Different Circles

“Sounds good,” he told her. “Let me go drain the dragon and wash up and I’ll get to work.”

“You do that,” she said. “I’ll go pop the tots in the oven.”

Jake went to the nearest restroom—the guest bathroom in the hallway between the kitchen and the entertainment room—and took care of his business. He then walked back into the entertainment room and grabbed one of his bottles of Lighthouse Ale from the refrigerator in the bar. He opened it, poured it into a glass, and then made his way back to the kitchen. Laura was sitting in one of the breakfast nook chairs that she had pulled over near the large kitchen island.

“Did you remember to pick up those prenatal vitamins today?” he asked her. Dr. Vargo, her gynecologist, had advised her to start taking them as soon as she stopped her birth control pills so that when she did eventually conceive she would have an ample supply of folic acid in her body to stave off neural tube defects such as spina bifida in the future Kingsley child. But Laura, who could be just a little scatterbrained on occasion, had forgotten to pick them up when she’d gone to the pharmacy to put the hold on her pills—even though that had specifically been her mission for the trip.

“Yes,” she said giving him a little eye roll. She did not like being reminded of her scatterbrain episodes. “I remembered.”

“Good girl,” he said. “Maybe I’ll give you a little treat after dinner.”

“You were going to do that anyway,” she said.

“Don’t ruin the moment,” he told her, opening the refrigerator and pulling out the package of ground beef. He set it down on the counter and then pulled out a cutting board. The garlic Laura had bought was sitting on the island. He extricated three cloves from it and set them aside. He then got out a small bowl and a stick of butter. He put half the stick in the bowl and then popped it in the microwave, setting the timer for fifteen seconds—just enough to soften it.

“What’s the news on the transgender situation?” Laura asked.

“It is officially nipped in the bud,” he told her.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Pauline got hold of Ron the ramper. He told her that he posted the original picture of him with us along with all the other pictures of our plane in some photography group he is a part of with an explanation of what the shots were all about. There are over two hundred people in this group and some or all of them must have forwarded the email to others who then did the same. Somewhere along the line, the author of that email must have pulled the shot out, photoshopped it, and then made up all that transgender shit and sent it out into the world.”

“Why would someone do something like that?” Laura asked, shaking her head.

Jake took the now softened butter out of the microwave and carried it back to the island. He rooted around in the drawer—which was sparkling clean and neatly organized thanks to Elsa—and took out the garlic masher. “Because people are assholes,” he said simply. “Whoever this person is, he doesn’t like me. It doesn’t matter though.”

“Why doesn’t it matter? You said that the media vultures are circling.”

“They can’t print or air anything about this,” Jake said, mashing the garlic cloves into the butter and then putting the masher in the sink. As he was washing his hands again, he continued to explain why. “Pauline had the ramper send her copies of all the shots he took that day and the original email he sent out. He is perfectly willing to go on record about what actually happened. She then sent copies of those pictures and the original email to every reporter that enquired about the fake email. In the body of Pauline’s email she let them know that there is no Jose at the Sandpoint airport FBO, that no law enforcement agency in the Sandpoint area has taken a report about an underaged Venezuelan tranny being held in captivity by the Kingsleys, and that Ron the ramper is willing to testify in court that he is the person in that photo, that he has never been to Venezuela, and that he is most certainly not transexual or a maid.”

“Facts have never stopped them from printing or reporting lies before,” she pointed out.

“True,” Jake said, “but these are irrefutable facts that are now in their possession. That’s the difference maker here.”

“What do you mean?”