A/N: So, this started out as a fragment written for a prompt, and due to the encouragement and prodding of various (VO1 in particular), blew up into a huge chaptered behemoth. Go figure.

Disclaimer: If you recognize it, I don't own it. Okay?

Kevin Ellis was a fish out of water from the moment he stepped out of the cab in middle-of-nowhere, Georgia, into the sultry heat of a June day before rain. The jeans he wore were all but plastered to his legs in the heat, and the dust of the gravelly road that led, eventually, to Great-Aunt Emmaline's house grimed the stark white canvas of his tennis shoes. The air was silent but for the buzz of a few bumblebees and the faint splash of a sprinkler on a bright green lawn across the street.

Kevin rubbed one hand over his forehead, shifting sweaty hair out of his eyes. Technically, it had been his choice to come to Georgia this summer, and it was a better choice than the alternative. Ever since the drunk driver had plowed into his mother's car on her way back from the supermarket, the apartment had been empty, nearly as empty as his father's eyes when he was home at all. John Ellis smoked too much, spent his days and most of his evenings at his office, staring at black numbers and white paper as though already-completed invoices could take him away from the truth. The bills came through the mail, and Kevin paid them before the due dates. The checkbook that his father kept in the kitchen was set amidst the flotsam of greasy-bottomed pizza boxes and empty soft drink cans. The bank statements showed no sign of detection that he had managed due to necessity to become quite good at forging his father's signature.

When the letter came from the Georgia hospital that Great-Aunt Emmaline had broken her hip and needed some help over the summer, Kevin had read it through like he did any of his father's other correspondence. Emmaline Thomas was seventy-two, plump, and smelled like lemon bars and sweet tea and talcum, and she'd practically raised Kevin's mother after her parents had divorced. It would be a change of scene, a change of pace...

And he'd PROBABLY not have to eat pizza five nights a week.

Shutting the gloomy thoughts off with a click, he dragged his luggage cart over the pitted, gravelly sidewalk towards a front porch bleached by the sun and crimsoned by flourishing geraniums in terra-cotta pots. Kevin knew, as he'd spoken to Great-Aunt Emmaline on the telephone earlier that week, that underneath the pot closest to the door would be a spare key.

"I'm HERE!" Kevin called out after unlocking the door. The house was mostly as he remembered, aside from the dust on the family photos on the wall and the smell of antiseptic replacing the smell of lemon oil and lavender sachet. "Auntie?"

"I'm here, dearie," came a voice somewhere from the back parlour. Kevin's shoes sounded overly loud on the wooden floor, and when he turned a corner, he encountered a wispy-haired figure in a calico housedress lying on the settee, a self-help book resting facedown on her stomach and a mazy smile on her face. Great-Aunt Emmaline's plumpness seemed diminished by her injury, and she seemed smaller somehow, in a room filled with china dolls and doilies. She beamed up at him and struggled into a sitting position. "I am SO glad you're here. It's been so lonely."

That, at least, Kevin could understand, so he nodded. Through the open window came a breeze that did nothing to cool the air, but wafted the muslin curtains like curls of steam and brought in a heady, sultry scent of flowers. It was almost too sweet.

"Isn't that magnolia tree the loveliest thing you've ever seen?" Great-Aunt Emmaline nodded at the swan-white blooms visible through the parlour window. "This has been an especially good year for my garden. If only I hadn't slipped on that dratted staircase... I'm really rather worried that once the weather truly warms up, it'll become a mess of weeds. It was really very sweet of you to come over to help me out."

Kevin coughed and looked away. He knew nothing about gardens and magnolia trees.

~*~

"Now, the trick to making good mashed potatoes is to not skimp on the butter and garlic," Great-Aunt Emmaline's voice was endlessly patient as she sat in a wheelchair by the kitchen counter, watching Kevin awkwardly peel potatoes over the sink. "I like to add a bit of sour cream to mine as well, and basil. Gives it flavour, you know?" She whisked a bowl of egg whites in her lap as she spoke, fingers efficient and deft despite their arthritis. "I taught your mother how to make mashed potatoes when she was a little girl a few years younger than you are now. Dear me, how time has flown... she was such a sweet child, little Laurie." A tear slid down the papery cheek, but Emmaline managed a smile. "You have her eyes, but her hair was much curlier."

Kevin knew that, of course, but he didn't really want to think about his mother now. Silently, he chopped the peeled potatoes into cubes and put them in the pot to boil.

Dinner was a peaceful affair. Cold chicken, mashed potatoes, creamed corn and lemon meringue pie. The corn was a bit soggy and the potatoes were a bit too salty, but as far as Kevin was concerned, it was his first attempt cooking both items, so he could be forgiven. It wasn't pizza, either, and that was something.

He was on his second glass of sweet tea when Great-Aunt Emmaline actually broached the subject of his father.

"I was a bit surprised that your dad has not called yet," she said gently, her voice not much louder than the tinkle of ice cubes in the glass. "Why, when Laurie brought him home to meet me back before they married, I thought... never a nicer and more handsome man would I meet. And so sophisticated! He took us out to eat at the Italian restaurant in town. Laurie told me afterwards that she'd loved him from their college days at Cornell."

Kevin made a non-committal noise and stirred his glass with his straw. The lemon wedge sitting atop his tea twirled, a flare of gaudy yellow against woody-brown. "Dad's been busy," he muttered. "He's not home much."

Emmaline reached across the table and laid a cool hand over his arm. "Lauren was a special girl. All of us are grieving," she said softly. "Your father loved her very much, and he's lost right now."

There were tears in her voice, and Kevin wasn't so sure he wanted to listen any more, because tears were like yawns and a bit contagious, and seventeen was too old for that. He stood up abruptly, setting down his glass with a clank. "Look, I'll go outside and water your plants. I think I read something somewhere about how you're not supposed to water them when it's really hot outside as it'd just dry up again."

The screen door slammed behind his back before she could say anything, and it was an hour before he came back in, scratching at a mosquito bite on his forearm and scraping mud off his shoes. Great-Aunt Emmaline was still seated in the kitchen when he returned, and she gave him a smile. There was a trace of smudged mascara underneath her left eye, and Kevin felt something in him contract with a twinge.

He hadn't cried yet, over his mother's death. He wasn't sure when-- if-- when-- it would happen. He didn't know if it was better or worse not to.