Author's Note: After I saw Legacy, I started getting ideas about Vert's past and about how he ended up in the Yukon and then back at Handler's. This is part of that idea. Contains a brief mention of physical domestic abuse.
Disappearance
Jason Vert Wheeler was eleven years old the summer his father disappeared. Commonly known as Jason, the boy was the son of Vera Wheeler, a retired theatre star, and Jack Wheeler, a mechanic. He and his father had worked on cars together for the last five years, though mostly that meant Jason handing his dad tools and listening to him explain what he was doing. But Jason did listen, dutifully, and learned all he could from his dad. His mom and dad were happy, cuddling on movie night, kissing each other goodbye in the morning, and teasing one another as they cooked breakfast together. Life in Handler's Corners for the Wheeler family was perfect. That was, it was perfect until the storm.
Jason had been at Grace's house with his mom when the first storm hit. Grace was four years younger than Jason, and infinitely curious, but she liked cars, and that was good enough for him. The two had been playing outside when the storm approached. Tall, billowing black clouds came over the horizon fast as lightning and a tornado touched down dangerously close to the converted warehouse Jason called home. They hid under the table and his mother tried to call home, but there was no answer. For a long minute, one longer than Jason had ever felt, the world seemed too loud. He found himself holding onto Grace tightly, hoping the tornado would go away.
It did. And so did the storm. A few minutes after that, Jason's dad called to let them know he was okay, just hadn't been able to get to the phone. There was no damage to Handler's, as the tornado had touched down in the Salt Flats. In fact, it seemed the storm had never happened the next day, and everyone seemed to forget it. Everyone except for Jack Wheeler.
Jack grew distant as summer grew closer, shrugging off Jason's attempts to help him with his strange new car and snapping at the slightly provocation. Jason spent a lot of time with Zeke up at the diner because of that. His mother didn't want him around, and Jason knew why. His parents were fighting. They tried to keep quiet, or at least, his mom did, but it was no use. The walls of the warehouse were hardly soundproof, and Jason laid awake many nights listening to them scream until they couldn't scream anymore. Most of those nights ended in his dad going back to the garage and his mom crying in the next bedroom. Some of those nights ended with Jason crawling in with his mother, despite knowing he was too old, to comfort her. Dad wouldn't, so it became his job. One he took very seriously.
Four months passed in much the same way. Jason and his mom never said anything to the people of Handler's Corners, but they found out anyway. The pitying looks they gave him and his mother when they were at the diner made Jason want to hide. If his mother noticed, she gave no indication.
Then, one night, the fighting went too far. It started out the same – his mother trying to get Jack to come out of the garage, trying to get him to pay attention to their family. But it ended with the sudden sharp sound of skin hitting skin and a cry from his mother. When Jason went to her room a few minutes later to comfort her, he found the door was locked. That night, the second storm hit. Black clouds rolled in over the black sky, lightning crashed around them, and a tornado touched down on the Salt Flats. Jason hid under his bed and covered his ears. No one came to comfort him or tell him what else to do.
The next morning, the sky was clear, the birds were singing, and the desert was damp. Jason was alone while he ate his breakfast. His mother appeared shortly after, a purple speckled bruise on her right cheek and tears in her eyes. Jack was gone, she said. His strange car and the clothes he kept in the garage gone with them.
That was when Jason's world turned to Hell. His mother broke down, unable to function properly with Jack suddenly gone. The house was quiet, the garage was abandoned, and when his mother went out in public it seemed everyone knew that Jack had walked out on them. No one knew where he was, no one had seen him leave that night. Even when his mother put on a brave face, even after the bruise faded from her cheek, the looks from the people of Handler's Corners remained pitying. It made him sick to his stomach, and his mother didn't fare much better.
He took care of the house as best as he could. He cleaned, he cooked, and he moved all of Jack's things into boxes in the garage, unsure of what to do with them. Slowly, life gained a rhythm as the summer continued. Cook, clean, comfort, pack, and so on and so on. His mom eventually became more of herself again, and eventually all the boxes were packed, but life didn't get much more cheery.
At the end of the summer, his mom announced they were moving to the Yukon, a place the exact opposite of Handler's Corners. They didn't sell the warehouse, they didn't have to, and it stayed in Handler's, to be reclaimed if one of them ever wanted it again. By the end of September they were moved up the Yukon. The house was an actual house, tucked into the side of a snowy hill. It was huge and old and beautiful, full of secrets and fireplaces, full of warmth and comfort. It felt like home for both him and his mom, more than the warehouse ever did.
A month after they moved in, he was in school, and not long after that he made his first friend, AJ Dalton. His mom got friends as well, and they learned to adjust to the fact that it snowed six months out of the year up North, and that up high the snow never really went away. Jason introduced himself to everyone up north as Vert, wanting the separation from his old life and his new one. Life was good, but Jason saw how his mother still looked out the window sometimes, longingly, heard the pauses in her speech when she thought of Jack, and felt the mood drop whenever someone asked whatever happened to his father. It made him angry, angrier than he ever had been before, and it showed in everything he did. For the first time in his life, Jason was well and truly helpless, and he didn't like it.
Jason Vert Wheeler, more commonly known as Vert, was eleven years old the summer his father disappeared. He was born to a wonderful, theatre loving mother named Vera, and a deadbeat jerk named Jack. He lived in a house in the Yukon with his mom and life was good. But sometimes his mom became quiet and sad, and Vert knew it was because of Jack. And if he ever saw the man who ruined his mother's life again, it would be too soon.