Introduction: The year is 2076, not that is extremely important. The story takes place at the same time as Five Love Stories en Brochette; much of it at the same time as the last chapter of that story. It has been almost six years since that story was published here. In that story, Scott Adams is briefly mentioned in a couple of sentences near the beginning, and once again in the epilogue. Wren Phoenix thought it might be nice to know a bit more about Scotty Adams. I’m sorry, Wren, that it took so damn long to get around to it.

Jake Adams is dead, and he won’t be missed by anyone. This tale is not over by a long shot. Finally, Scott is free to be who she really is. It isn’t quite that easy. There are many loose ends that must be tied up and hurdles that must be cleared before that can start. What happened to her mother?

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This work is copyrighted by the author and any publication or distribution without the written consent of the author is strictly prohibited. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of the characters to persons living or dead is coincidental.

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Scott Free
 

Chapter 9

“Joe, we found her car,” Sheriff John Williams said. He’d called the Esterházys early Saturday morning.

“And, whose car might that be,” Joe said fully aware of what car John was talking about.

“If we’d had cause, if someone had reported her missing, we might have found the car right away. Someone had pushed it off the edge of the cleared area where that old logging camp had been. She wasn’t in it. Someone pulled a lot of brush over it so it was difficult to spot it from the air. They’re pulling it up the hill right now. It looks like it’s still drivable.”

“Think he killed her?”

“Sure looks that way. He probably buried her somewhere around here. They’re bringing up a cadaver dog. It should be up here in an hour.”

“Did they find her?”

Joe turned to find Scott standing there. He’d obviously been listening in on the conversation.

“No, they did find her car. He pushed it off the edge back at the old logging camp. I’m sorry, Scott, it doesn’t look good.”

“I think I’ve known that ever since that day he caught me in Mom’s dress. There were times I wished he killed me.”

“Scott!” Amy said as she walked in on the conversation.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill myself. My friends gave me strength to hold on. You have given me strength to go forward. I am so happy we found each other.

“Did Aunt Persi find someone I can talk to?”

“Yes, she did. That’s what I was coming down to tell you. She found someone down in Ferndale. She talked to her last night. I’ll call her Monday for an appointment. Persi said she’d met her at a seminar a few years ago. She and Clara thought the world of her.

“Mom called a while ago. She said that Karen and Pat are thicker than thieves. Karen surprised the hell out of him showing up like she did. Mom can read between the lines. Things are going very well,” Amy said in a knowing tone that wasn’t missed by Scott.

Although he’d heard a lot about the family, he’d only met Joe’s mother. That was stopping later that day as they were going the place he’d heard so much about over the years: The Ranch. There was the thought that they’d be passing his old home; however, that was no longer a problem. He had no reason to be afraid.

“Let’s start the dog around the area of the car, though I can’t imagine he’d have buried her around here. This is the only open area for a half mile in any direction. I can’t imagine he’d gone very far into that second growth, either. That stuff’s so thick a snake would have trouble getting through some of it.”

They worked the entire area of the old camp, and the dog didn’t alert on a thing. They decided to look for any openings off the road where he might have been able to hide her body - still nothing. There were some cleared areas to the rear of the ruins of the trailer. The dog alerted immediately. They marked the spot. Then the dog alerted in the second cleared area. They staked that spot also. A cleared path led straight back towards the trailer. When the dog alerted at the third cleared spot, the deputy exclaimed, “What the fuck, boss, do we have a serial killer. How many bodies do you think there are?”

“Just one, just one,” he said looking up the cleared path between the trees. “Call the coroner and a septic tank company. She’s up there.”

They stood at the fourth spot the dog alerted on. They could look down three relatively straight lines to where the dog had alerted originally.

“I’ll be Goddamned, he dumped her in the septic tank.” the deputy muttered.

It was an easy matter to get the septic tank maintenance people to pump out the tank. They had a screen to catch any large solids such as bones. When they were through, the coroner had a pretty much complete skeleton. They brought out a tank truck to wash the tank out. They didn’t want to miss a thing as they did not have a cause of death. They weren’t absolutely sure to whom the remains belonged; however, forensics already knew the remains were female. That was easy to determine from the skull and pelvis structures.

“Let’s see if that screen caught anything,” Dr. Mendez said. It had been no easy task up to this point. A man in a dry-suit and self-contained breathing apparatus had been passing up the bones as they were revealed. A helper was holding on to a life line in case the man in the tank ran into any problems. The atmosphere in the tank could be anoxic and toxic.

They stood around as the septic tank man removed the suction hose and exposed the screen.

A partial plate, a few phalanges and a U-shaped bone were trapped against the screen. The plate and small bones were placed in an evidence bag as was the U-shaped bone after the medical examiner looked at it. “I think we got just about everything. We might be missing a couple of phalanges, but they’re not critical. At least we know how he killed her.”

“How’s that?” the deputy asked.

“That last bone was the clue,” the sheriff said. “That was the hyoid bone. It was broken. The son-of-a-bitch strangled her.”

Sylvia greeted Scott with a hug and a kiss before Musetta led him out to the back yard to pick berries. “Watch out for the poison oak. I found some in the garden last week.

“You’re a girl, aren’t you? I was pretty sure when I saw you last week. Why are you called Scott?”

“That’s the name my mother gave me.”

“That’s a strange name to give a girl.”

“She didn’t know I was a girl when I was born. I’ve known for a while, though.

“So, you’re like my great, great Gramma Musetta.”

“I hope so.”

“What would you like your name to be?”

“Margaret Elaine. Elaine was my mother’s name.”

“That’s nice.”

The next few weeks were filled with many surprises, and many legal issues. Scott finally was able to meet Joe’s little brother and the woman he was going to marry. He met his Aunt Persi, short for Persephone, and her wife Clara. A major surprise for everyone had been that Clara and Karen were sisters. Karen had been kidnapped when their family lived in Ukraine. Everyone had remarked how much they resembled each other; however, it took Clara’s determination to find out the truth.

Scott would meet his other aunts and uncles to be over the next few weeks and months. He met many other people over those next few weeks, too. His mother had taken out a life insurance policy on herself and Jake. Jake had never been aware of it. Elaine’s policy had been paid through the month when she’d been murdered. The insurance company complained, but decided discretion was the better part of valor. They paid. Jake’s premium had been taken out of his monthly disability payments; again something he hadn’t been aware of. Scott received $200,000 plus interest on the two policies. Of course, he inherited the 500 plus acres of land.

They buried his mother’s remains next to the grandparents he’d never met. Sheriff John gave him the ring his mother had worn. It had been her mother’s ring. She never wore a wedding ring. He didn’t ask, and no one told him what happened to his father’s remains.

The counselor Persi had suggested turned out to be a wonderful, compassionate, no nonsense professional. It didn’t take long for her to determine that Scott was transgender. Of course the legal issues raised their heads. Scott was still a ward of the state. The Esterházys petitioned the state to allow them to adopt Scott. They provided all the medical evidence and testimonies from the doctors. They sought a second opinion; however, the state provided their psychologist. His opinion matched that by Scott’s counselor. The state realized that having someone wanting to adopt a child with gender issues was a good thing. They wouldn’t have to worry finding a home for the child. They knew the Esterházys would be good parents. The adoption was finalized two days later. The judge had done one other thing. Scott Adams ceased to exist. She was now Margaret Elaine Esterházy.

From the Judge’s chambers they went to the doctor where she received an implant of blockers in her arm and another of slow release estrogen in her buttocks.

Joe and Amy suggested she drop out of school, but she didn’t want to; however, she realized that with so much going on in her life, it might be the best idea. Besides, she had more than $200,000 in trust for her college education.

Several in her classes were aware that there were some serious situations going on. Some even knew she had been hitch hiking to school. Suddenly, she was living with Mr. Joe and his family. Then the news of her father’s death hit the TV channels. Along with that came the child abuse allegations all capped by the discovery of her mother’s remains in the septic tank.

She had been the only freshman in her classes. The remainder of the students were sophomores, juniors and seniors. They had been polite to her. There had been no time for anything other than classwork in the accelerated environment. Perhaps Mr. Joe’s reputation as being a tough, no nonsense, but fair instructor kept the problem students away. Margaret felt that this was the time to test the waters. The best defense is a good offense.

She talked to her father and mother about the best way to out herself to the students of the school she’d be going to for the next four years. She wrote an outline of what she wanted to tell them. If that went over well, she’d do the same thing at the real beginning of school that September. That was still more than a month away.

“I have several things to tell you,” she said as she stood before the class. “First of all, I want to thank you for being as good to me as you have been. This has been an interesting and, surprisingly, a not too difficult time for me; at least compared to what I went through previously. We discovered my mother was murdered by my father more than two years ago, my father was killed in a house fire (that was no secret), I’ve been adopted by Mr. Joe and his wife (there were several gasps of surprise at this revelation), and I’m no longer Scott Adams. I am now officially Margaret Elaine Esterházy. It seems I was born in the wrong body. Well, we’re taking care of that last problem as we speak. When I see you this fall, I’ll just be Margie, I kinda like that name.

“I’ll be glad to answer any questions you have, up to a point. Mom is taking me to the beauty parlor in a little while to get some things done that I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”

“Sandy?”

“Sco … er, Margie, I think we’ve known for quite a while what’s been going on, at least to a point. Diane Wilkes is a close friend, and she asked me to keep watch on you. We go to the same church. I think I can speak for all of us. We wish you the best, and Diane says she can’t wait to give you makeup lessons.”

There were a few more questions; most of which Margie expected:

“Do you like boys or girls?”

“I haven’t really given that much thought. I have much more important things on my mind right now.”

“Are you going to have the operation?”

“That’s a bit personal; however, as you’re a girl, how would you feel if you woke up looking like a boy. Wouldn’t you want to fix that?”

“Do you want to be a cheer leader?” That was from one of the jocks in the class.

“Have you been reading some of the same stuff I read? There are about 700 girls at Eureka High. Do you think they all want to be cheerleaders, or go to ballet school, or date the quarterback? I don’t think so. I think I want to be a naturalist or meteorologist, but I have a long time to think about it.”

Chapter 10

“Mary, this is our new daughter, Margie. She’s a bit apprehensive about what we’ve arranged, but I told her you would be gentle.

“Most important, do not overdo it. She is just 14.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Esterházy, we’ll just make sure she fits in when school starts.”

The next few hours fulfilled just about every fantasy Margie may have had over the last four or five years. Her dark brown hair was trimmed and given a light perm. Her eyebrows were lightly sculpted, just lightly, not too much. Her makeup was understated as it should have been. They cleaned up her finger nails just a bit. She was far too young to go much beyond that.

Things had been going fast, very fast, since she dropped out of summer school, and it was really for the best. The results of the trip to the emergency room mandated a complete physical. She was probably in the fifteenth percentile in her age group for height and weight. Where most boys would probably been entering puberty, hers had been delayed. In a way that favored her physical transformation to female. She was four feet, eleven inches tall and weighed eighty-five pounds. She’d probably weighed less just weeks before. There were hopes that because her male growth spurt had been held back that the infusion of blockers and female hormones would allow her skeletal development shift more to the female. It had worked in other transgender male to female her age; however, many of those had started blockers at around age eleven. It was important, but she’d be happy with what ever happened as long as she could be female.

The trip to the dentist had been something else.

“So, when was your last trip to the dentist, young lady?”

“I’ve never been to the dentist before.”

“I’m surprised. Your teeth seem to be in good shape. We’ll get some x-rays and then get your teeth cleaned. Then we’ll see where we have to go from there.”

There was some good news and some bad news. Margaret’s mother (Elaine Adams) had taught her how to take care of her teeth at an early age. She brushed twice in the morning, before and after breakfast, and after dinner, and she flossed after dinner. She did not have any cavities. The bad news was that all four wisdom teeth would have to come out. Three of them were impacted, and the fourth would have to come out as it had nothing to work against. She would also need orthodontic work, but that could wait a little while.

The teeth came out two weeks before school started. It was done under general anesthesia. She was out before she knew it, and the next thing she knew she was in recovery with a mouth full of bloody gauze. She was feeling no pain, and was quite loopy. It was soup that night and soft food for a couple of days, and ice cream, lots of ice cream.

Michael and Frances were home from their summer adventures, and greeted their new sister with great warmth. Michael was tall, but not nearly as tall as his father. Frances was considerably taller than her mother and had inherited her bust line characteristics. Margie was secretly envious – maybe not so secret.

Michael and some friends had decided to rent a house in Arcata; so, that allowed Margie to move into that room permanently. Michael had broken up with his now ex-girlfriend. They had met as freshmen, and the attraction was immediate. Edna insisted that if they were going to go together he would have to start going to church with her. The Esterházys did not attend church, and no one made a big deal out of it. Michael thought he would give it a try, and even went as far as to go with her church group on a pilgrimage of sorts to Europe and the Middle East. Mike balked at the ceremonial baptism in the River Jordan. He realized how much of a hypocritical act that would be. He found the tenets of the religion to be unacceptable and totally unrealistic. At his refusal to go through with the ceremony he was shunned by the rest of the group. He saw no reason to hang around. He paid the penalty to change his flight, it was substantial, and flew home four days before the rest of the group did. He and his ex-girlfriend never spoke to each other again.

Frances, on the other hand, did not have a significant other. That is until she met Robert Heckman. Robert was a post-graduate student from the Colorado School of Mines. To say the sparks flew was an understatement. The only things in Yellowstone that were hotter than their romance were the geysers and hot springs in the area. Frances hadn’t quite figured out how to tell her parents, but she was going to transfer to Colorado the following fall. She’d thought about doing her graduate studies there, and now she was going to get her BS and M(R)S there as well. She’d have to think of something because she’d invited Bob to come to Eureka to meet her parents over Thanksgiving.

Michael and Frances had been in on what had been happening to Margie almost from the beginning. They’d both wanted to be there for the adoption ceremony, but it just wasn’t possible. Frances did give Margie a ‘birthday’ present of a makeup kit.

The hormones started taking affect rather rapidly. Part of it was that it was just the right time. She was getting the proper nutrition for the first time in more than two years. She realized she was getting a bit moody, and it embarrassed her. She had managed to keep her emotions hidden for a long time, and now they were out there all over the place. Her brothers and father were told to give her a bit of leeway, and the girls soothed her with chocolate.

The doctors wanted to keep close track of her development partly because of what she’d gone through over the last two plus years, also because they wanted to make sure everything was going the right way. They took measurements right away, and put her mark at four foot eleven inches on the ‘measuring door’ right there with her brother and sisters’ marks. She’d grown an inch in just six weeks! Her nipples and areola started changing at the same time. Her mother was helping her with her hair one evening when she accidently bumped Margie’s chest with her elbow.

“Ouch!”

“Oh, something’s happening, isn’t it?”

“Yes, they’re getting sore and kinda hot. I think they’re supposed to do that from what you and the doctor said.” She had also read the same on several websites she’d visited over the years. There was one major difference now. It was finally happening to her.

“Let’s take a look.”

Margie took off the camisole she’d been wearing followed by the training bra that she had been happily wearing since the first week in her new home.

“Well, look at that, you are becoming a young woman at last. I am so happy for you. We will definitely have to keep track of your measurements.”

As pleased as Margie was with her developments, her close friends were just as happy. Diane Wilkes visited Margie a couple of weeks after she’d had her first makeover. Margie had kept her apprised from the beginning on what was going on; however, that didn’t prepare Diane for their actual meeting.

Margie was wearing the dress she would be wearing on the first day of school. As far as she was concerned, she looked perfect. Her mother agreed.

Margie opened the door when Diane and her mother arrived.

“Hi, I’m Diane Wilkes, and this is my mother. We’re here to see Margie Esterházy.”

“Hi, Diane.”

“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!”

“Hi, Mrs. Wilkes. Please come in. Mom’s made some tea, and we have some cookies.

“Oh my God, Jimmy’s going to shit when he sees you.” She flung her arms around her friend she hadn’t seen in nearly three months.

“Diane! Watch your language,” her mother exclaimed.

“Careful, Diane, the girls are a bit tender right now.”

“Hi, I’m Amy Esterházy. I’m Margie’s mother.”

“Amy, I’m Alice, please.”

“Diane has told me quite a bit about Margie. I don’t think either of us was prepared for this pretty young lady. What a surprise.”

“Let’s have some tea. I’m sure there’s quite a bit to talk about.”

After a while, the two younger girls went to Margie’s bedroom to talk about things that most high school freshmen talked about.

“Who is that?” Diane said looking at a framed portrait on Margie’s dresser.

“That was my mother. Daddy was able to get it from the place where she worked. It was in her personnel folder. He had a professional work on it a bit, and they surprised me with it a while ago. That’s the only thing I have to remember her by along with this ring. The ring belonged to my grandmother. It was the only piece of jewelry that mom wore.”

“I couldn’t believe it when you said he killed her. But then, I had to. He was so awful to you. It just tore Jimmy and me up to see what he did to you,” Diane started to sniffle.

“I don’t think we need to worry about that anymore,” Margie said. “All of that is over.

“If it had been my father who’d died, I think my mother might have helped me to get to where I am now. It would have been difficult, but there was an insurance policy that I didn’t know about. It would have paid for a lot. I don’t know. Life is so fucking unfair, sometimes.”

“Margie, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say anything like that!”

“My mother never hurt anyone. All she wanted was for me to have a life that she never had. She wanted me to be able to go to college, to get an education. She was going to take me to Portland with her. It was all arranged. I guess she told father, and the son-of-a-bitch strangled her and dumped her in the septic tank. She didn’t deserve that. No one did.”

At that point Margie broke down in tears.

Diane comforted her as best she could. She finally wiped her eyes with a tissue from a box that was on the dresser.

“Margie, we need to fix your makeup. Look at me. I need to tell you something.

“I think I fell in love with Margie two years ago. I know. I was only twelve. Jimmy and I both knew you were Margie even though we didn’t know your name at the time. We kept hoping, hope above hope, that something would work out for you.”

“You and Jimmy knew?”

“Yes. You see, we were also learning about ourselves at the same time.”

“You and Jimmy? You were doing it?”

“Of course not, silly. Jimmy and I are great friends. I imagine we always will be. The thing is Jimmy is gay. And me, I’m a lesbian. Sometimes we have to keep these things hidden. I’m out to Mom. She’s okay with it. She wants grandchildren, and fortunately, I have a brother and sister who are straight. That’s not to say that you and I won’t adopt some children one of these days.

“Alice, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Two of my sisters-in-law were bisexual as they grew up, or at least they experimented. One determined that she was far more into men, and is happily married and a mother. She is a world famous opera singer. I think you know who she is. Her reputation is out there. Her older sister found her perfect companion who happened to be a lovely woman. They both maintain that their perfect partners could have been men; however, they suddenly realized that they were perfect for each other. They are both doctors and they have two children with another on the way.

“Our family has had a great deal of experience with gender variant children and adults. We’ve come to realize that this is just part of the various human spectra. If another ‘Margie’ showed up at our door tomorrow we’d welcome him or her with open arms.

“We’ve made some great advances over the years in helping the transgender; however, there are some things about human behavior that cannot be legislated. It will take generations to unlearn what so many social organizations formal and informal continue to perpetuate. Here we are, it’s 2076, our country is 300 years old, and Margie nearly gets beaten to death by her bigoted father because she put on a dress worn by her murdered mother. We will do everything possible to protect the LGBTQ.

“We have quite a legacy in this family. Are you familiar with General Angie Bilitnikov?”

“Certainly, she created quite a stir when she caused that asshole’s administration to collapse. Do you know her?”

“Her daughter, who was transgender, married Joe’s second cousin. I’ll have to give you a bottle of their pinot noir. It is superb. I don’t drink much, especially since I’m pregnant, but I’ll have a taste now and then. We see them often. George is a general practitioner, and Julie is a voice teacher. She is also teaching Italian. They have adopted four children. They live in Santa Rosa.

“I’m probably going at this the wrong way. Joe’s great-grandmother was Musetta Gigliotti O’Donnell. Our daughter is named after her. She had been transgender. She became quite wealthy in later life and promised that if she could do anything about it, no child would have to go through what she did. She paid for most of Angie’s surgery. Angie, her husband, and Joe’s uncle were in the Air Force together. Angie and Matt received the Medal of Honor back when we were quite young. Angie and Fred adopted three children from an orphanage in Italy, and their second and oldest lived a life similar to Margie’s, eerily like it, now that I think about it.

“Musetta’s largesse will allow, when the time comes, for Margie to have her gender confirmation surgery, if she wants it. We don’t think there is any doubt in her mind that she will have it. We wouldn’t be where we are today, if we didn’t think that.”

Margie had her gender confirmation surgery during the summer between her high school graduation and her freshman year at Humboldt State. Diane was at her bedside almost 24/7. What might have been an infatuation at first on the part of Diane turned into a genuine love between the two as the years progressed. Margie’s development progressed very well. Her medical regimen had successfully halted any male traits from developing, and her figure became quite feminine. Her skeletal features were definitely female. Her waist remained narrow, and her hips broadened nicely. She naturally grew into a B+ cup which was perfect for her slender figure. She had a major growth spurt in her fifteenth and sixteenth years, and she was suddenly looking down at her mother. She stopped growing at just under five foot six inches. Her best feature was her hair. She would never be called beautiful; however, her smile was.

She graduated from Humboldt State cum laude with a degree in oceanography. Diane graduated with a degree in psychology. They married that summer. They moved to Palo Alto where Margie, after much work received her MS in Meteorology from Stanford University. Diane received her Master’s in Psychology. They briefly moved back to Eureka where Margie started work at the local ABC affiliate as a broadcast meteorologist. Her outgoing, friendly personality was a winner from the beginning. After two years, she was back in San Francisco as the Chief Meteorologist for the ABC affiliate. Diane became a counselor at Persi and Carol’s clinic. She also gave birth to their first child; a little boy. Life was very, very good.

One other thing, Margie donated the 500 acres to Humboldt State with the stipulation it could never be logged. The land was to be allowed to revert to its natural state with as little interference as possible. It was to be a place of quiet, peaceful study. It was known henceforth as the Elaine Adams Memorial Forest.

I think this needed to be written. It adds some closure to the California Saga. Hopefully, you enjoyed the tale.