The Trickster Diaries, part 3/Chapter 21

Sunday, May 6, 2018. All systems go. T-minus whenever I decide to hit the play arrow, remembering that Saga, at the end of S3, was under investigation for the murder of her psycho mother. She’d handed in her badge, gun, and, broken like I felt broken, driven her ’77 Porsche 911S, (another crazy piece of the puzzle), to the same railroad tracks as sister’s suicide.

And it’s hard to tell, precisely, where Saga is, as S4 begins.

Prison? A mental institution? Is it possible she’s homeless? Are we viewing her interior dreamscape? None of those scenarios would surprise. Turns out it’s prison. Been there a year, convicted of her mother’s murder.
Oh God, no. No way I can endure seeing this incredibly gifted, special child locked up, set up, framed by her evil mother, whose death was, in fact, a psycho scheme, a suicide inspired by vexatious jealousy.
No, not even for a single episode. But I do, of course, because there’s hope: new evidence that could prove reasonable doubt.
A psychotherapist who had once treated the mother, then read about Saga’s conviction, has come forward. The case is re-opened. The judge listens, considers, then cuts Saga loose.

The scene of her release — her freedom restored — happens so quickly, is set up, shot, edited so perfectly, I never see the emotion coming until it’s too late.
Saga tucks the cuffs of her snug leather pants inside her calf-length boots, laces up, throws her leather greatcoat over her shoulders, swishes her long blonde hair back, walks past a series of sliding steel doors, through an underground parking structure. Ignition. Headlamps. The Porsche corners, heads for the exit, hits the ramp, zooms up into the light.
Jesus. I was choking back tears the second I saw that Porsche.

But then something else happens. Something for my eyes only. The second Saga hits the bottom of that ramp, a completely different tableau begins to materialize, superimposing itself over the computer screen and quickly covering my entire field of vision.

Silence, or perhaps a low, droning static, deep background. The sunny interior of a Malibu-style beach house. Across a spacious, bleached hardwood floor, three vertical, floor-to-ceiling windows frame a fuzzy ocean, an afternoon sky, and in the foreground, occupying two-thirds of the frame, are the folds of a soft, mustard colored fabric with black scratches and dots and In the super-foreground, resting upon the fabric, the delicate fingers of a female hand caress a wobbly kitten’s cheek.
I recognize the cat. He’s a baby again. Those shiny emerald eyes…

“Oh, Mr Hanky! You MADE it!”