The Sky Falls - chapter three
Title: The Sky Falls (3/?)
Author: snowflake912
Pairing: House/Cuddy/Stacy, Jake.
Rating: PG-13 (subject to change)
Warnings: None.
Summary: Jake Cuddy's world is a whimsical study of people, puzzles and music - until one Tuesday in February Gregory House stumbles into his mother's life. As Jake comes to find, birthmarks are hard to hide, and their revelation leaves him caught in a web of hope and denial, both estranged and coveted.
Disclaimer: It's sad, but I don't own any of these wonderful characters (pre-character slaughter).
Author's Note:
This chapter took a little longer than expected. Real life has been quite busy lately. I'm sitting for the GMAT in a week, and studying has been taking up much of my free time. Still, at 40,000 feet, I managed to put this together. I don't love it, particularly, but it's a step in the story to be told. I'm struggling a little with their mindsets. That said, I'm beta-less. I usually write without a beta, but lately it's becoming glaringly clear that I need someone to bounce ideas off of during the creative process. So any volunteers in that regard would be much appreciated.
Onto the good stuff. Please enjoy!
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Chapter Three: Wage Your War
I’ve got this feeling, there’s something that I missed
I could do almost anything to you
Don’t you breathe, don’t you breathe
(Snow Patrol - Somewhere A Clock Is Ticking)
Lisa Cuddy did not pace.
She said this to herself thirteen times as she wore a hole into the deep green carpet of her father’s study. The last time she had paced, she’d been in Princeton-General, outside the radiology wing, where the smell of sterile white tiles made her feel nauseous. The last time she had paced, a three-year old Jake had been getting an abdominal X-Ray to determine the fate of the marble he had smilingly swallowed. That time she hadn’t particularly cared for the fact that she wasn’t a woman who paced. She’d been worried sick.
This dreadfully quiet Sunday afternoon, dressed in a cheerful, cashmere ruby red v-neck, she was pacing again.
She hadn’t slept in days. At ten in the morning, she had ushered a grumbling Jake to the car and drove to her mother’s house, two hours early for their Sunday lunch. Arlene Cuddy was a force to be reckoned with, especially when she was suspicious. Fielding her probes had been grueling. As soon as the lunch leftovers had been cleared from the table, Lisa had cornered Julia and told her to meet her in their father’s study. So she waited, and she paced. And she felt guilty because Jake - sweet and cautious Jake - would never know that the father he had asked for time and time again was going to be minutes away. She felt guilty because she knew she would continue to lie to him.
The door creaked open, and Lisa whipped around to find Julia walking in, eyebrows caught in a shallow frown of concern. She closed the door and walked over to one of the maroon leather chairs, lowering herself into the plush seat. “Well?” Julia prodded.
She heaved a deep breath and paused mid-stride to encounter her sister’s expectant gaze. “House - Gregory House - is in Princeton.”
As the implication of that simple statement dawned on Julia, her shapely eyebrows climbed high onto her brow. “What do you mean he’s in Princeton? What is he doing here? When is he leaving? Are you in contact with him? Does he know anything?” she fired in rapid succession.
“It’s ah-complicated,” she muttered and rubbed a palm across her forehead tiredly.
“I’m listening.”
Walking over to the empty armchair, she fell into the leather seat and released a trembling breath. “The past four weeks have been insane,” she began.
“Four weeks?” Julia repeated - clearly baffled.
“Four weeks ago, I walked into the clinic to find House chewing out one of the visiting physicians.” Julia’s gasp barely registered on her as she replayed that fateful afternoon in her mind. “He was screaming in pain. He had an infarction in his right thigh, and he’d been misdiagnosed for three consecutive days. When I found him, he had already diagnosed himself and was begging for morphine. I admitted him and personally oversaw his case…”
“Wait, what was he doing in Princeton?” Julia cut her off impatiently.
“His girlfriend’s cousin was getting married.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Yeah, Stacy Warner,” she smiled ruefully. “The surgeon wanted to amputate his leg, but House would hear none of it. I suggested a middle-ground surgery that would save the leg but leave it severely impaired. When we put him in a medically induced coma, Stacy authorized the surgery through medical proxy. We removed this much -” she made a fist with her right hand “ - dead muscle from his thigh. He was furious when he woke up. He was furious with me for suggesting it. He was mostly furious with Stacy for authorizing it when she knew he didn’t want it. The following two weeks, they stayed here for his recovery, and he began attending physiotherapy sessions at the hospital. Last week, on a whim, he decided he wants to move to Princeton. He asked me for a job, which I gave him, against my better judgment, but I just couldn’t say no,” she finished. The night he’d asked her for a diagnostics department, she’d lain awake in her bed, staring at the ceiling as if the answers to this impending crisis could be found there. It had been the first of a series of sleepless nights. “And, no, of course he doesn’t know anything.”
“And you didn’t tell me any of this while it was happening?” Julia chided her. “You should have said no to the job. You should have sent him to Princeton-General from the very beginning.”
Lisa gave her an incredulous look. “I couldn’t, Julia. His condition was getting worse by the minute. It’s a miracle he didn’t wind up dead from all the toxins that necrotic tissue was releasing into his blood.”
“Forget the medicine. You’re in way over your head here,” she said candidly. “If Jake finds out about him, he’s going to want to know him. Even though he’s stopped asking, you know how much that boy wants to know his father. If he finds out about Jake…”
“I can’t let either of those things happen,” Lisa interrupted in an effort to calm the violent roiling in her stomach.
Julia’s features softened with sympathy. “Then just don’t say anything. Don’t even think about it. When or if the time comes, you’ll introduce them to each other as your son and your employee - nothing more, nothing less.”
“He looks so much like him,” she whispered, her voice twisted with pained nostalgia. The instant her eyes had met House’s solemn gaze for the first time in a decade, the resemblance had stolen her breath. She quelled the tears that pricked the backs of her eyes. “Somebody’s going to notice.”
Julia shook her head with certainty. “You only see it because you know. To anyone else, it wouldn’t be remarkable,” she reassured her.
Lisa wished she shared her confidence. Burying her face in her hands, she voiced the thought that had been plaguing her during those restless nights. “Maybe it’s time for me to tell him.”
The sound of Julia’s loud tsk-ing was only slightly soothing. “Don’t be stupid, Leese. He wasn’t father material before, and I’m sure he still isn’t. Both he and Jake are better off this way."
That was what the rational part of her mind had been telling her. “What if he finds out?” she asked in an uncharacteristically small voice.
Julia left her seat and walked over to stand beside Lisa’s chair, pressing a comforting hand to her narrow shoulder. “There’s no way he can find out,” she said firmly.
Covering her sister’s hand with her own, Lisa gave her fingers a weak squeeze of gratitude. “You don’t know him,” she said and flashed an uneasy smile at her.
Pushing the thoughts away, Lisa frowned deeply. There was something off about the hospital’s accounts.
Tucked into the corner of her gray-beige couch, she worried her bottom lip as she read through last month’s financials again, still unable isolate the metaphorical bleed. The soft, downy throw tangled between her bare legs warded off the early evening chill, and the clock on the mantle kept time with soft ticks that filled the dusky silence. Tapping the tip of her ballpoint pen against the paper, she sighed and rolled her neck tiredly. She needed to get to the bottom of this. With renewed resolve, she rearranged the booklet and began by pouring over detailed pharmacology costs. She was barely through the first page when the shrill buzz of the doorbell reverberated in the empty house. A puzzled frown wrinkled her brow, and she cast a hurried look at the gilded clock. It was almost seven o’clock. Jake wasn’t due back from soccer practice for another twenty minutes.
Swinging her bare legs off the couch, she slid her feet into a pair of fuzzy slippers and placed the stack of papers on the sturdy glass table. Jake must have finished practice early, she reasoned as she hurried to the foyer. Foregoing the peephole, she unlatched the lock and lowered the door handle.
“You’re ear…” Lisa’s words died on her lips when the intricate door fell open and revealed her two unexpected visitors. As if summoned by her raging anxieties, Stacy and House stood at her doorstep, looking rundown and more exhausted than she felt. Stacy’s knee-length beige raincoat was rain-splattered, and a rueful smile that looked both affable and hapless curved her lips. Behind her, House, propped against a pair of crutches, was defying the Princeton cold in a worn, white t-shirt, his expression unreadable. Her heart twisted against her ribs in protest, and she was suddenly aware of how vulnerable she felt in her long-sleeved, checkered nightgown that stopped several inches above her knees. “Oh, hello, Stacy, House,” she stammered, opening the door wider and stepping back self-consciously.
Stacy bit her lip. “Lisa, we’re so sorry to be dropping by unannounced. Our car died just up the street, and they’ll need an hour to pick it up,” she explained apologetically and shot a surreptitious, telling look at House over her shoulder.
Over the past six weeks, Lisa had been privy to the tension between the pair. An embittered House had made no secret of his disdain for Stacy’s decision. Taken by his current plight, he obliviously shuffled to find a more comfortable arrangement. Composure restored, she looked back at Stacy and returned a subtle nod - their exchange settled. “Don’t worry about it. I’m happy to have you guys. Please come in,” she ushered them inside, shutting the door against the beginnings of a rainy night. Leading them through the foyer and into the living room, she watched their gazes trail along her homey furniture, thankful that neither of them lingered on the framed photographs long enough to notice the little boy featured prominently in most of them. The erratic rhythm of her heart quieted at the notion of shelving the explanations for now. When they hovered around the furniture, she made a vague gesture with her arm, encompassing the two arm chairs and the three-seat sofa where her throw was strewn. “Please sit,” she urged them, and House promptly dropped into one of the plush, pale blue armchairs.
“Nice slippers,” he remarked, his voice scratchy and misplaced in the comfort of her living room.
A hurried glance at her feet made her acknowledge the teasing sarcasm in his voice with a half-smile. Lifting her gaze back to his, she found him averting Stacy’s warning glance like a reprimanded child. “Would you like to have anything to drink? Tea? Coffee? Soda?” she offered.
“Scotch?” House intervened, sharp blue eyes narrowing on the stack of papers she’d left on the coffee table.
“Sure,” she answered quickly, nodding in confirmation. They both looked like they needed a drink - badly. Stacy was frowning as she loitered beside him and followed his stare to the printout of the hospital’s budget. “Stacy?” she prodded, hoping to distract her from her obvious predicament. “Wine?” she suggested and plucked the knit afghan from the couch, draping it around her shoulders like a shield.
Shaken out of her thoughts, Stacy smiled self-consciously. “Tea is fine for me,” she declared quietly. “I’ll help,” she said and followed Lisa out of the living room and into the spacious kitchen, where a breakfast table was tucked into a nook bordered by floor-to-ceiling windows that boasted a well-kempt backyard. Stacy eyed the set-up appreciatively. Last Sunday, they had sat across from each other at that table, sipping black coffee and pouring over the legal case against Philip Brown. Stacy had gushed incessantly about what she had fondly dubbed the breakfast corner.
Moving around with familiar ease, Lisa switched on the electric kettle and reached for the cupboard over the sink, releasing the magnetic latch. She scanned the contents and finally selected an unopened bottle of scotch.
“I feel terrible about this,” Stacy confessed. “We’ve interrupted your evening. You were working and obviously waiting for someone. I’m sorry. I talked Greg into…”
“Stacy,” Lisa cut her off firmly. “Don’t be silly. I’m glad you thought of coming over. I wouldn’t want you to be waiting in the rain when I’m only a couple of minutes away. And House’s leg probably hurts - a lot,” she added in a quieter voice. She thought of him sitting in her living room and felt another pang of dread. He was much too close to everything she had been fiercely protecting for a decade.
Stacy swallowed tightly and used both hands to push her hair away from her face. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Not that he would tell me,” she added under her breath.
Pulling an ice tray out of the freezer, Lisa gave her a sympathetic look. Three cubes of ice rattled into an expensive crystal tumbler. “I’m sorry,” she said sincerely. “He’ll come around.” The confidence in her voice made the other woman shake her head sadly. Lisa caught the glint of tears in her eyes.
“I don’t think he will,” she admitted.
A frown sketched across her brow as she poured scotch into the tumbler. “He loves you,” she stated reassuringly.
“Not enough to forgive me,” she murmured.
Lisa looked up just in time to catch her quickly brush away a stray tear with the back of her hand. She promptly turned around under the ruse of rifling through a box of teabags, allowing the other woman a couple of minutes to compose herself. When she turned back to face her, Lisa was holding both their drinks.
“Thank you,” Stacy said, taking the ceramic mug out of her hands.
“It’s chamomile. It has a soothing effect,” she joked with a half-smile.
Stacy’s answering smile was tremulous but grateful that they hadn’t dwelled on the topic.
They returned to the living room to find House still perched on the armchair, staring intently at the hospital’s budget, which was now brazenly splayed across his lap. The image took her back to an early Ann Arbor morning fourteen years ago. His hair had been lighter, his stubbly face not quite as weary as he’d skimmed her syllabus and spewed out disconcertingly accurate judgments on her character.
“That’s classified information, you know,” she told him dryly, pressing the cool glass into his palm before burrowing into the corner of the couch to watch him as he tipped the glass back and swallowed the golden liquid. From the other armchair, Stacy was watching them with a curious frown.
He steadied the tumbler on the flat arm of the chair and gave her one of those brilliant, sparkling looks that said he had unraveled something. Throwing his gaze back to the scattered papers, he ran his calloused index finger down one of the sheets. “Your oncologist is a thief,” he declared with an easy grin. “Every time he signs off on a budget,” he paused and rifled through the papers to select his proof. Collating five sheets, he thrust them at her impatiently. “That budget happens to increase by say ten grand. Sometimes he’s bold and he goes for twenty. I have to say, it’s been working out well for him. You could barely tell at the beginning, but then the additions started accumulating, and the entire hospital’s budget flickered by three percent. He couldn’t expect a Jew not to notice.” He shook his head with mock indignation.
“Give me that,” she muttered, collecting the papers out of his hands. She quickly scanned through his findings as he sipped the scotch. “Damn it,” she hissed, following Hank Tanner’s signature across the fluctuating budgets. She’d been trying to find a pattern by department, not by delegation of authority.
“Are you going to fire him?” House pushed, returning a messy heap of unused documents to the coffee table.
“Of course I’m going to fire him,” she snapped.
Ignoring her snide tone, he plowed forward, intent on driving his point home. “Good, because I have just the guy for you. James Wilson, board certified oncologist, fired from his last job for caring.”
“Greg, I think Lisa has given us more than our share of gratuity jobs.” The reprimand made him press his lips together as if biting in something acrid.
Sensing the brewing argument, Lisa graciously interceded with a kind smile and quick reassurance. “I’m actually privileged that the two of you want to work at PPTH.”
To her left, House snorted childishly. “Totally,” he piped in, which only made Stacy sigh in resignation.
Lisa rolled her eyes, realigned the papers and settled back into the couch exhaustedly. “I’ve been trying to figure this out for weeks, but I just couldn’t doubt anyone from my board, especially Hank. He’s always so eager to help out, I just didn’t think…”
“Are you sure he’s not just eagerly salivating after you?” The suggestive look he gave her trailed down her form, lingering on the expanse of bare thigh peeking from below her throw.
She felt herself flush with awareness.
“Greg!” Stacy exclaimed in alarm. It was almost like she hadn’t been in his presence long enough to expect him to say such things. Or - Lisa acknowledged with a twinge of remorse - he had changed to the extent that this kind of behavior from him was unrecognizable. Either way, she looked back at the papers, giving them ample opportunity to glare at each other, and she told herself this wasn’t awkward at all. So what if she and House shared a sexual history - an explosive one at that. So what if they had a child he didn’t know about. Stacy obviously had no idea about the former, and nobody but she, Julia and Angie Wheeler knew about the latter.
When she raised her head, House was shrugging, as insensitive as always. “In many cultures, that’s a compliment,” he said matter-of-factly, and Lisa allowed herself a smile private smile at that. “If all of your outfits are like the-deceiving-long-johns-that-turn-into-a-beach-dress,” he thrust his chin in the direction of her admittedly short nightgown. “I think you should pay your employees compensation for daily sexual harassment,” he concluded, the gleam in his eyes daring her to refute his logic.
“That’s enough, Greg.”
“Fine,” he sighed as if she had taken away his favorite toy, and Lisa’s heart sank when his gaze lit on the Xbox Kinect tidily sitting behind the glass doors of the closet under the flat-screen television. “Why do you have an Xbox Kinect?” he asked, eyebrows delving into a thoughtful frown. “Not that I don’t appreciate the console. I just never imagined you as the type to kick off your stilettos and shoot a round of virtual hoops.”
She parted her lips to say something, but the words died in her throat at the sound of the ringing doorbell. The buzz was insistent, almost jubilant, and she felt the blood drain out of her face as she quickly shuffled to her feet. “Excuse me,” she murmured under her breath, trying not to linger on their bewildered expressions. She wanted to scream. It was too soon. She wasn’t ready, and she wasn’t sure she could live with the guilt of what she was about to do.
Breathe, Lisa. Breathe.
She steadied her breathing and pasted a wide smile on her face as she pulled the door open.
-~-
House evaded Stacy’s burning gaze. He was being obnoxious and callous, and he couldn’t bring himself to stop. His vindictive appetite fed on Stacy’s embarrassment. As a sharp pang of pain shot through his thigh, he clenched his jaw, feeling justified in his less than exemplary conduct. And then there was Cuddy, and how much it amused him to get a rise out of her. Her husky laughter dismissed snarky remarks that lesser mortals would shudder at. She was ballsy and collected, fiercely independent and everything he wasn’t feeling. He tried not to stare at her delectable ass as she padded out of the living room in her ridiculous slippers. Being in love (and furious) with Stacy didn’t make it any easier to forget their shared past. He remembered with surprising clarity their various unholy unions. The doorbell rang again, as if her visitor was becoming impatient. He wondered who it might be. She’d looked visibly shaken when she’d excused herself, but she had obviously been expecting someone earlier. That meant she didn’t want them to meet the visitor in question. A boyfriend, he surmised and frowned at the startling unpleasantness of the thought.
He heard the click of the opening door, the quiet whistle of the wind seeking refuge from the night, followed by the warmth of an exuberant greeting that made his stomach clench in something that resembled panic.
“Hey, mom!”
House’s gaze shot to Stacy’s wide-eyed stare in alarm. Woes forgotten, they shared a long laden look. He hadn’t seen this coming. His eyes frantically touched on the items in the neat living room, trying to place the clues of a boy that evidently lived here. The Xbox Kinect was a dead giveaway. The photos on the mantle caught his attention. From his vantage point, he couldn’t see them in detail, but they all featured a boy through the various stages of his life from toddling to toting some sort of sports trophy.
“Hey, babe. Watch it, you’re all muddy! Shoes at the door,” Cuddy was instructing the invisible boy. “We have guests. Come on in.”
Afire with curiosity, House straightened in his seat, a deep frown denting his brow. He exchanged another confused stare with Stacy, before a fairly tall, lanky boy who looked to be somewhere in his preteen years burst into the living room. Clearly expecting other guests, he faltered at the sight of them, as if he didn’t quite know what to make of their presence.
House drank in the slight frown that formed across the boy’s rain-splattered brow.
“Stacy, House, this is my son, Jake,” Cuddy declared, and it was impossible to miss the pride in her voice. It was also impossible to miss the nervous flutter of her hand as she tucked a strand of wavy dark hair behind her ear. “Jake, this is Stacy, the hospital’s lawyer, and Doctor House, who is going to join the hospital in a couple of weeks as head of the new diagnostics department,” she explained, as if the two of them had already discussed the intricacies of her new recruits.
House shifted his gaze back to the boy, who was now smiling a close-lipped, well-mannered smile. By any standard, Jake Cuddy - if that was his last name - was a good-looking kid. His short brown hair, fair in the photos, was darkened and tousled by a combination of wind, rainwater and sweat. His eyes were a curious blue that was even more interesting when framed by wet, spiked eyelashes. He wore a soccer outfit: knee-length socks with shin-guards underneath them, maroon shorts and a plain white t-shirt. All items were equally mud-streaked.
“Hi Stacy and Doctor House,” he greeted them politely. Jake’s sharp gaze fell on the crutches House had propped against the back of his armchair. Pausing curiously but not long enough to be rude, he then shifted his stare to assess Stacy. House thought she looked a little bit daunted by the child’s easy confidence, but Stacy had faced the worst juries and judges without so much as a misplaced blink. He figured it was part of deflecting how much this development in Cuddy’s life left him unbalanced.
“Hello, Jacob,” House heard himself speak and forced a sarcastic smirk onto his lips. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Your mother has told us so much about you. In fact, we’ve spoken of nothing else the past hour,” he lied, giving Cuddy a pointed look over her son’s head. She shied away from meeting his eyes - an admission of guilt, if he’d ever seen one.
“Hi,” Stacy echoed awkwardly. “Nice to meet you, Jake.”
Cuddy cut into the palpable tension by placing both hands on Jake’s shoulders. “Alright, babe. Shower, now. You’re stinking up the place,” she teased.
Jake rolled his eyes at that, and the gesture was disturbingly reminiscent of Cuddy. “Nice to meet you guys,” he said, waving an arm over his head as Cuddy guided him out of the living room and into the hallway.
House strained to hear their faint voices as they kept up a lively conversation all the way down the hallway, but he couldn’t make out anything except Jake’s, “… and I scored!” said with more gusto than the rest of the conversation. He thought the boy must have been around ten years old, and he struggled to fit that into the timeline of when he had last seen Cuddy. Was she married? He hadn’t seen a ring at any point during the past six weeks. He couldn’t have missed a ring. He looked at the photos again, narrowing his eyes to bring the images into sharp focus. There didn’t seem to be a father figure anywhere. If the child was ten, she had already had him when he had last seen her in Boston. A wry smile ghosted over his lips at the memory. Maybe she had adopted, he rationalized, but that didn’t explain the child’s resemblance to her.
When she walked back into the living room, she was both radiant and weary. House had never seen that particular combination on her, and he struggled to adjust his image of the woman standing in the doorway, tensely tying the sash of a blue robe she had evidently sought from her bedroom. Lisa Cuddy, the youngest doctor to ever hold the title of dean of medicine at Princeton Plainsboro, the first female dean, top of her class at the University of Michigan, unapologetically gorgeous, always dressed to the nines, always on top of her game. Lisa Cuddy, mother to ten-year-old Jacob.
“… and the mystery of the Xbox is solved. Tune in next week for more of Lisa Cuddy’s secret children,” House announced mockingly, imitating the tune of a radio commercial as he stilled her with a spearing glare.
Stacy wisely opted to stay out of that one, and Cuddy cleared her throat uncomfortably, mirroring his stiff posture. “It’s not a secret, House,” she said with quiet dignity, and whether intentionally or not she made him feel very small. “Everyone knows. Don’t overanalyze this. It hasn’t exactly been the ideal time to catch up,” she packaged the omission so nicely that he would have believed her had he been less desperate for a diversion.
“It,” he mimicked, using air quotes to emphasize the pronoun. “ - is not exactly such an insignificant detail. I would imagine having a child would qualify to make an appearance in small talk.”
Her incisive glare lit with the fire House remembered. “Small talk?” she echoed on a sneer. “At which point between trying not to kill you by not amputating your leg and then dealing with your post-infarction self-imposed blues was I supposed to make small talk?” she asked tightly, her voice controlled and even.
He scoffed, at a loss for words, and rubbed his thigh almost roughly. “Where’s daddy dearest?”
“House,” Stacy warned, but he barely heard her over the racket inside his head.
Cuddy didn’t acknowledge her either. She looked frozen, as if he’d dashed her with a bucket of ice-cold water in the middle of January. “That’s none of your business,” she said flatly, still perfectly composed, but House heard the catch in her voice. He had known Lisa Cuddy too intimately to not pick up on the nuances of her altercations. He had obsessed over her for far too long. And this certainly meant something.
He shrugged then, like it suddenly didn’t matter, resigned to retreating for the day. “At least we have an owner for the Xbox. I was having a hard time placing you on the playground.”
“He seems like a wonderful little boy, Lisa,” Stacy intervened, the words warm and sincere in the aftermath of his snide remarks.
Cuddy smiled at her. “Thank you.”
“We should get going,” Stacy declared with faux remorse. She’d always been a good liar, which, House reasoned, made her an excellent lawyer. “Thank you again for having us.”
“It was my pleasure,” Cuddy replied automatically. It was one of those responses that had been drilled into her and made up with propriety for what it lacked in sincerity. Despite her many achievements, Lisa Cuddy had always been a terrible liar. Perfunctory smile in place, she followed them into the foyer and held the door open for them. As she waved them off, she didn’t urge them to stay longer or invite them for a repeat.
The rain had almost stopped, leaving a moody drizzly cloud in its wake. Streetlights lit the inky black night like beacons of refuge. His leg hurt like the devil had chomped into it, and Stacy walked at his side rigidly, holding in a thousand words he could almost hear in the silence.
“That was an interesting twist,” he remarked conversationally.
And that unleashed her words.
TBC
Author: snowflake912
Pairing: House/Cuddy/Stacy, Jake.
Rating: PG-13 (subject to change)
Warnings: None.
Summary: Jake Cuddy's world is a whimsical study of people, puzzles and music - until one Tuesday in February Gregory House stumbles into his mother's life. As Jake comes to find, birthmarks are hard to hide, and their revelation leaves him caught in a web of hope and denial, both estranged and coveted.
Disclaimer: It's sad, but I don't own any of these wonderful characters (pre-character slaughter).
Author's Note:
This chapter took a little longer than expected. Real life has been quite busy lately. I'm sitting for the GMAT in a week, and studying has been taking up much of my free time. Still, at 40,000 feet, I managed to put this together. I don't love it, particularly, but it's a step in the story to be told. I'm struggling a little with their mindsets. That said, I'm beta-less. I usually write without a beta, but lately it's becoming glaringly clear that I need someone to bounce ideas off of during the creative process. So any volunteers in that regard would be much appreciated.
Onto the good stuff. Please enjoy!
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Chapter Three: Wage Your War
I’ve got this feeling, there’s something that I missed
I could do almost anything to you
Don’t you breathe, don’t you breathe
(Snow Patrol - Somewhere A Clock Is Ticking)
Lisa Cuddy did not pace.
She said this to herself thirteen times as she wore a hole into the deep green carpet of her father’s study. The last time she had paced, she’d been in Princeton-General, outside the radiology wing, where the smell of sterile white tiles made her feel nauseous. The last time she had paced, a three-year old Jake had been getting an abdominal X-Ray to determine the fate of the marble he had smilingly swallowed. That time she hadn’t particularly cared for the fact that she wasn’t a woman who paced. She’d been worried sick.
This dreadfully quiet Sunday afternoon, dressed in a cheerful, cashmere ruby red v-neck, she was pacing again.
She hadn’t slept in days. At ten in the morning, she had ushered a grumbling Jake to the car and drove to her mother’s house, two hours early for their Sunday lunch. Arlene Cuddy was a force to be reckoned with, especially when she was suspicious. Fielding her probes had been grueling. As soon as the lunch leftovers had been cleared from the table, Lisa had cornered Julia and told her to meet her in their father’s study. So she waited, and she paced. And she felt guilty because Jake - sweet and cautious Jake - would never know that the father he had asked for time and time again was going to be minutes away. She felt guilty because she knew she would continue to lie to him.
The door creaked open, and Lisa whipped around to find Julia walking in, eyebrows caught in a shallow frown of concern. She closed the door and walked over to one of the maroon leather chairs, lowering herself into the plush seat. “Well?” Julia prodded.
She heaved a deep breath and paused mid-stride to encounter her sister’s expectant gaze. “House - Gregory House - is in Princeton.”
As the implication of that simple statement dawned on Julia, her shapely eyebrows climbed high onto her brow. “What do you mean he’s in Princeton? What is he doing here? When is he leaving? Are you in contact with him? Does he know anything?” she fired in rapid succession.
“It’s ah-complicated,” she muttered and rubbed a palm across her forehead tiredly.
“I’m listening.”
Walking over to the empty armchair, she fell into the leather seat and released a trembling breath. “The past four weeks have been insane,” she began.
“Four weeks?” Julia repeated - clearly baffled.
“Four weeks ago, I walked into the clinic to find House chewing out one of the visiting physicians.” Julia’s gasp barely registered on her as she replayed that fateful afternoon in her mind. “He was screaming in pain. He had an infarction in his right thigh, and he’d been misdiagnosed for three consecutive days. When I found him, he had already diagnosed himself and was begging for morphine. I admitted him and personally oversaw his case…”
“Wait, what was he doing in Princeton?” Julia cut her off impatiently.
“His girlfriend’s cousin was getting married.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Yeah, Stacy Warner,” she smiled ruefully. “The surgeon wanted to amputate his leg, but House would hear none of it. I suggested a middle-ground surgery that would save the leg but leave it severely impaired. When we put him in a medically induced coma, Stacy authorized the surgery through medical proxy. We removed this much -” she made a fist with her right hand “ - dead muscle from his thigh. He was furious when he woke up. He was furious with me for suggesting it. He was mostly furious with Stacy for authorizing it when she knew he didn’t want it. The following two weeks, they stayed here for his recovery, and he began attending physiotherapy sessions at the hospital. Last week, on a whim, he decided he wants to move to Princeton. He asked me for a job, which I gave him, against my better judgment, but I just couldn’t say no,” she finished. The night he’d asked her for a diagnostics department, she’d lain awake in her bed, staring at the ceiling as if the answers to this impending crisis could be found there. It had been the first of a series of sleepless nights. “And, no, of course he doesn’t know anything.”
“And you didn’t tell me any of this while it was happening?” Julia chided her. “You should have said no to the job. You should have sent him to Princeton-General from the very beginning.”
Lisa gave her an incredulous look. “I couldn’t, Julia. His condition was getting worse by the minute. It’s a miracle he didn’t wind up dead from all the toxins that necrotic tissue was releasing into his blood.”
“Forget the medicine. You’re in way over your head here,” she said candidly. “If Jake finds out about him, he’s going to want to know him. Even though he’s stopped asking, you know how much that boy wants to know his father. If he finds out about Jake…”
“I can’t let either of those things happen,” Lisa interrupted in an effort to calm the violent roiling in her stomach.
Julia’s features softened with sympathy. “Then just don’t say anything. Don’t even think about it. When or if the time comes, you’ll introduce them to each other as your son and your employee - nothing more, nothing less.”
“He looks so much like him,” she whispered, her voice twisted with pained nostalgia. The instant her eyes had met House’s solemn gaze for the first time in a decade, the resemblance had stolen her breath. She quelled the tears that pricked the backs of her eyes. “Somebody’s going to notice.”
Julia shook her head with certainty. “You only see it because you know. To anyone else, it wouldn’t be remarkable,” she reassured her.
Lisa wished she shared her confidence. Burying her face in her hands, she voiced the thought that had been plaguing her during those restless nights. “Maybe it’s time for me to tell him.”
The sound of Julia’s loud tsk-ing was only slightly soothing. “Don’t be stupid, Leese. He wasn’t father material before, and I’m sure he still isn’t. Both he and Jake are better off this way."
That was what the rational part of her mind had been telling her. “What if he finds out?” she asked in an uncharacteristically small voice.
Julia left her seat and walked over to stand beside Lisa’s chair, pressing a comforting hand to her narrow shoulder. “There’s no way he can find out,” she said firmly.
Covering her sister’s hand with her own, Lisa gave her fingers a weak squeeze of gratitude. “You don’t know him,” she said and flashed an uneasy smile at her.
Pushing the thoughts away, Lisa frowned deeply. There was something off about the hospital’s accounts.
Tucked into the corner of her gray-beige couch, she worried her bottom lip as she read through last month’s financials again, still unable isolate the metaphorical bleed. The soft, downy throw tangled between her bare legs warded off the early evening chill, and the clock on the mantle kept time with soft ticks that filled the dusky silence. Tapping the tip of her ballpoint pen against the paper, she sighed and rolled her neck tiredly. She needed to get to the bottom of this. With renewed resolve, she rearranged the booklet and began by pouring over detailed pharmacology costs. She was barely through the first page when the shrill buzz of the doorbell reverberated in the empty house. A puzzled frown wrinkled her brow, and she cast a hurried look at the gilded clock. It was almost seven o’clock. Jake wasn’t due back from soccer practice for another twenty minutes.
Swinging her bare legs off the couch, she slid her feet into a pair of fuzzy slippers and placed the stack of papers on the sturdy glass table. Jake must have finished practice early, she reasoned as she hurried to the foyer. Foregoing the peephole, she unlatched the lock and lowered the door handle.
“You’re ear…” Lisa’s words died on her lips when the intricate door fell open and revealed her two unexpected visitors. As if summoned by her raging anxieties, Stacy and House stood at her doorstep, looking rundown and more exhausted than she felt. Stacy’s knee-length beige raincoat was rain-splattered, and a rueful smile that looked both affable and hapless curved her lips. Behind her, House, propped against a pair of crutches, was defying the Princeton cold in a worn, white t-shirt, his expression unreadable. Her heart twisted against her ribs in protest, and she was suddenly aware of how vulnerable she felt in her long-sleeved, checkered nightgown that stopped several inches above her knees. “Oh, hello, Stacy, House,” she stammered, opening the door wider and stepping back self-consciously.
Stacy bit her lip. “Lisa, we’re so sorry to be dropping by unannounced. Our car died just up the street, and they’ll need an hour to pick it up,” she explained apologetically and shot a surreptitious, telling look at House over her shoulder.
Over the past six weeks, Lisa had been privy to the tension between the pair. An embittered House had made no secret of his disdain for Stacy’s decision. Taken by his current plight, he obliviously shuffled to find a more comfortable arrangement. Composure restored, she looked back at Stacy and returned a subtle nod - their exchange settled. “Don’t worry about it. I’m happy to have you guys. Please come in,” she ushered them inside, shutting the door against the beginnings of a rainy night. Leading them through the foyer and into the living room, she watched their gazes trail along her homey furniture, thankful that neither of them lingered on the framed photographs long enough to notice the little boy featured prominently in most of them. The erratic rhythm of her heart quieted at the notion of shelving the explanations for now. When they hovered around the furniture, she made a vague gesture with her arm, encompassing the two arm chairs and the three-seat sofa where her throw was strewn. “Please sit,” she urged them, and House promptly dropped into one of the plush, pale blue armchairs.
“Nice slippers,” he remarked, his voice scratchy and misplaced in the comfort of her living room.
A hurried glance at her feet made her acknowledge the teasing sarcasm in his voice with a half-smile. Lifting her gaze back to his, she found him averting Stacy’s warning glance like a reprimanded child. “Would you like to have anything to drink? Tea? Coffee? Soda?” she offered.
“Scotch?” House intervened, sharp blue eyes narrowing on the stack of papers she’d left on the coffee table.
“Sure,” she answered quickly, nodding in confirmation. They both looked like they needed a drink - badly. Stacy was frowning as she loitered beside him and followed his stare to the printout of the hospital’s budget. “Stacy?” she prodded, hoping to distract her from her obvious predicament. “Wine?” she suggested and plucked the knit afghan from the couch, draping it around her shoulders like a shield.
Shaken out of her thoughts, Stacy smiled self-consciously. “Tea is fine for me,” she declared quietly. “I’ll help,” she said and followed Lisa out of the living room and into the spacious kitchen, where a breakfast table was tucked into a nook bordered by floor-to-ceiling windows that boasted a well-kempt backyard. Stacy eyed the set-up appreciatively. Last Sunday, they had sat across from each other at that table, sipping black coffee and pouring over the legal case against Philip Brown. Stacy had gushed incessantly about what she had fondly dubbed the breakfast corner.
Moving around with familiar ease, Lisa switched on the electric kettle and reached for the cupboard over the sink, releasing the magnetic latch. She scanned the contents and finally selected an unopened bottle of scotch.
“I feel terrible about this,” Stacy confessed. “We’ve interrupted your evening. You were working and obviously waiting for someone. I’m sorry. I talked Greg into…”
“Stacy,” Lisa cut her off firmly. “Don’t be silly. I’m glad you thought of coming over. I wouldn’t want you to be waiting in the rain when I’m only a couple of minutes away. And House’s leg probably hurts - a lot,” she added in a quieter voice. She thought of him sitting in her living room and felt another pang of dread. He was much too close to everything she had been fiercely protecting for a decade.
Stacy swallowed tightly and used both hands to push her hair away from her face. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Not that he would tell me,” she added under her breath.
Pulling an ice tray out of the freezer, Lisa gave her a sympathetic look. Three cubes of ice rattled into an expensive crystal tumbler. “I’m sorry,” she said sincerely. “He’ll come around.” The confidence in her voice made the other woman shake her head sadly. Lisa caught the glint of tears in her eyes.
“I don’t think he will,” she admitted.
A frown sketched across her brow as she poured scotch into the tumbler. “He loves you,” she stated reassuringly.
“Not enough to forgive me,” she murmured.
Lisa looked up just in time to catch her quickly brush away a stray tear with the back of her hand. She promptly turned around under the ruse of rifling through a box of teabags, allowing the other woman a couple of minutes to compose herself. When she turned back to face her, Lisa was holding both their drinks.
“Thank you,” Stacy said, taking the ceramic mug out of her hands.
“It’s chamomile. It has a soothing effect,” she joked with a half-smile.
Stacy’s answering smile was tremulous but grateful that they hadn’t dwelled on the topic.
They returned to the living room to find House still perched on the armchair, staring intently at the hospital’s budget, which was now brazenly splayed across his lap. The image took her back to an early Ann Arbor morning fourteen years ago. His hair had been lighter, his stubbly face not quite as weary as he’d skimmed her syllabus and spewed out disconcertingly accurate judgments on her character.
“That’s classified information, you know,” she told him dryly, pressing the cool glass into his palm before burrowing into the corner of the couch to watch him as he tipped the glass back and swallowed the golden liquid. From the other armchair, Stacy was watching them with a curious frown.
He steadied the tumbler on the flat arm of the chair and gave her one of those brilliant, sparkling looks that said he had unraveled something. Throwing his gaze back to the scattered papers, he ran his calloused index finger down one of the sheets. “Your oncologist is a thief,” he declared with an easy grin. “Every time he signs off on a budget,” he paused and rifled through the papers to select his proof. Collating five sheets, he thrust them at her impatiently. “That budget happens to increase by say ten grand. Sometimes he’s bold and he goes for twenty. I have to say, it’s been working out well for him. You could barely tell at the beginning, but then the additions started accumulating, and the entire hospital’s budget flickered by three percent. He couldn’t expect a Jew not to notice.” He shook his head with mock indignation.
“Give me that,” she muttered, collecting the papers out of his hands. She quickly scanned through his findings as he sipped the scotch. “Damn it,” she hissed, following Hank Tanner’s signature across the fluctuating budgets. She’d been trying to find a pattern by department, not by delegation of authority.
“Are you going to fire him?” House pushed, returning a messy heap of unused documents to the coffee table.
“Of course I’m going to fire him,” she snapped.
Ignoring her snide tone, he plowed forward, intent on driving his point home. “Good, because I have just the guy for you. James Wilson, board certified oncologist, fired from his last job for caring.”
“Greg, I think Lisa has given us more than our share of gratuity jobs.” The reprimand made him press his lips together as if biting in something acrid.
Sensing the brewing argument, Lisa graciously interceded with a kind smile and quick reassurance. “I’m actually privileged that the two of you want to work at PPTH.”
To her left, House snorted childishly. “Totally,” he piped in, which only made Stacy sigh in resignation.
Lisa rolled her eyes, realigned the papers and settled back into the couch exhaustedly. “I’ve been trying to figure this out for weeks, but I just couldn’t doubt anyone from my board, especially Hank. He’s always so eager to help out, I just didn’t think…”
“Are you sure he’s not just eagerly salivating after you?” The suggestive look he gave her trailed down her form, lingering on the expanse of bare thigh peeking from below her throw.
She felt herself flush with awareness.
“Greg!” Stacy exclaimed in alarm. It was almost like she hadn’t been in his presence long enough to expect him to say such things. Or - Lisa acknowledged with a twinge of remorse - he had changed to the extent that this kind of behavior from him was unrecognizable. Either way, she looked back at the papers, giving them ample opportunity to glare at each other, and she told herself this wasn’t awkward at all. So what if she and House shared a sexual history - an explosive one at that. So what if they had a child he didn’t know about. Stacy obviously had no idea about the former, and nobody but she, Julia and Angie Wheeler knew about the latter.
When she raised her head, House was shrugging, as insensitive as always. “In many cultures, that’s a compliment,” he said matter-of-factly, and Lisa allowed herself a smile private smile at that. “If all of your outfits are like the-deceiving-long-johns-that-turn-into-a-beach-dress,” he thrust his chin in the direction of her admittedly short nightgown. “I think you should pay your employees compensation for daily sexual harassment,” he concluded, the gleam in his eyes daring her to refute his logic.
“That’s enough, Greg.”
“Fine,” he sighed as if she had taken away his favorite toy, and Lisa’s heart sank when his gaze lit on the Xbox Kinect tidily sitting behind the glass doors of the closet under the flat-screen television. “Why do you have an Xbox Kinect?” he asked, eyebrows delving into a thoughtful frown. “Not that I don’t appreciate the console. I just never imagined you as the type to kick off your stilettos and shoot a round of virtual hoops.”
She parted her lips to say something, but the words died in her throat at the sound of the ringing doorbell. The buzz was insistent, almost jubilant, and she felt the blood drain out of her face as she quickly shuffled to her feet. “Excuse me,” she murmured under her breath, trying not to linger on their bewildered expressions. She wanted to scream. It was too soon. She wasn’t ready, and she wasn’t sure she could live with the guilt of what she was about to do.
Breathe, Lisa. Breathe.
She steadied her breathing and pasted a wide smile on her face as she pulled the door open.
-~-
House evaded Stacy’s burning gaze. He was being obnoxious and callous, and he couldn’t bring himself to stop. His vindictive appetite fed on Stacy’s embarrassment. As a sharp pang of pain shot through his thigh, he clenched his jaw, feeling justified in his less than exemplary conduct. And then there was Cuddy, and how much it amused him to get a rise out of her. Her husky laughter dismissed snarky remarks that lesser mortals would shudder at. She was ballsy and collected, fiercely independent and everything he wasn’t feeling. He tried not to stare at her delectable ass as she padded out of the living room in her ridiculous slippers. Being in love (and furious) with Stacy didn’t make it any easier to forget their shared past. He remembered with surprising clarity their various unholy unions. The doorbell rang again, as if her visitor was becoming impatient. He wondered who it might be. She’d looked visibly shaken when she’d excused herself, but she had obviously been expecting someone earlier. That meant she didn’t want them to meet the visitor in question. A boyfriend, he surmised and frowned at the startling unpleasantness of the thought.
He heard the click of the opening door, the quiet whistle of the wind seeking refuge from the night, followed by the warmth of an exuberant greeting that made his stomach clench in something that resembled panic.
“Hey, mom!”
House’s gaze shot to Stacy’s wide-eyed stare in alarm. Woes forgotten, they shared a long laden look. He hadn’t seen this coming. His eyes frantically touched on the items in the neat living room, trying to place the clues of a boy that evidently lived here. The Xbox Kinect was a dead giveaway. The photos on the mantle caught his attention. From his vantage point, he couldn’t see them in detail, but they all featured a boy through the various stages of his life from toddling to toting some sort of sports trophy.
“Hey, babe. Watch it, you’re all muddy! Shoes at the door,” Cuddy was instructing the invisible boy. “We have guests. Come on in.”
Afire with curiosity, House straightened in his seat, a deep frown denting his brow. He exchanged another confused stare with Stacy, before a fairly tall, lanky boy who looked to be somewhere in his preteen years burst into the living room. Clearly expecting other guests, he faltered at the sight of them, as if he didn’t quite know what to make of their presence.
House drank in the slight frown that formed across the boy’s rain-splattered brow.
“Stacy, House, this is my son, Jake,” Cuddy declared, and it was impossible to miss the pride in her voice. It was also impossible to miss the nervous flutter of her hand as she tucked a strand of wavy dark hair behind her ear. “Jake, this is Stacy, the hospital’s lawyer, and Doctor House, who is going to join the hospital in a couple of weeks as head of the new diagnostics department,” she explained, as if the two of them had already discussed the intricacies of her new recruits.
House shifted his gaze back to the boy, who was now smiling a close-lipped, well-mannered smile. By any standard, Jake Cuddy - if that was his last name - was a good-looking kid. His short brown hair, fair in the photos, was darkened and tousled by a combination of wind, rainwater and sweat. His eyes were a curious blue that was even more interesting when framed by wet, spiked eyelashes. He wore a soccer outfit: knee-length socks with shin-guards underneath them, maroon shorts and a plain white t-shirt. All items were equally mud-streaked.
“Hi Stacy and Doctor House,” he greeted them politely. Jake’s sharp gaze fell on the crutches House had propped against the back of his armchair. Pausing curiously but not long enough to be rude, he then shifted his stare to assess Stacy. House thought she looked a little bit daunted by the child’s easy confidence, but Stacy had faced the worst juries and judges without so much as a misplaced blink. He figured it was part of deflecting how much this development in Cuddy’s life left him unbalanced.
“Hello, Jacob,” House heard himself speak and forced a sarcastic smirk onto his lips. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Your mother has told us so much about you. In fact, we’ve spoken of nothing else the past hour,” he lied, giving Cuddy a pointed look over her son’s head. She shied away from meeting his eyes - an admission of guilt, if he’d ever seen one.
“Hi,” Stacy echoed awkwardly. “Nice to meet you, Jake.”
Cuddy cut into the palpable tension by placing both hands on Jake’s shoulders. “Alright, babe. Shower, now. You’re stinking up the place,” she teased.
Jake rolled his eyes at that, and the gesture was disturbingly reminiscent of Cuddy. “Nice to meet you guys,” he said, waving an arm over his head as Cuddy guided him out of the living room and into the hallway.
House strained to hear their faint voices as they kept up a lively conversation all the way down the hallway, but he couldn’t make out anything except Jake’s, “… and I scored!” said with more gusto than the rest of the conversation. He thought the boy must have been around ten years old, and he struggled to fit that into the timeline of when he had last seen Cuddy. Was she married? He hadn’t seen a ring at any point during the past six weeks. He couldn’t have missed a ring. He looked at the photos again, narrowing his eyes to bring the images into sharp focus. There didn’t seem to be a father figure anywhere. If the child was ten, she had already had him when he had last seen her in Boston. A wry smile ghosted over his lips at the memory. Maybe she had adopted, he rationalized, but that didn’t explain the child’s resemblance to her.
When she walked back into the living room, she was both radiant and weary. House had never seen that particular combination on her, and he struggled to adjust his image of the woman standing in the doorway, tensely tying the sash of a blue robe she had evidently sought from her bedroom. Lisa Cuddy, the youngest doctor to ever hold the title of dean of medicine at Princeton Plainsboro, the first female dean, top of her class at the University of Michigan, unapologetically gorgeous, always dressed to the nines, always on top of her game. Lisa Cuddy, mother to ten-year-old Jacob.
“… and the mystery of the Xbox is solved. Tune in next week for more of Lisa Cuddy’s secret children,” House announced mockingly, imitating the tune of a radio commercial as he stilled her with a spearing glare.
Stacy wisely opted to stay out of that one, and Cuddy cleared her throat uncomfortably, mirroring his stiff posture. “It’s not a secret, House,” she said with quiet dignity, and whether intentionally or not she made him feel very small. “Everyone knows. Don’t overanalyze this. It hasn’t exactly been the ideal time to catch up,” she packaged the omission so nicely that he would have believed her had he been less desperate for a diversion.
“It,” he mimicked, using air quotes to emphasize the pronoun. “ - is not exactly such an insignificant detail. I would imagine having a child would qualify to make an appearance in small talk.”
Her incisive glare lit with the fire House remembered. “Small talk?” she echoed on a sneer. “At which point between trying not to kill you by not amputating your leg and then dealing with your post-infarction self-imposed blues was I supposed to make small talk?” she asked tightly, her voice controlled and even.
He scoffed, at a loss for words, and rubbed his thigh almost roughly. “Where’s daddy dearest?”
“House,” Stacy warned, but he barely heard her over the racket inside his head.
Cuddy didn’t acknowledge her either. She looked frozen, as if he’d dashed her with a bucket of ice-cold water in the middle of January. “That’s none of your business,” she said flatly, still perfectly composed, but House heard the catch in her voice. He had known Lisa Cuddy too intimately to not pick up on the nuances of her altercations. He had obsessed over her for far too long. And this certainly meant something.
He shrugged then, like it suddenly didn’t matter, resigned to retreating for the day. “At least we have an owner for the Xbox. I was having a hard time placing you on the playground.”
“He seems like a wonderful little boy, Lisa,” Stacy intervened, the words warm and sincere in the aftermath of his snide remarks.
Cuddy smiled at her. “Thank you.”
“We should get going,” Stacy declared with faux remorse. She’d always been a good liar, which, House reasoned, made her an excellent lawyer. “Thank you again for having us.”
“It was my pleasure,” Cuddy replied automatically. It was one of those responses that had been drilled into her and made up with propriety for what it lacked in sincerity. Despite her many achievements, Lisa Cuddy had always been a terrible liar. Perfunctory smile in place, she followed them into the foyer and held the door open for them. As she waved them off, she didn’t urge them to stay longer or invite them for a repeat.
The rain had almost stopped, leaving a moody drizzly cloud in its wake. Streetlights lit the inky black night like beacons of refuge. His leg hurt like the devil had chomped into it, and Stacy walked at his side rigidly, holding in a thousand words he could almost hear in the silence.
“That was an interesting twist,” he remarked conversationally.
And that unleashed her words.
TBC