POISON IVY [I]

Mike sighed as he lay on his bed. David was out there with Joanna, probably telling her all the lies in the world just as he told him. Evie had gone out with Isabel and wouldn't be back back soon. He had eaten lunch with Caleb and Eloisa which was a very bad decision as Eloisa kept directing hateful glares to him until he lost his appetite and left the dinning room for her.

His phone beeped on the nightstand and he reached out his hand to get it. It was a irrelevant text from his customer care service. He placed it back on the nightstand. He picked up the lotion that was also on the nightstand. It was an expensive brand. David had bought it for him a few days back and had kept it on his nightstand. He had not touched it since then.

Without thinking twice, he tossed it into the trashcan. It was in vain that David bought him expensive things as he would only throw it away. It was in vain that David tried to be a good father. No matter what he did, he could never take back all that he did to Mike, and Mike wouldn't forgive him either.

He lay back on his bed when he heard a knock on the door. A small voice came afterward asking him to open up. He opened the door and Caleb walked in. He scanned the room before going toward the trash can.

"Mike, your body lotion is in the trash can but it isn't empty yet." Caleb said as he picked out the lotion and placed it on the bed.

"I don't want it so I threw it away." Mike answered blatantly and began searching under his bed for his Xbox.

"Can I have it, please? It looks expensive. It'd be a waste to throw it out like this. Please?" Caleb made a puppy face as he came to squat in front of Mike.

"Okay, you can have it." Mike was overwhelmed by his cuteness and let him have it. He watched him go back to where he was sitting happily while mumbling a thank you and applied a little of the lotion onto his hands.

"Now, come let's get this thing started." Mike said as he finally pulled out his Xbox. He put headphones on for him and tossed a console to him before doing the same for himself. They played against each other as they waited for Evie and Joanna to return. As he watched Caleb play happily, Mike felt a huge warmth in his heart. He really loved Caleb and didn't want to lose him.

He hoped Isabel and Evie could stop David in whatever he was planning. He was ready to push his feelings for Evie down and have them as siblings forever. At that thought, a smile crept into his face. He looked up at the clock and three hours had passed since they started playing. He turned the devices off and arranged it neatly.

He noticed that his laptop's webcam had been on and had been recording a video. He couldn't remember when he last turned it on. He ended the video but instead of deleting it right away, he decided to view the content first. He put it on fast forward so as to get to the end quickly.

Judging from the start of the video, he must have started it accidentally the night before. It simply showed him what he did in the room at night and in the morning up till this time. But it also showed Eloisa entering into his room and putting something into his lotion. He replayed that part again slowly and paused it at the part where she poured something in. Since the laptop and the lotion had both been on the nightstand, it captured the scene clearly and also the tag on the liquid. It was urushiol - an oil from poison ivy.

He was seething with anger and hate toward Eloisa as he tried to think of a motive. He hadn't done anything to her and had always avoided her. There was absolutely no reason for her to want to make him suffer. Unless she was jealous of him.

Jealousy. That made sense. She was his father's mistress. She hated the attention David gave him and certainly wanted to drift them further apart. And gifting him a lotion he was seemingly allergic to was enough reason not to accept anything from him again. He turned to look at the lotion which was on the bed where Caleb had placed it. He had to give Eloisa a taste of her own medicine but first he had to rid Caleb of it.

He took Caleb into his bathroom and washed his mildly swollen and reddish hands. Afterwards, he rubbed some alcohol on them and laid him on the bed. Then he picked up the lotion and walked out of the room.

***** ***** *****

Evie watched as Henry and Isabel discussed outside Isabel's car. Isabel had a worried look on her face while Henry was very calm. He had been in the law field for a long time and knew how to keep calm in difficult situations. She wished she could be that calm when handling any situation.

"No, you shouldn't lie to Joanna anymore." She heard Henry say as she lowered the passenger's side window. "She hates being deceived and the more we do that, the harder she will find it to forgive you. Even after knowing you did it for her own good."

"Joanna has returned to being that woman ten years ago. If she finds out I've been deceiving her, she'll make my life hell. She can even throw me out of the house." Isabel's voice was desperate and it made Evie to see her that way.

"She will do that. Unless you make her see reason. She has forgotten all that David did to her. But if you show her how evil he is, she'll trust you more. And she won't be that angry anymore." Henry said as he adjusted his glasses. He didn't seem comfortable talking outside the law firm but he had to since Isabel had refused to go in.

"But how do I do that? I don't have any evidence against him and she's out there with David believing all the lies he has fabricated against me." Isabel rubbed against her left hand anxiously.

"Do you know why David is one step ahead of you? He had suspicions and backed it up with evidence. You only have suspicions. Who would Joanna trust?"

"What should I do, Uncle?"

"You know what to do already. You just need to carry it out quickly. And maybe leaving that house is actually a blessing for those children. You could watch over them and keep them safe from David."

Evie sighed as she raised the window. She knew it was wrong to listen in to people's conversation but after that day in the attic, her first intuition when she saw people talking was to listen.

She suddenly remembered the video she took. If Joanna saw that video, she would distrust David and she, Caleb and Isabel would have to opportunity to be by her side. She placed her hand on her neck to touch the locket where she had placed the microchip she had saved the video in but it wasn't there.

She searched in her pocket for the locket but it wasn't there. She hit her head in anger. She was so clumsy and now she had lost the only undisputable evidence they had against David. She checked her phone praying silently that she still had the video in her phone.

She was still scrolling through her phone for the video when Isabel entered the car. She explained the situation to Isabel and she promised to search for it with her when they returned to the house - only after she had made a big fuss about Evie having such a video and keeping it to herself.

They drove off with Evie continuing her futile search for the video.