NaNo 2010 part 6
Chloe had spent weeks watching him. How could she not? They were married, after all. They spent a good deal of the day together. She could watch him while he slept, because her worry kept her up at night even when her work in the mayor’s office, like her father would have wanted her to continue to do, didn’t. She saw the faces he made, felt the brief twitches, sometimes, of dreams or nightmares that wouldn’t let him be. But he always awoke rested, never seemed to remember anything that might have plagued him during the night, somehow. Only during the day.
Their house was the place they’d always wanted. But it still didn’t feel like a home.
It was when he broke a lamp in one of his hallucinogenic fits that she had had enough, finally. It might have been a minor thing in the end, just a lamp, but she was determined to put an end to all of the madness if things started spiraling out of control. She knew hi drinking hadn’t let up, had clearly deduced that he did it to try to keep his moments at bay without having to tell her himself. Which hurt, that he didn’t trust her enough to tell her about it, to explain that, that he didn’t trust her enough to tell her anything at all about what he was going through or putting himself through, instead acting like his father tended to in such situations: insisting things were fine, things were great, things were under control, there was nothing to worry about. Sometimes t seemed like it worked, but not all the time. It wasn’t good enough, and she wouldn’t stand for it. Not when it still all haunted him, even while drunk. Not if he was going to start getting violent about it.
“Matt, stop!” How did he expect her to live with that day in and day out?
He whirled around to stare at her, momentarily wild-eyed, but whatever it was he had seen to cause him to lash out and attack an innocent floor lamp cleared from his expression. “Ah…Chloe, I--”
Her face alone made him stop before he started verbally digging himself into a hole deeper than the one he was already trapped in. She was angry at him, and terrified for him. Not for herself, let it be known. He would never hurt her no matter it was that was going on; of that, she had an absolute and unbreakable certainty of. “Just stop. Please.” She had to breathe. “It’s getting worse.” To keep her voice from trembling. He didn’t argue. Good. “You’re getting worse. Matt, the drinking isn’t helping, and the hallucinations, all of it, it’s only getting worse. You’re drinking more, and now you’re lashing out.”
“I’ll clean this mess up, Chlo, I’m sorry.”
“You’ll clean this one up. But what about the next one? And the next one, and then the one after that?” She motioned to the bent material, the broken glass. “Cleaning up the messes caused by your problems is not the same thing as treating the problems to begin with. I hope you realize that.”
“Look,” he started with a frustrated wave of his hands, “It was just one little accident! I’m not drunk, and it’s not getting worse, and I’m not getting violent! I’ve got it under control; why don’t you believe me?”
“Give me a reason to, and then we’ll talk.” She turned away, running a hand through her long hair, mussing it up subconsciously, taking a moment to reel herself in before confronting Matt again. “You know I care about you. I see what you’ve been doing to yourself, and I can see that this scares you even more than it scares me. So I don’t see why you keep on doing this to the both of us. Why don’t you just get help for whatever is going on?”
“There’s nothing to help.” He seemed to struggle with something inside of him. “It’s not something I think anyone will be able to help me with. They won’t understand, and they won’t be able to help.”
She approached him cautiously, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his shoulder. “Oh Matt. I promise, someone will be able to do something for you; you are not beyond help. I know you said I won’t lose you, but I can’t help but think you’re slipping away from me.” It upset her that it seemed apparent that she couldn’t help, that he seemed to think he couldn’t get any to begin with. “Could you at least try, for me if not for yourself, please? You don’t even have to see a professional if you think just talking it out with someone might work. Did talking to Mr. Rush help?”
He held her likewise, huffing into her hair. “That was ages ago. I don’t know, maybe it helped a bit. How’d you find out about that?”
“Your father was pretty pissed at him about it.”
Another huff, half of a laugh. “Yeah, better talking to him than to dad. It’s so weird; they used to be real good friends, too.”
Friends. Right. “Yeah, I know. Your dad’s worried in his own way, too, you know. And Rush, and Dale, and Hunter, and Sheriff Telford, and everyone else around here, you know? You don’t have a lack of people to talk to, again, you know, really talk, if you need it. And you do need it.” She pulled back enough to look up at him in the face. “Promise me, Matt. You’ll look for help soon.”
He sighed but conceded. “Yes, I’ll…get something done about this, and soon. You’re right. You’re always so right, and that’s one of the reasons why I love you so much.”
They shared a kiss, but her uneasiness remained. “Good. Then you can clean this up like you said you would. I’ve got that doctor’s appointment to get to. Are you…going to be fine for a bit here?”
“Yeah.” But he winced. “I don’t know. But I think so. Hey, I’m not going to break anything else here, at least, okay? Worry about yourself for a little bit, I’ve got the fort covered.”
She did worry about herself, however, more than he knew. It was hypocritical of her, she knew, to demand honesty of Matt when she hadn’t been exactly the most forthcoming of wives. But today would change that either way. They had been trying for a kid, of course, was something they truly desired, but after months, nothing seemed to take, and lately with Matt’s mental situation, they hadn’t been legitimately trying very much lately.
But she was late. And a take home test had shown herself positive. Oh, she knew the chances of error in those things were so small, but it was, she felt, much better to be absolutely positive about it rather than have any risk of premature elation. Instead of being overjoyed at even the very possibility, she was deeply troubled by the thought of carrying a child to term. She had her doubts, doubts that she hadn’t needed to voice before. How good of a mother could she really be? She did love her mother, and bless her heart, she had raised them all, even Matt, right, even if she had quickly deteriorated after her husband had died after they were grown. Could Chloe live up to that? She was thinking that she wanted to be more career oriented lately, working for Mayor Wray, looking to the future-politics, maybe something on a larger scale somewhere down the line. Would that leave time for a kid, let alone a number of kids? Did she really want to stay here with Matt and child after child forever? The thought was, the more she considered it, starting to become less and less appealing than it originally had. Maybe it was just nerves, hormones. Maybe the feeling would pass. And maybe she’d be a good wife and a happy mother with equally good and happy children to raise and then see off. She could only hope.
The situation with her husband was the other major concern that gave her pause. How would it impact the family? Especially if he was right and couldn’t get help, or worse yet, if he didn’t get any help like he said after all. What if it was something genetic and their child had something that would make him or her go the same way eventually? What if he only got worse from here, did something dangerous, hurt the child? It horrified her to think about it, but such thoughts had to haunt her now; they were legitimate concerns, she felt. And a doctor couldn’t tell her about those risks. But if things got worse instead of better, if he couldn’t admit to his own problems staring him and everyone else in the face, then…
Although it would break her heart, and his, she would do what she thought was necessary, for the sake of their potential family and for the sake of everyone else. But first she had to find out if there even was a family upcoming.
Doctors offices never really bothered her, although ob gyns did unsettle her a bit. She figured it must be the same for every woman; it wasn’t a comfortable place to be in, mentally, sometimes physically. And she’d never had a reason to get an ultrasound or such a thoroughly physical examination before, and her tension only rose with time, which she knew must have been hell with a spiking blood pressure.
The lamp had been cleared from the floor, and a new one replaced it. In fact, that wasn’t the only thing clean. The entire first floor seemed to have had a pretty thorough cleaning, and she hadn’t thought she’d been gone really all that long. “Matt?”
He appeared soon after, clomping down the stairs loudly in the boots he found so comfortable. His sheepish, guilty, ‘I know I did something wrong, please forgive me’ look that so frequently reminded her of a puppy she couldn’t bear to say no to made her laugh a bit, and he took that as a good sign. “I hope you don’t mind that I cleaned.”
“No, I don’t mind at all. That’s…that’s so sweet of you.” A shaky hand rested on her lips, wondering if she could reel in everything crazy she felt.
He hopped the last few steps and came right over, concerned. “Baby, what’s wrong? All I did was clean; I didn’t cook a fancy dinner and get you roses or anything.”
“We’re having a baby.” The words were blurted out before she could reel hem in, and then she realized that she didn’t want to reel them in. She was pregnant, and the news she had taken a lot better than her initial fears had led her to believe she would. So she repeated the words to a stunned Matt in hopes that her own stunned senses could truly take it in. “I’m pregnant, and we’re having a baby.”
It seemed cliché, their predictable reactions seen many a time in tv and in movies, but it was a cliché for a reason, she discovered. It all really happened like that, all really felt like that.
“Oh my god,” exhaled Matt, grabbing onto her tightly. “Oh my god! We’re gonna need to refurnish the guest room again!”
“And I know just where we’ll put the crib.”
***
Volker grinned stupidly over his glass that might as well not have existed, and Hunter, glancing up from his scribbled notes, couldn’t help but be infected by it. “You’re not the one having the kid, Dale.”
“I know,” he said, still beaming, “I know! But I still kinda feel like I’m part of the process, you know? I mean, pharmacist, they come to me for things they need regarding the baby and their health. I know I must have sold them pregnancy tests, right? And, I don’t know, it just makes me excited. Come on, you can’t tell me that I’m crazy for being so happy for them.”
Riley shook his head, infected grin still lighting his face as he went back to his notepad. “No, you’re not crazy for that. You just look damn silly like that since it’s not yours.”
“It’s the town’s,” supplied Brody, out from behind the bar, drying off a glass in his hand. “All the kids around here end up being half raised by the whole town. Just look at Matt.”
Volker kept on grinning at Riley as if to say ‘see what I mean?’ And he wasn’t the only one in such a good mood, too, he knew. Ever since the news had hit a few days ago, most people around town were in a brighter mood with more of a spring in their steps that he could appreciate. Sure, a new child around wasn’t going to happen for almost a year yet, but, as Everett had said at the news breaking, about time. They’d waited that long already; they could wait eight or nine months longer. “I wonder if it’s a boy or a girl.”
“It really hasn’t been long enough to find out yet, Dale.”
“I’m just saying! Maybe--”
“Maybe we should take bets, huh?” suggested Brody slyly.
Riley perked up again like a puppy. “What if she has twins of, one boy and one girl?” Adam shot him a bit of a withering look, and he shrugged. “I’m just saying…”
“We’ll find out when they do,” Volker said with some attempted finality to try and close the subject. “If they even want to tell us. Or at the birth. We need to remember that it’s a very personal and private thing between the two of them, and we should consider ourselves lucky that they decided to tell us about it in the first place.”
“Until she blows up like a balloon, I guess they could’ve kept it close to the vest for a while.” Riley snickered to himself, probably at the mental image of what Chloe might look like in a few months, which he had to admit was pretty amusing to consider for the perpetually stick thin woman.
“You don’t keep secrets for too long in a place like this anyway.” Brody leaned against the booth, still wiping down the clean mug just for something to continue doing with this hands. Hunter frowned, which wasn’t too worrying. The guy tended to know secrets about people either because they tell his trustworthy face or from doing a little digging up on people with some research. He kept said secrets, as far as Dale knew. Hunter would know. And Adam was always privy to gossip and the declarations of drunken people. One could not be a very decent bartender without having a good ear. If there were secrets in the town, those two would know them, more likely than not.
But Volker laughed at the idea. Of course there were secrets that could be kept for ages, forever, even in their town. There were always secrets. That was just the way people worked; that was just human nature. “Not a secret like a pregnancy, anyway!” On the other hand, there were the town secrets, the things that everyone knew but nobody knew, strictly speaking. The things people ignored or simply didn’t talk about, didn’t acknowledge. There were plenty of so called secrets like those, but if everyone knew them, Volker figured, then they really weren’t technically secrets in the first place, now, were they? “Not something that anticipated that they want everyone to know about anyway.” Some of the best worst kept secrets (or worst best kept secrets, perhaps) were the things none of them like to talk about but liked to give glances, knowing looks and hints about. It didn’t sit well with him sometimes, though Brody tended to help him out with all of that. Shouldn’t get involved if he didn’t have to. Should probably just keep quiet and out of the way, for the best. Somehow, it was for the best.
“I don’t think anyone is going to mess with their privacy if they want any, Dale.” Riley clicked his pen in thought a few times. “We’ll respect that; you know that. But I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that kind of issue anyway is all. I think they’re more than happy sharing it all with us.” And clicked a few more times until he went back to writing out one of his articles. “Hey, either of you guys ever wanted kids?”
Adam and Dale glanced at each other, then back at Hunter, who was initially oblivious to the discontent caused by an innocent question. Brody was, thankfully, the first to break the silence. “Me? Nah. I never thought of myself as a father figure. Or a family man in general.”
Dale sighed a little wistfully. “I’d love kids, really. Always wanted a couple small ones running around, calling me dad. Guess I just haven’t really met the right person for that, yet. And maybe I won’t. We’re all just getting older, you know?”
“Oh, god, Dale, don’t get started on that.”
“But we are! Life just goes by so fast now, and you’ll only ever meet so many people in your life. And I don’t want to be a single dad.”
Riley’s eyes were soft. “Come on, you’re only in your thirties. You’ll meet someone, eventually, if you go looking. I mean, it’s been a couple of years since I picked up a girlfriend, and I’m still convinced I’m going to have a wife and a kid or two. And we’ll take ‘em down to my dad’s farm every other weekend. Have picnics in the fall with fresh apples. Little things like that. I mean, some of it’s just fantasy. I don’t know if any of it will ever actually happen. But I like to think it will. I’ve still got faith. And I’m not that much younger than you, you know.” He reached out to pat a hand on Volker’s arm. “A little faith, Dale; that’s all it takes.” His eyes flicked to Brody for support.
“Yeah,” Brody added, arms delicately crossed so as to not smudge the overly clean glass. “You’ve got decades ahead of you, man. You can’t give up so easily.”
Volker smiled at them, even if it wasn’t genuine, so as to lighten the mood. “Right. Right, of course, I know. I get that. It’s hard to remember sometimes. Thanks.”
“Atta boy.” Brody clapped him on the shoulder then jerked a thumb over his own. “I’m probably needed elsewhere, if you gents will excuse me.”
But Riley didn’t move off for any reason. “Hey. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, no, I’m fine, really.” With a wave of his hand, he similarly waved the subject’s meaning off. “I guess a reason why I’m just so happy for Matt and Chloe is because I’ve always wanted kids so bad. It’s nothing; I’m being stupid. And if you leave that notepad unattended for too terribly much longer, I’m gonna have to steal it and read whatever it is you’ve got cooking up for myself.”
***
A school teacher was never on his list of expected people to fall for, but Dale can’t complain. Teaching’s a wonderful career choice, even if it’s not the one for him. No, he’s too busy indulging Adam in his business schemes. The latest is a restaurant. Or a bar. Or a restaurant with a bar in it, the man hasn’t made up his mind, and while they had decided to do everything together through thick and thin, Dale isn’t really looking forward to any iteration of the idea. It doesn’t seem much for him, either. But they’ll figure things out eventually, like always, with time, or with a change of someone’s mind.
Somehow, somewhere along the line, a perpetually frustrated chemistry teacher at the high school caught his eye, and still does catch his eye, even harder now than at first. They don’t talk much; there’s really not much reason. Although Dale’s starting to look back into some of his old college notes, wondering if maybe something a little more chemistry related will be better, that maybe it’s something he can mention to his more sociable business partner at some point. And they do know each other, of course; everyone in the town knows everyone else. Everyone hangs out at the same places for lack of anywhere better to do so, small town as it is.
“Hi, Jeremy,” he says one evening when he bumps into Dr. Franklin after school has let out. “How are your students?” Everything he says he thinks comes out sounding stupid and ridiculous, but he at least does manage to say something every time.
Franklin scoffs, his vaguely upper class northeastern accent gets a little thicker (and he’s not sure if that’s for show, a persona, or if he’s really from some rich Boston family or what have you). “Stupid, as always, thank you for asking.”
“Oh come on, they can’t be that bad, or you wouldn’t even be doing what you do.”
“I can try to teach them, anyway.” There is a softer side. He’s seen it. He just plays the part of snooty, smarter than thou professor. Sometimes the frustrations were real, sometimes they weren’t. “Someone has to, after all. I hope these tests I have to grade will show that something’s getting into their heads.” At least, he thinks the frustrations are false sometimes. The guy’s hard to crack.
Which is exactly what Adam says to him. He’s noticed, and he wants to help, but neither of them really know how. It gets so bad, after a while, that Dale is making plans in his head for a future he might be too chicken to even go through with.
“I wanna be with this guy, you know?” he sighs into his hands, feeling more ridiculous and hopeless by the second. “I want to date this guy, and I want to live with him, and I want to adopt a couple of kids for us to raise, and I want us to live here together happily like any other married couple. Oh god, I’m in way over my head, aren’t I?”
“You always are,” Adam says unhelpfully. “Look, if you want my advice, you need to man up and ask him out sometime. Over the weekend, away from the school and the kids and grading and his lab experiments. Do it sometime this month or let it go. You can’t trip all over yourself about it forever.”
His plans start to form into something more solid like reality. He doesn’t know what to say or how to say it, but by god, before the month is up, he’s going to speak to Franklin, and he’ll see where it goes from there.
The month isn’t up yet before his hopes are dashed. He’s discovered on a Monday morning, bright and early, when he doesn’t show up to the school and when he doesn’t answer any calls. A suicide, Telford said, and another of the cops confirms, the one who got there first. No doubt of it. No accident. Just a simple plain old straight up suicide. Riley eventually digs up that Franklin had himself a history of severe depression, supposedly taken care of with a few drugs, but clearly not enough.
“I didn’t even know he ever felt that way.” It’s a burden Volker and Brody carry alone, knowledge never noticed or shared with anyone else, their own little secret, the pieces of a potential family life, dreams, crushed to pieces on the floor. The thought weighs at him, crushing. “I never noticed he was even ever that sad.”
Their house was the place they’d always wanted. But it still didn’t feel like a home.
It was when he broke a lamp in one of his hallucinogenic fits that she had had enough, finally. It might have been a minor thing in the end, just a lamp, but she was determined to put an end to all of the madness if things started spiraling out of control. She knew hi drinking hadn’t let up, had clearly deduced that he did it to try to keep his moments at bay without having to tell her himself. Which hurt, that he didn’t trust her enough to tell her about it, to explain that, that he didn’t trust her enough to tell her anything at all about what he was going through or putting himself through, instead acting like his father tended to in such situations: insisting things were fine, things were great, things were under control, there was nothing to worry about. Sometimes t seemed like it worked, but not all the time. It wasn’t good enough, and she wouldn’t stand for it. Not when it still all haunted him, even while drunk. Not if he was going to start getting violent about it.
“Matt, stop!” How did he expect her to live with that day in and day out?
He whirled around to stare at her, momentarily wild-eyed, but whatever it was he had seen to cause him to lash out and attack an innocent floor lamp cleared from his expression. “Ah…Chloe, I--”
Her face alone made him stop before he started verbally digging himself into a hole deeper than the one he was already trapped in. She was angry at him, and terrified for him. Not for herself, let it be known. He would never hurt her no matter it was that was going on; of that, she had an absolute and unbreakable certainty of. “Just stop. Please.” She had to breathe. “It’s getting worse.” To keep her voice from trembling. He didn’t argue. Good. “You’re getting worse. Matt, the drinking isn’t helping, and the hallucinations, all of it, it’s only getting worse. You’re drinking more, and now you’re lashing out.”
“I’ll clean this mess up, Chlo, I’m sorry.”
“You’ll clean this one up. But what about the next one? And the next one, and then the one after that?” She motioned to the bent material, the broken glass. “Cleaning up the messes caused by your problems is not the same thing as treating the problems to begin with. I hope you realize that.”
“Look,” he started with a frustrated wave of his hands, “It was just one little accident! I’m not drunk, and it’s not getting worse, and I’m not getting violent! I’ve got it under control; why don’t you believe me?”
“Give me a reason to, and then we’ll talk.” She turned away, running a hand through her long hair, mussing it up subconsciously, taking a moment to reel herself in before confronting Matt again. “You know I care about you. I see what you’ve been doing to yourself, and I can see that this scares you even more than it scares me. So I don’t see why you keep on doing this to the both of us. Why don’t you just get help for whatever is going on?”
“There’s nothing to help.” He seemed to struggle with something inside of him. “It’s not something I think anyone will be able to help me with. They won’t understand, and they won’t be able to help.”
She approached him cautiously, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his shoulder. “Oh Matt. I promise, someone will be able to do something for you; you are not beyond help. I know you said I won’t lose you, but I can’t help but think you’re slipping away from me.” It upset her that it seemed apparent that she couldn’t help, that he seemed to think he couldn’t get any to begin with. “Could you at least try, for me if not for yourself, please? You don’t even have to see a professional if you think just talking it out with someone might work. Did talking to Mr. Rush help?”
He held her likewise, huffing into her hair. “That was ages ago. I don’t know, maybe it helped a bit. How’d you find out about that?”
“Your father was pretty pissed at him about it.”
Another huff, half of a laugh. “Yeah, better talking to him than to dad. It’s so weird; they used to be real good friends, too.”
Friends. Right. “Yeah, I know. Your dad’s worried in his own way, too, you know. And Rush, and Dale, and Hunter, and Sheriff Telford, and everyone else around here, you know? You don’t have a lack of people to talk to, again, you know, really talk, if you need it. And you do need it.” She pulled back enough to look up at him in the face. “Promise me, Matt. You’ll look for help soon.”
He sighed but conceded. “Yes, I’ll…get something done about this, and soon. You’re right. You’re always so right, and that’s one of the reasons why I love you so much.”
They shared a kiss, but her uneasiness remained. “Good. Then you can clean this up like you said you would. I’ve got that doctor’s appointment to get to. Are you…going to be fine for a bit here?”
“Yeah.” But he winced. “I don’t know. But I think so. Hey, I’m not going to break anything else here, at least, okay? Worry about yourself for a little bit, I’ve got the fort covered.”
She did worry about herself, however, more than he knew. It was hypocritical of her, she knew, to demand honesty of Matt when she hadn’t been exactly the most forthcoming of wives. But today would change that either way. They had been trying for a kid, of course, was something they truly desired, but after months, nothing seemed to take, and lately with Matt’s mental situation, they hadn’t been legitimately trying very much lately.
But she was late. And a take home test had shown herself positive. Oh, she knew the chances of error in those things were so small, but it was, she felt, much better to be absolutely positive about it rather than have any risk of premature elation. Instead of being overjoyed at even the very possibility, she was deeply troubled by the thought of carrying a child to term. She had her doubts, doubts that she hadn’t needed to voice before. How good of a mother could she really be? She did love her mother, and bless her heart, she had raised them all, even Matt, right, even if she had quickly deteriorated after her husband had died after they were grown. Could Chloe live up to that? She was thinking that she wanted to be more career oriented lately, working for Mayor Wray, looking to the future-politics, maybe something on a larger scale somewhere down the line. Would that leave time for a kid, let alone a number of kids? Did she really want to stay here with Matt and child after child forever? The thought was, the more she considered it, starting to become less and less appealing than it originally had. Maybe it was just nerves, hormones. Maybe the feeling would pass. And maybe she’d be a good wife and a happy mother with equally good and happy children to raise and then see off. She could only hope.
The situation with her husband was the other major concern that gave her pause. How would it impact the family? Especially if he was right and couldn’t get help, or worse yet, if he didn’t get any help like he said after all. What if it was something genetic and their child had something that would make him or her go the same way eventually? What if he only got worse from here, did something dangerous, hurt the child? It horrified her to think about it, but such thoughts had to haunt her now; they were legitimate concerns, she felt. And a doctor couldn’t tell her about those risks. But if things got worse instead of better, if he couldn’t admit to his own problems staring him and everyone else in the face, then…
Although it would break her heart, and his, she would do what she thought was necessary, for the sake of their potential family and for the sake of everyone else. But first she had to find out if there even was a family upcoming.
Doctors offices never really bothered her, although ob gyns did unsettle her a bit. She figured it must be the same for every woman; it wasn’t a comfortable place to be in, mentally, sometimes physically. And she’d never had a reason to get an ultrasound or such a thoroughly physical examination before, and her tension only rose with time, which she knew must have been hell with a spiking blood pressure.
The lamp had been cleared from the floor, and a new one replaced it. In fact, that wasn’t the only thing clean. The entire first floor seemed to have had a pretty thorough cleaning, and she hadn’t thought she’d been gone really all that long. “Matt?”
He appeared soon after, clomping down the stairs loudly in the boots he found so comfortable. His sheepish, guilty, ‘I know I did something wrong, please forgive me’ look that so frequently reminded her of a puppy she couldn’t bear to say no to made her laugh a bit, and he took that as a good sign. “I hope you don’t mind that I cleaned.”
“No, I don’t mind at all. That’s…that’s so sweet of you.” A shaky hand rested on her lips, wondering if she could reel in everything crazy she felt.
He hopped the last few steps and came right over, concerned. “Baby, what’s wrong? All I did was clean; I didn’t cook a fancy dinner and get you roses or anything.”
“We’re having a baby.” The words were blurted out before she could reel hem in, and then she realized that she didn’t want to reel them in. She was pregnant, and the news she had taken a lot better than her initial fears had led her to believe she would. So she repeated the words to a stunned Matt in hopes that her own stunned senses could truly take it in. “I’m pregnant, and we’re having a baby.”
It seemed cliché, their predictable reactions seen many a time in tv and in movies, but it was a cliché for a reason, she discovered. It all really happened like that, all really felt like that.
“Oh my god,” exhaled Matt, grabbing onto her tightly. “Oh my god! We’re gonna need to refurnish the guest room again!”
“And I know just where we’ll put the crib.”
***
Volker grinned stupidly over his glass that might as well not have existed, and Hunter, glancing up from his scribbled notes, couldn’t help but be infected by it. “You’re not the one having the kid, Dale.”
“I know,” he said, still beaming, “I know! But I still kinda feel like I’m part of the process, you know? I mean, pharmacist, they come to me for things they need regarding the baby and their health. I know I must have sold them pregnancy tests, right? And, I don’t know, it just makes me excited. Come on, you can’t tell me that I’m crazy for being so happy for them.”
Riley shook his head, infected grin still lighting his face as he went back to his notepad. “No, you’re not crazy for that. You just look damn silly like that since it’s not yours.”
“It’s the town’s,” supplied Brody, out from behind the bar, drying off a glass in his hand. “All the kids around here end up being half raised by the whole town. Just look at Matt.”
Volker kept on grinning at Riley as if to say ‘see what I mean?’ And he wasn’t the only one in such a good mood, too, he knew. Ever since the news had hit a few days ago, most people around town were in a brighter mood with more of a spring in their steps that he could appreciate. Sure, a new child around wasn’t going to happen for almost a year yet, but, as Everett had said at the news breaking, about time. They’d waited that long already; they could wait eight or nine months longer. “I wonder if it’s a boy or a girl.”
“It really hasn’t been long enough to find out yet, Dale.”
“I’m just saying! Maybe--”
“Maybe we should take bets, huh?” suggested Brody slyly.
Riley perked up again like a puppy. “What if she has twins of, one boy and one girl?” Adam shot him a bit of a withering look, and he shrugged. “I’m just saying…”
“We’ll find out when they do,” Volker said with some attempted finality to try and close the subject. “If they even want to tell us. Or at the birth. We need to remember that it’s a very personal and private thing between the two of them, and we should consider ourselves lucky that they decided to tell us about it in the first place.”
“Until she blows up like a balloon, I guess they could’ve kept it close to the vest for a while.” Riley snickered to himself, probably at the mental image of what Chloe might look like in a few months, which he had to admit was pretty amusing to consider for the perpetually stick thin woman.
“You don’t keep secrets for too long in a place like this anyway.” Brody leaned against the booth, still wiping down the clean mug just for something to continue doing with this hands. Hunter frowned, which wasn’t too worrying. The guy tended to know secrets about people either because they tell his trustworthy face or from doing a little digging up on people with some research. He kept said secrets, as far as Dale knew. Hunter would know. And Adam was always privy to gossip and the declarations of drunken people. One could not be a very decent bartender without having a good ear. If there were secrets in the town, those two would know them, more likely than not.
But Volker laughed at the idea. Of course there were secrets that could be kept for ages, forever, even in their town. There were always secrets. That was just the way people worked; that was just human nature. “Not a secret like a pregnancy, anyway!” On the other hand, there were the town secrets, the things that everyone knew but nobody knew, strictly speaking. The things people ignored or simply didn’t talk about, didn’t acknowledge. There were plenty of so called secrets like those, but if everyone knew them, Volker figured, then they really weren’t technically secrets in the first place, now, were they? “Not something that anticipated that they want everyone to know about anyway.” Some of the best worst kept secrets (or worst best kept secrets, perhaps) were the things none of them like to talk about but liked to give glances, knowing looks and hints about. It didn’t sit well with him sometimes, though Brody tended to help him out with all of that. Shouldn’t get involved if he didn’t have to. Should probably just keep quiet and out of the way, for the best. Somehow, it was for the best.
“I don’t think anyone is going to mess with their privacy if they want any, Dale.” Riley clicked his pen in thought a few times. “We’ll respect that; you know that. But I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that kind of issue anyway is all. I think they’re more than happy sharing it all with us.” And clicked a few more times until he went back to writing out one of his articles. “Hey, either of you guys ever wanted kids?”
Adam and Dale glanced at each other, then back at Hunter, who was initially oblivious to the discontent caused by an innocent question. Brody was, thankfully, the first to break the silence. “Me? Nah. I never thought of myself as a father figure. Or a family man in general.”
Dale sighed a little wistfully. “I’d love kids, really. Always wanted a couple small ones running around, calling me dad. Guess I just haven’t really met the right person for that, yet. And maybe I won’t. We’re all just getting older, you know?”
“Oh, god, Dale, don’t get started on that.”
“But we are! Life just goes by so fast now, and you’ll only ever meet so many people in your life. And I don’t want to be a single dad.”
Riley’s eyes were soft. “Come on, you’re only in your thirties. You’ll meet someone, eventually, if you go looking. I mean, it’s been a couple of years since I picked up a girlfriend, and I’m still convinced I’m going to have a wife and a kid or two. And we’ll take ‘em down to my dad’s farm every other weekend. Have picnics in the fall with fresh apples. Little things like that. I mean, some of it’s just fantasy. I don’t know if any of it will ever actually happen. But I like to think it will. I’ve still got faith. And I’m not that much younger than you, you know.” He reached out to pat a hand on Volker’s arm. “A little faith, Dale; that’s all it takes.” His eyes flicked to Brody for support.
“Yeah,” Brody added, arms delicately crossed so as to not smudge the overly clean glass. “You’ve got decades ahead of you, man. You can’t give up so easily.”
Volker smiled at them, even if it wasn’t genuine, so as to lighten the mood. “Right. Right, of course, I know. I get that. It’s hard to remember sometimes. Thanks.”
“Atta boy.” Brody clapped him on the shoulder then jerked a thumb over his own. “I’m probably needed elsewhere, if you gents will excuse me.”
But Riley didn’t move off for any reason. “Hey. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, no, I’m fine, really.” With a wave of his hand, he similarly waved the subject’s meaning off. “I guess a reason why I’m just so happy for Matt and Chloe is because I’ve always wanted kids so bad. It’s nothing; I’m being stupid. And if you leave that notepad unattended for too terribly much longer, I’m gonna have to steal it and read whatever it is you’ve got cooking up for myself.”
***
A school teacher was never on his list of expected people to fall for, but Dale can’t complain. Teaching’s a wonderful career choice, even if it’s not the one for him. No, he’s too busy indulging Adam in his business schemes. The latest is a restaurant. Or a bar. Or a restaurant with a bar in it, the man hasn’t made up his mind, and while they had decided to do everything together through thick and thin, Dale isn’t really looking forward to any iteration of the idea. It doesn’t seem much for him, either. But they’ll figure things out eventually, like always, with time, or with a change of someone’s mind.
Somehow, somewhere along the line, a perpetually frustrated chemistry teacher at the high school caught his eye, and still does catch his eye, even harder now than at first. They don’t talk much; there’s really not much reason. Although Dale’s starting to look back into some of his old college notes, wondering if maybe something a little more chemistry related will be better, that maybe it’s something he can mention to his more sociable business partner at some point. And they do know each other, of course; everyone in the town knows everyone else. Everyone hangs out at the same places for lack of anywhere better to do so, small town as it is.
“Hi, Jeremy,” he says one evening when he bumps into Dr. Franklin after school has let out. “How are your students?” Everything he says he thinks comes out sounding stupid and ridiculous, but he at least does manage to say something every time.
Franklin scoffs, his vaguely upper class northeastern accent gets a little thicker (and he’s not sure if that’s for show, a persona, or if he’s really from some rich Boston family or what have you). “Stupid, as always, thank you for asking.”
“Oh come on, they can’t be that bad, or you wouldn’t even be doing what you do.”
“I can try to teach them, anyway.” There is a softer side. He’s seen it. He just plays the part of snooty, smarter than thou professor. Sometimes the frustrations were real, sometimes they weren’t. “Someone has to, after all. I hope these tests I have to grade will show that something’s getting into their heads.” At least, he thinks the frustrations are false sometimes. The guy’s hard to crack.
Which is exactly what Adam says to him. He’s noticed, and he wants to help, but neither of them really know how. It gets so bad, after a while, that Dale is making plans in his head for a future he might be too chicken to even go through with.
“I wanna be with this guy, you know?” he sighs into his hands, feeling more ridiculous and hopeless by the second. “I want to date this guy, and I want to live with him, and I want to adopt a couple of kids for us to raise, and I want us to live here together happily like any other married couple. Oh god, I’m in way over my head, aren’t I?”
“You always are,” Adam says unhelpfully. “Look, if you want my advice, you need to man up and ask him out sometime. Over the weekend, away from the school and the kids and grading and his lab experiments. Do it sometime this month or let it go. You can’t trip all over yourself about it forever.”
His plans start to form into something more solid like reality. He doesn’t know what to say or how to say it, but by god, before the month is up, he’s going to speak to Franklin, and he’ll see where it goes from there.
The month isn’t up yet before his hopes are dashed. He’s discovered on a Monday morning, bright and early, when he doesn’t show up to the school and when he doesn’t answer any calls. A suicide, Telford said, and another of the cops confirms, the one who got there first. No doubt of it. No accident. Just a simple plain old straight up suicide. Riley eventually digs up that Franklin had himself a history of severe depression, supposedly taken care of with a few drugs, but clearly not enough.
“I didn’t even know he ever felt that way.” It’s a burden Volker and Brody carry alone, knowledge never noticed or shared with anyone else, their own little secret, the pieces of a potential family life, dreams, crushed to pieces on the floor. The thought weighs at him, crushing. “I never noticed he was even ever that sad.”