Chapter
21: Everything Falls Apart
“Wake up, Shiri,” Daniel whispered as his lips pressed against her
neck. Shiri rolled over and found his lips. They kissed for a few moments before
leaving the bed and heading into the kitchen. Three days had passed since they
came home from Las Vegas. They had spent that time together, never leaving the
others side.
The doorbell rang. Shiri stood up to answer it. “Package for Ms.
Appleby,” a man in a brown UPS uniform said when she opened the door. Shiri
signed his clipboard and headed back inside. Cautiously, she opened the large
envelope. Her mouth dropped open when she saw what was inside.
“Dan, I just got the test results back,” her shaky voice said.
“And?” he eagerly called from the kitchen.
“It’s true, Chance is my sister.” Shiri’s eyes began to water as
she leaned against the wall and slid to the floor. Daniel rushed into the room
to find out if he was hearing her correctly. He found Shiri crying by the door,
the open letter on the floor beside her. He shook his head.
‘Oh, no,’ Daniel thought as he picked it up and read it.
“I have to call her and tell her to get over here. I don’t want to
say this over the phone,” Shiri said as she stood up and wiped her eyes with
the sleeves of her shirt. She reached for the phone on the coffee table and
dialed Chance’s number.
“Hello?” she asked.
“Chance, hey, what’s up?” Shiri asked in a stressed tone.
“Nothing, just about to start reading my book when you called. What do
you need?” Chance replied.
“Um… Could you come over with Darren? I need to talk to you guys
about something.”
“Okay, we’ll be there soon.” Chance hung up the phone before saying
goodbye.
~~~~~~~~~~
“We really need to talk to you,” Shiri started off when she and
Daniel walked into the room.
“Okay, talk,” Chance replied as she sat back on the couch to listen.
She and Darren had arrived just minutes earlier.
“First off, about the accident. I should have told you earlier what
happened, but I was afraid and upset. Only Dan knew because it mainly pertained
to him,” Shiri started. “You see, I was hit by a car and a shard of glass
became lodged in my abdomen. I was coming back from your place because I needed
to tell Dan something, but I just couldn’t. It’s still hard for me to say
this, but I was pregnant. I lost the baby because of the accident, and it upsets
me still.”
“Oh, my God! Shiri! I’m so sorry,” Chance offered her comfort.
“Wait, there’s more,” Shiri interrupted. “While I was at the
hospital, Dan proposed to me, and I knew at that moment he was the one, so I
said yes. We kept the engagement a secret because of what had happened to Dan
the last time he proposed, and he wanted to make sure that our relationship
would last.”
“Do you think I’m mad at you?” Chance questioned. Shiri nodded.
“I’m not. I completely understand. I was scared too when Darren proposed to
me, and I didn’t want everyone in the room at the moment, but I got over it.
I’m not mad at you for keeping this a secret.”
“Chance, there’s more,” Daniel interrupted.
“What more could there possibly be?” she asked.
“Plenty,” he replied.
“Okay, here goes,” Shiri said, taking a deep breath as she gathered
her thoughts. “Dan and I got married.”
“What? When!” Chance nearly yelled.
“In Las Vegas. We brought you guys out there so that the press
wouldn’t think much of it, and we got married.”
“What were you thinking?” Darren joined in. “Are you crazy? Do you
know how disappointed I am? How could you do this? She still hasn’t even met
your family.”
“And like Chance has met yours,” Dan retorted.
“Boys! Stop it,” Shiri butted in. “We still haven’t gotten to the
really important part.”
“Which is?” Chance asked.
“Here, this will explain itself.” Shiri handed her a manila folder
and Chance pulled out the papers within. They were the blood test results.
Chance read them over to find nothing was wrong with her, but as she flipped the
page, she saw the real reason she had been called to the apartment. A DNA test
had been done comparing Chance’s along with Shiri’s. At the bottom of the
page was the percentage possibility that they were sisters, 99.99%.
“No!” Chance yelled at the three of them. “This is NOT possible. I
can’t be adopted. There’s just no way. My parents would have told me if I
was adopted.”
“Settle down, Chance. We found the paperwork that proves everything,”
Daniel replied calmly. He handed another manila envelope to Chance. She looked
through it, shocked at what she found.
“This can’t be true. Where did you get this?” she hissed.
“I had your grandmother fax it to us,” Darren said in a near whisper.
He knew this was wrong, and couldn’t believe he had helped his so-called
friends ruin his fiancés life.
“Oh, my God! They KNEW about this? And they never told me?” Chance
was about to break down into tears. She angrily paced the room, her hot tears
flowing from her eyes, but she refused to explode.
“Look, Chance, we’re really sorry for doing this to you, but I had to
know, for my mother’s sake. Ever since she saw you on ‘Roswell,’ she’s
been pestering me about you and where you came from and all that crap,” Shiri
tried to explain.
“So this was all your idea?” Chance screamed in an angry rage.
“You… You… I don’t even know what to say to you. You were my best
friend, and you betrayed me! How could you?”
“Chance, calm down,” Darren tried to quiet her. He placed his hands
over her shoulders, but she shook out of his grasp.
“And you! My own fiancé! The supposed love of my life who would never
do a thing like this. You BASTARD! How could you scheme against me? I thought
you loved me?”
“They forced me into it!” Darren’s finger pointed to Daniel and
Shiri. “I didn’t want to do it, but they made me.”
“Oh, don’t even go and shift the blame to them. You could have
stopped yourself from doing this, but NOOOOOOO! You did it because you were
curious too!” Chance yelled into his face.
“I did not!” he tried to defend himself.
Chance stopped her pacing and looked at the three of them with red, hurt
eyes. “I’ve had enough of this. I’m leaving,” she said. Quickly, she
twisted Darren’s ring off her finger and threw it at him. “This is over. You
could go to hell for all I care. I never want to see any of you for the rest of
my life.”
Calmly, Chance walked out of the apartment and headed for her car. Darren
watched from the window as she drove off down the street. He turned to Dan and
Shiri as they tried to figure out how this had gone so wrong.
“You two are the most pathetic friends I’ve ever had. This is all
your fault! You screwed up Chance’s life, and you’ve screwed up mine in the
process. I’ve lost her again, and this time I know I’m not going to get her
back. I hope you’re proud of yourselves,” Darren said as he stomped out of
the apartment and started to walk home.
Daniel and Shiri looked at each other. They had been expecting this, but
didn’t think it would end up hurting them more than anything. Shiri could feel
the tears that welled up in her eyes. She wrapped her arms around Daniel’s
neck and cried for what seemed like forever.
“I can’t believe what I’ve just done. I am such a selfish bitch.
This is the worst thing I could possibly do to my best friend. I am a horrible
person,” she bawled.
“It’s not just you. I am too. I did all the convincing. I wish I
could take it all back,” Daniel softly replied.
“We have to do something,” she said. “Come on, let’s find her.
It’s the least we could do for Darren.”
Daniel bolted out of the house as Shiri turned on the car. They drove to
Darren’s in less then two minutes to find that he was outside. Dan ran out of
the car and met him by the stairs.
“Darren!” Daniel called from behind him. Reaching his best friend, he
rested his hands on his knees and panted to get his breath back. “Did you find
her?”
Darren glared at him and turned away towards the beach house. He didn’t
want to talk to his former best friend after what he had done to him. As Darren
walked farther away from the condo, he could hear Daniel running towards him.
“What do you want?” Darren yelled in his face as he walked up to him.
“You’ve already screwed up my life enough, what more do you want to do to
me? Kill me?”
“Darren, listen to me. Nobody was planning for this to happen. Nobody
knew how Chance would react to the news. I’m just as saddened by it as you
are,” Daniel tried to explain.
“But you didn’t lose your fiancé over it, did you?” Darren kept
yelling. “You didn’t really lose anyone. You still have your wife.”
“I did lose someone!” Daniel shouted back. “I lost my best
friend!”
“Then why did you tell your so called best friend that she was really
adopted and that her sister was Shiri?” Darren retorted.
“I didn’t want to do this! It was Shiri’s idea! She wanted to find
out if Chance was part of her family. Why are you yelling at me?” Daniel
asked.
“Because you’re the fucking idiot that went along with her, that’s
why!”
“So did you!”
Darren’s eyes began to glow with fury. He lunged at Daniel and began to
fight with him on the sand. Shiri was only a few meters away and quickly came to
stop the fight. By the time she got there, the two were already at each
other’s throats and ready to choke each other to death. Darren threw a few
punches Daniel’s way and vice versa.
“Enough!” Shiri’s high-pitched shriek stopped them dead in their
tracks. She pulled Daniel away and looked him over. His lip was fat and
bleeding, and his face was a total mess. Darren was pretty much the same way,
except instead of a bloody lip, his eye was swollen shut.
“You two act like five year olds!” It was her turn to yell. “I’m
ashamed of both of you! There’s nothing more embarrassing than having two
superstars trying to beat the shit out of each other. Let alone being married to
one of them. What the hell is wrong with you? There are bigger things that we
need to figure out. We don’t need any fighting at the present time. We need to
find Chance.”
“Where are we gonna find her?” Darren asked as he felt his jaw.
“Let’s start with local hotels the work our way up. I’ll ask around
to see if anyone has seen her. You two can then search the local coffee shops to
see if she’s been to one of them. Our last resort is the airport, but I
seriously doubt that she’s going anywhere. Come on, let’s go,” Shiri said
as she marched down the beach in a determined manner.
Daniel and Darren stayed put on the sand as they watched her leave. Shiri
turned back to see that they weren’t following her and immediately ran back to
where they were sitting.
“There’s no chance in hell I’m going anywhere with him,” Darren
stubbornly answered her unspoken question as he pointed a finger at Daniel.
“ARG! You two are even more childish than I expected!” Shiri almost
screamed. “You’d better apologize, or Dan, we’re not having sex
tonight.”
Daniel’s mouth dropped with the last comment. He quickly turned to
Darren and said, “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry,” Darren grumbled as he stood up and slowly made his way back
to the house.
They began their search of the hotels a few hours later. They hadn’t
found a single person who had seen Chance all day. The next things on their list
were the coffee shops in the area. Again, no sign of Chance anywhere. During
their search, Shiri had made a number of phone calls to friends and family
trying to figure out where Chance had gone. Nobody seemed to know. Darren was
becoming more and more panicked at the hours passed without a single thread of
information.
On the drive back home, he was completely distant from everyone around
him. His thoughts drifted from the fight to Chance to the information he had
just found out that day. He couldn’t put it all together and had trouble
sorting all out in his mind. He felt as if he had been shot and was still
bleeding from the open wound.
“Darren?” Shiri asked as she gently touched his shoulder. He jumped
then looked at her as his heart began to beat normally again. “I’m sorry we
didn’t find Chance. I’m sorry all this had to happen today. I’m sorry I
had to tell her the news that she was my sister,” she started crying.
Darren wrapped his arms around her when he realized that she also felt
bad about what had happened with Chance that day. Shiri was just as devastated
about the outcome as Darren was. She cried on his shoulder while they drove back
to the condo. Darren got out of the car and pulled out his keys.
“Thanks, guys,” he said as he walked up the lonely stairs and into
the even lonelier condo.