Sally's Secret

Chapter 28

Sally knew she had dodged a huge bullet when Maria didn't reveal her diagnosis on that terrible interrogation recording. It certainly wouldn't have been Maria's fault if she'd said anything while drugged, but it would have been extremely awkward for Sally to have to admit to her family it was true and she'd failed to tell everyone herself. Virgil had been especially vulnerable, and had he been forced to deal with his grandmother's secret and his girlfriend's possible death at the same time, it could have been devastating. Sally knew she needed to tell them all, and soon. There were just a few little details she wanted to work out first.

The main one was how Maria would fit into the family beyond her likelihood of eventually marrying Virgil. Her grandson might not realise she was the one yet, but Sally had no doubt he'd catch up eventually. It would complicate matters if Maria didn't have a good solid place in the family apart from her relationship though. It wouldn't do at all for Maria to feel any sort of pressure to marry Virgil just to have a place to live. She needed to have purpose and acceptance for herself first, so marrying Virgil would be solely for love.

Several positive developments had moved them all in that direction. Scott coming full on board and deciding she was family had been major. The fact Brains had recognised value in that weird anatomy song was another big step. It wasn't surprising Stephen Q. Watson Medical College wanted the song, but they probably wouldn't have forgiven all her debt if not for Kayo ever-so-slyly dropping hints that Maria had a very solid case for a sexual harassment lawsuit and how tons of negative publicity for the school might occur if Maria suddenly decided to take her story public. Forgiving her student loan debt was actually a very small price to pay for preserving Maria's goodwill after they'd failed to protect her from that sleezebag clinical rotations director. The fact they also got a valuable educational song in the deal was simply bonus for them. Maria had no idea Kayo had said anything, nor did she even want to dredge all that history up again. But the turn of events did give her the advantage of now being debt-free.

Brains was giddy as a schoolboy to have the opportunity to get Maria all decked out to do underwater perimeter patrol. She'd undoubtedly end up equipped just as well as Lady Penelope, although Sally really hoped Brains realised Maria wasn't as into pink as their London agent was. Sally had not even thought of something like that, but putting her on island surveillance and making her part of Kayo's security team was a stroke of genius and Maria had come up with it all by herself.

It was obvious Maria loved the cooking and gardening part of her job. Sally felt pretty sure she would be willing to stay simply as cook-housekeeper-underwater patroller. However, it was ridiculous to waste her nursing talents. The boys just needed to see how she could be useful to them.

Although Maria was getting stronger and stronger every day, Sally continued encouraging her to sit and watch rescues more, hoping she might catch on to how overworked the boys were and how the GDF was taking them for granted. Whether Maria was seeing it or not was anyone's guess, but she wasn't very good at sitting still. Sally figured Maria most likely had a hyperactivity disorder, not to mention a very strong work ethic, and probably a little guilt thrown in, all conspiring against her to make it difficult for her to simply watch other people doing rescues while she did 'nothing'. Of course, Sally didn't consider it 'nothing'. Sally considered it education. But she couldn't really explain that to Maria, nor why it was important.

However, Maria was quite willing to help fold clean laundry or work on her shark teaching materials while in the lounge. At first, Sally didn't think she was paying any attention to the rescues when her eyes were on something else, but Maria was fairly good at multi-tasking and could catch nearly every word that came over comms while never looking up from a mountain of towels or a life-size hammerhead silhouette she was cutting out from black paper.