Explaining Grace

Author: LushBaby

Timeline: between Silence and Only Connect

Summary: Luke feels left out and Grace shows him a side of herself she'll probably regret. My summary sucks but hopefully the story's better. R&R please!

Okay everybody, here it is, my first ever fanfic! Or at least, the first ever that I've had the nerve to post! So, the usual disclaimer: I just borrowed these great characters from Barbara Hall (but if she'd like to loan me Luke I'd think long and hard before giving him back!) And I don't intend to make any money from this (duh).

Sunday dinner was sacrosanct in the Giradi house. Traditionally it included some sort of roast and a round of twenty questions concerning Kevin's basketball game on Saturday and Joan's love life, Will concentrating on the first and Helen on the second. Luke just ate silently. His mom once told him she knew about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle because she listened to him, but Luke had to wonder. Lately, he just hadn't bothered to speak at all.

"But Mom, Adam and I--"

"Twelve points scored is pretty good, don't you think?"

""Joan, I'm not going to argue about this. There's no way you're going to Baltimore on a school night to see some concert."

"Yeah, Bear really knows how to assist."

"But Mom, its White Stripe," Joan pleaded.

Luke let all this wash over him. He wondered if anyone would notice if he just sat there until morning, not saying a word. Twenty minutes later, he gave up. Scooting back his chair, he announced, "I'm going over to Friedman's."

Okay, honey. Be back before ten," his mom barely paused before she fielded another of Joan's feeble reasons why she and Adam should be allowed to see White Stripe in Baltimore.

Luke shut the door behind him quietly. No point in making a scene, he thought as he walked aimlessly in the gathering darkness of the late September evening.

"Hey geek." Luke looked up to see Grace Polk approaching him, apparently heading for his house.

"Hey," he said not bothering to stop. He didn't need another 'discussion' about how Grace didn't do couples. Although they had hung out together over the summer while Joan was at that counseling/camp thingy, he still didn't know where he stood with her. That night he had walked her home from the hospital they had kissed—even kissed again since then, but he wasn't in the mood to try and sort out their relationship, such as it was.

"Hey," Grace fell into step with him. "What's up, dude?" she asked, eying him narrowly.

Luke didn't answer. He turned his steps to the park and made his way over to the kiddy play area where he sat down on the merry-go-round and was surprised to see Grace sit down next to him.

"What's up?" she repeated, nudging him gently with her leather-jacketed shoulder.

"Nothing." At her look of disbelief, he shrugged, and suddenly all his anger and hurt were pouring from him; he couldn't have stopped it if he had tried. "I'm such a nobody in this weird family dynamic. I mean, Kevin's the oldest and he was, like, the perfect son—good-looking, athletic, popular, smart enough to keep up his grades for baseball. Now he's handicapped and he's still great. Still the athlete, still pulling the girls. Joan is the girl—a very weird girl, I'll grant you, but still, she has her defined place in the family. And then there's me. The geek, the brainiac, no one's really interested in anything I have to say unless it affects them."

Grace sat silently, letting Luke's uncharacteristic outburst continue, watching him from the corner of her eye as he scrubbed his hand through his hair as he did whenever he was momentarily stumped.

Luke turned suddenly to face her. "I mean, we went to counseling to deal with all this crap that's come up in the past couple of years, and I was like the only person who didn't have anything to unload. Well, I do now! Just because I'm not as screwed up as everyone else, it's like I don't exist. I mean, I realize they don't understand half—okay, most of what I'm saying, but still. I heard my dad once telling my mom that he wanted to stop having kids after Joan--"

"Dude, he must have been joking." Grace interrupted him quickly.

"Maybe, but a lot of jokes stem from some underlying truth. Was I an accident that his defunct Catholic soul couldn't bring to terminate? Was I unwanted? Was I ---"

Grace interrupted again, this time sharply and with none of the comforting warmth she had just displayed.

"Listen Girardi, there is no way you can have any concept of being unwanted and ignored." She spoke with so much pain and bitterness that Luke looked at her sharply.

"What do you mean, I have no concept? And you do? Grace, you're an only child. And no one could ever ignore you."

"You're wrong, Luke." Grace hunched her shoulders in a protective gesture and kept her head down. Her voice had lost its edginess and now just sounded sad. "I'm not an only child. Or at least, I am now. Have you ever wondered why I am the way I am?"

"Of course. All the time." His gentle tone took the sting from the words.

"Well, I used to have an older brother, Jakob. When he was three, he was diagnosed with leukemia. Chemo wasn't working and my parents decided to try an experimental procedure. They deliberately had me so I could be a bone marrow donor for Jake. Unfortunately, I wasn't a match and my brother died when I was five."

"Wow, that must have been tough." Luke put his arm around Grace's shoulder and hugged her close to him. He could still feel the tension in her body and realized she wasn't done yet.

"I don't remember much about him. He was so sick by that time and in the hospital the last few months."

"Didn't your parents talk about him to you?"

Grace gave a hollow laugh. "Talk about him? All the time. To me? Never. My mom couldn't handle even being in the same room with me. I went to school and then went to a babysitter's. I was eight before I realized my mother didn't work. She'd sit for hours in Jake's room like it was a shrine. She just couldn't stand to look at me. They fought a lot and one day she just left."

"Wow—uh—I don't know what to say—that's sucks." Luke finished lamely. Grace just shrugged. "Have you talked to her since—she, uh left?"

"No. She was killed in a car accident a couple of years later. We didn't even know about it for six months. Finally, some cop from Philly found us and told us."

"I'm sorry--"

Grace cut him off. "I'm not. She hated me and told me every day how I had failed them. One day," she hesitated, and then went on in a rush as if the words were being forced out of her. "One day, she found me in Jake's room. He and I used to play Tinker-Toys and stuff. I was building something—a car I think—and she went crazy." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Luke, she beat the living crap out of me, screaming over and over again how Jake should have lived and how useless I was. Dad had to call Social Services and have me taken away until she calmed down."

Luke sat silent, hardly able to take it all in and having no idea what he was going to say when she finished. All he could do was hold Grace tighter, letting her know he was there for her. Suddenly, his grievances seemed so petty; so insignificant.

"Three weeks later, after mom went to counseling, they let me go home. She left two days later." Grace's voice was becoming stronger again, as if telling Luke had somehow strengthened her.

"What about your dad?"

Grace shrugged again. "He had a crisis of faith and took a sabbatical. Looking back, I don't think he hated or blamed me; he just couldn't get over losing Jake, and then my mom. He doesn't talk about either of them anymore. We just co-exist in the same house. I used to try to get him to notice me-- I thought that if I caused enough trouble at school, he'd have to notice me, but I wasn't mean enough to be a bully, and too smart to be failed, so I started challenging everything and I guess it just stuck."

"I'm glad it did. You wouldn't be Grace without that." Luke leaned over and kissed her gently on the cheek, tasting the salty tears that ran silently down her cheeks. This gesture was Grace's undoing. Great gut-wrenching sobs racked her body and Luke could only hold her close and soothe her hair while she cried. She'd probably regret telling him all this—he foresaw days, if not weeks, of her avoiding him, but he'd wear her down in the end. He always did. Maybe he wasn't important to his family, but right now Luke could sense that he was very important to Grace Polk and somehow that's all he needed.