Good Man

"It's amazing...how much you look like her..."

"Who?"

"Like our mother."



Giselle was trying to take the last thing Ellis said in all at once and seemed to be failing miserably as her mind clouded and her brain felt like it was about to implode. "Our what?" she blurted as if she had just been spoken to in Swahili. "I'm sorry...you lost me there. What do you mean our mother?"

Instead of replying, Ellis Helmes finally withdrew a manilla folder with a metal clasp to keep the lip closed. Undoing said clasp, and flipping open said lip, the seemingly older woman took several sheets of what looked to be documents out and handed them over to Giselle, who took them with wary hands.

"What's this?" Giselle wondered, not bothering to study the papers yet. She looked briefly down at the mix of typed words and someone's handwriting on the top sheet before looking up and across.

Ellis didn't respond with words but simply nodded for Giselle to take a decent gander at what she'd handed over, while returning to her Birko bag to dig for something else.

Obliging the wealthy woman, Giselle found herself starting from the top of the page and scanning downward, noticing foreign names like FATHER'S NAME: GREGORY CARNES and MOTHER'S MAIDEN NAME: CYNTHIA TANNER. It looked like a copy of a birth certificate, which definitely intrigued Giselle now. So, she read on.



"Okay, seriously," Giselle demanded, staring back up at Ellis. "What is this?"

"It's your birth certificate."

"No, shit. I have a copy of this," Giselle snipped. "How the hell did you get one?"

Keeping her calm, Ellis gestured to the other papers the younger woman was holding. "Look beneath your birth certificate."

Hesitating out of confusion and anger, Giselle finally placed her own birth certificate on the bottom of the small pile of papers in her hand and looked at the second sheet. And her heart skipped a beat.



"Wha--?" was all Giselle seemed to mutter before she noticed the two names that seemed to seal the deal, in a manner of speaking where her confusion laid.



"Not possible," Giselle replied, shaking her head. "We can't be...I mean, my birth mother was raped by her uncle and I was given up for adoption as a result. That's what the adoption agency told my parents when they adopted me."

"I know," Ellis spoke with a frown of sympathy. "They also told the adoptive parents of a woman named Kelsey Dwyer, who's your age now and lives in Rochester, that her birth parents were a married couple, with a five-year-old daughter, and died in a car accident on the way home from the hospital." Ellis watched what she said sink in before adding, "They mixed up your stories. But not your birth certificates."

Giselle furrowed her brow and almost felt the need to suddenly cry.

"I've been waiting so long to find you...because you're the little sister I lost."

"I am?" Giselle queried; her voice small.

Ellis nodded. "Your adoptive parents were given the wrong story about where you came from, so they never knew I existed. And the couple who adopted Kelsey Dwyer, who thought I was her sister, only wanted one child, so I was left in foster care until the following year," she explained. "I was adopted by Charles Helmes and his wife Esther; a ridiculously wealthy couple from Manhattan who couldn't conceive and were on a business trip to Buffalo when they visited the foster home I was at, on the spur of the moment."

Giselle, still holding the papers, dropped them down in front of her lap as she listened to what her apparently long lost sibling was saying.

"They were in their mid forties and desperate for a child, but not a baby. So when they saw me, they found what they were looking for: a child to mold and call their own who didn't need to be potty-trained." Ellis smiled a little. "I was raised in Manhattan, went to all the best schools, attended Harvard where I studied Literature and Business. And, for as long as I can remember, I've been floating amongst the highest social circles."

Giselle listened, as if hearing someone recount a fairytale. "Wow. Must've been nice."

"It has been a really nice life," Ellis nodded, reminiscently. "I never wanted for anything but I wasn't spoiled. My parents came from blue-collared backgrounds who made their fortune without forgetting where they came from. But, for me, I always knew a part of me was missing. I knew that someday I'd have to find the sister I never got to grow up with."

Giselle was silent when Ellis finished speaking, glancing back down at the papers in her hand. There was just so much information in such a short time to process all at once. It kinda almost felt as if her head was going to explode. Or, implode. Whichever came first.

"So..." Giselle trailed slightly. "My birth name was Laura?"

Ellis smiled and nodded. "Yeah. I had a baby doll when I was little, right before you were born, named Laura and I remember saying, 'Mommy, mommy, can we name the baby Laura?' And our mom just smiled at me and said, 'Maybe.' I just remember being so surprised when I got to see you for the first time and she told me, 'Ellis, this is your sister, Laura.'" Pausing, Ellis knew Giselle had to sense she was looking at her, but didn't wait for her biological sister to look up. She continued. "I've waited my whole life to see you again; thirty-one long years to have a piece of mom and dad back in my life and I found you."

Giselle swallowed back a lump in her throat. "Well, this is a lot to digest right now..."

"I know, I know. I'm sorry," Ellis apologized. "But I had to do this. It was now or never for me."

Nodding, Giselle could understand. Reaching forward, she tried handing the papers back to Ellis, who put her hand up in a halting motion and shook her head.

"No, no, those are yours to keep. They're copies I made."

"Oh, okay, thanks." Giselle licked her lips and folded her arms under her chest as she carefully gripped the papers in one hand. "So, uh...what are your plans for the holiday?"

"After here? Going back to my hotel suite, drinking a glass of eggnog from room service and sitting down to watch Miracle On 34th Street with a young Natalie Woods."

For a single woman who had no friends or family to spend the evening with, it sounded somewhat decent.

"Well, why don't you come with my husband and me to a party we're going to at my sister's restaurant?

A feeling of warmth and surprise filled Ellis' heart almost immediately. "Really?"

Giselle nodded, wholeheartedly. "Yeah. No one should spend Christmas alone. Blood related or not, whatever a blood test says just to be one hundred percent sure, I'd still be asking you to join the party after what you just donated here tonight. That just about made my year, thinking of all the possibilities for my department, and myself...personally."

"Thank you," Ellis profused. "This means a lot."



In the midst of party mode, Caroline found she'd rather be sitting in a booth, with Mikey on her lap, playing with his favorite Matchbox car; driving it across the length of the table. It was more peaceful to just be on the sidelines while everyone else ate, drank and got their merry on. Across the table from her was Adrienne, with a happy lap full of Chloe who was just eating up the attention 'Auntie Adie' always gave her.

Both women seem absentminded as chatter and music buzzed with life around them; Green Day's teenage children talking rather loudly at the back sitting area of Rudy's, and what it was they were talking about was a mystery to the adults who were all lost in their own conversations.

At almost eighteen, Joey was leaning back in his chair to the point of it almost tipping backward with him falling over. But somehow he managed to keep the back legs of the chair from giving out underneath him. He was dressed in a pair of skinny black pants, identical to the pair his father only ever seemed to wear, along with a black and white striped dress shirt that. His dark brown hair was spiky with some sort of styling product he claimed was the greatest thing since sliced bread and his shoes were neon pink Converse with white laces in one shoe and black in the other.

Estelle, who was beside him, was nearing sixteen. She already had her driver's permit and was a beauty if there ever was one. With her naturally tanned skin tone, her dark eyes, dark brown hair that fell well past her shoulders and her father's playful smile, the Pritchard teen was a sight for sore eyes. She sat, laughing at whatever Joey had just muttered under his breath, wearing a simple red blouse and a black skirt with a red snowflake on the bottom, left side. With one leg crossed over the other, she dangled one of her red, flat heels from off her toes.

"Kiss my ass, Joey. You're such a glutton for attention, you...attention whore."

"Kiss your ass?" he repeated. "Produce it, sweetcheeks."

Giving him a faux disgusted face, Estelle shoved him gently in the shoulder, which caused his chair to finally give out beneath him and send him hurtling sideways to the ground.

With the loud thud of body and metal clattering against the linoleum floor, most of the adults snapped their heads in the kids' directions. Billie Joe stepped to the left and poked his head around the corner from the front part of the restaurant to look back over at his miscreant of an eldest child.

"Joey, quit fuckin' around on the furniture!" he shouted.

The elder Armstrong child bitched back at his father, but only under his breath, rolling his eyes and clamoring back to his feet and sitting back down in his chair, but this time sitting backwards in it.

Ramona, dressed the same as she had been earlier in the day at her father's house, shook her head at Joey and laughed at him. "So, what're your plans after graduation?"

"I dunno. My mom wants me to go to college, but I think she wants me to at least say I had the experience and study something so I have a fall back plan...or whatever. I only wanna go so I don't have to be at home, and not be paying for being away from home."

Ramona raised her eyebrow. "So you're looking forward to mooching off your parents?"

Joey shrugged. "Basically."

"You're such an ass. When did you get to this point? Didn't you used to be really sweet?"

"I'm still sweet. But now I'm like a jawbreaker."

"How's that?"

"I'm sweet when you suck on me, but the moment you try and bite me and I'll break your teeth," he flashed her a devilish grin worthy of his father.

Fifteen-year-old Jakob snorted at his brother's comment and leaned forward a bit more on his side of the table, across from Joey. With a handheld video game in his hands, he looked up, caught his brother's eye and nodded. "Yeah, you're an ass."

"I'm sorry, Jake. Not everyone can be a tormented artist like you."

"I'm not tormented," Jakob protested.

"Which is surprising with all the torment I've put you through since you were old enough to walk," Joey teased. "Remember how I used to push you to the ground every time you tried to get up."

"Not really."

"Well, yeah, you wouldn't remember that. You were only, like, a year and half or whatever."

As the conversations between the teens continued, an eleven-year-old Frankito came over to the teens' table in hopes to join them, but Joey swatted him away and the preteen pouted, going off to complain to his mother, Claudia, who was sitting in the booth behind Caroline and Adrienne, chatting amiably with Jason White and his wife.

Caroline watched the boy, as she was in the direction facing the back of the restaurant where Tre's youngest had come from. She smiled at him when he looked her way and then she looked at her wristwatch.

"Giselle should be here by now. She said she wasn't going to stay at the hospital's party the entire time."

"Well, she wouldn't not come. For one, Tre would get so bored hanging around doctors, he'd physically drag her away."

Caroline smirked. "Yeah, that's true."

As Adrienne smirked in returned, Billie Joe walked over to his wife and planted a kiss on the side of her cheek before nodding to the full coffee cup beside Caroline.

"Mike's cup looks like its getting cold. Want me to refill it?"

As if snapping back to reality, Caroline followed his gaze to the cup beside her and nodded appreciatively. "Oh, yeah, thanks."

As Billie Joe reached across the table to grab the cup, he winked at Mikey and then stepped away to go dump to cold coffee from the cup and refill it with some hotter Java.

Adrienne looked across at Caroline who caught the other woman's eye right away. "It's a nice, little tribute to Mike; that coffee cup."

"Yeah, I figured that if he was here, it's what his beverage of choice would be, and since I believe he's with me and our kids at all times..."

"Oh, I know what you mean. And I have to admit, I know how insanely hard this has been on you these last four months but I'm so proud of the progress you're making."

"I think I am, too. I try telling myself that Mike wouldn't want me to be wallowing every day, but at the same time I can't help but think that what he'd really want would be to actually be here in person, alive, in the flesh..."

Adrienne reached a hand across the table and placed it over Caroline's and gave the younger woman a sympathetic smile. "I know you do."

When Billie Joe walked back over with a steaming cup of Joe in Mike's coffee cup, the door to Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe opened with a jingle from the bell attached to the door. Several heads turned and in walked Tre with Giselle and some other woman in tow.

"Who's that?" Adrienne inquired, bouncing Chloe up and down on her leg.

Caroline shrugged. "Hell if I know," she replied. "Maybe another doctor Zelle works with and is bringing with her tonight from the other party. After all, the more the merrier, right?"

Billie Joe smiled down at his friend as he placed the coffee cup back down beside her. "That's the spirit, Care. Or, should I say Christmas spirit?" he laughed.

"Christ almighty, you're a cheesy sonofapup," the hazel-eyed widow chose to call him, opting out of a swear word for the sake of her young children's ears.

"Must come with age," he joked further.

As Tre stepped over to the booth, he leaned down and gave Caroline a kiss on the forehead and then did the same to Adrienne, wishing both a Merry Christmas, before giving Billie Joe a hug and moving on to greeting Frankito and Claudia.

Caroline's eyes left Tre and fixated on her approaching sister and the woman in the black, cocktail dress who was sticking out like a sore thumb in a sea of people in more casual attire. She could tell the unfamiliar woman was feeling out of place; it showed in her mannerisms as she stood behind Giselle with her fingers idly fiddling about.

"It's about time you showed up," Caroline griped to Giselle.

"I know. I'm sorry, but I kinda got sidetracked with something a the party that was pretty major."

"Something else is more important than my Christmas Eve Shindig?"

"Well, sort of, yeah." Giselle shrugged sheepishly and stepped to the right so that Cocktail Dress Lady was forced to be in full view of Caroline. "This is Ellis Helmes. Her foundation just donated a shitload of money to the hospital, and...she might be my biological sister."

"After the holidays we're gonna get the blood work done to be sure. I already went through a mix up before that wasn't exactly a bed of roses," Ellis added, finally speaking.

Caroline looked between her sister and this Ellis woman who was supposed to be Giselle's flesh and blood sister, and a pang of jealously swept through her body. Caroline nodded, and said hello to Ellis; even going as far as to shake her hand, but she couldn't help but feel as if her territory was being threatened. Yet, how could she make such a claim with her having a biological sister of her own who was, as a matter of fact, sitting at the counter near the register with her fiance, a handsome man in his late twenties named Seth Mills? Granted, Timmy was her half-sister, but still.

Caroline looked beyond Giselle and Ellis and by chance made eye contact with her sister, Timmy, who smiled and waved. Not able to honestly take anything personal about the situation, Caroline looked back to Giselle and smiled, herself, back up at the younger woman.

"Well, uh, congratulations to you. Now you know how I felt to find a part of where I came from."

"I do. I really do," Giselle agreed.

"So, uh...Ellis, is it?" Off Ellis' nod, "Help yourself to something to drink and some finger foods. We already did dinner earlier so I hope you weren't looking for a meal."

"Oh, no. I wasn't even expecting to come here at all."

Without much else said, Giselle led Ellis off as Caroline looked downward and to the side as Adrienne shifted in her seat across the way.

"I think it goes without saying that that was awkward?" she inquire rhetorically.

"Tell me about it." Caroline tried laughing it off, but there was still the feeling as if for some reason she was about to lose her sister.