Tad had a relatively quiet morning but wondered over the whole issue of therapy that his mother presented. His missed his father and loved him dearly, but his father had always been kind and even optimistic to him. He was sure his father had seen plenty of horrific things, as Tad didn't grow up totally ignorant of his father's job, and that that job wasn't pretty. But his father had never described those things and largely said that much of what he did was to ultimately make the world a better place. Tad accepted that, and while he wished his father was still alive, but he knew that he couldn't lose the sort of optimism and confidence that his father had always had. And he had always thought his mother had been rather strong with regard everything that had happened. He might not have seen everything, but from what he had seen, he figured Jen was strong.
He spent much of the morning watching some television, though he found that daytime television wasn't that interesting. He and Jen at an early lunch and were soon the road and driving through Moon Lake.
"Are you sure you need to do this?" Tad asked, "You've always seemed strong to me."
"I try to be," Jen said slowly and thought back to the night before. The pride meeting had been good and she enjoyed meeting her new pride mates, but a part of her did honestly agree with Frances' urge for therapy over Jeff's death. All of her pride were in what were presently happy marriages. The pride's males with each other, Frances and Samantha, and Martha with William Anderson. It all reminded her of all the joy that she and Jeff had had before someone decided to kill him while he went jogging. It was a joy she wished she hadn't lost when Jeff died. "But there are times when I just miss your father so much..."
Tad looked over to see her mother hold back a sniffle for the moment as she drove along.
"And this would all be helpful," Jen said to him, "let me get some stuff off my chest and so forth."
Tad nodded and shrugged and then briefly looked out the window as Jen drove through town. He found a fair bit of it to be very interesting. There were a few houses that looked fairly modern, particularly in the area where he and his mother had moved to, but he also found some homes that looked to have a substantially older design, but were still all in very good shape. As Jen drove into the more downtown area, Tad even noticed that in some of the stone buildings that made up the downtown. They looked more like an eighteen hundreds frontier town than anything else, but they were all well-kept, as though time or change had destroyed them.
"Moon Lake's done a lot to keep things intact," Jen commented when she noticed her son looking at the buildings around the town, "and a good many of the buildings date back to when the town was founded... and some of the weres that were there for founding are still here... or their children are."
Tad slowly nodded, remembering that weres all had the potential to be very long lived provided someone or something didn't kill them. He supposed that his mother's answer made sense and then paused his glances as Jen pulled into a parking spot on the street. Once Jen put the car in park, both of them climbed out of the car and stretched. Tad then looked to the large glass window on the building that his mother had parked in front of. It read: Moon Lake Psychiatric Clinic, Frances Twist, MD, DO.
"This is where we're going," Jen commented as she walked around the car, "come on."
Tad then quietly followed his mother in. They entered a calm and quiet entry room. There was a couch along one wall with a small only knee high table in front of it. Tad noticed a few magazines sitting on it, but didn't pay too close attention to it as his mother approached a sort of desk/counter space that had a lone man seated behind it across from the couch. To Tad's surprise, the man was a normal. He looked up as Jen approached.
"Hello..." Jen said to him, "I'm Jen Decker... I have an appointment."
"Of course," the man answered with a nod and actually went down to something on his desk and actually passed a clipboard to his mother, "If you could fill out the form for us, that would be helpful. And if you have insurance, I would also ask for your card so it can be copied for our records."
Jen nodded and set her purse on the desk/counter that the man was seated at. She carefully fished through it until she recovered a small laminated ID card that she had carried since Jeff got his commission in the Marine Corps. The military provided its personnel with health coverage under a company called Tri-Care, which covered just about everything and was taxpayer funded. And while Jen and Tad were Jeff's dependents, Tri-Care would cover her, as a veteran's wife, for life, and Tad would get to accept coverage well into his twenties even if he didn't go to college. The man accepted the card and turned to a small printer that sat next to him. He lifted up a plastic lid on its top, revealing that the printer was a multi-function machine. While Jen began filling out the form that had been handed to her, Tad came forward.
"You're Dr. Frances Twist?" Tad wondered to him, remembering a boy from elementary school that had been named Francis.
"No... son," Jen spoke up, "Frances is a werecat... like me."
"I am Doctor Twist's secretary/clerk," the man spoke, "You can call me Rudy. Would you like something to drink? I have some bottled water and juice in a little mini-fridge."
"No, we'll be fine, thank you," Jen answered.
By now, the process of copying Jen's card was completed and Rudy returned the card to Jen while Jen handed the fully filled out form to Rudy. He took it and pressed a small intercom button on a phone on the desk in front of him.
"Doctor Twist, your twelve o'clock is here and checked in," Rudy reported.
Tad and Jen didn't get a chance as a door opened and Frances emerged from it. She approached Jen said, "hello" and hugged Jen like an old friend. Tad stood quietly and noted Frances' werecat scent and that Jen returned the hug as well.
"Thank you for coming," Frances said to Jen and then turned to Tad and gave a polite smile, "and you must be Tad... you do take a lot after your father..."
"I think I take after both my parents in many ways," Tad commented, "but thank you."
"What do you think of Moon Lake?" Frances asked to him.
"It is very... different, though at times, different in a nice way," Tad answered
Frances smiled.
"Hopefully, we'll also let him meet his grandparents," Jen commented, "Jeff's parents are still here and mine are."
Frances nodded and Tad blinked. He remembered birthday and Christmas gifts from a Josephine and Jacob Decker and Vivian and Karen Teller, who had been identified as his grandparents, but he'd never known where they lived beyond it being a "wonderful place." Though, he did realize that that probably connected a fair number of dots regarding some things. After all, his mom and dad had both mentioned "Moon Lake" as a town regarding where they grew up.
"Well... if you come with me, we can get started," Frances gestured back to the door that she had come out of.
Jen and Tad then followed Frances through the door that Frances had initially came out of. They walked across the room to a long couch while Frances shut the door behind them and then moved to sit in an office chair nearby. Tad watched as she collected a notebook and then turned back to him and his mother.
“Now… to start with, I would like to ask you a few questions, Tad,” Frances began, “If that’s alright.”
“It’s… okay…” Tad answered hesitantly. He really didn’t want to be there and didn’t think he needed counseling, but his mother had asked him, so here he was.
Frances nodded and started, “So… can you tell me how you’ve been feeling since your father died?”
“Sad that he’s gone,” Tad said honestly, “I mean… why should I not be? He was the best dad, ever.”
“You have every right to be sad at your father’s death,” Frances spoke, “it’s normal to be sad when we lose things that are important to us… be they possessions, pets, or family.”
“Well… I am sad that he’s gone,” Tad repeated the comment, “and from what I’ve seen of Moon Lake so far… I kinda wish he could be here, show me places where he’d had fun and so forth.”
Jen smiled to her son, as there were plenty of places and things to do that Jeff would have loved to do with Tad. He had been a great father, and thanks to some idiot in her opinion, he’d never get to see his son grow mature into a man Jeff could be proud of. A tear slowly went down her cheek as those thoughts crossed Jen’s mind, which Frances did notice but didn’t say anything.
“But it’s not like I can do anything to change what happened,” Tad spoke, “Dad always said the Marines never retreat. Best to live by that idea. Keep going forward and be the sort of person that I know dad would want me to be.”
Frances nodded and followed how calm Tad seemed to be with his answers. There was some hint of annoyance in his voice, but not much. On many levels though, that was actually a good thing, as Tad also wasn’t showing any signs of trying to hold things back or hold things in. It gave her some indication that Tad was coping at least reasonably well with the whole situation. That would do well, as for the moment, the real task that she had was to help Jen get through her own grief, which she had seen affecting Jen the night before at their pride meeting.
“That’s actually quite good,” Frances commented with a small and soft smile.
“I’d like to think so,” Tad agreed, “Is that all you wanted to know?”
“From you, Tad?” Frances replied, “Pretty much. If you ever feel you need help, I’m always here, but the rest of this is mostly to help your mother.”
Tad watched as Frances looked from him to his mother. It was at this point that Tad actually noticed that his mother had been crying a little bit. That surprised him a little bit.
“Mom?” Tad asked and reached to her.
“These are tears of pride, dear,” Jen gave a soft smile, “I miss your father tremendously, but having you here… in many ways it’s like he never left us… for I can see him in you.”
Jen was completely honest with her son in that regard. While Tad had displayed more of an interest in electronics and gaming than Jeff ever had, there was a great deal of Jeff’s honor, optimism, confidence, and even calmness in Tad, even if Tad didn’t know it. She took Tad’s hand and squeezed it softly. He only looked to her as Frances began to move into the real part of the session.
“Now, Jen,” Frances spoke, “remember to keep in mind that these sessions are intended to help you come to full grips regarding what happened with Jeff. I don’t want you to hold anything back, as in many cases with grief, trying to bottle things up inside you will never work. You may be able to contain it for a while, but eventually something will come along that will force you to let it all out suddenly… as happened last night.”
“What happened last night?” Tad asked.
“I got a little bit sorrowful and wishful when I met with my new pride, dear,” Jen answered, doing her best to avoid telling her son that she and the pride’s other females had a small orgy of their own, “they all have happy marriages and husbands or a wife, in Frances’ case, that they love very much.”
Tad only watched quietly. He knew that werecats were at least bisexual if not outright lesbians, as his mother had explained to him a werecat’s base nature around the same time that his dad had given him “the talk,” so he knew that it was possible, even probable, that some werecats would be in same sex couples. That never bothered him, and as far as he remembered, it didn’t bother his father, either.
“And your marriage with Jeff was happy as well,” Frances commented.
“Yes… yes it was,” Jen spoke, “he was my soul mate… my defender… my lover. He was everything to me… and well… seeing all of you with your significant others… or talking about their significant other in Martha’s case… it just…”
Tad watched in surprise as his mother sniffled. Frances twisted in her chair, picked a clean tissue up from a box on hear desk and then twisted back to reach out and hand it to Jen.
“Thank you,” Jen accepted the tissue, but didn’t blow her nose yet, “and well, all that reminded me of what I had lost.”
Frances slowly nodded as Jen did blow her nose.
“He was my everything,” Jen said as she looked to Frances, “and some lunatic… some idiot decided to kill him while jogging.”
“Any reason why?” Frances asked.
“For the life of me… I have no idea,” Jen spoke, “maybe it was terrorists, trying some new way to get at him… but why one murder in the night? I’m sure they’d love to kill a Marine… but only one and in a situation where everyone in the country WON’T know they did it?”
Frances nodded. She had Jen talking, and in this case, the talking would do the most to help her. There was no need or reason for notes, as she wasn’t diagnosing Jen with any sort of disorder, as she didn’t think Jen had one. She felt that Jen had been holding a lot of her grief within her, and the point of present therapy was to help Jen get it all out.
“Now, I suppose the murder could have been more personal,” Jen continued, “but then WHO would have wanted that? Who COULD have done that? The MPs, Shore Patrol, and FBI all said the spot where his body was found WASN’T where he was killed. He was drug to that spot and his body burned there…”
Tad blinked at that. He remembered some of the report that his father had been murdered, but his mother had sent him out and made sure he was out of earshot at the time.
“Jeff was a fully trained Marine Corps officer, in good shape, and a werewolf besides,” Jen spoke, “the only one who could have physically moved him to wherever he was killed would be another were that was bigger and stronger than a werewolf… but with his training, it’d be unlikely that some random werelion, weretiger, or werebear would be able to just grab him, drag him off, and kill him without alerting the entire base to their presence in the process.”
Frances nodded. She privately wondered if the fact that Jeff Decker’s murder hadn’t been solved might be part of the issue.
“Maybe he was lured off,” Frances commented, “Jeff was always very protective with a strong moral center, even back in college. Maybe he saw someone in trouble, and went to help.”
“Possible,” Jen commented, “The MPs, SPs, and FBI didn’t have a clear picture on their suspect or real action besides that he’d been shot and then burned… and… and… I’d just like to know who could have done this? Why would they do this?”
“Mom?” Tad spoke, seeing tears begin to go down his mother’s cheeks.
“I mean… he’d been to war,” Jen spoke, “seen all sorts of nasty things… had to do things that he didn’t tell Tad or I about… and survived ALL of that, only to get murdered by some lunatic in a place where he was SUPPOSED to be SAFE?!”
Frances sat quietly as Jen continued.
“I couldn’t stay there… couldn’t stay on or near the base after that,” Jen spoke, “if someone had targeted Jeff specifically… they could come after me or Tad, and I had to make sure Tad was safe.”
“And so you came home,” Frances commented, “not a bad decision, Jen. You were always welcome here, and many of us missed both you and Jeff greatly when you left.”
“Thank you,” Jen gave a weak smile, “and in a way… I do feel safer here. Hopefully though… whoever killed my husband… hopefully he gets what’s coming to him.”
“I’m sure the military’s police units…” Frances began.
“MPs or SPs,” Jen spoke, “MP stands for Military Police and SP stands for Shore Patrol. Both handle law enforcement on military bases, harbors, and even in combat.”
“I’m sure they and the FBI will do their utmost to get justice for Jeff’s murder,” Frances spoke.
Jen nodded. She did want that, a part of her would feel at ease to know that her husband’s killer was going behind bars or given the lethal injection. The process of that would at least give her closure as to why her husband died.
“I hope so,” Jen said simply, squeezing her son’s hand.
Frances nodded, “and from there you can move on.”
“I don’t want to just replace Jeff… “Jen spoke.
“I never urged that you should,” Frances spoke, “Jeff Decker was a good man, and it’s perfectly understandable to keep him and his memory close to you heart. If something happened to Samantha… I don’t know what I’d do, but I know I’d want to keep a memory of her with me.”
Jen looked over to Tad, and noticed the slightly concerned look on his face. He was her reminder of Jeff, and that was part of the real reason to get him to Moon Lake, so that the part of Jeff that hadn’t died, would be safe.
“And also… always remember that Moon Lake will support and protect you,” Frances said to her, “Your pride will support and protect you.”
“I know,” Jen spoke, “and it does feel good to be back.”
Things were quite for a few moments longer before Jen continued.
“I’m still going to miss him though,” Jen said softly, knowing that Frances would still hear her, “he was everything I’d committed myself to.”
“I understand,” Frances commented.
“And Tad is all I have left that reminds me of him,” Jen continued, actually pulling Tad into a hug.
Frances nodded, “and hopefully he brings you good memories and reason to be proud.”
Frances felt fairly well with how things were going. Jen might need more time to get things off of her chest and get through her grief, but the day’s session was a good start. With that, she stood up and walked to ward Jen and Tad. Both of them also stood up to look to the therapist.
"You've made a good start today, Jen," Frances spoke, "We'll have some more sessions... and I'd like to set them up on a weekly basis, so you have time to look for work and get further settled in, but if you ever need to talk..."
"I have yours and Sam's number," Jen answered and hugged Frances again