Fanfic: B&S episode 705: part 4/4
Season 7 - Episode 705 - Private investigations
By Marea67
About: Brothers & Sisters general
Rate: Can’t go higher than PG-13 as this American Television.
Disclaimer: Just escaping from reality here, not created for financial gain.
Summary: It’s my own season 7. Go with it! If you believe you can do better, write it yourself! I dare you!
*****
“Hey, jerk!” Cooper feels someone grab his arm and the next moment he gets smashed against the fence. “Remember me?”
“Roddy?” Cooper is surprised. He had befriended Roddy a year ago, but that friendship hadn’t been too successful.
Roddy had turned out to be a bully who enjoyed hurting animals and smaller kids. One day he had even put a garden-shed on fire, just for fun, and Cooper had felt guilty when he found out that the owner of the house had nearly died of a heart-attack, upon finding his shed torched.
Just as he struggled on how to get rid of Roddy, Roddy had disappeared. The gossip was that he had been expelled and Cooper hadn’t really shed a tear over this.
“Yes. Me.” Roddy answers.
“Where have you been? You disappeared from school?” Though Cooper knows he isn’t much of fighter, but he’s not really scared either. Besides, despite the word ‘jerk’ and the way he had shoved Cooper against the fence, Roddy doesn’t seem to be angry Cooper now notices.
“Are you mad at me or something?” Cooper wants to know. Roddy seems to think over the question.
“Nah. Not really.”
“Then why are you’re here? To beat me up?”
“No, you weasel. Though apparently your grandma had a talk with the school-principal?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she had.” Cooper sighs. “I shouldn’t have told her something about anything, but I felt so bad about the old man…”
“Got into a lot of trouble over your actions…”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I finally got to tell how bad it was to live with my mom… I now live with my dad and his new wife and they aren’t bad. Not as bad as my mom anyway. I now also have two little sisters…” Roddy shrugs. Cooper is surprised. Roddy had never said much about his family-life.
“I just wanted to let you know,” Roddy continues. “… that there’s no hard feelings. My dad made me go to the old man and apologize. He then made me help the old man rebuilt the shed, which was actually kinda fun to do.” Roddy laughs. “It turns out he’s not as bad as I thought. I’m on my way to see him now.”
“You are?”
“Yes, saw you get off the bus and … just had to talk to you…” Roddy shuffles his feet and he looks a little shy all of a sudden. “I’m sorry if I got you in trouble…”
“You didn’t.”
“Can’t we be friends again?” Roddy asks. Cooper hesitates. Roddd does seem like he has changed, but Cooper isn’t too sure that he has.
“I’d … rather not.” Cooper replies breathlessly, expecting a punch in the face or some other form of violence.
But all he can see is the disappointed look on Roddy’s face.
“Fair enough.” Roddy says and he shrugs. “I’ll be on my way then…” And he leaves Cooper alone. Cooper wants to call him back, but he can’t seem to find a voice to do it. It isn’t until Roddy is near the end of the street that Cooper comes into action.
“Roddy! Wait!” Roddy turns around, an expectant look on his face. Cooper catches up with him.
“Just because I don’t want us to be friends again, doesn’t mean that I don’t want things to go right for you…” Cooper says, not sure if he should perhaps offer his friendship after all.
“Whatever.” Roddy shrugs. He turn around again and he disappears around the corner.
*****
“I’m sorry, Mr Walker, I cannot let you talk to your wife just yet.”
“Mrs Green, I came all the way here to talk to her… Please, I’m not mad. I’m not going to yell at her. Or upset her. I just want to talk to her…. I need to understand.” Tommy nearly begs. Mrs Green looks over her glasses at the man sitting on the chair in front of her.
“I understand that too, mr Walker. You want answers. You want to make things right. Fix things. But you can’t. Your wife is broken and you cannot fix her.”
“And you think you can?” Tommy asks.
“Give us a little time, Mr Walker.”
“A little time? I have a job that I can’t do properly, a house that I no longer want to live in, knowing what my wife did my kid. My brother and his husband spend more time with my kids than I do, because I keep running from place to another. And you ask me for more time? For what? For me to be just as confused as she is?”
“Mr Walker, I can understand that the situation is stressful for you, but they aren’t any less confusing to her.” Mrs Green insists. “You cannot help your wife. You can however help yourself and help your children. My advice would be to focus on what yo can do and leave the care of Mrs Walker in our hands.”
Tommy runs his finger through his hair. It’s a sign of desperation.
“I don’t know anymore what to do.” He sighs. Mrs Green leans over her desk to get closer.
“Your wife does nothing but cry and sleep. She’s in no position to talk to you right now.”
“How long do you think this situation will last?” Tommy wants to know.
“I can’t tell you. Your wife has been able to fool a lot of people for a long time, but it would seem like all her defenses came tumbling down all at once, and she’s only nowdealing with everything that happened to her… Going through the emotions, rather than just the words…
She can be hysterical one moment and dead quiet the next. One moment she says that she hates you and that she never wants to see you again. The next she’s begging us to let her talk to you. And I think you should know…. She hates the boy…” Tommy gasps at mrs Green’s words. “At this moment: I think that seeing her could be more destructive to you than not seeing her….”
“She’s my wife… I love her…” Tommy whispers. Mrs Green nods that she understands and sympathizes.
“I’m sorry, Mr Walker. Trust me… This is not the right moment….” She says nonetheless. “I have your phone-number and email-address. I will contact you as soon as it is possible to see her. I think that it will be good that you two talk to each other eventually, but not right now…” And with those words Tommy has no other alternative than to let it rest.
*****
Lena is about to lock up when a young man enters the office.
“Hi. Is Kevin still in?”
“No. He went home early.” Lena answers.
“Oh, right. His dinner with Scotty…” The young man remembers.
“You know about that?” Lena is surprised.
“Yes, he was Ojai this afternoon and he mentioned it… I’m Ryan Lafferty, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you.” Lena smiles and they shake hands. Ryan then gives her the stack of papers he held under his arm.
“These are for Kevin. Sarah and Holly signed them.”
“I’ll put them on his desk…” Lena immediately adds action to words. “Is there anything else you needed? I was about to close up.”
“No… No. I just thought about getting a drink at the bar at Café 429. Would you like to join me?”
He seems a bit nervous about asking her and she’s amused. Would it matter if she did? She’s a free woman after all, but just to be sure….
“You’re not married, engaged or otherwise in a relationship that could get me fired, right?”
“No, single and free.” Ryan asks, not sure why she would want to know that.
*****
“Are you serious?” Kevin asks Scotty. Scotty puts down his glass. “I take you out for a nice dinner, hoping that we will have some time to spend together, having perhaps a conversation or two that isn’t about the kids and you spring the news on me that you’ve asked my brother to move in with us..? “
“Only if you would agree….”
“I can’t in all seriousness back away now, can I? I mean, it would be as if I don’t want to help him.”
“But you do want to help him?”
“Of course I do. That is not the point.”
“Then what is?”
“You should have discussed it with me first. That is what you always insist on as well.”
“I’m sorry.” Scotty looks appropriately guilty. “I know that I always ask the same of you, but … He looked so lost..”
“Yes, well, he screwed up a lot of things in his life and why should I always be the one to help him? He has another brother and two sisters. And a mother and an uncle.”
“You have custody over his daughter, who’s biologically yours, and she’s living in our house. And she wants her brother and her father close…”
“We can’t always get what we want.” Kevin answers. “I understand the desire to help Tommy and to be there for Elizabeth and Billy, but at some point, Tommy will have to learn to do things on his own again.”
“That is what he wanted too, he got derailed.”
“Scotty, who are we trying to kid here? As much as we love Elizabeth, we both know that she wasn’t meant to stay with us. So, when Tommy announced that Julia and he were married and that they were working on coming back to California, don’t tell me that a part of you wasn’t happy about that.
When we thought about having kids, we wanted just one. Right now, we have four of them under our roof and you’re talking about adding a fifth. It’s madness! Whatever happened to your ‘I’m not the Salvation Army’-speech from last year? Nothing has changed.
Except now you’re asking m to add not one, but two more people to our already busy household. Adding Elizabeth wasn’t difficult, because she had spent her holidays with us and knew our routine. She’s smart and she can understand why she has to be quiet in the morning when you’re still asleep.
She sees the reason on why she should clean up her own room, because we don’t have time do it for her. She someone we can reason with, but we can’t do that with Billy. Bringing him into our house means going back to broken nights and taking care of a little baby, Scotty.”
“I know that. But that part would fall mostly on Tommy and Jordan and not so much on us.”
“And you really believe that?” Kevin asks.
“Yes!”
“Sweetheart, you’re talking about helping Tommy out with feeding Billy during the nights….”
“Yes, I come home late, I can do that. I always need to unwind before going to bed anyway, otherwise I’m still frantically cooking in my dreams…” Scotty smiles.
“I know that. I can’t remember the many times that you woke me up to give me cooking instructions in your sleep. So, yes, I know you need to unwind. And you do that with a glass of red wine and a nibble of cheese, not with a baby on your arm, who needs his bottle and who needs his burp and his clean nappy. We’re past that. We’ve done that.”
“I know that.” Scotty admits quietly.
“We were working towards less responsibilities in our lives, not more.” Kevin says.
“I know that too. We thought that we would have to give Elizabeth back and that there would be one less kid to worry about. And now you feel like I’m asking you to add a fifth kid to our family, but that isn’t true. I want us to add an extra adult to our household as well, so that we can share the responsibility more equally. I think it’s only fair that, considering that we help raise Billy and Elizabeth, Tommy helps us with Olivia, Daniel and Mateo.”
Kevin remains quiet while the waitress clears away the dishes from the first course, and brings them their salmon for Scotty and the steak for Kevin. Kevin throws some salt on his steak and, upon seeing the annoyed frown over his action on Scotty’s face, Kevin throws even more salt on it.
“And you really believe that this weird co-parent-ship is going to work?”
“Yes.” Scotty says with confidence. “Why shouldn’t it? Tommy wants to take care of his kids as much as we want to take of ours. Our way of scheduling our lives might also be a good system for Tommy too.”
“Not sure…. Tommy hasn’t proven to be the most reliable person over the last few years and I don’t want to end up with even more trouble than ever before.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“He could run off again…” Kevin suggests.
“I don’t believe that and neither do you.” Scotty says. Kevin has to agree. He doesn’t believe it’s possible either, but then, he didn’t think that Tommy would run off the first time.
“I don’t want to us to lose what we have.” Kevin then says.
Scotty gives Kevin his sweetest smile, offers his compliment on the excellently prepared salmon. It is something that Scotty doesn’t do often, but he knows it’s important to Kevin to know that Scotty is enjoying the food, even if he hadn’t prepared it himself, but then he brings the conversation back to their previous topic.
“We were afraid of that last year, when we had to add Elizabeth, while we already had three kids in an apartment that was built for two adults and two kids only. But we didn’t fail last year and we won’t fail now either. We can do this, because we’ve learned to be flexible and creative and we have to teach those things to Tommy as well.
It’s time for Tommy to take his life back and built a life with at least his son and his daughter, if Julia remains as sick as she is. And we should be the ones to help him accomplish that.”
“If you’re sure that we aren’t making some mistake?” Kevin hestitates.
“We’re not…. Remember, a few years ago, you picked up some lonely, broke guy from the street and let him sleep in you living-room..I just needed to get my life organized as well, and I was losing grip because one bad thing after another happened... But you had faith in me. Can't you have faith in your brother as well? Why won't you let Tommy stay with us? At least for a few weeks?”
“Fine. I can't say no to you anyway." Kevin sighs. "Shall we order dessert?”
“Aren’t you going to finish your steak?”
“No. There’s too much salt on it.” Kevin answers.
*****
Nora opens the door and she’s shocked to see Dennis York standing there. She wonders if she should even let him in or not. As if he can guess her concern, he point to the large carton box at his feet.
“There’s an entire file on William in here… I’d rather not discuss this here.”
Nora reluctantly opens the door even further. She’s after all the first one to make contact with him, if he had something to say in return, she should give him a chance. Dennis gives her a quick nod of acceptance and enters the large hall-way. She leads him to the kitchen and he starts to smile.
“We’ve spend quite some evenings here…” He says. It doesn’t seem to be a bad memory to him. Even Nora can’t claim that Dennis’ presence had always been bad. She had never really trusted him, she had felt like he had some power over William or William over him, but he certainly hadn’t been bad company.
“You said you had a file on William?” She asks.
“Yes. When I got out to prison, I was fortunate enough to make some good investments with what little money I had left, but I was hell-bend on revenge. So, once I had enough money I had William followed by a private investigator.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me…”
“No. In here are records of trips he took, people he would meet, lunches he would have … There were even pictures taken…”
“I’m not sure that I want to see pictures of Holly and him…”
“There aren’t any in there.” Dennis says. “As much as I hated him, I never wanted to hurt you or your kids…. Not until William suddenly died and I realized that somehow I had never been able to get my vengeance and … I started to hate him even more.”
Dennis seems embarrassed by his own words and Nora doesn’t know what to say.
“I was looking for something to hit him with. Something that would pull the rug from underneath him, like he had done with me. I wanted to hit him financially, rob him of the cash, that I felt he couldn’t have deserved if it hadn’t been for me…”
Dennis is not as defiant as before. He’s merely stating the plans he had and Nora sees no reason to remind him that Ojai Food had been William’s idea…. William, Saul and Nora had spend many nights working out the details…. For a few seconds she stares at the table and she can almost see them sitting there again…
“What am I supposed to do with all that info?” Nora wonders. Dennis shrugs.
“Don’t know. But after your visit, I went to the archives and looked through the old paperwork again … I don’t know if there’s anything in there that could be of help to you, but you said that you felt like you didn’t know who William was…
This is all the information I have on him. Perhaps that there’s something in there that is completely meaningless to me, but of great importance to you… Anyway, I have no further use for it. I could have thrown it all away. The paper-shredder is a patient thing, you know…” Dennis smiles apologetically.
“Thank you, Dennis, for thinking of me… And for not just throwing it all away….” Nora says… “Can I offer you some coffee?” She asks, suddenly remembering her manners. Dennis grins, an almost boyish grin.
“Always the nice little Nora Holden…” He says and Nora can’t help but smile.
“Alright one cup of coffee and then I’ll leave you alone. Where do you want the box?”
“Do you remember William’s old study? Well, it’s my office now. Just put it there.” Nora answers and as she watches Dennis carry the box to her office, she worries about what she may discover amongst those papers.
END OF CHAPTER 5
If the Gods will allow it, the next epsiode will be up Monday 18 February. The title will be 'Rescue me'.
By Marea67
About: Brothers & Sisters general
Rate: Can’t go higher than PG-13 as this American Television.
Disclaimer: Just escaping from reality here, not created for financial gain.
Summary: It’s my own season 7. Go with it! If you believe you can do better, write it yourself! I dare you!
*****
“Hey, jerk!” Cooper feels someone grab his arm and the next moment he gets smashed against the fence. “Remember me?”
“Roddy?” Cooper is surprised. He had befriended Roddy a year ago, but that friendship hadn’t been too successful.
Roddy had turned out to be a bully who enjoyed hurting animals and smaller kids. One day he had even put a garden-shed on fire, just for fun, and Cooper had felt guilty when he found out that the owner of the house had nearly died of a heart-attack, upon finding his shed torched.
Just as he struggled on how to get rid of Roddy, Roddy had disappeared. The gossip was that he had been expelled and Cooper hadn’t really shed a tear over this.
“Yes. Me.” Roddy answers.
“Where have you been? You disappeared from school?” Though Cooper knows he isn’t much of fighter, but he’s not really scared either. Besides, despite the word ‘jerk’ and the way he had shoved Cooper against the fence, Roddy doesn’t seem to be angry Cooper now notices.
“Are you mad at me or something?” Cooper wants to know. Roddy seems to think over the question.
“Nah. Not really.”
“Then why are you’re here? To beat me up?”
“No, you weasel. Though apparently your grandma had a talk with the school-principal?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she had.” Cooper sighs. “I shouldn’t have told her something about anything, but I felt so bad about the old man…”
“Got into a lot of trouble over your actions…”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I finally got to tell how bad it was to live with my mom… I now live with my dad and his new wife and they aren’t bad. Not as bad as my mom anyway. I now also have two little sisters…” Roddy shrugs. Cooper is surprised. Roddy had never said much about his family-life.
“I just wanted to let you know,” Roddy continues. “… that there’s no hard feelings. My dad made me go to the old man and apologize. He then made me help the old man rebuilt the shed, which was actually kinda fun to do.” Roddy laughs. “It turns out he’s not as bad as I thought. I’m on my way to see him now.”
“You are?”
“Yes, saw you get off the bus and … just had to talk to you…” Roddy shuffles his feet and he looks a little shy all of a sudden. “I’m sorry if I got you in trouble…”
“You didn’t.”
“Can’t we be friends again?” Roddy asks. Cooper hesitates. Roddd does seem like he has changed, but Cooper isn’t too sure that he has.
“I’d … rather not.” Cooper replies breathlessly, expecting a punch in the face or some other form of violence.
But all he can see is the disappointed look on Roddy’s face.
“Fair enough.” Roddy says and he shrugs. “I’ll be on my way then…” And he leaves Cooper alone. Cooper wants to call him back, but he can’t seem to find a voice to do it. It isn’t until Roddy is near the end of the street that Cooper comes into action.
“Roddy! Wait!” Roddy turns around, an expectant look on his face. Cooper catches up with him.
“Just because I don’t want us to be friends again, doesn’t mean that I don’t want things to go right for you…” Cooper says, not sure if he should perhaps offer his friendship after all.
“Whatever.” Roddy shrugs. He turn around again and he disappears around the corner.
*****
“I’m sorry, Mr Walker, I cannot let you talk to your wife just yet.”
“Mrs Green, I came all the way here to talk to her… Please, I’m not mad. I’m not going to yell at her. Or upset her. I just want to talk to her…. I need to understand.” Tommy nearly begs. Mrs Green looks over her glasses at the man sitting on the chair in front of her.
“I understand that too, mr Walker. You want answers. You want to make things right. Fix things. But you can’t. Your wife is broken and you cannot fix her.”
“And you think you can?” Tommy asks.
“Give us a little time, Mr Walker.”
“A little time? I have a job that I can’t do properly, a house that I no longer want to live in, knowing what my wife did my kid. My brother and his husband spend more time with my kids than I do, because I keep running from place to another. And you ask me for more time? For what? For me to be just as confused as she is?”
“Mr Walker, I can understand that the situation is stressful for you, but they aren’t any less confusing to her.” Mrs Green insists. “You cannot help your wife. You can however help yourself and help your children. My advice would be to focus on what yo can do and leave the care of Mrs Walker in our hands.”
Tommy runs his finger through his hair. It’s a sign of desperation.
“I don’t know anymore what to do.” He sighs. Mrs Green leans over her desk to get closer.
“Your wife does nothing but cry and sleep. She’s in no position to talk to you right now.”
“How long do you think this situation will last?” Tommy wants to know.
“I can’t tell you. Your wife has been able to fool a lot of people for a long time, but it would seem like all her defenses came tumbling down all at once, and she’s only nowdealing with everything that happened to her… Going through the emotions, rather than just the words…
She can be hysterical one moment and dead quiet the next. One moment she says that she hates you and that she never wants to see you again. The next she’s begging us to let her talk to you. And I think you should know…. She hates the boy…” Tommy gasps at mrs Green’s words. “At this moment: I think that seeing her could be more destructive to you than not seeing her….”
“She’s my wife… I love her…” Tommy whispers. Mrs Green nods that she understands and sympathizes.
“I’m sorry, Mr Walker. Trust me… This is not the right moment….” She says nonetheless. “I have your phone-number and email-address. I will contact you as soon as it is possible to see her. I think that it will be good that you two talk to each other eventually, but not right now…” And with those words Tommy has no other alternative than to let it rest.
*****
Lena is about to lock up when a young man enters the office.
“Hi. Is Kevin still in?”
“No. He went home early.” Lena answers.
“Oh, right. His dinner with Scotty…” The young man remembers.
“You know about that?” Lena is surprised.
“Yes, he was Ojai this afternoon and he mentioned it… I’m Ryan Lafferty, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you.” Lena smiles and they shake hands. Ryan then gives her the stack of papers he held under his arm.
“These are for Kevin. Sarah and Holly signed them.”
“I’ll put them on his desk…” Lena immediately adds action to words. “Is there anything else you needed? I was about to close up.”
“No… No. I just thought about getting a drink at the bar at Café 429. Would you like to join me?”
He seems a bit nervous about asking her and she’s amused. Would it matter if she did? She’s a free woman after all, but just to be sure….
“You’re not married, engaged or otherwise in a relationship that could get me fired, right?”
“No, single and free.” Ryan asks, not sure why she would want to know that.
*****
“Are you serious?” Kevin asks Scotty. Scotty puts down his glass. “I take you out for a nice dinner, hoping that we will have some time to spend together, having perhaps a conversation or two that isn’t about the kids and you spring the news on me that you’ve asked my brother to move in with us..? “
“Only if you would agree….”
“I can’t in all seriousness back away now, can I? I mean, it would be as if I don’t want to help him.”
“But you do want to help him?”
“Of course I do. That is not the point.”
“Then what is?”
“You should have discussed it with me first. That is what you always insist on as well.”
“I’m sorry.” Scotty looks appropriately guilty. “I know that I always ask the same of you, but … He looked so lost..”
“Yes, well, he screwed up a lot of things in his life and why should I always be the one to help him? He has another brother and two sisters. And a mother and an uncle.”
“You have custody over his daughter, who’s biologically yours, and she’s living in our house. And she wants her brother and her father close…”
“We can’t always get what we want.” Kevin answers. “I understand the desire to help Tommy and to be there for Elizabeth and Billy, but at some point, Tommy will have to learn to do things on his own again.”
“That is what he wanted too, he got derailed.”
“Scotty, who are we trying to kid here? As much as we love Elizabeth, we both know that she wasn’t meant to stay with us. So, when Tommy announced that Julia and he were married and that they were working on coming back to California, don’t tell me that a part of you wasn’t happy about that.
When we thought about having kids, we wanted just one. Right now, we have four of them under our roof and you’re talking about adding a fifth. It’s madness! Whatever happened to your ‘I’m not the Salvation Army’-speech from last year? Nothing has changed.
Except now you’re asking m to add not one, but two more people to our already busy household. Adding Elizabeth wasn’t difficult, because she had spent her holidays with us and knew our routine. She’s smart and she can understand why she has to be quiet in the morning when you’re still asleep.
She sees the reason on why she should clean up her own room, because we don’t have time do it for her. She someone we can reason with, but we can’t do that with Billy. Bringing him into our house means going back to broken nights and taking care of a little baby, Scotty.”
“I know that. But that part would fall mostly on Tommy and Jordan and not so much on us.”
“And you really believe that?” Kevin asks.
“Yes!”
“Sweetheart, you’re talking about helping Tommy out with feeding Billy during the nights….”
“Yes, I come home late, I can do that. I always need to unwind before going to bed anyway, otherwise I’m still frantically cooking in my dreams…” Scotty smiles.
“I know that. I can’t remember the many times that you woke me up to give me cooking instructions in your sleep. So, yes, I know you need to unwind. And you do that with a glass of red wine and a nibble of cheese, not with a baby on your arm, who needs his bottle and who needs his burp and his clean nappy. We’re past that. We’ve done that.”
“I know that.” Scotty admits quietly.
“We were working towards less responsibilities in our lives, not more.” Kevin says.
“I know that too. We thought that we would have to give Elizabeth back and that there would be one less kid to worry about. And now you feel like I’m asking you to add a fifth kid to our family, but that isn’t true. I want us to add an extra adult to our household as well, so that we can share the responsibility more equally. I think it’s only fair that, considering that we help raise Billy and Elizabeth, Tommy helps us with Olivia, Daniel and Mateo.”
Kevin remains quiet while the waitress clears away the dishes from the first course, and brings them their salmon for Scotty and the steak for Kevin. Kevin throws some salt on his steak and, upon seeing the annoyed frown over his action on Scotty’s face, Kevin throws even more salt on it.
“And you really believe that this weird co-parent-ship is going to work?”
“Yes.” Scotty says with confidence. “Why shouldn’t it? Tommy wants to take care of his kids as much as we want to take of ours. Our way of scheduling our lives might also be a good system for Tommy too.”
“Not sure…. Tommy hasn’t proven to be the most reliable person over the last few years and I don’t want to end up with even more trouble than ever before.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“He could run off again…” Kevin suggests.
“I don’t believe that and neither do you.” Scotty says. Kevin has to agree. He doesn’t believe it’s possible either, but then, he didn’t think that Tommy would run off the first time.
“I don’t want to us to lose what we have.” Kevin then says.
Scotty gives Kevin his sweetest smile, offers his compliment on the excellently prepared salmon. It is something that Scotty doesn’t do often, but he knows it’s important to Kevin to know that Scotty is enjoying the food, even if he hadn’t prepared it himself, but then he brings the conversation back to their previous topic.
“We were afraid of that last year, when we had to add Elizabeth, while we already had three kids in an apartment that was built for two adults and two kids only. But we didn’t fail last year and we won’t fail now either. We can do this, because we’ve learned to be flexible and creative and we have to teach those things to Tommy as well.
It’s time for Tommy to take his life back and built a life with at least his son and his daughter, if Julia remains as sick as she is. And we should be the ones to help him accomplish that.”
“If you’re sure that we aren’t making some mistake?” Kevin hestitates.
“We’re not…. Remember, a few years ago, you picked up some lonely, broke guy from the street and let him sleep in you living-room..I just needed to get my life organized as well, and I was losing grip because one bad thing after another happened... But you had faith in me. Can't you have faith in your brother as well? Why won't you let Tommy stay with us? At least for a few weeks?”
“Fine. I can't say no to you anyway." Kevin sighs. "Shall we order dessert?”
“Aren’t you going to finish your steak?”
“No. There’s too much salt on it.” Kevin answers.
*****
Nora opens the door and she’s shocked to see Dennis York standing there. She wonders if she should even let him in or not. As if he can guess her concern, he point to the large carton box at his feet.
“There’s an entire file on William in here… I’d rather not discuss this here.”
Nora reluctantly opens the door even further. She’s after all the first one to make contact with him, if he had something to say in return, she should give him a chance. Dennis gives her a quick nod of acceptance and enters the large hall-way. She leads him to the kitchen and he starts to smile.
“We’ve spend quite some evenings here…” He says. It doesn’t seem to be a bad memory to him. Even Nora can’t claim that Dennis’ presence had always been bad. She had never really trusted him, she had felt like he had some power over William or William over him, but he certainly hadn’t been bad company.
“You said you had a file on William?” She asks.
“Yes. When I got out to prison, I was fortunate enough to make some good investments with what little money I had left, but I was hell-bend on revenge. So, once I had enough money I had William followed by a private investigator.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me…”
“No. In here are records of trips he took, people he would meet, lunches he would have … There were even pictures taken…”
“I’m not sure that I want to see pictures of Holly and him…”
“There aren’t any in there.” Dennis says. “As much as I hated him, I never wanted to hurt you or your kids…. Not until William suddenly died and I realized that somehow I had never been able to get my vengeance and … I started to hate him even more.”
Dennis seems embarrassed by his own words and Nora doesn’t know what to say.
“I was looking for something to hit him with. Something that would pull the rug from underneath him, like he had done with me. I wanted to hit him financially, rob him of the cash, that I felt he couldn’t have deserved if it hadn’t been for me…”
Dennis is not as defiant as before. He’s merely stating the plans he had and Nora sees no reason to remind him that Ojai Food had been William’s idea…. William, Saul and Nora had spend many nights working out the details…. For a few seconds she stares at the table and she can almost see them sitting there again…
“What am I supposed to do with all that info?” Nora wonders. Dennis shrugs.
“Don’t know. But after your visit, I went to the archives and looked through the old paperwork again … I don’t know if there’s anything in there that could be of help to you, but you said that you felt like you didn’t know who William was…
This is all the information I have on him. Perhaps that there’s something in there that is completely meaningless to me, but of great importance to you… Anyway, I have no further use for it. I could have thrown it all away. The paper-shredder is a patient thing, you know…” Dennis smiles apologetically.
“Thank you, Dennis, for thinking of me… And for not just throwing it all away….” Nora says… “Can I offer you some coffee?” She asks, suddenly remembering her manners. Dennis grins, an almost boyish grin.
“Always the nice little Nora Holden…” He says and Nora can’t help but smile.
“Alright one cup of coffee and then I’ll leave you alone. Where do you want the box?”
“Do you remember William’s old study? Well, it’s my office now. Just put it there.” Nora answers and as she watches Dennis carry the box to her office, she worries about what she may discover amongst those papers.
END OF CHAPTER 5
If the Gods will allow it, the next epsiode will be up Monday 18 February. The title will be 'Rescue me'.