Changing Seasons. Winter IV, part 3

Winter IV, part 3 The fact that the strangers couldn’t get the car any further down the drive was a source of great satisfaction to Bess and Tom – and an equally great source of irritation to the intruders “…for visitors they ain’t,” Old Tench muttered to Bess, and she agreed. “No proper driveways,” Mr Greystone grumbled to Mrs Hardside. “And yet more bikes! What is it with these people? Are they some kind of eco-freaks?” “There’s nothing wrong with my hearing,” Bess said tartly. “Who are you calling freaks? And the reason we all have bicycles is that the nearest gas station is either Newborough or Hillside, depending on which way you’re travelling. How’s your fuel gauge looking?”
“And might I be inquirin’ who you are and what you want?” Old Tench added. “Got to have been Maddie Portland.”
Mrs Greystone was not happy with what she was hearing. It was almost as if everyone in the place was reading off the same script.
“Maddie Hatter as is now, but back when she was at school with us…” The stories came out far too fluently to be anything but true.
“Member that time she was stealin’ from Ludo Meither’s lunch pail..?” “Your Mary never did find her nice blue hair ribbons, did she? Miss Kirk knew what she was like too – notice how Maddie was never in charge of collecting money for anything”
They were well away, the two of them, raking up stories from Maddie’s past. Mrs Hardside decided to go on listening for a while though.
“Maddie Hatter is a theivin’ lyin’ troublemaker and allus has been. She’s had her knife into Marcus and Annette since they got here, ‘cause he’s the spit and image of his great-uncle James, an’ James Winter saw straight through her attempts to catch him. Don’t know why Frank an’ Honey can’t see through her, ‘cause the rest of us sure can.” Old Tench was genuinely angry.
“That Clara? She’s Annette’s sister and there ain’t no-one here goin’ to tell you any different. You just go an’ have a word with your ‘informer’, an’ while you’re at it, ask her about all them lies she told at school…” The doubts were finally beginning to set in. Frank was thinking hard. That morning, as they were getting up, he’d said casually to Honey, “Did you ever buy any magazines from Minnie?”
“Did you see that classic car one? I would have loved to have bought that for you. It’d be nice to be able to afford the extras like magazines. Maybe one day…” No evasiveness, just his open-hearted Honey.
“Be nice to have some curtains too.”
“In our dreams! Even if I just bought fabric and we looked after Patience’s children while she made them for us – we still couldn’t afford it. And now Honey was beginning to sound bitter. He let the subject drop. He’d kissed Honey goodbye before she left for school. “Let’s go out to Leo’s place tonight, you and I,” he suggested and watched her smile. They’d talk about this at Leo’s place. Out of the house and out of earshot of Maddie. Maddie had announced that she was going to the library after lunch. After the lunch that he had prepared and would obviously be clearing up after as well. She was carefully dressed and made up, and Frank had a feeling that she was hoping to meet Old Tench there: Maddie usually did go to the library in the afternoon, he’d know that. Once she was out, he’d sat down and looked through Honey’s household accounts, set out in her clear primary-school-teacher handwriting.
“I checked with Minnie at the beginning,” she’d said to him, when they were trying to work out where the money had gone, "and we were spending about a third to half of our income.”
He could see the fluctuations – the weeks that had been just food and the weeks where they’d needed toilet paper, toothpaste, soap or bleach as well. He could see when Maddie had arrived and the food bill had gone up. And he could only see a couple of contributions from Maddie towards that as well. So where had it all gone? He went upstairs to Maddie’s room – and the door was locked as usual. And suddenly that really irritated him. This was his home! His and Honey’s home! And they were being locked out of a room in it. Was it that she didn’t trust them? And that was an insult in itself. Or was it that she was hiding something from them? Well, a door wasn’t the only way into a room. Up the ladder, onto the roof of the bay, and he could get in through the window. The catch could be slipped back easily enough with his penknife, but Maddie probably wouldn’t even have bothered to lock the window in the first place. The blinds that he’d just climbed in under – yes, Maddie had more-or-less paid for those and he’d put them up for her. The rug, the bed, the chest of drawers and the wallpaper he recognised. But five pairs of expensive curtains? The magazines? The chocolates? That hadn’t been Honey buying those, had it? That had been Maddie, lying to Minnie as she bought them. Telling Minnie Honey wanted them. Frank felt his anger rising. No wonder Maddie had been so keen to lock them out. What else had she been buying? He pulled a drawer open and then paused for a moment. Should he be looking through Maddie’s things? But he surely couldn’t trust her to give him an honest answer. And there it was. Her savings passbook. He looked inside and saw that she’d got it updated the last time she’d gone into Newborough. “I do have a very small income,” she’d told them. “Naturally, the business all went to Stephen’s children…”
Frank could barely restrain himself from ripping the book in half. Maddie’s monthly income was more than Honey earned in a year! And Maddie had given them next to nothing. And stolen Honey’s savings. Mrs Hardside and Mr Greystone pulled up at Maddie Hatter’s address on to an interesting scene.
“Recognise that lot? And don’t give me ‘how dare I go into your bedroom?’ This is my house and Honey’s house. Not yours. Like I asked, do you recognise that lot? All those things you’ve bought with Honey’s earnings, Honey’s savings. You lying, cheating…” Mrs Hardcastle watched closely. She’d had her suspicions about everyone else, and about the way that Clara had always seemed to have gone somewhere else before they arrived. But this was genuine anger. And this – presumably – was the stepson everyone said had welcomed her in. “And who are you?” Frank snapped as she came over to him. She recited her piece.
“Clara? Nonsense. She’s Annette’s sister. And who gave you the idea that she wasn’t..?” His voice died away as he put two and two together. “This was you, wasn’t it? You’ve never liked Clara – probably because she saw straight through you. Well I can see through you now. You are an evil, scheming, mischief-making greedy busybody. You took my father for all he had, and dumped him when you found out he wasn’t going to inherit any more. My grandparents saw through you as well, didn’t they? You are not welcome in my house one moment longer.” “But…but…what do you mean? Frank, you can’t…”
A slight sense of satisfaction crept over Mrs Hardside for the first time that day. She’d known there was something not quite right going on – and here it was, right in front of them. As long as this young man didn’t look like he was going to get physically violent, she’d let him carry on a bit longer.
A little further up the road, half a dozen children were mounting their bikes and riding off together. The school day had obviously ended. She wouldn’t want to live in this no-gas-station, no-phone-signal dump, but she could see why someone might want to. And there were obvious signs of growth and revival everywhere. A very pretty young blonde woman had coming running down from the school towards them. She’d obviously heard the shouting.
“Frank? What’s going on?”
“Want to know where all your money went? All your earnings? All your savings? She – that liar there – spent them on herself. Despite her monthly income being more than you earn in a year, she had to steal from you!”
Mrs Hardside decided to put her oar in. This woman had wasted a lot of their time, and there’d be a mountain of paperwork to fill in afterwards as well.
“Yes. Mr Tench and Mrs Preston did tell us that you were known to be a thief while you were at school,” she said dryly. “Maddie Portland wasn’t to be trusted, they said…” And then everyone who knew Honey got the surprise of their lives. “Portland? Portland! You told me ‘you didn’t have long to live. It was hereditary…’ All the Portland women in the graveyard lived into their nineties. They never had a thing wrong with them! You – you scheming, lying toad!” Sweet Honey had been transformed into a raging tiger. “And you were quite happy to leech off us for – what? The next twenty years or so? I thought people as nasty as you only existed in stories. You’re a real wicked stepmother, aren’t you?” And with a resounding crack, Honey – of all people! – slapped Maddie across the face. And then burst into tears and ran into the house. “She – she hit me!”
“You lied to her. You stole her earnings and her savings. What do you expect? A bunch of thank-you flowers? And if that stuff of yours isn’t gone from here in half an hour, I’m burning it all.” He meant it. They could all tell that.
“But – but what can I do?”
“Walk to Newborough for all I care. No-one here wants you.” “Don’t worry,” Mrs Hardside said. “We’ll take her to Newborough for you. As long as she can pay the fare. In advance. I think we’ve got a few things to discuss on the way. Haven’t we?” “It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay. She’ll be gone in ten minutes. By the way, you were amazing! I so wanted to do that myself – slap her lying greedy face.”
“You don’t think it was awful of me?”
“No. Not at all. Like I said, amazing. I – um – did do something a bit bad though…”
“What?” Honey perked up a little: Frank’s tone of voice told her that it wasn’t too dreadful.
“I’ll show you…” “We need a new door. I kicked it off its hinges…” But Honey wasn’t really listening.
“Where did those curtains come from?” She knew what they must have cost, roughly.
“Your earnings,” Frank said, dryly. “I’ll get Minnie to sell them on – she’ll know where to do that. We don’t want them, do we?”
“No. They’re totally not us.”
“And we’ll redecorate in here straight away.” Christmas holidays, and this room looked like it belonged to them now. Okay, it still didn’t have a door.
“I was just so angry,” Frank had said. “How dare she steal from you? I wanted her and her stuff out of our house at once – so I went back out of the window and came in and kicked the door off its hinges before ramming all her possessions back into those cases of hers.”
“You mean you didn’t carefully fold all of her clothes?”
“Like heck!”
They’d spent most of the money they’d got from the sale of the curtains and other stuff on paint and lighting. Frank had rewired upstairs completely. Downstairs – they’d do that next year. Which started tomorrow! “Have you enjoyed this Christmas then?” Frank asked a little anxiously.
“I’ve loved it,” she replied enthusiastically. “The weddings…”
Amber and Rafe, Lucie and Leo had had a double wedding in Newborough with everyone invited (and a crèche for all the babies and toddlers), and then gone away on (separate) honeymoons.
“Getting all that painting done: I know it was work in a way but it was so satisfying to do; no Maddie in the house…”
“Good. Well, seeing as we’re standing under the mistletoe…” Honey didn’t need asking twice! “Oh, I’ve got another present for you,” Frank said. “It’s only a small one…let me just get it out of my pocket.” “Honey, will you marry me?” Bess Preston had been right. “Why haven’t you asked Honey to marry you?” she’d said, rather forthrightly.
“We – we talked about it once, b-but she said she had reservations…” Frank had stammered in reply.
“I bet those reservations were Maddie Portland-shaped. Now she’s out of your lives for good, ask Honey again. That girl loves you: I can see it in her eyes.” “I know it’s New Year’s Eve, but there’s no rule that says we can’t go to bed early, is there?”
“None at all,” Honey said, pulling him closer. “None at all.” “Best New Year ever,” Clara said. “They’re never going to come here looking for me again. Ever. You guys were all amazing!” The five of them had all eaten a lovely meal, toasted the New Year and each other, and were sitting in the afterglow of a great evening before they sloped off to bed.
“Good job I took Blake off fishing,” Caleb said. “He’d have made old Ironside – sorry, Hardside – suspicious for sure. I’ve never known such a gullible guy.”
“Don’t be too hard on him,” Marcus said. “That old bat nearly tricked Tom Tench as well.”
“Yeah, I suppose so. But he is a bit soppy – day-dreaming about rebuilding that farmhouse, messing on with those dreadful pumpkins…” Caleb didn’t have a lot of patience with inefficient methods! He was going to be a very good winemaker one day, Marcus thought. New Year’s Day. And he was starting this year knowing that he’d made a total fool of himself. Oh, everyone was being very kind and forgiving about it to his face, but the fact remained that he’d been taken for a ride. And his crops were pathetic. And he hadn’t got anywhere towards building the house of his dreams. Has his brother been right when he’d told Blake he was just one of life’s losers?
No-one else would be up this early on New Year’s Day. He’d go for a bike ride on his own. He wouldn’t have to meet anyone or face them. He stopped at the church and wandered in to see how things were going on in there. And then he wished he hadn’t, because it reminded him of Clara and what had so nearly happened to her. What could he do? He’d have to leave here – but now he had nothing at all to his name. “I’m such a failure,” he said out loud.
And then he really really wished he hadn’t gone into the church because a ghostly figure drifted up to him and said, in a decidedly unghostly and rather tart voice, “Well, what are you going to do about that then?”

Blake and his house were made by Jessabeans. Link here for Blake
https://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=9352926
and here for the house
https://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=9352888
which I tweaked slightly to fit in with the landscape and the story.

Caleb and Chris were made by Suzses, for BreeMiles for the Homebound Holiday Gift Exchange 2020 Link here: https://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=9432116

Frank, Honey, Maddie and house were made for me by Hidehi as a lovely gift.
I’ve tweaked them slightly to fit the scenery of Two Lakes, so if you’re going to play them, they won’t look quite like this. I’ve tweaked Maddie’s personality too…
Link here for the house:
https://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=9351879
And for the family:
https://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=9351878

The engagement ring in the box was by Sandy at ATS3, as were a lot of other little details. Anything dilapidated was probably by Cyclone Sue at TSR