But this is the last bit of that dinner, though it certainly leaves the dinner incomplete. But, If I want to move on i figured I'd better go ahead and post this, finished or not.
So enjoy!
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“Mr. Delaney?”
Jonah dragged his eyes away from Viola, feeling a mixture of irritation and shame. It wasn’t the first time that evening that he’d been more or less caught staring at his teenage daughter. He swallowed, adjusted his glasses automatically, and pulled his expression into one of polite interest for his daughter-in-law.
“Yes, Maggie?” He asked genially. “You don’t have to call me that, by the way, Jonah is just fine.”
She smiled shyly, though Jonah suspected that outside of the Delaney mansion she probably wasn’t half so timid and skittish. She had to have a spine of steel to have wrangled Grey into that gold band, after all. His smile deepened at the thought.
“May I ask—do you have any photos from Grey’s christening?”
Jonah didn’t know what he’d expected her to ask, maybe perhaps ‘would you pass the peas’, but nothing even remotely in the realm of what she’d just asked. He blinked several times.
“Because I didn’t see any in the beautiful album Mrs. Delaney gave to me—“ she pressed gently when he failed to respond.
Jonah smiled once again, but his mind was reeling. Grey’s christening? So many lines of thought were jockeying for position in his head he found it most difficult to form a verbal response. That day had been awful. He hadn’t even wanted to christen the boy. He eschewed organized religion and Velvet had expressed her ambivalence about the archaic ritual as well, but then, everybody has parents and aunts and even grandparents, each with firm beliefs on the subject, each with sets of vocal chords that never seem to rattle louder or more incessantly than when they’re lecturing you on how to raise your first child.
“Photos.” He said ponderously, hoping his mask resembled an aging father trying to recall if they had such an album and where it might be. “Hmm.” Out of the corner of his eye he caught her fiddling with the saint at her neck. She was nervous. He sensed she wasn’t interested in the photos at all. Not really. She needed to know if her new husband had been baptized a Christian. Jonah’d studied the world’s major religions for years, which is how he’d settled on his own agnostic tendencies.
His new daughter-in-law needed to know if she could make the sacrament with Grey before a priest. Jonah groaned inwardly at the thought of this poor little thing dragging his recalcitrant son off to a chapel and coercing him into a ritual he would neither respect nor adhere to. But, he reminded himself, it had been Grey that had offered. It had been his son who had, unprompted, made the willing concession to recite vows once again before the Ramirez’s family priest.
“I’d ask Grey’s mother, but she’s already put together such a wonderful photo collection, I don’t want her to think I’m ungrateful or that it’s wanting for anything.” The young woman rushed, rather self-consciously.
Jonah nodded conspiratorially. “Of course, of course.” He said, and made a ‘don’t worry about a thing’ hand gesture. “But between you and me, I’d bet money that the album she gave you will be but the first volume in a series.” He winked and chuckled, which seemed to put Maggie at better ease.
But she was still waiting. Nervously. Her whole world hinging on how he responded to her disguised inquiry.
Jonah reached for his wine and took a long sip to but himself time to formulate a response. Because the truth was, he couldn’t be sure the ceremony had been successfully completed. He didn’t know for sure if Grey had been baptized properly or not. Because he hadn’t been there. Because he and Nolan had had to escort a certain person from the premises about midway through the blessed event. And it had been quite an uproar. A scuffle. It had stopped the ceremony dead, as he recalled.
And no. He didn’t believe there were any photos around of that delightful little incident.
Maybe his mother had kept some? But those would have been lost in the fire.
“You know what, I don’t know if we have photos handy—I’m never sure where Velvet squirrels these things away, but I could probably put my hands on the christening gown.” He offered as a consolation.
Her eyes widened a bit, before washing over troubled. She bit her lower lip.
Jonah wondered if she’d have her baby baptized in Grey’s gown or if she had her own family heirloom for the eventual occasion. “He was baptized at First Presbyterian on Sycamore.” Jonah added helpfully. “Do you need a certificate, or, um, something to that effect?” He was educated enough to know that Grey would need to be a baptized Christian in order for the church to recognize their union, but he hadn’t studied deeply enough to have a grasp on the particulars of paperwork and other clerical requirements.
He studied her reaction carefully. She flushed lightly and looked quickly away from him, first across to where Grey sat and then down to her plate. Her dark eyebrows drew together in distress and she seemed to force her hand from their habitual spinning of the little medallion. When she’d taken a breath and folded her hands neatly in her lap, she pulled her spine up, sat a little taller and then smiled pleasantly at him once more, her chin higher than before, her chocolate gaze clear and direct.
“I believe that would be a great help.” She answered frankly. “The record, I mean, more than the gown.”
His mouth took on a wry curve. “You can have the gown when you find you have the need.” He told her gently. “But yes, I can understand that the document would be more useful in the immediate.”
“Right Dad?” a voice was pressing, sounding as though maybe they’d already asked once or twice, trying vainly to capture his attention. Jonah became aware that his end of the table had become very quiet and several pairs of eyes were fixed intently on him, awaiting some response.
He glanced around, an apologetic little smile in place. “I’m so sorry, I was chattering away over here—what was the question?”
It was Avalon who spoke again, looking miffed and icy when she repeated her assertion about folk lore and wedding customs, looking to him for confirmation. He smiled and nodded, confirmed what she’d said and then added some factoid of trivia about colonial brides and antiquated marriage law, and then the onus of the figurative spotlight passed from him once again.
When he turned to continue his discussion with Maggie he found she’d been pulled into a rather animated conversation with Keer and Genny about some tween heartthrob or other and a scandalous celebrity wedding.
So his eyes went back to where they’d been before she’d ventured her veiled request for Grey’s baptismal record. He lifted his wine to his lips once more and let his gaze slide slowly over Viola, who was seated at a comfortably significant distance from him this evening. Not by her choice of course. With so many guests her mother had made place cards and everyone knew there was to be absolutely no switching around. Velvet Delaney was a sweet, gentle, kind-as-can-be lady, but it was a well known household dictum to avoid foiling, either intentionally or through careless accident, her plans for a proper dinner party.
One did everything one could possibly do to ensure Velvet’s best laid plans went off without impediment or detour. Or one suffered days and days of lamentation and woe over the failed or botched event. Suffered hours on end of hearing about how it had all been planned perfectly but then somehow it had all, misery of miseries, gone horribly wrong!
So Viola sat where her mother had assigned her, a careful and deliberate placement made on the predication of a carefully calculated algorithm of Velvet’s design, which took into account personality types, conversation style, gender, age, and the ability to tolerate Celia, among other factors known only to Velvet herself.
And he rather liked the distance for conflicting reasons. For one, he was able to relax a little, knowing her foot would not find his below the table. Breathe easier without her constant and cloying attention. Think more clearly because she wasn’t near enough for him to smell her, to watch closely the mesmerizing rise and fall of her small but perfect breasts, to feel the pulsing need pouring off her, clouding his brain with relentless and wicked pheromones that muddled everything up completely.
He also couldn’t deny that at this distance he was able to appreciate how perfectly fucking adorable and gorgeous and delicious she looked this evening. And, in a sort of circle of reasoning, he was once again glad of the forced distance and barrier between their bodies.
He glanced around the table quickly to make sure he wasn’t being watched. He’d just about made it back around to Viola when he caught his brother’s curious and stormy stare. Fuck. He lowered the wine glass enough to flash Nolan a smile.
Nolan didn’t smile back immediately. Instead he lowered his brow slightly and squinted a little.
Jonah pointed at his glass and nodded appreciatively as if to say: ‘This is great wine you brought! Thanks!’
Nolan blinked, hesitated, and then nodded in return with a friendly-enough smile.
Christ. Jonah looked determinedly in the opposite direction of his youngest daughter and his too keenly observant brother.
He could hear his mother-in-law making some critical comment about the lamb, and he tried not to listen.
“When?” He asked Maggie when she finally emerged from the thrilling (to Keer anyway) debate over pubescent nickelodeon stars.
She sipped her water gingerly. Was she still struggling with nausea at this point? He scanned her plate. She seemed to have eaten well enough, though certainly not with much gusto. She was forcing it down to be polite.
“When is the—“ He wasn’t quite sure of the appropriate term for a redundant wedding. “When will you make the sacrament?” He asked, sounding more like he was asking if he’d said that right than about the event.
“Tomorrow.” She replied with a grateful smile. He couldn’t read whether he’d got the phrasing right, but at least he hadn’t screwed it up to the point of offense.
Tomorrow.
“Oh.” He said, not able to mask the surprise. “Should we, I mean, should Velvet and I? Did you tell us? That is, was Grey supposed to let us know—“
Now she blushed again. “It won’t be, um, we aren’t doing anything grand at all.” She apologized. “It will be sort of, private?” She searched the air in front of her for a better way to explain.
“A quiet ceremony?” He helped gently.
“Not even really a ceremony, more a, well.” She sighed. “It’ll be fulfilling an obligation. No frills. Nothing fancy.” She admitted.
Jonah nodded and pushed a piece of asparagus around on his plate idly. She wasn’t the only one struggling with nausea and lack of appetite. Though his sickness was much more grim and unnatural. His eyes flicked to Viola once again and her eyes flicked up at the same time. She smiled slyly and tossed her hair over her shoulder to better display her slim white neck to him. He forced his attention back to Maggie.
“Velvet will be devastated if she learns there was any kind of ceremony for the two of you, and we’d somehow missed it.” He said bluntly. He might have tried harder to couch that in more delicate terms. Afterall, he was basically inviting himself to a religious ceremony to which, it seemed, neither the bride nor the groom had intended to extend a welcome.
The girl looked mortified. Jonah felt guilty.
“Of course you can—I’m so sorry that we didn’t—I didn’t think you’d want to—because, well, you aren’t catholic—and it isn’t going to be anything grand or—I’m so sorry, how thoughtless of me—“
Jonah opened his mouth to apologize and reassure the girl when he heard his name being called again.
“Dad.” The voice said firmly. He glanced over. It was Grey this time. And he looked bullshit. His eyes jumped from Maggie to Jonah and back again. Jonah could almost hear the ‘what the fuck?’ reverberating in his son’s mind. Maggie looked more than a little distressed, and Grey was too many seats away to know why, or how to fix it, but he looked like he had no trouble pinning the blame on his old man.
Jonah heaved a heavy sigh. He hastened to soothe Maggie, assure her that everything was alright, that she hadn’t offended at all , and that there was no need to tell Velvet about the wedding service. He did this all with Grey’s pale green eyes boring furious holes into the side of his skull, and Maggie’s wide chocolate irises washing over with the threat of tears, and Viola’s electric purple stare daring him to look her way, and Nolan’s curious, heck, downright suspicious stormy blue gaze monitoring most everything Jonah did.
This evening was proving to be even longer than he’d dreaded.
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