Chapter 25: Fade to Black

As the scene from 1866 Seattle does a slow fade to black, a scene from 2026 Seattle comes into focus. Kate was seated at her vintage typewriter. A page from the final rewrite of her novel had her consumed. She had debated for months whether she should change her main character to a transsexual, or leave her intersexed.

Obviously, she had based her character on herself and her own struggles. In the end, she decided it was just too close to home to make her intersexed, and switched her to transsexual. Only time would tell if she’d made the right decision.

The tea kettle's whistle startled Kate, and broke her concentration. Transferring Muffin from lap to arm, she pushed herself away from the desk, and walked to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

She made the cup with milk and sugar, just as any good Anglophile would. As she watched the spoon swirl round and round in the cup, her thoughts turned from her character's drama to the one she faced in her own life.

She continued the mental debate that had kept her up most of the night. "Should you tell him or should you not? Did he really need to know everything? If you tell him, you could lose him, but if you don’t tell him and he finds out, you’ll definitely lose him. But what if you tell him, and he says he has no problem with it, but he never looks at you the same again? You couldn't bear that, but you can't bear living a lie ... or would that just be the sin of omission?"

Muffin nuzzled her to let her know her tea was getting cold, which once again brought her back to the land of the living. Easing into her rocker, she sipped her tea, and told herself it was pointless to continue the debate. It was resolved once she realized she had to tell him, come what may.

Once she had decided to deliver the poison, she had to determine in what form it should be administered. A text was too impersonal, face to face was too personal, and she’d be too nervous on the phone to get the words right. So, she went old school, and took the coward's way out. She wrote him a letter, and just before dawn, pushed it through his mail slot

If she’d placed it on the windscreen, she might have lost her nerve, and been tempted to retrieve it. Once she heard it drop to floor, she knew she had passed the point of no return.

On the drive back to her flat, she kept going over and over what she had written. She was a journalism major, and an award winning reporter. She had also written a book, yet to be published, but a book indeed. Still, it took her five hours to compose two pages.

In all fairness though, when a man tells you that he’s never met a woman like you, how do you tell him he’s probably right, but not for the reason he thinks?

How do you tell him ... how do you gently tell him that up until the age of 13, the woman of your dreams had a penis? You can throw in the fact that she had a vagina too, but you might just lose him at penis.

In the end, all she could do was start the story at the beginning, and give him the truth. She was born an hermaphrodite, or in other words, with genitals of both genders. There had been other complications as well, which made any gender altering surgeries out of the question at that time of her birth.

Her parents would not have opted for immediate surgery anyway. It was a 50/50 chance that they could've got it wrong. So they decided to treat her as gender neutral as possible, and allow he or she to find his or her self.

They weren’t kept in suspense long as she gravitated toward everything pink and girly they exposed her to. It was obvious she knew she was a girl before she could even say she was one.

Kate was raised as the girl she truly was, but she carried the additional appendage with her until she was 13. This was due to increased surgical risk from her anemia, and because no surgeon would operate until they felt she was able to participate in the decision.

Between five and 13, sleepovers, slumber parties, and swimming with friends never happened. Until the 7th grade, she had to use the faculty washroom. Even after surgery, most people's parents were wary of inviting her.

Kate's parents moved to give her a fresh start for high school. Nothing of the offending appendage remained, save for a few small surgical scars, and the major emotional ones she carried with her.

As high school transitioned into college, she acted as if the first thirteen years of her life didn’t exist. It became her big dark secret that she couldn’t share with anyone. She was convinced they would think of her as a freak, or something less than a whole woman, and they would never look at her the same way again.

She had wanted to share the secret a few times, but it wasn't until Josh came into her life that she knew she had to share it, even if she lost him. In the end, she didn’t write the letter because he had the right to know, she wrote it because he deserved to know.

At around half past seven that morning, he called several times, but she didn't have the courage to pick up. At eight she received a text that said, "Read your letter. We need to talk. I’ll be there after work. Love you."

She had looked at the text a hundred times at work. He ended it with "Love you," but ... did the words have the same meaning as they did before? Looking up at the clock, she had about an hour to kill before she found out .

Rather than watch the clock tick, she turned on the television and decided to go through today's mail. The sorting process went as usual: advert, advert, bill, advert, bill, free sample of Viagra ... she always loved getting those, another bill and then a letter from Pennington Publishers.

The rest of the mail fluttered to the floor as her heart pounded and her fingers trembled. She had sent her novel to ten different publishers, and received nine rejection letters. She was holding number ten. Even though she knew this letter was coming, she almost dreaded it more than welcomed it. If it was another rejection then she’d struck out completely.

She might just have to accept that the mainstream literary world wasn’t ready for a book about a transexual woman who woke up to find she was now a genetic woman, only transported to the world of her favorite television show, 160 years in the past. Maybe tonight she might have to accept the fact that she was a second rate writer, as well as a second rate woman.

She looked at Muffin pleadingly, "Do I really want to do this now? I mean, on the one hand, if it's good news and Josh is bad news they might cancel each other out ... sort of. But ... if it's bad news and Josh is bad news, then I’m going to be tempted to do a swan dive off the balcony, or down a bottle of sleeping pills. Of course, we don’t even need to consider the possibility that both are good news, because my lucks not that good. Soooo ... what do you think?"

Muffin meowed, then jumped off the rocker, finally settling on the rug in front of the fireplace.

Kate put the unopened letter on the end table next to her parents' picture. "You're absolutely right, baby. If I'm looking at facing my two biggest failures, then I need to revisit my greatest success."

Kate gently caressed the gold frame sitting on the mantle and proudly read the words aloud. "For literary excellence, and achievement in the truest spirit of the Seattle Star, we present the 2024 Freedom For All award to Kaitlyn Thomas."

She received the award for her investigative report during the 2024 presidential primaries. As the low girl on the totem pole, she had been given the inevitable task of doing a piece on one of the up and coming dark horse parties. They called themselves Americans For America, and their platform preached a better world through white supremacy, racism, hate, and violence. They stood for everything the Seattle Star and Kaitlyn Thomas stood against.

It was the last piece she ever wanted to write, but if she had to, she was going to do everything she could to expose them for what they were. She started digging immediately, even going undercover to their rallies. She could smell the stench, but she couldn’t prove where it was coming from, until she found her own "Deep Throat," in a bar outside a Seattle rally.

He was drunk. He had been ousted from the party for having a less than pure blood line, and he wanted to talk. By the time the bar closed, she didn’t just have proof there were bodies, she knew where they were, and who buried them.

The next day, she brought her story and the proof to the editor. It went out on the front page of the evening edition, and was picked up by every news service world wide. She put the light on them, and when the authorities raided the party headquarters, they ran like rats off a sinking ship. The Captain of the ship went down with it, and was found guilty on enough charges to keep him behind bars for the rest of his life.

By the time of the next primary, the AFA was just a footnote in an election that saw the candidate endorsed by the Seattle Star sweep into office with a decisive victory. Antonia Gianelli became the first woman or transsexual woman to be elected president. The former therapist and senator from Massachusetts issued a new era of acceptance, respect and freedom for all. Kate liked to believe that in her own small way, she helped make it possible.

At least for now, she was a winner and no matter what else happened. Nobody and nothing could take away her "Maggie". Her FFA award was known by those who worked for the Star as a "Maggie", in honor of the woman who founded the Seattle Star in 1867.

Everyone in newspaper circles knew the story of Mary Margaret "Maggie" O’Malley-Bolt. She was a true pioneer in every sense of the word. She traveled 3000 miles on a mule boat to settle in the tiny logging town of Seattle.

Within her first year of arriving, she married her true love Joshua Bolt, who after being one of the first responders at the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, would become a major developer in the rebirth of downtown Seattle.

As a wedding present for his young bride, he obtained a used printing press from San Francisco, and built her a small office where Maggie published the first issue of the Seattle Star, April 10th, 1867.

The paper started out slowly as the townsfolk were skeptical of a “newspaper woman”, but with the brides and the Bolt family to back her, it wasn’t long before nearly every business and household became regular subscribers

The Star started out as a single page publication reaching about four to five hundred readers, but as Seattle grew, The Star grew too. Soon it was regularly seen in Tacoma and Olympia. The paper did more than report news and events. It gave people practical information on all the latest medical and technical advances, and how they could improve their lives.

Her biggest contribution was found in the three small letters that were printed above the paper's name. They stood as the heart, the soul, and the mission statement of the paper. The letters were FFA ... "Freedom For All". 160 years later, every edition still carried them.

She rang freedom for all through her editorials, which she continued to write up until her death in 1929. She was the champion for every group and every people who were victims of discrimination and prejudice.

She stood up for the Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, and demanded their release from slavery, as Lincoln had the African Americans. Over 60 years, her paper and her voice demanded fair treatment for the American Indian, women, and every citizen ... regardless of race, color or creed.

Her ideals carried on after her death, as the Seattle Star was the first paper to support Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930’s, and Kennedy’s civil rights legislation in the 1960’s. People considered her a visionary whose insight spoke to the present about the future. Unfortunately, one of her greatest warnings about what lay ahead was never heard until it was too late.

On her death bed in April of 1929, she wrote a piece warning that the dangers of continued stock speculation on the economy could result in a major economic recession. Unfortunately, the article wasn’t discovered until her grandaughter found it among her personal papers two years later, and the country was in the midst of the Great Depression she predicted. . People have often debated if her prophetic words could've changed history, but no one debated her contributions to it.

It was her story that inspired Kate to join the high school paper. It was in her honor that Kate assumed the pen name "Maggie O’Malley" to write her columns and stories. She inspired her to choose Journalism as a major at Boston College, and to go 3000 miles to Seattle, just to work for the paper she’d built.

Kate knelt down and scooped Muffin up. "You know girl, if it hadn’t been for Maggie, I wouldn’t be the Kate I am today. I just wish I had a way to thank her."

Kate's eyes drifted to the picture next to her award. It was a miniature reproduction of the original that hung in the lobby of the Seattle Star and featured Maggie silhouetted against the night sky aboard the ship that carried her to Seattle and holding her beloved kitty Muffin in her arms.

'Well ... who knows Maggie, maybe I can get that novel published that you always wanted to write, but never got the chance."

With new found courage she walked over to the table and picked up the envelope. She took a deep breath, released it and then tore open the flap. As she pulled the letter from it, the doorbell rang. The letter fell from her fingers and drifted to the floor. She knew it was Josh. She knew it was D-Day. She just hoped the "D" didn’t stand for defeat, disaster or disappointment.

She grabbed the doorknob and looked at Muffin. "Well girl ... this is it."

She turned the knob and opened the door wide, greeting Josh with, "Look out Seattle ... here I come."

He greeted her with a dozen red roses, a balloon with the words "I Love You" written on it, a large pizza from Andy's, and a sparkle in his eyes that said nothing in this world could change his love for her, and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life proving it.

It was everything she could ever hope for, and even more, because once they finished the pizza and the "celebrating" that night, they read the letter informing Kate that her story had been accepted for publication.

Somewhere, a sailor was playing a spritely tune on his concertina as they turned out the lights for another round of "celebration."

Hugs

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You made it to the end. I hope you enjoyed the journey.

I want to thank a few people who without their help this story never would've been posted.

Thanks to Piper, Sephrina, Teek and all the others who led me through the cybermaze of getting this story posted CORRECTLY.

Thanks to all who commented. I made several edits to my story after posting because you raised some really good points. Thank you for making my story better by making it our story.

Thanks to the writers and actors who created Here Comes the Brides. Their talent and magic created entertainment that I enjoyed so much that it woke up my “moose” and encouraged her to share a story with me so I could be a part of that world.

And…a very special thanks to my big Cuz Heather Rose Brown who encouraged me to write and then edited my crayon scrawls and kitten prints into a postable story. Thanks Cuz. You're the bestest. Love and hugs.

Final thoughts…sometimes the game of life sucks. Sometimes we get dealt lousy cards and we just want to fold, but fantasy, be it as a writer or a reader, gives you a chance for a reshuffle and a fair hand. So to all of you out there playing, I hope you always have a wild card in the hole and an ace up your sleeve.

Love and hugs Maggiethekitten