Andi Through the Multiverse

By Fred Pruitt

Abused by her brother as a teenager, rescued from human traffickers, Andi Maggiore had built a brand now life for herself. She had joined the Army, gone to Afghanistan as a flight medic, and had gotten her nursing degree when she got back. Thoroughly ashamed of herself for her teenage years, torn with guilt because she had been rescued and her best friend Janie hadn't, she had sworn off men, regardless of how much she missed her old sweetheart Elliott Collins. Then her brother died. Andi went home for the funeral. On the turnpike she got a speeding ticket. Over lunch with her old friend Crystal, she met Elliott again.

From that point things just got weird. Heisenberg wasn't certain, but he was pretty sure that Occam's Cleaver chopped off the tail of Schroedinger's Cat, who was either alive or dead, male or female, pregnant or not with kittens at the time. Andi and Elliott discovered her talent for slipping from universe to parallel universe without even needing a Flux Capacitor or an Einstein-Rosen Bridge. With the help of a few more of themselves, they set out to rescue Janie, break up the trafficking ring, and even patch up the broken heart of The Widow Andi.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fred Pruitt
• Release date: Jul 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463792766

Fred Pruitt

Fred Pruitt is somebody's grampaw. He's retired from both the Army and from a second career. He has lived in many, though not all, parts of the world. He read Robert Heinlein from about the time he was twelve, starting with his boys' books, through Stranger in a Strange Land. He has read The Virginian three times, and enjoys Raphael Sabatini. He's enjoying retirement by writing his own books about people he's known, putting them in situations they were never in in real life.

Book preview

Chapter 1 The Turnpike

April 14th

Andi’s plane had been delayed flying out of Dallas. She had arrived in Philadelphia at eleven thirty on the dot, which had been precisely the adjusted estimated time of arrival for her flight. That meant she was already forty five minutes behind her original schedule before she even managed to get out of baggage claim. Her single bag––black, with one loose wheel and a pop-out handle––was dead last to come tumbling out of the chute. She did manage to zip through car rental almost at the speed of sound, just like in the commercials, even after the loose wheel parted company with the bag.

Mark’s funeral was scheduled to begin at one o’clock. Google was convinced it took an hour and twenty four minutes to get from Philly’s airport to Jim Thorpe. She wasn’t sure how long it took to get from Jim Thorpe to the cemetery, but she was pretty sure it was going to take longer than six minutes. That was why she was trying to nurse a few additional miles per hour out of the rental car as she drove north on the Turnpike extension.

Speeding on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, whether the 360-mile east-west stretch or the north-south extension that runs from Philadelphia into Interstate 81 at Wilkes Barre, is a chancy thing. There are many miles of road and there are only a limited number of State Police per shift to cover them. On the other hand, the Pennsylvania State Police are a notoriously stiff-necked lot. Probably to make up for the thin coverage, catching a break on a speeding ticket doesn’t happen as frequently as, for instance, flying saucer sightings or blue moons. The sight of the flashing red and blue lights in her rear view mirror made Andi utter an uncharacteristically bad word before pulling over to the shoulder and gathering her license and the car rental agreement.

The trooper was about her own age, which was twenty seven. He was recruiting poster handsome, with bright blue eyes, strong white teeth, and a body that said he worked out regularly and did it well. None of that had any effect at all on Andi, who was impervious to most manly charms. She herself was uncommonly pretty, with dark hair and pretty brown eyes, even white teeth, smooth, lightly tanned skin, and all the other nice things that make men look twice at women. None of that had any discernible effect on the trooper, who was impervious to the charms of speeders. Trying not to speak in a rush, Andi explained that her plane had been delayed and that she was trying not to be late for her brother’s funeral.

Still courteous, despite the fact that he heard that story at least three times a week, the trooper poked in her information on the laptop in his car. He was a two-finger typist, and not a very fast one. The seconds ticked by, adding into minutes. Eventually the computer found no outstanding warrants and it verified that the car was a legitimate rental. Her license was from New Mexico and that state had nothing detrimental to say about Andrea Maggiore. There weren’t even any points on her license.

Because she wasn’t an habitual offender, Officer Friendly cut her a break, writing the ticket for going 79 in a 70 mile per hour zone, which would keep her fine down to $97, instead of the $122 it would have cost her if he had written it for going 82 miles per hour, which had been her actual speed. He gave her Standard Lecture Number 38, citing the accident rate on the turnpike and telling her to keep her speed to the posted limit. Then, finally, he cut her loose. At least the minutes hadn’t added up to hours.

In the privacy of the rental car, Andi groused in the ladylike manner her brother had trained her into from the time she had entered adolescence. She didn’t shriek, even though she felt like it, as she drove past the exits for Quakertown, Bethlehem, Allentown, and other tempting points of interest at precisely seventy miles an hour, which was the number printed on the signs. She had Google double check the location of the funeral, and she exhaled loudly as she saw that it was in Lehighton, which comes before Jim Thorpe when driving north, and not in Albrightsville, which is way on the other side of the county seat, and which was where she had somehow thought it was. She should have actually made it with a few minutes to spare, but there was an accident that closed Exit 74. Someone hadn’t gotten Standard Lecture Number 38, or had disregarded it. She finally managed to come limping in at the cemetery just as the coffin was being lowered into the ground and most people were leaving.

At least, Andi thought, she had managed to avoid seeing her only brother’s empty shroud of flesh before it was hidden away in the ground for all time, or at least until the cemetery became someone’s archaeology project in a few hundred years. She preferred to remember Mark, despite his many and varied faults, as being strong and alive, not as an example of the mortuary arts. Her participation in his sendoff into eternity consisted of a few moments standing by the hole in the ground, looking at his very last abode: just nine feet long, two feet deep, and just a little under thirty inches wide.

She was surprised at her lack of emotion, knowing Mark was in that box, that he would never move again. She felt like she should miss him as her brother. At the same time she felt guiltily like she was glad he was prematurely gone, that he would never come into her life again. She was feeling a tangled confusion of feelings, the clash of their blood ties with his despicable actions toward her, of her childhood adoration with his ultimate betrayal.

Andi? Chrystal Ebersole, asked from behind her, recognizing her, perhaps merely from her posture as she was standing and gazing.

Hi, Crys, Andi greeted her, looking around, not quite reluctantly, recognizing her friend just from the frequency of her voice. They shared the uncertain smiles of people who know each other’s secrets, the secrets they would prefer others didn’t know, not ever. How are you?

Crystal shrugged. I guess I’m fine, she said cautiously. How are you?

My flight was delayed, Andi explained unnecessarily apologetic. I got a speeding ticket, and I hit a traffic backup on 476. I’m sorry I was late!

Your Mom didn’t make it at all, Crystal pointed out, her voice reasonable. I’ve got Caroline’s number if it’s really necessary for you to apologize to someone. She was the first person to leave and she was his wife. His ex-wife, anyway. So don’t apologize to me. I just went steady with him for awhile. He was your brother, so you should be the one getting the apologies! Gosh! You’ve barely aged at all in almost ten years! How do you do it?

Crystal didn’t look bad. She was still easily recognizable as Andi’s best friend from the time they were buying their first pink lunchboxes for kindergarten. She just carried about twenty pounds more than she had when they had been teenagers. The braces that had marred her smile through her teen years were finally gone, leaving behind them a barely visible ridge on the surface of her otherwise perfect teeth. The braces were an ingrained part of Andi’s memory of her. When Crystal smiled she was supposed to have tinsel mouth. Andi had disappeared a month or two before the braces had.

Clean living in a healthy climate, Andi dismissed. She appreciated the compliment, but she hoped she wasn’t that easily recognizable to most people after the passage of ten years. She resolved to change her hairstyle, even though it was different from the way she had worn it as a teenager. How have you been? she asked politely.

Good, Crystal replied, a bit of their old easiness returning. Bill’s good to me. Bill McCleod. You remember him? He lived up on Chestnut Street, with his Grandma. We have two kids, both of them boys, both of them terrors. And a dog. He’s a sissy. We live in his Mom and Dad’s old house in Albrightsville. Bill’s Mom and Dad’s, not Rover’s.

Andi smiled, feeling the tug of familiarity, of being Home. I somehow expected you to be living in your parents’ old house, down the block from ours.

Can’t do it, Crystal responded. They still live there. My old room’s their junk room. Bill’s Dad found a job in Pine Grove, of all places, so his folks moved there. We’re buying the place from them. From the bank now. We started out paying their mortgage, until we were established enough to get our own. Have you had lunch? We could go to The Green Terrace? If you’re ready to leave here, I mean? Or to Collura’s? We could hit Molly Maguires or the Broadway Grill if you’d rather to eat in Jim Thorpe?

I didn’t really want to come here at all, Andi told her, matter-of-factly, so I’m ready to leave any time you are. Cemeteries do absolutely zip, nada, nothing for me. Coming here was one of those family things, the kind of thing you have to do whether you want to or not. I have to, anyway, even if Mom doesn’t. I’ll follow you to the restaurant. I can hold out for Collura’s. It was always my favorite.

They left the cemetery and Andi followed Crystal’s car from Lehighton through Jim Thorpe. At the square at the courthouse, they went north on the state road. Not too much had changed in the area from the time she had been a kid. Jim Thorpe looked timeless. Bear Mountain was changeless. Mark had been considerate enough––Andi guessed it was actually Caroline who had made the arrangements––to be buried on a pretty mid-April day. The scenery was the Poconos that she remembered from her youth, a continuous rolling carpet of trees punctuated here and there by a small town or a ribbon of road. The Sandia mountains she saw every day from her apartment in Albuquerque were larger and more imposing, gorgeous in their own way, but their way was pink and purple and suggestive of the desert. She realized that these eastern mountains would always be Home to her. It would have been nice to stay, like Crystal had, to be normal, to settle down in one of the microscopic towns and to raise a family.

Too bad, so sad. When life had dealt Andi the cards, she’d have thrown her hand in, if that had been an option—and if she had known better.

Their home town actually had changed a little bit. It began a little earlier along the road than it had before, with a new housing development that looked like it was pricey for the area. The houses were bigger, the yards less expansive, and the trees were barely out of the seedling stage. Another anchor store at the strip mall where Laumann’s grocery store was located had gone under. Laumann’s was now the anchor store again, with a big For Lease sign at the other end. Downtown, all four blocks of it, now sported two more antique stores, and there seemed to be more For Sale signs in front of the houses. Louie’s bar and Miller’s tavern were still in business. The Vets, at the edge of town, was still as nondescript as ever.

Crystal made a left at the Vets and drove a couple blocks down so Andi could see the house she had grown up in. The 1940s Cape Cod looked like it had shrunk. The grass that her father and later Mark had kept so neatly trimmed and edged was already overdue for a good mowing. It was growing up over one side of the sidewalk and between some of the cracks. She had no idea who lived there now, if anyone. There was no sign, but it looked like it might be vacant. There were curtains in the front window, but one looked like it had been pulled halfway down. The ramshackle house next to it where the Liverings had lived was noticeably leaning a couple degrees to the left. Andi was surprised it was still there; it had looked like it was going to collapse then last time she had seen it. The old house on the corner, with the red tin roof and the well-aged white asphalt shingles, was no longer there at all. It had been torn down and hauled away, and there was a sign promising to replace the missing large duplex with three town homes. There was no one left on the street to visit, so they left.

Collura’s was up the hill and another mile or so past the VFW, heading out the west end of town. It was a one-story building that backed to farmland, with a small parking lot out front. Its sign was a little overdue for a repainting. It was early in the day, so there weren’t many cars in the parking lot. To Andi’s surprise, the place was just as nice as she remembered it on the inside, just a little more worn on the outside. There was a new hostess, naturally; she turned out to be the mother of one of Andi’s high school chums. She recognized both women and greeted Andi almost fulsomely. She showed them to a booth and left them with menus, promising to tell her daughter Andi was in town.

A waitress brought them water without being asked, and both women ordered from the day’s lunch specials. Andi ordered a glass of wine to go with her burger. She was staying in town, and if she happened to get plastered she could walk the mile or two to the Hotel. She didn’t expect to have to. It had been a few years since she had last gotten sloshed. Crystal stuck with Coke.

So, Crystal demanded as they waited for their meals to arrive. Tell me what happened to you. You dropped off the face of the earth! Tell me why you didn’t get in touch with me, didn’t get in touch with with anyone! Tell me everything!

Andi shrugged. At first I couldn’t, she replied, carefully keeping her voice from screeching and her chin from quivering. Then I didn’t want to.

You ‘couldn’t?’ Crystal asked carefully.

Couldn’t. Can we talk about something else? The subject was extremely sensitive to her, as it should have been to Crystal.

And then you didn’t want to? Crystal plowed on, heedless of Andi’s discomfort. She had some of the same kind of discomfort at mistakes in her own past, but she seemed to have handled it well.

I’ve been trying to wash it all out of my mind ever since, Andi told her, a little shortly. Trying to live down the unlivable. I shouldn’t have come.

Andi… Crystal began, apologetically.

I was really lucky, Andi told her, avoiding her eyes. Much luckier than Janie. Someone bought me out before it was quite too late. I think it might have been Homer. I saw on the internet that he died around that time. He always liked me, so maybe it was one last act of kindness on his part. Whoever it was, they called me in one morning. They told me I was leaving. I got a new dress, a pair of cheap shoes, a purse, and a ride to the nearest airport. The purse had a passport that said I was two years older than I was, a driver’s license, and a few other things that I could put to good use, like a high school transcript. They all looked valid. There was a first class ticket to Denver waiting for me at the airport. I was told someone would meet me when I got off the plane.

So who met you in Denver? Crystal asked quietly.

No one, Andi told her. If they were there, I don’t know who they were. I traded the ticket at the counter for an economy class flight to Little Rock. Sometime during that ride to the airport, it had occurred to me that I’d like to try being my very own person for the first time in my life. Those few unsupervised moments would probably be the last opportunity I’d ever have.

And then? Chrystal asked as their lunches arrived. She tucked into her meatloaf while listening. It was one of Collura’s lunchtime specialties, low-priced and tasty. Andi could smell it, and the smell made her hungrier.

And then I joined the Army in Little Rock, she said, tasting her hamburger and adding mustard and Tabasco sauce. I walked into the recruiting office and asked what they could do for me. I signed the papers the same day.

"You joined the Army? Crystal asked incredulously, a bite of meatloaf poised on the end of her fork, halfway to her mouth. To be your own person? Aren’t the two ideas kind of contradictory?"

You’d be surprised, Andi shrugged. At that point, I had no idea how to be my own person, how to actually be free. Mark had led me around like a puppy from the time I was a little kid. I was really, really good at doing what I was told. I needed to learn how to function on my own, and the Army could teach me that.

So did you, like, shoot people and stuff? Crystal knew next to nothing about the military, and that from the movies.

The Army trained me to be a combat medical specialist, Andi laughed. I also learned how to shoot and how to take orders correctly. Eventually I even learned how to give orders, how to stay in shape, all that other stuff. I joined up wanting to go to Afghanistan. I wasn’t actually suicidal by that time, not anymore, but I didn’t really think much of my life or even of myself. I wouldn’t have been unhappy if someone had plugged me or blown me up. At least I didn’t think I would. I felt like I’d deserve it.

And did you? Go to Afghanistan, I mean? Crystal asked breathlessly.

Yup, replied Andi. I volunteered, got accepted right out of my training school. I flew as a crewman on Medevac helicopters, what we called Dustoff missions. When my first enlistment was up, I signed up for another three years. By then I pretty much had myself together. I had set goals that I was working toward. I cross trained as a practical nursing specialist and then went back to the ‘Stan. I took all the college courses they had available on base, or that were available online. I put all the money they’d let me set aside into the GI Bill. I extended for a year at Bagram air base, mainly because my boss asked me to stay on. Then I got out and I enrolled in University of New Mexico. Now I’m a Registered Nurse, specializing in Emergency Medicine.

Wow, Chrystal said, ignoring her meatloaf for a moment. You’ve kept yourself busy!

Andi shrugged dismissively. That was what I set out to do. Devil. Idle hands. Employment. You know the cliché.

So, is there a guy in your life now? her friend asked cautiously. Multiple guys, maybe?

No guys, Andi replied, making a face of distaste. I will never, ever, under any circumstances be anyone’s sexual plaything again. I’m done with that sort of thing for good. Forever! I live alone. I don’t date. I occasionally go out with groups of people I know––people I went to school with, or people I knew in the Army. People I can trust. I read a lot. I watch a lot of movies. I own a cat, who thinks my job is to keep him in the lap of kitty luxury. That’s it. I’m happy being a spinster. She paused, catching her breath and getting herself back under control. So now you know all about me, she said, hoping the subject would change. Tell me all about you.

I already told you, Crystal told her. Bill, two kids, and I’m a housewife. Bill makes enough that I don’t have to work, but I still do stuff part-time, baby sitting and crafts and that sort of thing. I enjoy our life, even if I am getting fat. We’ve joined the gym and I go regularly. I’m trying to take off the butt and the gut and leave the boobs. Bill likes them, and I like Bill.

I’m glad you’re happy, Andi said sincerely. I was afraid you wouldn’t be.

I am, very, Crystal admitted. "I have a very selective memory, and I keep it selective. When you and Janie… when you disappeared, all of Mark’s little empire broke up. There was a lot of suspicion about him, even though nobody could prove anything."

I’m glad of that too, Andi replied, referring to the empire breaking up. Things that had made sense to her at the time, or that were daring fun, now looked horribly stupid in retrospect.

You haven’t… You haven’t heard from Elliott? Crystal asked, a funny expression appearing on her face.

Andi shook her head.Even Elliott is far, far in my past. If he turned up this very afternoon, he’d have to content himself with a completely platonic relationship. So would I. I was a kid back then, Crys. He was a kid as well, just an older kid.

I wasn’t really a kid, Elliott Collins said from the booth behind them. I was not only old enough to vote, but almost old enough to buy strong drink. And we’re both ten years older now. Would you mind if I join you?

Chapter 2 Elliott

April 14th

Andi had been a very pretty girl as a teenager. That was how Elliott remembered her, not as beautiful, but as very pretty. He had a few pictures of her, though not nearly as many as he would have preferred. They had kept the vision of her fresh in his mind for ten years. There was one photo that he liked especially; she was wearing a dark dress, laughing, her eyes sparkling. He had taken it at just the right moment, her skirt swishing as she was walking past a raised bed that was full of multicolored flowers. She looked like she was dancing, and that was how he always thought of her.

That had been on a day when they had stopped on impulse in Jim Thorpe. It hadn’t been the prime time of year to stop; that would have been autumn, when the trees covering the mountains are a riot of color. Still, it had been pleasant, a nice day in the middle of August. The mountains had been a carpet of blue-green. The air had been warm, but the humidity had been low and there had been gentle breezes, mere zephyrs barely fierce enough to stir Andi’s hair. They had ridden the short line train down Lehigh Gorge, holding hands the whole way. They had gone from the train to Molly Maguires and had lunch when they got back. They had both been overdressed for the occasion; jeans or even shorts would have been more appropriate. Elliott had intended taking her someplace more upscale, in Allentown or maybe in Philadelphia, but she had gotten the urge to go for a train ride. They had talked about absolutely nothing of consequence over their lunch, and they had spent most of their meal laughing.

That was Elliott’s favorite picture of Andi, and it was but one of his favorite, idyllic memories. He had had the picture enlarged as far as the resolution would support, and he had had it framed, to hang on his bedroom wall. The other pictures he had taken in the course of their acquaintance he had both printed on paper and saved to solid state drives––two of them, in case one crashed. They featured Andi: pink-cheeked and laughing in winter; happy in spring time, her smile somehow taking up hr entire face; and wistfully sweet with a touch of sunburn in summer. He had lost her barely a week before autumn.

Complementing Andi’s prettiness had been the kind of personality that went with it. She had radiated an innate sweetness that was free of artifice. She possessed an air of kindness and inner joy that had made other girls in the same room fade, at least in Elliott’s perception. Perhaps they didn’t pale all the way to gray scale, but they at least faded to muted pastels; or perhaps it was just that Andi was so much more vivid than they were, that they just seemed pale by contrast.

As is all too often the case, kindness and sweetness were an invitation to other, opposite personalities to prey. In Andi’s case the predator had been her own brother, from the time she had first hit puberty. His ambition had been to turn her into his possession, a resource to be used for his own profit. He had done a pretty thorough job of it by the time she was Sweet Sixteen.

Elliott wasn’t the least bit sad to see Mark Maggiore gone from this world. He hadn’t traveled out of his way to mourn him. He was heartened to hear that Andi had escaped the kind of life Mark had groomed her for, and had actually started her into. Elliott had missed her, on one level or another, from the last time he had seen her until he had heard her voice a few moments ago.

Now, a woman grown, Andi was well beyond pretty. Beauty was the first word that sprung to mind when he saw her. Her face, as far as Elliott was concerned, was now simply captivating; it was a woman’s face, not a girl’s. It was a face to haunt a man’s dreams.

Certainly it was a face to haunt his dreams.

That lovely visage at the moment held the half panicked look of a person who is just realizing that she has been set up, even though she hadn’t been. Andi looked like she was going to get up from the booth and run. She wasn’t going to accept Elliott’s and Crystal’s explanations that it was sheer coincidence that he had been seated in the booth behind them, even though it was the absolute truth. He had come to Mark’s funeral because he had happened to be on the East Coast on the one hand, to make sure the man was really dead on the other. He had heard about it almost by chance, from one of the guys he kept in occasional touch with in town, who knew how he felt about Andi. He had gone to Collura’s after the funeral because he knew of the place. He had taken Andi there a few times, long, long ago. He had been feeling sentimental. The coincidence lay in the timing and in which booth he happened to sit.

Nope. Andi wasn’t going to believe him, even though Crystal looked just as shocked at the sight of him as she did.

May I join you? he asked them both, his eyes on Andi. Platonically? he added.

Elliott? asked Crystal, still looking stunned, her cooling meatloaf ignored. Really? It’s you?

Crystal, he acknowledged with a half bow in her direction. Andi. He put his hand across his heart, bowed again, and declaimed grammatically: It is I!

You set this up! Andi said to Crystal, accusingly. There was no smile in her expression, but she didn’t really snarl. Crystal looked guilty, even though she was completely innocent.

Elliott took Andi’s accusation as assent, sitting next to Crystal so he could look at this grownup vision across the table.

She didn’t set it up, Elliott corrected before Crystal could deny. You’re looking at a product of multiple thousand-to-one odds narrowed to the barely possible by a funeral. You look very well, both of you. Especially you, Nurse Maggiore.

You were eavesdropping on us, Andi growled, her eyes narrowed.

Elliott got the waitress’s attention so she could bring his seafood sampler to the right table. He moved his beer aside so she had room for the sizzling platter and the side dishes. "I was unintentionally eavesdropping, he admitted categorically. Once I heard the sound of your voice I had to listen in. I just couldn’t help myself."

Bosh, tush, and go away, Andi replied grimly. Take your scallops and shrimp and such with you. Leave the beer. We’ll split it.

So how have you been, Elliott? Crystal asked quickly, opening the way for him to stay. She stole two of Andi’s french fries while she was distracted.

Pretty well, thank you, he responded politely, spearing one of his shrimp and flavoring it delicately in cocktail sauce before biting into it. Andi watched as he chewed. He wasn’t sure if she had her eye on him or the shrimp; she had a known weakness for Collura’s broiled shrimp. And you? he asked, ostentatiously not addressing Andi. You’re well and happy?

Yeah, allowed Crystal. I’ve got it all: Two kids, a husband, a dog, and a mortgage, not necessarily in that order. What have you been doing since the last time we saw you?

Let’s see, he answered slowly, trying not to stare at Andi as she nibbled her burger. She had ostentatiously loaded it with raw onions when he sat down. "I finished college, got my bachelor’s degrees, two of them in a double major, one in mechanical