Juicy Secrets Forbidden Tales of Lesbian Love

Rescue Plans and Finality

By Cheryl Taggert 

If you need help keeping up with the characters, you may go here.

My week went well until I arrived home Friday afternoon, when my home life turned upside down in a hurry. I had to use my key to get in, which was odd, and as I entered, I found my house was a whirl of activity.

Hearing my mother’s urgent voice from the den, I walked into the room and looked around. Mom was talking to someone on the phone about a plane and Gwen was near her, pouring over a map. Jenna was sitting on the couch, and I could tell she’d been crying, and she was obviously distraught and looked as if she wasn’t aware of the activity around her. Emmy was home as well, which was odd since she wasn’t supposed to get off from work for another hour, but she and Danni were on the computer, reading something on the screen as if it were the most interesting thing ever written.

Everyone was so involved, they never even noticed me.

“What’s going on?” I asked. Mom didn’t seem to hear me, but Gwen, Emmy and Danni jerked their heads in my direction. I could see something major was happening, and I was certain it had something to do with Cindy. Jenna still sat where she was, staring at nothing. Her wet, red eyes made me wince for her. I said a quick prayer that the worst possible news hadn’t arrived — that Cindy was dead.

“Oh, we didn’t hear you come in,” Gwen said. “Did you lock the door back?”

“No. What’s going on?”

Danni scurried past me and I heard her locking the door, this time also putting the chain in place and turning the deadbolt.

Now I was getting scared. I looked at Gwen and said, “Tell me, please. What’s happened with Cindy?” I felt the tears sting my eyes as my vision blurred.

“Cindy has to be rescued at once. She found out that this Pablo shit-heel plans to kill her in three days,” said Danni.

“Or have her killed,” Aunt Emmy said.

What? My world did a sudden flip and I felt sick for a moment. I really wondered for a second if I was going to have to run to the bathroom. Seeing that everyone was occupied with plans to get Cindy out, I went to my baby sister and put my arm around her. She looked at me and put her head on my shoulder. She didn’t cry, but she was as sad as I’ve ever seen her.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice like a small bird chirping in a storm.

“For what?” I asked, truly wondering why she’d said that.

“For loving me no matter what. And understanding how I feel.” Again… chirp, chirp. I could barely hear her amid the noise of Mom on the phone negotiating with a pilot (I’d figured that much out from her end of the conversation), and Danni and Aunt Emmy discussing their article that involved the legal system and what we were planning.

“But if Cindy’s an American citizen being held against her will, that’s a crime,” Emmy said.

“Yes, but we can’t be sure who this Pablo character has on his payroll. It is Colombia, you know. A foreign country where sometimes the lords of the drug cartels do whatever they want without interference,” Danni answered.

I turned to Jenna. “Let’s go somewhere quieter.”

“Okay.” I didn’t hear her say this, but her lips moved and she stood up, so I figure that must be what it was.

We went to our room and lay on the bed, where I continued holding her.

“Are you gonna be okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s just that now that I know she’s alive, that mother fucker is planning to take her from me again.”

“When Danni told me about that, I thought I was going to throw up.”

“I did,” Jenna said. “I was lucky to make it to the bathroom.”

“I’m so sorry this is happening. You deserve better than this.”

She sat up and looked at me. Then she smiled. That smile made me happier than anything else that could have happened at that moment. I smiled back.

“Not that I mind that you’re smiling, but why?” I asked.

“I was just thinking. You said I deserve better, and I realized that in a way, I have better already. You and Mom have been so good to me. You took me in and fed me and clothed me and took care of me and loved me. So many times I’ve felt so special just being a part of this family.

“I was only seven when I moved in with you,” she continued. “God, I was so scared. My mommy had left and I didn’t know when she’d be back. If someone had told me it would be five years before I even spoke to her again, I would have wanted to die right then.”

She paused for a moment to take a deep breath, a sigh really.

“Do you remember that first morning after my mom left?” she asked.

“Well, kinda. What about it?”

“Do you remember bringing me breakfast in bed and making sure I didn’t need anything else? Then you stayed while I ate and talked to me about how much fun we were going to have. And when I was done, you wouldn’t let me get up to take the dishes back?”

I smiled. I’d forgotten about that.

“I do now,” I said. “I wanted to make you feel welcome. That was my own idea, by the way. Mom said it was a good one and so I brought –“

“I know it was your idea,” she said, interrupting me. “I told Mom thank you later, and she told me that it was all your idea. I’ve always remembered that.”

“Aw, it wasn’t anything really. I just wanted –“

“I know what you were doing, even then at the age of seven,” she said, stopping my little protest. “And don’t say it wasn’t anything. It was everything. I’ve loved you ever since that morning.”

I looked at her and saw a tear spill over an eyelid swollen from too many tears already. I reached over and gently brushed it away.

She smiled again. “I never thanked you for doing that. I was nervous about thanking you for some reason. I don’t know why now.” She paused and looked at me, directly into me. “So it might be a little late, but thank you. You’re the best sister a girl could ever have, and if my mom does make it back here, I want you to always be my sister, no matter what.” She finished this last at a gallop because she was starting to cry again and the words were getting screechy the way your voice can be when you’re crying.

“Shhh,” I said, taking her hands in mine. “It’ll be okay. They’ll get your mom out. You’ll see. Everything will be fine.” I said this with a conviction I really didn’t feel, but what really surprised me was the response from Jenna.

“You don’t understand,” she said through the tears. “Part of the reason I’m crying is that I don’t want to leave here. This is my home now. This is my family.” She swiped at her eyes. “I love my mother, but your mom has been my mother for five years now. It’s all so confusing.”

I reached to her and held her close again, rocking her the way I would a small baby that needed soothing. To say I was shocked at this reply from her would be the understatement of the decade. The century, even.

“These things don’t have to be decided right away,” I said.

“Please don’t think I don’t want my mom back. I do! It’s just that I’m scared to tell her how I feel about this.”

“Maybe you two could live here,” I said. “We don’t really know anything yet.”

“Maybe,” she said, and we lay back down and I held the only sister I would ever know.

********

That evening after we had cleaned up after dinner, we all sat down in the dining room for a family meeting. Gwen was there, too, and she more or less was leading the discussion.

“I got a call this morning at 5:17,” she said. “I know the time because I looked at my bedside clock when the phone rang. I had given Carlo my home number in case he needed to reach me in an emergency, and it turns out we were all lucky I did.”

She stopped for a moment to take a breath. “Last night Cindy was told by one of the housekeepers that she overheard Pablo talking to a man named Juan who is Pablo’s ‘executioner,’ as Carlo put it. The housekeeper overheard a conversation that made it very clear that Cindy was to be executed on the Colombian Independence Day, which is on the 20th, just three days from now. That moved our plans up considerably. Tomorrow morning, or two days before her scheduled death, we will be flying down to Colombia. We will be landing at Santiago Vila airport, near Girardot, Colombia, after stopping in Mexico City for fuel. The bad news is we will have to rent another plane once we land in Colombia because the jet won’t land on the small grass airstrip. We will have to use a smaller plane that will seat eight. That’s been arranged as well.”

“That’s what I was doing when you came in,” Mom said to me. “Negotiating for the plane in Colombia.”

Gwen continued, “We will wait at Santiago Vila until we receive word from Carlo that we should fly to the scheduled rendezvous point for the pick up, which is a grass landing strip a few miles west of the border of Pablo’s compound. Carlo has already figured it out, and it will take us about twenty minutes to fly to the meeting place. He and Cindy will meet us there, where we will take off and fly back to Santiago Vila for the jet and the long flight home, with another stop in Mexico for fuel.”

“How will he contact you at this airport?” I asked.

“He’ll just call the terminal and ask a person he knows there to speak to me. We are to pay the man at the terminal, who is a friend of Carlo’s named Juan, $500 in U.S. currency, this will allow us to alter our flight plan without questions once we are in the air. Cindy has also insisted we give Carlo $2000 as well, though he said he doesn’t want it. In any case, we’ll have it to give him.”

“Then what?” Jenna asked.

“Then your mom will be home,” Mom said to Jenna, smiling.

Jenna glanced at me and I read her mind. This is home and I’ll have to leave it. 

“Who’s going?” I asked. “Can I go?”

“No, sweetheart. This is a very dangerous thing we’re doing. I don’t want either of you there. In fact, it will be only Gwen, the pilot, and me.”

“But, Mom, you’re terrified of flying,” I said, remembering one big reason we never flew to New York to see my grandmother.

“I know, but I’ll do it for Cindy. Gwen can’t go alone.”

“When will you be back home?” I asked.

“The trip down, including the stop for fuel, will take about eight hours. So there and back including getting Cindy and the twins, will take about seventeen or eighteen hours. We’re leaving at six in the morning, so if all goes well, we should be landing at John Wayne airport around midnight.”

“Wow,” Jenna said. “That’s gonna be a long day.”

“Yes,” Mom said, “but it’s worth it.”

“That’s gonna cost a lot of money, isn’t it?” I said.

“Money doesn’t matter,” Mom said. “But yes, all told the trip will cost around twenty-five thousand dollars.”

Do you have that much?” I asked her. I’d never considered money since I knew Mom had enough to support us. But that sounded like an awful lot.

She almost laughed. “Yes, honey. I do. In fact, one of the first things I did after Gwen told me the trip was moving up was to go to the bank and withdraw the cash in hundred dollar bills.” She smiled and added, “It’s a good thing the bank manager is a fan. All I had to do is assure him it wasn’t for drugs, and he authorized the sizable withdrawal.”

Jenna was amazed at this. “You mean you have to get permission to withdraw your own money?!”

“Yes, honey, when it’s a large cash withdrawal. Banks have state and federal regulations about large cash deposits and withdrawals.”

“So what now?” I asked.

Mom looked at me and I could see she was tearing up.

“We all make love,” she said, as if she were saying ‘Let’s have lunch.’

At the time I didn’t know why she was so emotional, but later it hit me. Mom knew they could be killed doing this. This was a chance for her to make love with all of us in case there was never another time.

We all stood up and Aunt Emmy started crying. Again, at that time I didn’t realize why. I thought maybe she was just getting emotional about Cindy’s return.

We followed Mom and Gwen to my mother’s bedroom.

Mom began undressing, and the rest of us followed her lead. I remember all through the sex that there was a feeling in the air, a heaviness, that had never been there before. The lovemaking was tender, emotionally erotic as well as physically. Few words were spoken during the forty-five or so minutes we engaged in the impromptu orgy.

After the lovemaking I realized why Aunt Emmy was so emotional. I had been thinking about what had just occurred and considering that Aunt Emmy had not done anything with any of the rest of us, just Mom and it hit me.

Tears flooded my eyes and suddenly I was sobbing. None of the adults asked me why. They knew.

When Jenna asked, “What is it?” I looked at her through the blur of my tears.

“They could die on this trip,” I sobbed, and she burst into fresh tears as well.

Soon, we were all lying together, a tear-soaked mess of naked flesh, but it was also beautiful. There was more love in that room than I had ever known. That’s when I understood that real love is silent, that there are times when the love is so pure and overwhelming that words are unnecessary, even intrusive. That was one of those times.

Later, I wished I had realized sooner this could be the last time together. It may not have changed anything that happened later, but at least I would have been able to consider the possibilities and understood.

Continue on to Chapter 58