Jonah sat at the desk in his study... (PT 2)

Hey, be sure to read yesterday's entry, as it is the first half of this hefty vignette.

i like this one because we get a glimpse into Grey's relationship with Viola, and also a ghost from the past, and also what kind of man Grey is becoming--or is down deep-- despite the events of the first half of this vignette. or maybe, is it the man he COULD be? hmmm. we shall see. I suppose. The thing I like about Grey is that there are always flashes, despite how hard he tries to be one way, the other side always seems to break through in bits and bursts, here and there.

I've just been up writing a goddamn script for the fucking ant and the grasshopper fable, and i would much rther have been writing some salacious sex scene or something.  Lol.  this year, act One Scene 1 proudly presents:  Selections from Cedar Falls!  

Oh hilarity.

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

“You’re such a wise ass.”  Jonah said, shaking his head.  He took a breath, hitched his own bright smile into place and opened the door, calling:  “Don’t send the search party, I’m in here!”

“Daddy!”  Cried his youngest, running through the livingroom to pounce on him and squeeze him in a fierce hug.

“Ooof!”  He laughed at the impact and then spun her around while squeezing her back even more tightly until she shrieked.  “How was gymnastics?”  He asked after giving her a kiss and setting her feet back on the floor.

“Grey!”  She exclaimed, and ran to her older brother with the same nine-year-old verve.

“Hey freak.”  Grey responded with a smile, and opened his arms for the hug.

Velvet came around the corner from the foyer.  “There you are!”  She said with a smile.  “Did you hear us come in? I didn’t know—Oh! Grey!”  Velvet’s face lit up like Christmas.  Jonah laughed a little at her enthusiasm.  She acted, every time she saw the boy, as if he went to boarding school in Switzerland instead of at a campus just on the outskirts of town.

“Hey Mum.”  Grey greeted warmly and walked toward is mother with exaggerated slowness, as there was a little sister wrapped around his left leg.

Velvet crossed the distance and took his handsome face in her newly manicured fingers and kissed both his cheeks twice.  Then she wrapped her arms around him and squeezed.  “What are you doing here? I didn’t know you’d be here!  I wish I’d known, I’d have skipped the market—Oh, Jonah there are groceries, can you? Oh Grey, say you’ll stay for dinner?”

Grey laughed easily.  “What are you having?”  He asked with a charming smile as she pulled back to gaze at him as if it had been months, though the boy came home every Sunday evening for family dinner. 

“Whatever you want!”  She said without hesitation.

He laughed.  “How can I resist?”

She kissed him again and he allowed it, with a slightly embarrassed eye roll. 

“I’m beginning to feel neglected.”  Jonah teased, and his wife spun around with an apology all over her face.  Her pale green eyes were wide and she pressed her lips in, making a silent ‘oops’ expression.

He laughed and held her arms wide for her to move into.  When she’d melted against him he wrapped her close and dipped his head down to meet her lips in a welcome home kiss.  “I missed you too much.”  He murmured against her lips and felt her grin.

“I missed you too.”  She said in a giddy tone of voice that signaled to Jonah that she was too thrilled about coming home to find Grey to focus on much else.

He chuckled and gave her a final peck before standing up straight and letting her go.  He became aware that Grey and Viola were making gross-out faces at one another about their parents’ kisses.  He smiled.

“C’mon love, I need some help with the groceries.”  He told Viola and held out his hand for her.  “Grey?”

Grey nodded, accepted another little hug from his mother and followed Jonah and Viola toward the front door.

“Velvet, it helps, when you have groceries, to park in the garage, sweetheart.”  Jonah said patiently.  He said it every time.

She pulled a face.  “Sorry.”  He knew she disliked the garage and resented the garage door for some reason, but she was always vague about just why, exactly, and he’d learned to let it go and schlep the groceries.  It certainly wasn’t worth arguing about or, rather, making her upset over.  Mr. and Mrs. Delaney didn’t really ever argue, precisely.  

“No problem, we’ve got our big strong son here today.”  He said, flashing her a grin.  “Are there many?  Should you send the other girls out?”

Velvet shrugged.  “I’ll send them when they’re out of their dance clothes.”

Jonah sighed but kept the smile.  That meant they’d wander out just in time to see him grabbing the last bag and locking the trunk.  His girls weren’t stupid.

“How about you Love?”  He asked the peanut bobbing alongside him.  “Do you need to go get out of your gymnastics stuff?”

She giggled and ran ahead into the foyer to do a cartwheel.  “Nope!”

Jonah applauded and Grey enthused too.  Jonah opened the front door and Viola ran onto the front lawn crying ‘Grey! Grey Watch this!’ and proceeded to do some fancy sort of jump and roll and then a round off.

Grey and Jonah again appreciated her display even as they moved toward the van for the grocery bags.

“Thanks again.”  Grey said gruffly, loading up one arm with more grocery bags than was sensible.

Jonah followed suit and Viola carried the milk.  “Of course.”  He said in a low voice after a moment or two.

As they approached the front door Viola remembered something.  “Ooh, guess what?”

“What?”  Jonah asked indulgently.

Velvet waited to hold the door wide for them.  “We saw a man that looked like Grey!  But he was old!  I thought he WAS Grey until I got a better look and saw how OLD he was!”

Velvet’s large green eyes lifted from Viola’s perky face as the girl breezed into the house.  She met Jonah’s first, and then Grey’s.

Jonah’s stomach muscles clenched and he bit his lower jaw into his upper, causing a muscle to tweak in his face.

Beside him Grey looked sober and disgruntled.

Viola didn’t know.  She was chattering away on her progress to the kitchen, unaware that the rest of the train had slowed to a halt in the foyer.

“Jonah, please don’t—“

“Where?”  He asked darkly.  All he could imagine was that son of a bitch watching his little girl in her gymnastics lesson.  Or his twins at Dance.  Or Avalon in her fucking bathing suit at the pool.  His heart flipped.  Avalon was fourteen.  He wouldn’t put it past the animal to start sniffing around her.  “Where?”  He repeated more firmly.

Velvet looked at Grey and fidgeted.  “In the center.”  She replied.  “We didn’t speak of course, he was coming out of the smoke shop and we were headed from the florist and wanted to pop in and see Nolan—“

“I’m gunna go put these down.”  Grey muttered and moved through the foyer without looking back.

Jonah set down all his bags and tried to shake some of the circulation back into his arms.  He knew Grey would keep Viola entertained in the kitchen and he was grateful for the time to think.

“Jonah—“  Velvet closed the door and leaned her back against it.

“I just wasn’t ready.”  He said.  He removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose.  He wasn’t ready to tell Viola.  But now he knew he should.  Christ.  It had been hard enough with Avalon and the twins, but Viola?  She and Grey were especially close.  He’d been her champion and protector since she’d come home from the hospital.  Where he’d spent much of his life dedicated to the hobby of making Avalon and the twins miserable—teasing, tormenting, bullying, playing pranks on, instigating arguments, playing one against the others, all older brother bullshit—with Viola he’d finally become the kind of older brother Jonah could be proud of. 

He’d liked her since he met her in the maternity ward, and had apparently decided from then on to be her friend.  And when the other girls picked on her and made her life miserable the way he’d done to them, he was always there to come to her rescue, stave them off, or plot revenge pranks with her.  He made the girl laugh when she was down, made up elaborate bedtime stories to tell her when she was all wound up and didn’t want to sleep, played board games with her when she asked, and actually sat through her recitals without complaining.

And she adored him.  Jonah hadn’t told Grey, but Viola had wept bitterly for hours on end when he’d started at Cedar Prep—when he’d moved to the boarding school three years previous.  Even though Jonah explained that he’d be home every weekend, and every school vacation, and every summer.  She’d taken it very hard and it had seemed to take an agonizingly long time for her to adjust and bounce back to her usual self.  Grey’d helped with that, too.  He’d become her pen pal, a thing Viola had always wanted, but being six and not terribly adept at ‘writing’ yet, had not had such an opportunity.  Grey wrote her short letters, which Jonah would help her read, and usually included a drawing or a small artifact to amuse her; and she’d scribble nonsense back, very often including her list of spelling words from school with no prepositions to link them into anything resembling a sentence, and she’d draw pictures and send him little items as well.  Jonah suspected they were very often pilfered from her sisters and it was some kind of devious treasure hunt that Grey encouraged, but he held his tongue and let her seal them up and even stamped the envelopes himself.  Anything for that beautiful smile of hers.

And Jonah had been enormously grateful to his son for it.  A young teenage boy, on his own for the first time in his life, with so many distractions and activities and changes and new adventures to try, and the boy had taken the time, weekly, to indulge in the little ritual that made his sister beam and glow when she ran up to the mailbox.  Jonah wouldn’t have faulted the kid if he’d missed a week, or if he’d gradually weaned her by sending fewer and fewer letters over the course of his busy school year.  But it hadn’t happened like that.  Grey’d kept his end of the bargain up for the entire first year he was away, and then resumed the practice the next year when she’d cried and locked herself in her room after the Labor Day cookout when Velvet was getting ready to drive him back to school.  He’d coaxed her out by promising to write again and making her promise to do the same.  Only then had she consented to hug him goodbye and allow her father to hold her while her mom and brother pulled out of the driveway toward Cedar Prep.  

They were still pen pals but Viola had become much more busy in her little life and so the letters were finally spaced out, maybe one or two a month.  They were also longer and more articulate on her end, and shorter and more irreverent on his end.  Jonah could always tell when his daughter had received a pen pal letter by the particularly boisterous laughing he’d hear coming from her room before bed.  Whatever the hell Grey wrote to her it always cracked her up like nothing else.  She adored him.

And now he needed to take her aside tonight and explain the older man she’d seen in the center of town today.  God dammit.  He’d told the twins when they were nine, but they hadn’t seemed so young at nine.  And he’d told them together with Avalon, who’d been eleven and had always possessed a poise and maturity beyond her years.  It hadn’t been as awful as he’d expected.  But, then, none of them were all that fond of their brother, and Jonah got the feeling that they were almost relieved to discover he was only partly related to them—as if it somehow all made sense and explained how mean he was to them.

“We don’t have to tell her today.”  Velvet said in a very quiet, very urgent voice.

“Yes.  We do.”  Jonah sighed heavily.  It would be dishonest otherwise, and he made a practice of fairness and honesty with his children.  “It’s come-up, she’s noticed the resemblance, it would be sneaky to hide it any longer.”

Velvet walked to him slowly and slipped her arms around his waist tentatively.  He forced a small smile to let her know he wasn’t angry and fixed his glasses back in place before pulling her the rest of the way into an embrace.

“I’m sorry.”  She whispered, her head resting on his chest.

“There’s nothing to apologize for Sweetheart.” Jonah told her firmly.  “It isn’t shameful, it isn’t wrong, it’s just, it just isn’t easy.”  He said thoughtfully.  “But who said life is ever easy? Hm?”  He placed a kiss on the crown of her head. 

“Do you think it will change?”

Jonah was quiet.  He wasn’t sure.  He hoped not.  Not only for Viola’s sake but for Grey’s.  Poor Grey.  Jonah almost lost his resolve when he thought about the possibility that telling Viola might just change their unique relationship—Jonah sometimes thought Grey’s little sister was the only thing, besides his mother, keeping him tethered to a semi-respectable lifestyle, and rooted in the family.

“I think Grey should tell her with us.”  Jonah murmured at last. 

Velvet looked up at him and he saw the fear and hurt in her eyes.  “Don’t make him talk about it.”  She pleaded gently.

He kissed the tip of her nose.  “He’s not a boy anymore, Angel.” Jonah thought about Grey’s very real and very unfortunate situation that still needed to be dealt with this week.  “And it concerns him, why shouldn’t he have a say in how we explain it to his sister?”

Her lower lip trembled and her mouth bent into a slight frown, slight pout.  “I wish—“

Jonah kissed her to stop her from saying more.  “No.”  He said after a long moment of tender but full kissing.  “He’s perfect, you’re perfect, we’re perfect.”  He insisted.  “I don’t wish anything different Mrs. Delaney—“  He smiled warmly and saw her melt a bit, and return his smile with a small, sweet one of her own.  “And I don’t want you to either.  Not ever.”

He pulled his wife against him again and squeezed.  He rested one hand on the back of her head and gently pressed her ear to his chest, wanting her to hear his heart beat there.  “I love you.”  He said, knowing she would feel the vibrations of the familiar phrase and not just hear them.

With his other hand easily spreading across the entire expanse of her slight back he could feel her warmth, feel every inhalation and exhalation.  And when she answered with her own “I Love you”, he felt his fingertips tingle gently with the vibration of it.

“Can we wait till after dinner?”  Velvet asked meekly.

Jonah smiled.  “Of course.”  He wasn’t in a rush to spoil anyone’s evening.

“Thank you.”  His wife breathed and squeezed his rib cage a little tighter.

“Now let’s get these bags to the kitchen before the ice cream melts.”  Jonah said with a chuckle, noting a pair of frosty cartons on the floor of the foyer.

“Oh!”  Explained Velvet with a small start. 

He let her rush to the pile of bags he’d left unceremoniously and watched her bend to lift the ice cream bag.  He sighed a little at how perfect her ass was.  She bobbed back up and spun to face him with a girlish smile.  “Your favorite!”

“Lucky me.”  He grinned, and as she moved past him toward the kitchen he slapped her ass playfully.

She giggled appreciatively and continued on with a flirty glance over her shoulder.  “C’mon Mr. Delaney.”  She cooed, disappearing into the dining room with the endangered ice cream.

With a soft laugh he bent to gather up the abandoned groceries.  And he thought about Grace Bennett.  His high school sweetheart.  And wondered what kind of life they might be living today if she’d said ‘yes’ when he’d proposed that night in the car, up at Cedar Point.  If she’d said ‘yes’ and kept the baby.

A shiver stole over him from scalp to heel thinking about how close he’d come to missing out on all this.  His perfect life.  His dream come true. 

“Mum said to come help you!”  Piped a small voice behind him and he grinned, warmed through by the sound of his youngest skipping across the stone floor toward him.

“That’s my girl.”  He said affectionately, and with the quick expertise a father learns early, he deftly chose three bags of the lightest possible groceries.  “You always come through for me when I’m in a pinch.”  He told her.

She giggled.  “You’re my best friend.”  She explained.

He couldn’t help the grin he gave her.  She could make his heart swell without the least effort.  “I always will be.”  He told her without equivocation.

Her eyes scrunched up and she dazzled him with a mega-watt smile, absent a few baby teeth, making him laugh from his belly.

“Dj’you have fun in gymnastics today?”  He inquired as they made their way out of the foyer at last.

“I’m the best one in my class.”  She boasted.

He laughed again.  “How can you be certain of this?”

She looked affronted but rose to the challenge. “I can do back bends and round offs, and nobody else can do both back bends and round offs.” 

“So you’re ahead of the game, eh?”

“Exactly.”  She nodded, pushing the kitchen door open with her behind and scooting in backwards.  “Besides that, I can do three cartwheels in a row without even getting dizzy, and everyone else just falls over after two usually.”

Jonah nodded, “I’m impressed.”  He remarked, lifting his bags to the top of the kitchen island with a small groan.  Jesus Christ.  What on earth was his wife doing buying all these groceries?  “Delivery!”  He called jauntily.  But as he glanced around the kitchen he saw his wife and son were nowhere in sight.

Viola finished climbing onto one of the kitchen island barstools and deposited her three bags atop the surface alongside her father’s.  She looked around, appearing as puzzled as he.

“Where’d everyone go?”  He asked her.

She looked up and shrugged her small shoulders.

“Hmmm.”  He said thoughtfully.  “Well, let’s say you and I start putting these away—“  He saw Grey’s head move past the kitchen window.  They were out on the deck.  “Actually, love, can you start without me?  I think I spotted them.”  He winked at her and she giggled.  She lifted her arms high and he obeyed the unspoken command to lift her from the stool and spin her before setting her on the ground.

“Freezer stuff first.”  He reminded her as he crossed to the slider.

“I don’t want her anywhere near that man—“  Jonah heard Grey say as he slid open the door.

Velvet and Grey spun to face him.  Jonah smiled, though he could feel his brow bunched up.  “Am I meant to put them all away as well?”  He teased half-heartedly.  What the hell was going on?

Velvet looked apologetic and crossed to give him a peck on the cheek.  “I just never get to see him.”  She explained.

“If you let me put him in public school he’d be home all the time.”  Jonah reminded her with a playful one-finger tap to her perfect nose.  Home, under this roof, where he could more closely monitor the boy.

She shook her head and sighed exaggeratedly.  All the Calder men had attended Cedar Prep, they’d gone back and forth on whether or not to send Grey, but she’d been firm on her wishes and he’d capitulated.  Despite the fact that he was a public school teacher, and a high ranking member of the union, and president of the PTA at Cedar Falls elementary.  His son had been sent to private school.

“We were actually just talking about his grades.”  Velvet said, directing a meaningful look at her son.

Jonah frowned.  No.  They had not been.  What was going on?  “Yes.”  Jonah said slowly.  “That’s what Grey and I were discussing when you came home.”

Grey shoved his hands in his pockets and sighed, staring fixedly at some point above their heads. 

“You’re having trouble in--?”  Velvet asked sweetly.

“Biology.”  Grey responded, and Jonah’s lips twitched.  The kid had lost some of the balls he’d had in the study and had chosen the more subtle option.  Maybe it was closer to the truth.  Grey didn’t seem to have any trouble at all with the human anatomy, but the biology of it was causing him a great deal of angst. 

“Yes, well, you don’t want to be a scientist anyway.”  Said Velvet dismissively, but Jonah fixed her with a warning look.

“Sweetheart, that isn’t the point.”

She looked contrite.  “Of course.  No.  Of course.  You’ll need to study harder.”

“I will.”  Grey said in a bored tone of voice.  “When are we telling her?”  He asked, looking over his mother’s head at Jonah.

Jonah leaned back into the kitchen and watched Viola struggling to add frozen peas to the top shelf of the freezer—she was so diminutive.  He leaned his head back out.  “After dinner?”

Velvet nodded emphatically and Grey shrugged.  “Fine.”

The three of them looked at eachother for a moment.  “Velvet why don’t we get the other girls to put away the groceries and help you with dinner.  Grey, maybe you’d like to take Viola for an icecream or something?”

“And spoil our dinner?”  He asked with a wide grin.

“I think your mother will forgive you.”  Jonah responded with an answering grin.

Velvet giggled and cupped her son’s cheek adoringly.  “Go ahead.  Be back in an hour.”

Jonah stepped onto the back deck as Grey moved past him into the kitchen.  “Grey—just dodge any questions if they come up—I want to be the one to tell her.”  He said in a low voice, and Grey nodded.

“Hey midget, wanna go for a drive?”

Jonah pulled the slider shut and looked long at Velvet.  She swallowed under the scrutiny and pushed her ling silken hair over her shoulders.  “What were you two actually discussing out here?”

“Pardon?”

“Velvet?”

“Vaughan Grey.”

Jonah inhaled sharply and nodded.  “And?”

“And it isn’t an easy subject for him and I wanted to prepare him for the discussion later.”

Jonah narrowed his eyes, trying to reconcile her apparently honest tone with what he’d overheard his son saying a few moments ago.

“He was as rattled as you, I think, about him being near the girls.”

But Grey didn’t have half the reasons to be as concerned as Jonah was.  Jonah knew a hell of a lot more about the son-of-a-bitch than he’d ever told his son.

“Does he have reason to think the girls might find themselves in the man’s proximity again?”  Jonah asked very quietly, but very pointedly. 

Velvet’s eyes got hugely round and she shook her head.  “Of course not!”  She assured him, tears welling in those beautiful green orbs. 

He instantly felt like a heel. “I’m sorry.  Forgive me.”  He rushed and opened his arms for a hug.

Her lower lip quivered and he wished he hadn’t said anything.  But she let him gather her up, let him hold her and murmur apologies for doubting her in the slightest.  Of course she wouldn’t be going anywhere near that monster.  Why on earth would she, after how he’d treated her?  Jonah was an ass for even thinking it for a moment, for even hinting at the possibility.

She’d only gone back to him once, in a moment of weakness and confusion, and that had ended in absolute disaster; had ended in brutal rape and almost ended in homicide.  Of course she wouldn’t put herself in a situation like that again, and of course she wouldn’t willingly endanger any of her children. 

He held her tight.  Seeing that man today must have dredged up all the fear and guilt and pain she’d worked so hard to bury and overcome.

“I’m so sorry.”  He said again, his lips against the silky softness of her hair.  “Are you ok?”

He felt her nod against his chest.

It was going to be a long evening, telling Viola about an ugly, unhappy history.  But the truth was always better than secrets and whispers and doubts.  And the sooner he warned his little girl about that wolf she’d seen dressed up as a man, the sooner she knew how dangerous that man was, the better.  He’d deal with the nightmares and the ‘can I sleep in your bed’ and the looking around every corner for a while if it meant she never unwittingly fell into his traps.

“I can make dinner, if you want.”  He offered, still feeling like an ass.

She giggled.  “No, I wanna do it.”  She said.  “You help the girls with their homework.”

He smiled.  That he could do.  After they helped put away the damn groceries.

“Tell me it’s all going to be alright?” She whispered as he rocked her.

“It will.”  He asserted in a soothing voice.  “Everything will always be alright.”