In His Corner-Chapter 6

Chapter 6

It was late by time they had gotten back to the suite.  Scott had laid out what sounded like a good plan for Todd.  Blair only hoped her plans could help.

The fruits of those plans seemed to have landed at their front door while they had been out.  Stuffed under it was a fat manila envelope.  It seemed Rex had made quick work of information on Carly. 

“What is that, Mom?” Starr asked.

Blair looked at her daughter.  “I called Rex Balsom earlier today to find out anything on Carly.”  She looked apologetically at Viki.  “I am sorry, but I figured we needed all the information we could get on her.”  Blair opened up the envelope and sifted through the pages with Viki and Starr.   

A lot of the file was repeating some of what she had learned from AJ in the bar.  There were other things though.  The most glaring was her and a Dr. Tony Jones.  He must have been the boyfriend she was with when she had slept with AJ.  He had suffered a nervous breakdown, kidnapped Michael when he was still a baby and held another woman as a prisoner before being caught.  However, he got off on an insanity defense.  As a result, Carly shot him in open court and landed in a mental institution for a time. 

There was much more, but it was Rex’s conclusion that gave Blair pause.  He had written “Blair Cramer without the heart.”  Rereading everything, she sadly agreed.  It was those thoughts that she went to sleep with.  Unfortunately, sleep would not take her.  For some reason, she was remembering of another night she had laid in bed, awake with worry.  The difference was, Todd had been there with her.

A knock at the bedroom door startled her.  It opened and Starr crept in.  She noticed her mother was wide awake, even in the darkness.

“You couldn’t sleep either, huh?” Blair asked.  She turned down the other side of the bed and her grown daughter crawled in next to her.

“What was keeping you awake?” Starr asked.

“Rex’s comment about Carly,” Blair answered.

“Mom, from what I read in that file, you are nothing like Carly Jacks,” her daughter assured her.

“But I might have been,” she whispered, thinking of all the ways she could have turned into that woman.

“Really?” Starr asked, unconvinced.  “And just how do you figure that?”

“Starr, I initially married your daddy for the money I knew was coming to him.  It was not some grand romance,” Blair explained gently.  But as she looked back on their years, that was what it had turned into.

“But you and Dad started out as friends, right?”  Her mother nodded.  “And it all worked out in the end.  You two fell in love.”  Then she took her mother’s left hand.  “And by the state of this finger, I’d say you two were still in that state.”  A knowing glint appeared in Starr’s eyes. 

Blair bit her lip, unable to answer.  Thankfully Starr didn’t go looking for one.  She took her mother’s silence as confirmation.  Starr lay back down, her head on her mother’s chest like she had done when she was a child.  “Tell me a story.”

Blair didn’t even have to think about it.  “Once upon a time there was this great dragon.  He had a duty to protect this beautiful princess and her equally beautiful daughter.  And he did that, for years and years.  He protected them from all the bad people in the village who wanted to hurt them.  The princess loved the way the dragon defended her and loved the dragon for it, even if he was big and mean and fire-breathing.  But one day, the dragon disappeared and the princess went on a great quest to search for him.  It took so long, and at last, she believed the dragon had abandoned her and her daughter.  They went on with their lives.  Others hurt them and they tried to defend themselves but they had lost heart.”

“Then, one day, out of nowhere, the dragon returned.  But the years of separation from the princess and her daughter had changed him and they didn’t notice.  The dragon still tried to defend them, but feared that in doing so, he would only hurt them more and the last thing the dragon wanted to do was hurt the princess and her daughter.  So he left the village and them.  He went to another town, but the people there feared him and trapped him and tried to hurt him. The princess and her daughter heard of this and went to that village and fought the villagers on the dragon’s behalf.”

Starr smiled in her mother’s embrace.  She had remembered, vaguely, her father telling her about telling this story to her mother after he had returned to Llanview when she was young.  She loved how her mother had updated it.  “And did the princess and her daughter defeat the villagers?”

“I don’t know the answer to that yet, sweetheart,” she replied, turning to face Starr.  “But I have a feeling they will win in the end.  With the dragon, they always seem to win.”

******

AJ Quartermaine had left the MetroCourt’s bar hours ago and was sitting in the living room of the mansion in the dark.  Before him was a file he had been gathering on Todd Manning since he had first met the man’s daughter the day his grandfather had died. 

The man did not have a great reputation, to say the least.  And AJ knew a thing or two about bad reputations.  In a lot of ways, though, he saw a kindred spirit in Todd Manning.  Both tried to prove themselves to their families, whom they were often estranged from at times.  Both had tried to take their children away from their mothers, though Todd had never gone to the same lengths AJ had. 

The one marked difference between AJ and Todd was, he had a woman who seemed to stay by his side, through good times and bad.  AJ had never had a relationship like that.  Women had never devoted themselves to his defense.  Carly had stood by Jason countless times; Courtney had chosen his brother over him, so the thought of having a ‘stand by your man’ type of woman was foreign to him.  And he so envied Todd Manning for that. 

There was something that Blair Cramer had said at the bar that had stuck with AJ into the wee hours that was the here and now.  Using a rapist’s past against him.  That was what Carly had done to AJ; used his alcoholism against him for her own ends.  But there was something so twisted about crying rape that AJ didn’t even think Carly had the gall to do it.

And yet, everything had happened so quickly.  Johnny Zacchara had confessed to the death of Starr’s boyfriend and daughter and in her anger, Starr had confessed to Todd’s switching of Daniel with his ex-wife’s son.  All this took place in front of Carly.  She had learned that a man she had called friend had betrayed her, and Jason.  No matter how close Carly would get to any man, Jason would always be first in her heart and mind. 

Could Carly have set him up as revenge for what he did to Jason?  A part of AJ didn’t want to believe that she would sink that low, but it fit a pattern. 

There was also something nagging him about Michael.  When the accusation had come out, his son had a horrified expression on his face.  He hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to Michael about it, but it looked like a gut shot.  What was behind his son’s reaction?  Was it just disgust on Carly’s behalf or was there something else? 

There was more to this story and AJ was determined to figure it out.

******

It seemed that telling her daughter that fairy tale was like a shot of adrenaline for Blair when she woke the next morning.  She knew she could face anything, especially when that anything was a blond, brusque hotelier headed straight for her in the lobby.

“I heard you were in town,” Carly said immediately.  “Hope you’ll be joining me in hanging that bastard out to dry.”

Blair only gave her a cool gaze.

Carly didn’t even seem to notice.  “You warned me.  I should never have trusted him.  I thought he was my friend.  But he betrayed me in the worst way.”  Blair didn’t say it, but what Carly was talking about didn’t sound like rape.  She decided to let Carly continue to ramble.  It had worked to her advantage the night before.  “He knew how important Jason was to me.  He knew what Danny meant to Jason.  And he did nothing.  Worse than nothing.  He took away Jason’s chance at fatherhood.”

Loathe as she was to defend Todd’s actions, Blair had to point out the other side of the equation.  “He took away his own brother’s chance at fatherhood and then tragically fate took that away from Tea.  Todd was doing what he thought he could to spare Tea any more pain.”           

“You’re taking his side?!” Carly yelled, startling a number of people milling about.

Blair remained calm.  “Todd shows is loyalty to a very very select few, mostly his family.  His actions were absolutely wrong, but they were in keeping with the Todd Manning I know.”  

“And what about rape?  Is that in keeping with knowing ‘the real Todd Manning’?” she snarked.

The bar had been raised and Blair intended to meet it.  “No, actually, that isn’t.  Too much has happened to him to go back to being that man he was in college.”

“Obviously not.  But what else should we expect from the son of a pedophile?”

Blair’s mouth dropped open, not because of Carly’s comment, but because of who else heard it.  Viki Davidson seemed to have appeared if by magic at just the wrong time.  Concern coursed through Blair for Todd’s sister. 

For her part, Viki’s face was wiped of any emotions.  What her father had done to her still had an impact on her, but she would not allow it to be used against her brother.  “If that’s what you think, Mrs. Jacks, then I can assure you, you do not know a thing about my brother.”

Carly reared her head, intent on aiming both barrels at the other woman.  “That’s some high and mighty talk coming from a murderess.  Or was it Nikki?  Or Jean?  It was ‘one of your alters’, right?”

Off to the side, Starr seethed on her aunt’s behalf.

But it was Blair, whose voice was heard next.  “Carly?”  The woman turned and quickly hit the floor.

It wasn’t an open-handed slap, like the one Blair had done on Irene Manning ages ago.  It was the full force of her fist that made contact with Carly.  Say what you will about her, her family or Todd.  But you do not get to make remarks about one of the most disgusting acts ever perpetrated on anyone, much less Viki. 

Then, Blair just turned her heels and walked out of the hotel, intent on going to her meeting with Todd and Scott at the PCPD.