The Lost Duckling

Chapter 20: Mary

"What?" Lilo cried, wiping the tea remnants off her lips. 

Celia sighed, eyeing the liquid dripping on her rug with contempt.

Mike looked petrified.

"What?" Celia said crossing her arms and turning away from her husband. "They were going to find out eventually."

"You couldn't have used more tact? Couldn't have lead up to it?" Mike roared, gesturing wildly.

"Michael Wasowski don't you dare raise your voice at me!"

Mary watched Lilo take a firm grip on her bag as she made to leave, gesturing her to follow as the argument continued. She remained in place, feeling torn, confused, and more than slightly on edge. Looking down, she realized that her fingers had become so knotted in her ponytail that she had to rip them out, grounding her at last in reality.

"Hey!" she cried, more loudly than anything else she had said all evening, earning everyone's surprised attention. Lilo continued to silently plea for Mary to follow her lead and leave while they still had the chance.

Taking a deep breath, Mary shook her head. "No. We're getting all this straight." She met Mike's eye, searching for answers. "Well?"

He glanced to Celia for confirmation before sitting back down gingerly. "Look," he began, sounding rather tired. "When . . . when the company crashed, Celia and I already had our kids. Three of them, Hal, Mazie, and Jordan."

There was a a family picture on the table across from Mary, frame flickering in the candlelight. She thought they looked happy there, younger too.

"And so we needed money. Lots of places were going out of business, and even the ones who didn't . . . wouldn't hire."

"Why not?" Lilo asked suspiciously, despite her sympathy for job hunts.

Mike bristled at her question, gripping the edge of his armchair firmly. "Because I was associated with him."

Lilo raised an eyebrow in question. 

Mary pressed on. "What happened?"

"Sully sent Monster's Inc into the ground," Celia explained, seeing as Mike wouldn't even mention his name. "They were business partners. People started blaming Mike for his mistakes. No one would hire him."

"It's not just about the job!" Mike spat. "He ruined my reputation. Our kids came home and would tell us their friends weren't allowed to play with them anymore! Do you know what that does to a kid? Having no friends?"

"Yes," Mary and Lilo answered in perfect unison.

Mike sighed again and leaned back in his chair. "So I took the only job I could find, hoping that by cleaning up yet another one of his messes, people would stop seeing me like that. It wasn't my fault, none of this is."

"Where is he now? Is he with the DMA too?" Mary inquired.

"How would I know?" Mike huffed, looking away. 

Celia glared at him. "He shuts himself in his townhouse most of the time," she answered offhandedly. "It's only a few blocks down."

"Don't tell them! If you tell them they'll go there!" Mike exasperatedly groaned. "Look," he took on a serious tone. "You don't wanna go to him. He's not how you remember him."

"Then what is he like?" Mary crossed her arms. 

Mike and looked to Celia for an answer, one she would not give. 

"Look, I know you have a family. I didn't mean to endanger it and I don't want you to lose your job," Mary began softly. "But we're looking for a part of her family, and if you can't help us maybe he can."

Lilo was frozen to the spot, impressed by Mary's tact.

Celia smiled. "I can give you his address. You'll have to go soon, before morning."

Mike, looking very uncertain, got up and started pacing. "You can't tell him you saw us first, I don't want him to think I want to be friends anymore... I don't want-"

"Michael," Celia said through gritted teeth as she wrote down instructions on a spare sheet of paper. "Let them go."

An unspoken agreement flickered between the two of them, and he backed off, barely saying a word as Celia handed Mary the crude map. "He should answer if you knock a few times."

Before they knew it, Mary and Lilo were back on the hover board, slowly going along the shadows. The DMA workers had recently gone, and Mary hoped that even they didn't have enough energy to power security cameras.

Rows and rows of buildings came and went, all at the same, agonizingly slow crawl of a pace. Finally, they came to a particularly decrepit  looking building, with walls of ivy growing up the front. It looked rather out of place amongst the manicured, well tended buildings of the neighbors. The front door was peeling with paint, and a big metal gate lined the property. 

"How do we get in?" Mary asked, hoping Lilo would have a gadget of some sort to get them over the barrier. 

"Hop off, I'll try to fiddle with the height control on this thing."

Lilo sat with the hover board turned off and flipped upside down as Mary watched her fiddle with a mess of wirespopping out of a panel. She bit her tongue, hoping that she could figure it out soon. 

In the meantime, Mary walked around trying to find a second exit, or any signs of life from the dilapidated building. Of course there wasn't a light on an my of the eight does, but still, Mary had expected . . . something. Anything, a newspaper on the porch, a broom somewhere, maybe some flowers. All her further inspection turned up was a cracked windowpane she hadn't previously noticed. 

Mary remembered more than she thought about the monster, his warm soft fur, how gentle he always was with her. She didn't remember everything, of course, like how sad he seemed when they said their last goodbye. She guessed that kids grow up and perspectives change. But never would she has guessed that they would change like this.

"I think I got it," Lilo called, flipping the board back over. "We just need some momentum and maybe a ramp.

"You sure it will work?" Mary eyed the thing skeptically.

Lilo shrugged, riding it further down the street. "We'll see. It's starting to get light, I don't know if we have a lot of time for other options."

"Noted."

The skyline of the city was just barely tinged with a faint, purplish hue. The beginning of sunrise. Mary noticed how all the stars seemed to twinkle without the light pollution of the city. She hadn't noticed them before in their rush to avoid capture from the DMA. Their beauty was almost astounding. The constellations were completely different from the ones seen from her backyard, the ones she had spent hours gazing at with her astronomers of a father. It was one of the few happy memories she had with him growing up. 

Lilo scraped a discarded dumpster lid that was bent up on its own accord into positions, and gestured for Mary to get on the board behind her. "Ready?" She whispered over her shoulder.

Mary glanced up to the sky once more just as a star shot across it. 

"Yes."