fic: colorblind - four
Title: Colorblind
Rating: NC-17 (language, sexuality, drug use)
Characters: Miranda Montgomery; ensemble cast; assorted pairings
Disclaimer: Not mine; they’re property of ABC, and I’m just playing with them
Teaser: Marriage is a time for family- and for avoiding those devastating childhood issues.
Prologue; One; Two; Three
4;
Watching his daughter zero in on Ian like a shark on a flailing swimmer before he even got through the door was as amusing as always- Amazon-looking blonde collided with slender brunette, strong arms locking around Ian’s form so tightly Ryan could hear the squeak all the way across the room.
“What did you bring me?” she asked before she even let him go, and ignored the way Ian rolled his eyes in answer.
“Here,” was Ian’s response as he pushed a small box at her, moved past when she was properly distracted and wrestled his luggage to the side. “I got everybody something but not until later, I want something for when we all get together- Thanks.” The last came when Ryan helped him wrestle off the heavy coat, Ian taking it long enough to throw it to the side before shrugging off the exceedingly expensive business jacket.
Expensive or not, it was tossed to the side as well, Ian intent on getting the tie open and off.
Picking jacket and coat up, catching the tie when it flew in the same direction, Ryan didn’t bother to comment, so used to Ian’s homecoming ritual he simply dropped the clothes onto the couch to be taken care of later.
Besides, he couldn’t blame the kid-
Ryan paused, glanced at his stepson again, and grimaced guiltily.
Not that Ian was a kid, not anymore.
“I escaped when he was busy in a meeting,” Ian was now saying as he made for the kitchen, unbuttoning his sleeves to roll them up, “and I turned off my phone after calling Em to avoid any guilt tactics.” A thumb slid along his suspenders to slide them from his shoulders as he beamed over at Ryan, impossibly pleased with his escape.
It did more than anything to remind Ryan that Ian was all Kendall in more than just looks.
Same green eyes, same features, same dark hair that he kept obsessively short because he hated his natural curl.
“You doing okay?”
“Oh, pfft, I can handle him, it’s not like he’s got anything new-” A quick swig of his soda, a shrug that was impossibly Kendall as he pushed himself up and into the counter, sitting like the gangly kid that had constantly run into walls years before. “‘It’s up to you when I’m gone to handle Cambias… take your work seriously… act more like Miranda, she appreciates our legacy…’” Another shrug, Ian already at home again.
But then Ian paused, looking up to the ceiling and then back at Ryan, hesitating.
“What?”
“Is mom here?”
“Asleep.” Sprawled out in bed and snoring, in fact-she was going to read him the riot act when she found out she missed Ian’s first few minutes home but she needed all the sleep she could get, the way she was running herself ragged now.
“Good.” Another quick swig, Ian swinging his legs once. “Uh, I ran into-”
“I love them!” Emma announced as she launched into the kitchen, waving some kind of jewelry at Ryan. “It’s gorgeous, perfect, I love it,” she continued, grabbing Ian and pulling his head down for a quick kiss against his forehead. “Look,” she blurted happily at her father’s expectant look. “He even got the right color, you’re amazing.”
“The Kane in me allows me to shop correctly,” he preened, ignoring Ryan’s curious look in regards to his unfinished sentence before, refusing to even meet his stepfather’s eyes, a sure sign of his unwillingness to say whatever it was. “I got you something else, too, but not now-”
“Yeah, yeah, later, I know.”
“Be nice or I’ll lose your other present,” Ian snarked back, laughing outright when he got a well known finger in response, Emma as blunt as always with her responses. “And I’m surprised whatshisname didn’t run off to grab what you wanted… I mean, he’s got a company jet all of his own… hey, how long has this business trip been?”
“Dad,” she said immediately, spinning to Ryan for assistance.
Right, like it was easy to tell Ian to ease up when Ryan completely agreed with him.
“Honey-”
“He’s older than you,” Ian sputtered, a furious younger brother.
“Only by, like, a few years-”
“A few years, a few years!” was Ian’s almost-squawked response, waving his soda at her. “And he’s never around.”
“We’ve been dating for years!”
“I stand by my comment,” Ian stated. “That guy works all the time-”
“And I’m usually with him,” Emma snapped back, “remember?” She folded her arms over her middle, gave Ian her best dirty glare. “We spend tons of time together, unlike you and your fiancée- oh, I’m sorry, your girlfriend, you haven’t actually showed her that ring yet- how many years have you been carrying it, three?”
“I’m waiting for the right moment,” he sputtered, actually flushing in embarrassment.
“Hey.” As usual when their protectiveness for each other slipped into bickering, they ignored him, gesturing angrily at each other with soda can and jewelry as if they weren’t both fully-grown adults. “Hey,” he barked more loudly and caught his daughter’s wrist, pulling her back towards him, rolling his eyes when they stunk their tongues out at each other childishly. “Come on, you two make each other crazy, calm down.”
“Ian’s an ass-”
“That’s not my fault, it’s genetic.” His attention off Emma, he dropped off the counter and tossed the can away, stretching a bit as Emma sniffed and dropped the bickering match as well. “I’m going to go steal the shower, get out of the Cambias wear.” Moving past Ryan, he paused again, squirmed a bit. “And, uh… uh, when Mom wakes up, tell her that aunt Bianca’s coming to the wedding.”
Then Ian bolted out of the kitchen, shamelessly fleeing any questions they might have had for him.
Miranda hated mirrors.
As long as she could remember, she’d hated mirrors.
They were useful but they were brutal, had no sympathy for anyone looking into their reflection, and yet she surrounded herself with them, something small and horrible inside making her look every time she passed one.
Stepping out of the shower, she had no self-control, couldn’t stop herself from swiping the fog off the surface of the bathroom mirror and taking in the reflection she found, a dark-haired woman standing tense in a fluffy white robe.
Girls were supposed to look like their mothers.
Miranda did what she could in an attempt to fix the flaws- she darkened her hair, dressed as feminine as she could. She tried to imitate the grace her mother had when she wasn’t already halfway through a bottle, and was only left frustrated, acutely aware of her strong shoulders and the chin she didn’t get from her mother’s side, brown eyes that weren’t the same shade as anyone on the Kane side of her genetic tree.
Her mother still had a killer figure in her forties, had curves that were missing on Miranda.
Left wanting as always, she tugged wet hair, studied the dark strands against pale fingers.
Remembering that this was nothing new, she forced herself to turn away from the mirror, drying off hurriedly and dressing, going through a mental checklist as she tried to get ready. By the time she was heading out the door, her earlier moment in the bathroom was pushed to the back of her head, her attention now on the day ahead.
The Inn was mostly quiet, only a few people in the lobby, all sitting and relaxing on the couches.
Grateful for it, relaxing a little more, she didn’t handle the collision as she was passing the front desk, the other person heading for the door apparently in too much of a hurry to slow the hell down- she managed not to fall on her ass, instead digging her fingers into the arm she found until she was steady again.
It wasn’t until she recognized the human battering ram that she found herself mentally thrown.
“You again.” She looked down automatically, sighed in relief to find no scattered papers or dropped phone, tilted her head back to find him scratching the back of his neck, features looking flustered. “Did you time this?” she asked helplessly, not sure how to handle the way he looked past her for a moment, glanced over his shoulder, and then grinned broadly at her, a full-on cat-that-ate-the-canary grin.
After a second, he offered, “We have to stop meeting like this?”
“That’s all you have to say?” Another jilted grin, as he glanced around and then focused on her again, offered a shrug that was entirely too boyish on a grown man.
“Ma always told me to try to be endearing.”
Oh, she realized as he looked at her again, more intently- oh, god, Captain Clumsy was flirting with her.
“You look like an ax murderer,” she told him when he stared at her a few more seconds.
“I do?”
“You do,” she assured him, glancing past him and shifting uneasily, not sure why she felt guilty. It was kind of weird, the way he was staring at her, but it wasn’t intimidating so much as… baffling and, well, maybe a little endearing.
Unfortunately for him, she was officially uncomfortable.
“Watch where you’re going from now on,” Miranda finally said, pushing a palm against his chest and ducking past him, spinning around to wave him off when she felt him revolve to follow her movements like some kind of pointer dog. “Go off and find someone else to crash into, sweetheart.”
“Sweetheart?” he echoed, raising his voice to make sure she heard. “Is that a term of endearment?”
He had big ears, she decided, reaching behind her to push at the door when she reached it. “No,” she assured him, jaw aching and suddenly desperate to just disappear off the face of the earth. “No, it’s not.”
“Maybe the third time’ll be the charm,” he teased as she backed out of the door, shaking her head at the way he was grinning after her, so completely focused on her even through the glass that she moved faster, badly rattled.
Except the smile was still tugging at her lips when she parked at the house, knocked until the door swung open.
“What’s that look for?” Emma demanded immediately, squinting behind her glasses as Miranda pushed past her, feeling more comfortable than she had the last time she’d been by. “What’s that look?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s weird,” Emma insisted and Miranda rolled her eyes, refusing to let Emma’s constant desire to know everything ruin her slightly better mood. She glanced into the empty living room and then kept moving, knowing that her aunt and uncle were always up at this time. “Miranda.”
“I saw a good movie last night,” she sighed, and got a disbelieving snort in response.
They’d have a day together, she knew with utter certainty- she always had a day just with Emma.
But she wasn't in the mood now.
Propelling herself easily into the kitchen, she looked around, pausing when the lean figure digging through the cabinets froze in mid-grab for a box of crackers, clearly as much of a human garbage disposal as always. Then he actually saw her and his face lit up, so happy to see her it made her own mood notch up even more.
“I was going to surprise you over at the Inn but I wanted to see mom real quick.” An arm slid around her, a box of crackers pressing into her side as he kissed her temple, a quick show of affection that she leaned into helplessly.
But then he was pulling away and she steeled herself, shifting as he opened the box.
“You’re back early.”
“I escaped,” he shrugged, and she snorted in helpless amusement.
Miranda herself already been back in Paris by the time aunt Kendall had divorced uncle Zach but she remembered most everything that had happened from family members over the following years. Kendall had managed to get custody until uncle Josh had shown up- then Zach had used Josh to get partial custody, which at first he had taken full advantage of. Then he’d gotten more and more involved with Cambias with her mother, and now he dragged Ian off for long months at a time to prepare him for the day he would be sharing the helm with Miranda.
Other than that, though, there wasn’t much interaction.
So Ian understood the missing parent phenomenon even if he never seemed to be very… affected by it.
Miranda couldn’t say the same.
“Gabby says hi,” Ian said after a moment, staring at her carefully, and she smiled through the distant pang the name caused. “Still with that guy, the tattoo artist.” He popped another cracker into his mouth, scowled a little to himself. “I don’t think she’s just with him to piss off Bianca anymore- Oh, hey, did you know they live together now?”
“They do?”
“They even have a damn cat.”
“Oh?”
“Apparently Reese keeps coming up with excuses to come over for hours at a time. It’s driving Gab crazy.”
Miranda could remember when she’d heard about the tattoo artist, her mother’s grunt of disgust across the room and the comments about what kind of parenting skills Reese had. And now her sister was apparently still together with the tattoo guy, and they were sharing a home and a cat, and Reese visited them all the damn time.
Trying to remember the last time her mother had spoken to Gabby, Miranda was pulling a blank.
“What about you?”
She rolled her eyes at his immediate panic, proof he knew what she was really asking. “What?”
“You. What about you?”
“It’s not time yet.”
“Oh, come on!”
“Quit it,” Ian snapped right back, color rising in his cheeks. “It’s not time yet. Jesus, you’re as bad as Em.”
“She’s going to get sick of waiting.”
“No, she’s not.” He gestured at her with the open box of crackers, so much like his mom that she found herself grinning, mood notching back up again. “We talked about it like adults and she understands.”
“Did you show her the ring?”
“Not yet-” She opened her mouth and he pressed a palm against her face, looking childish in his embarrassment. “Please stop,” he begged, something serious under the playful tone that made her pause. “You know how I feel about her.”
She nodded and he dropped his hand, watching her as he went back to popping crackers into his mouth.
“Do you know where they are?” she asked after a minute or so of their silence, and Ian gestured over his shoulder at the back door. “What are they doing outside?”
“Hell if I know.”
“Helpful,” she sighed, moving past him to the back door, curious.
They should have heard her car, been able to hear her in the kitchen with Ian.
Cracking open the door, she found the two of them perched on the top step, completely involved in their quiet conversation, her aunt, to Miranda’s surprise, still wearing her nightgown. Thrown, she opened her mouth to get their attention, figure out what had them so captivated.
“… Bianca.”
Miranda stopped all at once, stiffening as she listened.
“She probably won’t even-”
“I don’t want her at the damn wedding.” Aunt Kendall, sounding upset in a way that suggested she was close to tears, something not very surprising. She had become more and more distressed over Miranda’s mother over the years, sometimes slipped into angry tears when her mother’s name was mentioned. “I don’t want her there.”
Swallowing, badly rattled, Miranda carefully shut the door again, knowing they wouldn’t hear it anyway.
Turning around, working hard not to sway on her feet, Miranda stared at Ian, waiting.
“Chris called her, apparently, and she decided to take him up on his offer. We… saw her in Tokyo and she just announces that she’ll be in town for the wedding, already brought gifts, she said.”
“She won’t be here if she doesn’t know when it is.”
They didn’t even have a date yet. It didn’t mean she was actually coming.
It didn’t mean anything, the chances of her mother actually showing up incredibly low.
Her mood had been dragged from one extreme to the other since she had gotten up after a sleepless night, and now there was a heavy weight on her shoulders, entirely too familiar after a lifetime of carrying it.
“I’m gonna go talk to Emma,” she finally stated, and stalked away again.
When Chris declared war on his mother, he announced it with the arrival of Rita, a twenty-four year old extremely blonde wedding planner originally from Nebraska, raised in Texas and now working in Pine Valley. “Everybody gets divorced and married so often over here I already have my retirement fund set up,” was her greeting to the shell-shocked Adam when he came home to find his partner and the bizarre woman chatting it up about orchids.
Beyond a quick greeting, Chris was ignoring him, had the slightly manic glint in his gaze that promised that he had officially hit the limit of what he was going to take in regards to his own damn wedding.
For her part, Rita looked extremely excited about it all, took in Chris’ every comment with bright smiles and understanding nods, assuring him that she was just the official planner and that it would still fall to them and their decisions. “Mothers sometimes get overexcited,” she murmured sympathetically, hurriedly jotting down notes.
“That’s one way of saying it- No, tan, not coffee,” Chris corrected, and Rita quickly scratched something out.
“Have you considered latte as a color?”
“We don’t want latte.”
“Okay then,” she replied brightly first at Chris and then at Adam, still standing in a confused daze and staring down at the two of them, trying to figure out what all had happened since he’d left that morning. “Tan and black.”
“That’s right.”
“Okay then,” she chirped, and smiled brightly. Again.
“Chris.” He got no response, blew out a breath in frustration. “Chris.”
“Busy.”
Darting forward, he caught at Chris’ arm, not pausing at the surprised yelp that followed.
“I just need to talk to Groomzilla here,” Adam informed Rita, grimacing at the happy grin that met his words as he dragged the sputtering writer into the kitchen behind him. “What the hell?” he demanded as soon as the door swung closed, catching Chris when he once again tried to make a run for it. “Spike.”
“Ugh.”
“I’ll call you Fluffy if you don’t quit.”
“I told you,” was the quick response, “I’m sick of it, I’m not putting up with it any longer, it’s our wedding.”
“Kendall’s going to-”
“She’ll get over it.”
“Well, maybe on her deathbed.”
“I know what I’m doing, it’ll go fine. Nice ceremony, happy family, and then things will go back to normal.”
“But-”
“This is something I can do,” Chris blurted, and all the words sort of dried up before Adam knew what happened. “We can’t go off and do this ourselves, I’ve accepted that, but I can control what kind of stupid flowers I have to get and the stupid color combinations, that I can do.”
This was a Miranda thing, an ‘I can’t fix her so I feel useless’ thing.
“Did something happen?” He got a confused stare. “With Miranda,” Adam clarified, “did something happen?”
“No.” But now he was staring at the wall behind Adam’s head, avoiding any and all eye contact. “No.”
“Chris.”
For a second, Chris looked firmly prepared to continue the bickering- but then he huffed out an angry breath and pressed his palms to his face, frame looking tense. When Adam reached out, brushed fingers across his shoulders, he found muscles tightly locked. “What happened?”
“Aunt Bianca’s coming.”
Adam didn’t expect that.
“Excuse me?”
“Aunt Bianca’s coming.” Chris dropped his hands, pressed his lips together and then exhaled harshly yet again. “Ian’s back early and he bumped into her in Tokyo, he said, and now she says she’ll be here for the wedding and this is just- I don’t want her there, Adam, I don’t want her at my wedding, she’s… toxic,” he finished in a rush, last word being spit out with so many emotion that the older man winced helplessly. “I can’t believe I invited her.”
“But you did.” Chris looked entirely too baffled. “If you didn’t want her to come, why did you invite her?”
“I was just being polite.”
As lies went, it was a good one.
As Kane lies went, it was almost worthy of a cringe.
“Do you want her to come?”
“No.” Except Chris wanted her to come, it was right there on his face, and he looked guilt-ridden over it. “It wouldn’t work anyway,” he abruptly said, apparently realizing Adam wasn’t buying it. “It’s stupid, I know what’ll happen. And I have other aunts so I don’t know why I wanted her to come. But Mom, you know, I know she wants her to be here.”
Under Adam’s palm, Chris felt heated, tense.
“It’s fine.”
“I think I’m going crazy, this… this is completely new, I can’t handle this.”
Technically, Adam knew they were cousins.
Ryan was his uncle by marriage, and so technically, they were cousins.
Except that didn’t mean much in Pine Valley, the way families kept lacing together one generation after the next- just off the top of his head, he thought of grandpa David, firmly attached to his dead brother’s wife for years, and the two of them still happy together. After Grandpa Adam had remarried grandma Brooke, they had been together right up until the end. Not to mention when aunt Colby had married Chris’ uncle Reggie (and they were still together, to the shock of most of the town that had placed bets on how quickly they would divorce) or Trey’s marriage to Amanda.
Everyone in the family remembered how close Kendall had been with Bianca, and everyone remembered how badly it had come undone- no apologies had ever been given and things had gotten worse and Adam acutely remembered the incident that Chris had told him about, the call when he had been sixteen that had gone unanswered.
“And it doesn’t matter anyway,” Chris was continuing in a rush. “I remember when Mom tried the intervention thing when I was a kid and aunt Bianca just picked up and she just left, just… like she didn’t even care. Miranda always came for Christmas but getting Bianca to come back was like pulling teeth and when she did, she was so… nasty, the things she would say when you were just trying to… talk to her.” There were bags under his eyes. “I don’t know what to do with Miranda, she’s like my sister and I don’t want us to be like…”
Silence, Chris looking completely torn.
Because he loved his family more than people realized he did, and he wanted his aunt at his wedding despite the fact that they all knew any kind of visit would just end in more stress for everybody involved.
“We need to think,” Adam finally decided, needing a few minutes to think everything through. “We’ll figure out the seating arrangements and then we’ll try something bigger.” He offered a kiss against a wrinkled forehead, another against a tightly creased mouth, felt relieved when Chris accepted it, still looking overwhelmed but just a little steadier when Adam pulled back and studied him. “This can’t be any harder than blizzards and train wrecks. Or the big parties that always seem to explode, can’t forget those.”
A snort, Chris looking like Chris again.
“We should have eloped.”
“Maybe it’s good we didn’t.” An incredulous and he grinned helplessly, entirely too relieved at how much of Chris he could see in the expression. “Maybe we need to all get together and just… see what happens.”
Miranda knew she could handle her mother for one day.
Nonetheless, she was still reeling when she got back to the Inn.
Already overwhelmed, it was like getting kicked in the gut, struck again while trying to deal with the first blow. She tried not to think about it but that was useless, only left her head filling with images and something in her chest aching. She tried to breathe through it, calm down, and that was impossible.
Only one day, she told herself firmly, it was only one day.
Her mother could be… stable for one day.
But her chest was getting tight and she felt exceedingly frail in the middle of the stupid lobby, walking where everyone could see her, surrounded by people and acutely aware of the fact that they were all probably staring at her.
Her, Miranda Montgomery, the rape baby with the drunken businesswoman of a mother.
Only one day, one foot in front of the other… and what were the chances of her even showing up?
She rarely showed up for anything anymore, not that it mattered at this point.
No, her mother was a intimidating presence, had become more of a boogeyman than the monster she had thought lived under her bed for two years. When she stayed away, which was becoming more and more often, she was only a heavy weight Miranda could sometimes manage, a burden Miranda had learned to carry.
But when her mother did show up, she came with the inevitable feeling of dread, the furious private prayers in the bathroom while checking make-up that ‘she won’t say anything too cringe-worthy tonight’ or ‘she’ll stay away from the sauce long enough to make a better impression,’ the urgent attempts to handle her that never worked.
If she came back now, to the wedding, and if she ruined it-
Except it wasn’t a question of if, Miranda knew, it was when and how.
There would be the veiled insinuations and the sharp comments, her mother’s spin on things that had happened decades before that the entire rest of the family already knew the story of. There would be cool smiles and superior glances, her mother as focused as ever on making sure that everyone knew everything she wanted them to know about her viewpoint on things, how she was right and they were wrong.
Her mother always seemed to be fighting some desperate war against the world that Miranda herself didn’t understand, couldn’t piece together. Every time Miranda saw her, her mother was charging out alone and frantic with whatever ammo she could gather, braced to carry out a campaign that she herself didn’t seem to be aware of.
It was jarring, confusing, impossible to handle.
Already feeling worse that she could remember in her entire life, just the thought of it was too much.
Fingers pressed against her hairline, she tried to breathe.
Dazed, she only twitched a little when someone touched her shoulder, lifting her head to see who it was.
It was probably a sign of her mental state that she couldn’t muster up any real surprise when she found Captain Clumsy studying her oddly, looking almost as rough as she felt. “What?”
“You okay?”
Pulling her shoulder away, unsure how to respond to the worry, she instead shook her head, turning her attention away from him. But now he was walking beside her, and despite the lack of any name and the clear interest that she never found all that interesting, she didn’t completely mind the physical company. “Great.”
“You almost bowled over a little old lady.”
“I collide with a lot of people,” she reminded him, feeling her mouth twitch just a little. Unable to even muster annoyance at the fact that her spirits were definitely lifted, she looked at him again. There were bags under his eyes, a little pale under his tan, and his grip looking too tight around the strap of the heavy-looking bag hooked over one shoulder. “What happened to you?”
“Long day.”
She waited, glanced over again when a few seconds ticked by. “That’s all?”
“Family issues.” He had none of the humor from that morning, clearly had nothing to add, but he did look pleased to see her, met her gaze squarely. She kept waiting, needing a distraction, and felt her lips twitch again when he winced. “My brother’s having… issues, and my mother’s…” A pause. “There was a death in the family. Lung cancer, never smoked a day in her damn life.”
Well, now she felt like shit again.
“Shouldn’t have said that,” he decided at her sharp breath. “Do you at least feel better?”
The elevator dinged, still unnamed Captain Clumsy stepping in behind her.
Hitting her floor, she stood back and watched him jab in his.
“Well?”
“A little,” she admitted, awkwardly aware that she was in a closed space with a creepy guy who kept crashing into her and kept trying to flirt without being good at it and who seemed entirely too… nice. “Do you have a name?”
“Do you?”
“Your social skills seem off.”
“They kicked in late.” When Miranda stared blankly, he grinned. “You won’t give me your name?”
“You’re a stalker.” He just kept grinning at her, waiting. Lost, Miranda crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the doors, refusing to give into the amusement he was causing. But she could feel his eyes on her, enough intensity that she had to press her lips together to keep a straight face. “I don’t date,” she informed him firmly.
“I just asked your name.”
They were almost at his floor.
She looked at him, rolled her eyes at the ridiculous grin she received.
“Come on,” he prodded, and she blew out a breath, gave up.
“Miranda.”
“What?”
“Miranda,” she repeated, only to feel the grin sliding off her face when she looked over, caught the look on his face. His features had gone sort of stiff, tight, and she faltered as he stared at her. “What?”
Another second and then his mouth twisted, a forced smile settling on his face. “Miranda.”
“That’s right.” Frozen under his focus, she dug her fingers into her arms, stood tense as he looked away and then glanced back at her. “That Miranda,” she said after a heartbeat, realizing what it was, that he’d probably finally realized who she was. Her mother was always in the tabloids, and she had popped up enough… “Cambias Miranda.”
“That’s not-” but the doors opened and his mouth snapped shut, his gaze flickering across her face.
“Your floor.”
He opened his mouth but then closed it, stepping jerkily away from her and to the open doors, grimacing when his shoulder hit the frame on the way out. “It’s not what you-” he started in an odd voice but the doors were sliding closed and she was steadfastly ignoring him even after he was left behind, her mother weighing heavier than before.
Rating: NC-17 (language, sexuality, drug use)
Characters: Miranda Montgomery; ensemble cast; assorted pairings
Disclaimer: Not mine; they’re property of ABC, and I’m just playing with them
Teaser: Marriage is a time for family- and for avoiding those devastating childhood issues.
Prologue; One; Two; Three
4;
Watching his daughter zero in on Ian like a shark on a flailing swimmer before he even got through the door was as amusing as always- Amazon-looking blonde collided with slender brunette, strong arms locking around Ian’s form so tightly Ryan could hear the squeak all the way across the room.
“What did you bring me?” she asked before she even let him go, and ignored the way Ian rolled his eyes in answer.
“Here,” was Ian’s response as he pushed a small box at her, moved past when she was properly distracted and wrestled his luggage to the side. “I got everybody something but not until later, I want something for when we all get together- Thanks.” The last came when Ryan helped him wrestle off the heavy coat, Ian taking it long enough to throw it to the side before shrugging off the exceedingly expensive business jacket.
Expensive or not, it was tossed to the side as well, Ian intent on getting the tie open and off.
Picking jacket and coat up, catching the tie when it flew in the same direction, Ryan didn’t bother to comment, so used to Ian’s homecoming ritual he simply dropped the clothes onto the couch to be taken care of later.
Besides, he couldn’t blame the kid-
Ryan paused, glanced at his stepson again, and grimaced guiltily.
Not that Ian was a kid, not anymore.
“I escaped when he was busy in a meeting,” Ian was now saying as he made for the kitchen, unbuttoning his sleeves to roll them up, “and I turned off my phone after calling Em to avoid any guilt tactics.” A thumb slid along his suspenders to slide them from his shoulders as he beamed over at Ryan, impossibly pleased with his escape.
It did more than anything to remind Ryan that Ian was all Kendall in more than just looks.
Same green eyes, same features, same dark hair that he kept obsessively short because he hated his natural curl.
“You doing okay?”
“Oh, pfft, I can handle him, it’s not like he’s got anything new-” A quick swig of his soda, a shrug that was impossibly Kendall as he pushed himself up and into the counter, sitting like the gangly kid that had constantly run into walls years before. “‘It’s up to you when I’m gone to handle Cambias… take your work seriously… act more like Miranda, she appreciates our legacy…’” Another shrug, Ian already at home again.
But then Ian paused, looking up to the ceiling and then back at Ryan, hesitating.
“What?”
“Is mom here?”
“Asleep.” Sprawled out in bed and snoring, in fact-she was going to read him the riot act when she found out she missed Ian’s first few minutes home but she needed all the sleep she could get, the way she was running herself ragged now.
“Good.” Another quick swig, Ian swinging his legs once. “Uh, I ran into-”
“I love them!” Emma announced as she launched into the kitchen, waving some kind of jewelry at Ryan. “It’s gorgeous, perfect, I love it,” she continued, grabbing Ian and pulling his head down for a quick kiss against his forehead. “Look,” she blurted happily at her father’s expectant look. “He even got the right color, you’re amazing.”
“The Kane in me allows me to shop correctly,” he preened, ignoring Ryan’s curious look in regards to his unfinished sentence before, refusing to even meet his stepfather’s eyes, a sure sign of his unwillingness to say whatever it was. “I got you something else, too, but not now-”
“Yeah, yeah, later, I know.”
“Be nice or I’ll lose your other present,” Ian snarked back, laughing outright when he got a well known finger in response, Emma as blunt as always with her responses. “And I’m surprised whatshisname didn’t run off to grab what you wanted… I mean, he’s got a company jet all of his own… hey, how long has this business trip been?”
“Dad,” she said immediately, spinning to Ryan for assistance.
Right, like it was easy to tell Ian to ease up when Ryan completely agreed with him.
“Honey-”
“He’s older than you,” Ian sputtered, a furious younger brother.
“Only by, like, a few years-”
“A few years, a few years!” was Ian’s almost-squawked response, waving his soda at her. “And he’s never around.”
“We’ve been dating for years!”
“I stand by my comment,” Ian stated. “That guy works all the time-”
“And I’m usually with him,” Emma snapped back, “remember?” She folded her arms over her middle, gave Ian her best dirty glare. “We spend tons of time together, unlike you and your fiancée- oh, I’m sorry, your girlfriend, you haven’t actually showed her that ring yet- how many years have you been carrying it, three?”
“I’m waiting for the right moment,” he sputtered, actually flushing in embarrassment.
“Hey.” As usual when their protectiveness for each other slipped into bickering, they ignored him, gesturing angrily at each other with soda can and jewelry as if they weren’t both fully-grown adults. “Hey,” he barked more loudly and caught his daughter’s wrist, pulling her back towards him, rolling his eyes when they stunk their tongues out at each other childishly. “Come on, you two make each other crazy, calm down.”
“Ian’s an ass-”
“That’s not my fault, it’s genetic.” His attention off Emma, he dropped off the counter and tossed the can away, stretching a bit as Emma sniffed and dropped the bickering match as well. “I’m going to go steal the shower, get out of the Cambias wear.” Moving past Ryan, he paused again, squirmed a bit. “And, uh… uh, when Mom wakes up, tell her that aunt Bianca’s coming to the wedding.”
Then Ian bolted out of the kitchen, shamelessly fleeing any questions they might have had for him.
Miranda hated mirrors.
As long as she could remember, she’d hated mirrors.
They were useful but they were brutal, had no sympathy for anyone looking into their reflection, and yet she surrounded herself with them, something small and horrible inside making her look every time she passed one.
Stepping out of the shower, she had no self-control, couldn’t stop herself from swiping the fog off the surface of the bathroom mirror and taking in the reflection she found, a dark-haired woman standing tense in a fluffy white robe.
Girls were supposed to look like their mothers.
Miranda did what she could in an attempt to fix the flaws- she darkened her hair, dressed as feminine as she could. She tried to imitate the grace her mother had when she wasn’t already halfway through a bottle, and was only left frustrated, acutely aware of her strong shoulders and the chin she didn’t get from her mother’s side, brown eyes that weren’t the same shade as anyone on the Kane side of her genetic tree.
Her mother still had a killer figure in her forties, had curves that were missing on Miranda.
Left wanting as always, she tugged wet hair, studied the dark strands against pale fingers.
Remembering that this was nothing new, she forced herself to turn away from the mirror, drying off hurriedly and dressing, going through a mental checklist as she tried to get ready. By the time she was heading out the door, her earlier moment in the bathroom was pushed to the back of her head, her attention now on the day ahead.
The Inn was mostly quiet, only a few people in the lobby, all sitting and relaxing on the couches.
Grateful for it, relaxing a little more, she didn’t handle the collision as she was passing the front desk, the other person heading for the door apparently in too much of a hurry to slow the hell down- she managed not to fall on her ass, instead digging her fingers into the arm she found until she was steady again.
It wasn’t until she recognized the human battering ram that she found herself mentally thrown.
“You again.” She looked down automatically, sighed in relief to find no scattered papers or dropped phone, tilted her head back to find him scratching the back of his neck, features looking flustered. “Did you time this?” she asked helplessly, not sure how to handle the way he looked past her for a moment, glanced over his shoulder, and then grinned broadly at her, a full-on cat-that-ate-the-canary grin.
After a second, he offered, “We have to stop meeting like this?”
“That’s all you have to say?” Another jilted grin, as he glanced around and then focused on her again, offered a shrug that was entirely too boyish on a grown man.
“Ma always told me to try to be endearing.”
Oh, she realized as he looked at her again, more intently- oh, god, Captain Clumsy was flirting with her.
“You look like an ax murderer,” she told him when he stared at her a few more seconds.
“I do?”
“You do,” she assured him, glancing past him and shifting uneasily, not sure why she felt guilty. It was kind of weird, the way he was staring at her, but it wasn’t intimidating so much as… baffling and, well, maybe a little endearing.
Unfortunately for him, she was officially uncomfortable.
“Watch where you’re going from now on,” Miranda finally said, pushing a palm against his chest and ducking past him, spinning around to wave him off when she felt him revolve to follow her movements like some kind of pointer dog. “Go off and find someone else to crash into, sweetheart.”
“Sweetheart?” he echoed, raising his voice to make sure she heard. “Is that a term of endearment?”
He had big ears, she decided, reaching behind her to push at the door when she reached it. “No,” she assured him, jaw aching and suddenly desperate to just disappear off the face of the earth. “No, it’s not.”
“Maybe the third time’ll be the charm,” he teased as she backed out of the door, shaking her head at the way he was grinning after her, so completely focused on her even through the glass that she moved faster, badly rattled.
Except the smile was still tugging at her lips when she parked at the house, knocked until the door swung open.
“What’s that look for?” Emma demanded immediately, squinting behind her glasses as Miranda pushed past her, feeling more comfortable than she had the last time she’d been by. “What’s that look?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s weird,” Emma insisted and Miranda rolled her eyes, refusing to let Emma’s constant desire to know everything ruin her slightly better mood. She glanced into the empty living room and then kept moving, knowing that her aunt and uncle were always up at this time. “Miranda.”
“I saw a good movie last night,” she sighed, and got a disbelieving snort in response.
They’d have a day together, she knew with utter certainty- she always had a day just with Emma.
But she wasn't in the mood now.
Propelling herself easily into the kitchen, she looked around, pausing when the lean figure digging through the cabinets froze in mid-grab for a box of crackers, clearly as much of a human garbage disposal as always. Then he actually saw her and his face lit up, so happy to see her it made her own mood notch up even more.
“I was going to surprise you over at the Inn but I wanted to see mom real quick.” An arm slid around her, a box of crackers pressing into her side as he kissed her temple, a quick show of affection that she leaned into helplessly.
But then he was pulling away and she steeled herself, shifting as he opened the box.
“You’re back early.”
“I escaped,” he shrugged, and she snorted in helpless amusement.
Miranda herself already been back in Paris by the time aunt Kendall had divorced uncle Zach but she remembered most everything that had happened from family members over the following years. Kendall had managed to get custody until uncle Josh had shown up- then Zach had used Josh to get partial custody, which at first he had taken full advantage of. Then he’d gotten more and more involved with Cambias with her mother, and now he dragged Ian off for long months at a time to prepare him for the day he would be sharing the helm with Miranda.
Other than that, though, there wasn’t much interaction.
So Ian understood the missing parent phenomenon even if he never seemed to be very… affected by it.
Miranda couldn’t say the same.
“Gabby says hi,” Ian said after a moment, staring at her carefully, and she smiled through the distant pang the name caused. “Still with that guy, the tattoo artist.” He popped another cracker into his mouth, scowled a little to himself. “I don’t think she’s just with him to piss off Bianca anymore- Oh, hey, did you know they live together now?”
“They do?”
“They even have a damn cat.”
“Oh?”
“Apparently Reese keeps coming up with excuses to come over for hours at a time. It’s driving Gab crazy.”
Miranda could remember when she’d heard about the tattoo artist, her mother’s grunt of disgust across the room and the comments about what kind of parenting skills Reese had. And now her sister was apparently still together with the tattoo guy, and they were sharing a home and a cat, and Reese visited them all the damn time.
Trying to remember the last time her mother had spoken to Gabby, Miranda was pulling a blank.
“What about you?”
She rolled her eyes at his immediate panic, proof he knew what she was really asking. “What?”
“You. What about you?”
“It’s not time yet.”
“Oh, come on!”
“Quit it,” Ian snapped right back, color rising in his cheeks. “It’s not time yet. Jesus, you’re as bad as Em.”
“She’s going to get sick of waiting.”
“No, she’s not.” He gestured at her with the open box of crackers, so much like his mom that she found herself grinning, mood notching back up again. “We talked about it like adults and she understands.”
“Did you show her the ring?”
“Not yet-” She opened her mouth and he pressed a palm against her face, looking childish in his embarrassment. “Please stop,” he begged, something serious under the playful tone that made her pause. “You know how I feel about her.”
She nodded and he dropped his hand, watching her as he went back to popping crackers into his mouth.
“Do you know where they are?” she asked after a minute or so of their silence, and Ian gestured over his shoulder at the back door. “What are they doing outside?”
“Hell if I know.”
“Helpful,” she sighed, moving past him to the back door, curious.
They should have heard her car, been able to hear her in the kitchen with Ian.
Cracking open the door, she found the two of them perched on the top step, completely involved in their quiet conversation, her aunt, to Miranda’s surprise, still wearing her nightgown. Thrown, she opened her mouth to get their attention, figure out what had them so captivated.
“… Bianca.”
Miranda stopped all at once, stiffening as she listened.
“She probably won’t even-”
“I don’t want her at the damn wedding.” Aunt Kendall, sounding upset in a way that suggested she was close to tears, something not very surprising. She had become more and more distressed over Miranda’s mother over the years, sometimes slipped into angry tears when her mother’s name was mentioned. “I don’t want her there.”
Swallowing, badly rattled, Miranda carefully shut the door again, knowing they wouldn’t hear it anyway.
Turning around, working hard not to sway on her feet, Miranda stared at Ian, waiting.
“Chris called her, apparently, and she decided to take him up on his offer. We… saw her in Tokyo and she just announces that she’ll be in town for the wedding, already brought gifts, she said.”
“She won’t be here if she doesn’t know when it is.”
They didn’t even have a date yet. It didn’t mean she was actually coming.
It didn’t mean anything, the chances of her mother actually showing up incredibly low.
Her mood had been dragged from one extreme to the other since she had gotten up after a sleepless night, and now there was a heavy weight on her shoulders, entirely too familiar after a lifetime of carrying it.
“I’m gonna go talk to Emma,” she finally stated, and stalked away again.
When Chris declared war on his mother, he announced it with the arrival of Rita, a twenty-four year old extremely blonde wedding planner originally from Nebraska, raised in Texas and now working in Pine Valley. “Everybody gets divorced and married so often over here I already have my retirement fund set up,” was her greeting to the shell-shocked Adam when he came home to find his partner and the bizarre woman chatting it up about orchids.
Beyond a quick greeting, Chris was ignoring him, had the slightly manic glint in his gaze that promised that he had officially hit the limit of what he was going to take in regards to his own damn wedding.
For her part, Rita looked extremely excited about it all, took in Chris’ every comment with bright smiles and understanding nods, assuring him that she was just the official planner and that it would still fall to them and their decisions. “Mothers sometimes get overexcited,” she murmured sympathetically, hurriedly jotting down notes.
“That’s one way of saying it- No, tan, not coffee,” Chris corrected, and Rita quickly scratched something out.
“Have you considered latte as a color?”
“We don’t want latte.”
“Okay then,” she replied brightly first at Chris and then at Adam, still standing in a confused daze and staring down at the two of them, trying to figure out what all had happened since he’d left that morning. “Tan and black.”
“That’s right.”
“Okay then,” she chirped, and smiled brightly. Again.
“Chris.” He got no response, blew out a breath in frustration. “Chris.”
“Busy.”
Darting forward, he caught at Chris’ arm, not pausing at the surprised yelp that followed.
“I just need to talk to Groomzilla here,” Adam informed Rita, grimacing at the happy grin that met his words as he dragged the sputtering writer into the kitchen behind him. “What the hell?” he demanded as soon as the door swung closed, catching Chris when he once again tried to make a run for it. “Spike.”
“Ugh.”
“I’ll call you Fluffy if you don’t quit.”
“I told you,” was the quick response, “I’m sick of it, I’m not putting up with it any longer, it’s our wedding.”
“Kendall’s going to-”
“She’ll get over it.”
“Well, maybe on her deathbed.”
“I know what I’m doing, it’ll go fine. Nice ceremony, happy family, and then things will go back to normal.”
“But-”
“This is something I can do,” Chris blurted, and all the words sort of dried up before Adam knew what happened. “We can’t go off and do this ourselves, I’ve accepted that, but I can control what kind of stupid flowers I have to get and the stupid color combinations, that I can do.”
This was a Miranda thing, an ‘I can’t fix her so I feel useless’ thing.
“Did something happen?” He got a confused stare. “With Miranda,” Adam clarified, “did something happen?”
“No.” But now he was staring at the wall behind Adam’s head, avoiding any and all eye contact. “No.”
“Chris.”
For a second, Chris looked firmly prepared to continue the bickering- but then he huffed out an angry breath and pressed his palms to his face, frame looking tense. When Adam reached out, brushed fingers across his shoulders, he found muscles tightly locked. “What happened?”
“Aunt Bianca’s coming.”
Adam didn’t expect that.
“Excuse me?”
“Aunt Bianca’s coming.” Chris dropped his hands, pressed his lips together and then exhaled harshly yet again. “Ian’s back early and he bumped into her in Tokyo, he said, and now she says she’ll be here for the wedding and this is just- I don’t want her there, Adam, I don’t want her at my wedding, she’s… toxic,” he finished in a rush, last word being spit out with so many emotion that the older man winced helplessly. “I can’t believe I invited her.”
“But you did.” Chris looked entirely too baffled. “If you didn’t want her to come, why did you invite her?”
“I was just being polite.”
As lies went, it was a good one.
As Kane lies went, it was almost worthy of a cringe.
“Do you want her to come?”
“No.” Except Chris wanted her to come, it was right there on his face, and he looked guilt-ridden over it. “It wouldn’t work anyway,” he abruptly said, apparently realizing Adam wasn’t buying it. “It’s stupid, I know what’ll happen. And I have other aunts so I don’t know why I wanted her to come. But Mom, you know, I know she wants her to be here.”
Under Adam’s palm, Chris felt heated, tense.
“It’s fine.”
“I think I’m going crazy, this… this is completely new, I can’t handle this.”
Technically, Adam knew they were cousins.
Ryan was his uncle by marriage, and so technically, they were cousins.
Except that didn’t mean much in Pine Valley, the way families kept lacing together one generation after the next- just off the top of his head, he thought of grandpa David, firmly attached to his dead brother’s wife for years, and the two of them still happy together. After Grandpa Adam had remarried grandma Brooke, they had been together right up until the end. Not to mention when aunt Colby had married Chris’ uncle Reggie (and they were still together, to the shock of most of the town that had placed bets on how quickly they would divorce) or Trey’s marriage to Amanda.
Everyone in the family remembered how close Kendall had been with Bianca, and everyone remembered how badly it had come undone- no apologies had ever been given and things had gotten worse and Adam acutely remembered the incident that Chris had told him about, the call when he had been sixteen that had gone unanswered.
“And it doesn’t matter anyway,” Chris was continuing in a rush. “I remember when Mom tried the intervention thing when I was a kid and aunt Bianca just picked up and she just left, just… like she didn’t even care. Miranda always came for Christmas but getting Bianca to come back was like pulling teeth and when she did, she was so… nasty, the things she would say when you were just trying to… talk to her.” There were bags under his eyes. “I don’t know what to do with Miranda, she’s like my sister and I don’t want us to be like…”
Silence, Chris looking completely torn.
Because he loved his family more than people realized he did, and he wanted his aunt at his wedding despite the fact that they all knew any kind of visit would just end in more stress for everybody involved.
“We need to think,” Adam finally decided, needing a few minutes to think everything through. “We’ll figure out the seating arrangements and then we’ll try something bigger.” He offered a kiss against a wrinkled forehead, another against a tightly creased mouth, felt relieved when Chris accepted it, still looking overwhelmed but just a little steadier when Adam pulled back and studied him. “This can’t be any harder than blizzards and train wrecks. Or the big parties that always seem to explode, can’t forget those.”
A snort, Chris looking like Chris again.
“We should have eloped.”
“Maybe it’s good we didn’t.” An incredulous and he grinned helplessly, entirely too relieved at how much of Chris he could see in the expression. “Maybe we need to all get together and just… see what happens.”
Miranda knew she could handle her mother for one day.
Nonetheless, she was still reeling when she got back to the Inn.
Already overwhelmed, it was like getting kicked in the gut, struck again while trying to deal with the first blow. She tried not to think about it but that was useless, only left her head filling with images and something in her chest aching. She tried to breathe through it, calm down, and that was impossible.
Only one day, she told herself firmly, it was only one day.
Her mother could be… stable for one day.
But her chest was getting tight and she felt exceedingly frail in the middle of the stupid lobby, walking where everyone could see her, surrounded by people and acutely aware of the fact that they were all probably staring at her.
Her, Miranda Montgomery, the rape baby with the drunken businesswoman of a mother.
Only one day, one foot in front of the other… and what were the chances of her even showing up?
She rarely showed up for anything anymore, not that it mattered at this point.
No, her mother was a intimidating presence, had become more of a boogeyman than the monster she had thought lived under her bed for two years. When she stayed away, which was becoming more and more often, she was only a heavy weight Miranda could sometimes manage, a burden Miranda had learned to carry.
But when her mother did show up, she came with the inevitable feeling of dread, the furious private prayers in the bathroom while checking make-up that ‘she won’t say anything too cringe-worthy tonight’ or ‘she’ll stay away from the sauce long enough to make a better impression,’ the urgent attempts to handle her that never worked.
If she came back now, to the wedding, and if she ruined it-
Except it wasn’t a question of if, Miranda knew, it was when and how.
There would be the veiled insinuations and the sharp comments, her mother’s spin on things that had happened decades before that the entire rest of the family already knew the story of. There would be cool smiles and superior glances, her mother as focused as ever on making sure that everyone knew everything she wanted them to know about her viewpoint on things, how she was right and they were wrong.
Her mother always seemed to be fighting some desperate war against the world that Miranda herself didn’t understand, couldn’t piece together. Every time Miranda saw her, her mother was charging out alone and frantic with whatever ammo she could gather, braced to carry out a campaign that she herself didn’t seem to be aware of.
It was jarring, confusing, impossible to handle.
Already feeling worse that she could remember in her entire life, just the thought of it was too much.
Fingers pressed against her hairline, she tried to breathe.
Dazed, she only twitched a little when someone touched her shoulder, lifting her head to see who it was.
It was probably a sign of her mental state that she couldn’t muster up any real surprise when she found Captain Clumsy studying her oddly, looking almost as rough as she felt. “What?”
“You okay?”
Pulling her shoulder away, unsure how to respond to the worry, she instead shook her head, turning her attention away from him. But now he was walking beside her, and despite the lack of any name and the clear interest that she never found all that interesting, she didn’t completely mind the physical company. “Great.”
“You almost bowled over a little old lady.”
“I collide with a lot of people,” she reminded him, feeling her mouth twitch just a little. Unable to even muster annoyance at the fact that her spirits were definitely lifted, she looked at him again. There were bags under his eyes, a little pale under his tan, and his grip looking too tight around the strap of the heavy-looking bag hooked over one shoulder. “What happened to you?”
“Long day.”
She waited, glanced over again when a few seconds ticked by. “That’s all?”
“Family issues.” He had none of the humor from that morning, clearly had nothing to add, but he did look pleased to see her, met her gaze squarely. She kept waiting, needing a distraction, and felt her lips twitch again when he winced. “My brother’s having… issues, and my mother’s…” A pause. “There was a death in the family. Lung cancer, never smoked a day in her damn life.”
Well, now she felt like shit again.
“Shouldn’t have said that,” he decided at her sharp breath. “Do you at least feel better?”
The elevator dinged, still unnamed Captain Clumsy stepping in behind her.
Hitting her floor, she stood back and watched him jab in his.
“Well?”
“A little,” she admitted, awkwardly aware that she was in a closed space with a creepy guy who kept crashing into her and kept trying to flirt without being good at it and who seemed entirely too… nice. “Do you have a name?”
“Do you?”
“Your social skills seem off.”
“They kicked in late.” When Miranda stared blankly, he grinned. “You won’t give me your name?”
“You’re a stalker.” He just kept grinning at her, waiting. Lost, Miranda crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the doors, refusing to give into the amusement he was causing. But she could feel his eyes on her, enough intensity that she had to press her lips together to keep a straight face. “I don’t date,” she informed him firmly.
“I just asked your name.”
They were almost at his floor.
She looked at him, rolled her eyes at the ridiculous grin she received.
“Come on,” he prodded, and she blew out a breath, gave up.
“Miranda.”
“What?”
“Miranda,” she repeated, only to feel the grin sliding off her face when she looked over, caught the look on his face. His features had gone sort of stiff, tight, and she faltered as he stared at her. “What?”
Another second and then his mouth twisted, a forced smile settling on his face. “Miranda.”
“That’s right.” Frozen under his focus, she dug her fingers into her arms, stood tense as he looked away and then glanced back at her. “That Miranda,” she said after a heartbeat, realizing what it was, that he’d probably finally realized who she was. Her mother was always in the tabloids, and she had popped up enough… “Cambias Miranda.”
“That’s not-” but the doors opened and his mouth snapped shut, his gaze flickering across her face.
“Your floor.”
He opened his mouth but then closed it, stepping jerkily away from her and to the open doors, grimacing when his shoulder hit the frame on the way out. “It’s not what you-” he started in an odd voice but the doors were sliding closed and she was steadfastly ignoring him even after he was left behind, her mother weighing heavier than before.