up on each others' lives, and so, as had been the case for most of the last ten years, Kat took a deep breath and the lead.
"Karyn has found one," she said. Her face was grim. They'd planned for this moment, but they had worked hard to keep it from happening. "We need to decide how we move forward from here."
Andrea knew most of what was happening and so stayed silent, keeping her own counsel as always. Cate spoke up. "How?"
Another deep breath. "Somehow, the stone survived," Kat said, her face reflecting weary resignation. She allowed a moment for that to sink in. They'd all thought that impossible, yet all lived in fear of that very thing coming to pass. This was rapidly heading toward worst-case scenario time.
Cate wanted to ask how that could possibly have happened, but she put that to the side. "How do you know? And which one?"
Andrea's turn. "I received a pre-coded call from the contacted one. Kimberly -- you won't remember her, she was put into play after your portion got underway." Cate nodded, brushing aside a strand of red hair. She expected there had been many of those, and they'd get to that next.
"Did she manage to ... change anything?"
"No," the blonde responded, idly twirling her new wedding ring. "She apparently tried, then vanished. We have to assume she'll be back, though."
"We don't think she knows about the others," Kat added, her dark eyes and dark hair making her face grim somehow in the late-morning shadows. Cate let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding; she couldn't lose her family to this, and perhaps she wouldn't. "But we need to put an end to this. I've already started activating assets around Lake Point and its suburbs."
"How many of those are there?"
Andrea again. "413 in the Greater Lake Point Metro area. Another 218--" that made sense, the total had to be 631, Cate thought -- "are around the country. I don't see any need to activate any of them for now." That meant her daughters could continue their lives. For now.
"Ok," she said, sipping her coffee. "What's next?"
Kat gave her a look of pity. "Plan Cheryl." Before she could do more than give a puzzled look, Cate heard the dark-haired, younger woman rattle off a series of alphanumerics, and everything went blank.
