Boxes in the Attic
Pairing/Characters: Nathan, Audrey, hints of Nathan/Audrey
Rating: T
Words: 3,434
Disclaimer: As far as I know Haven is owned by Jim Dunn, Sam Ernst, and SyFy/Universal. If I did own it...well...I wouldn't be writing fan fiction, would I?
Author's Note: So, this is one of those good news, bad news sort of deals.
The good news is that I have a pretty solid outline of the future chapters so hopefully it won't take me too long to get them out.
The bad news is that it's November 1, meaning that I'm starting NaNoWriMo, so I'll be on hiatus for the next month. Expect the next update sometime in December.
With the grime cleaned from the kitchen, Audrey admitted to herself that it had probably been very cozy in its heyday. She made one final inspection to make sure she and Nathan hadn't missed anywhere before moving into the dining room, where Nathan stood rooted just past the doorway.
"Wow," Audrey said softly as she scanned the room. There was a fine layer of dust over everything. The pale blue table cloth was dull with years of dust, the film on the glass doors of the china hutch was thick enough it obscured the contents, and there were cobwebs in every imaginable corner. "It's like walking into the Munster's dining room."
"Nothing's moved," Nathan said quietly. "After she died, the Chief and I ate in living room, usually watching TV shows or the news."
"You never used the dining room?" she asked in confusion. "Not even for special occasions? What about holidays?"
"We usually were invited to other people's houses," he explained, his eyes a little glassy. "Most of our holiday meals were with the Teagues. Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas…"
"That's…depressing," Audrey stated, causing Nathan to chuckle softly. "So what are you going to do now?"
He glanced at her, his face uncertain. "Well, I figure if you're still here, we'll have dinner together."
"With the Teagues?"
"Maybe. Or it might just be you and me at my place." He paused for a moment before amending, "Or your place. Whatever works."
He was so adorably flustered that Audrey only nodded in agreement. "We'll figure it out when we get there."
Nathan cracked a shy smile. "Yeah."
"Well, we should get started. We're going to need the vacuum cleaner," she noted as she stomped one foot on the carpet, raising a cloud of dust.
"I'll get it," Nathan said, making a quick exit from the room. Audrey watched him leave and noted that there was pink creeping up his neck.
Taking advantage of Nathan's absence, Audrey took the opportunity to study the dining room and discern what Nathan's boyhood had been like. If it weren't for the layer of dust, the dining room would have looked like it came from a magazine, showcasing Elizabeth Wuornos's impeccable taste. All of the furniture was antique and coordinated; a lovely cherry finish that spoke of elegance of an era past. The buffet was pressed flush against the wall the dining room shared with the kitchen, elegant scrollwork etched into the backboard and along the edges of the top. This had most likely been a room that was used for evening meals and special occasions, though Audrey supposed that they ate in the dining room every day for each meal. Unless they decided to eat in the living room while watching TV.
She then wandered towards the china hutch, up against the wall that the dining room shared with both the living and the sun room. It had the same scrollwork that was on the dining room table, chairs and buffet, clearly part of the set. Using her sleeve, she wiped away some of the dust on the glass and peered inside.
The contents were standard for a china hutch. There were a couple of collector's snow globes on the shelf directly in front of Audrey's face. The one at eye level was of a woman in a snowflake shaped tutu with a snowflake shaped crown on her head, a white and silver leotard, white toe shoes, standing en pointe, arms in fourth position, encased in glass and water with fake snow and flakes of silver glitter. Audrey wondered if it was simply a snow globe or if it was also a music box. If it was a music box, she was willing to bet money that it played "The Waltz of the Snowflakes."
The rest of what Audrey could see was of china plates and tea cups. The pattern was of red, mauve and yellow roses – popular enough that she knew she had probably seen and handled something with the pattern on it at some point, but she can't remember who she was when she did.
"Is the china hutch really that fascinating?" Nathan's voiced rumbled through the silent room, startling Audrey and causing her to jump.
Placing a hand on her chest, she glared at her partner who was looking at her with interest from his spot at the doorway. "I was just curious."
"I used to call it mom's treasure cave," Nathan said, striding across the room to join his partner. "She kept some of her most precious possessions in there. Stupid clay figurines that I made in art class in elementary school, her collection of music boxes, the china we only ever used for special holiday meals and my great-grandmother's silver."
"I'm sure there's more in there," Audrey noted, her eyes assessing the sheer size of the piece. "Are those cupboards extra storage?"
"For table cloths, napkins, place mats, candles, all the frills that go with those big, holiday meals," her partner answered dryly as he headed back towards the cleaning supplies.
There was something in his tone that spoke of years of irritation towards the contents of the china hutch. If it was because his skills with clay were lack luster and his mother had kept them anyway, or if he simply hated all of the work that usually went into the large, holiday meals, she wasn't sure. After all, if Audrey was right, that was gold on the plates which meant they all had to be hand washed.
"So I guess we should get things cleaned up in here and then we'll pack stuff up?" Audrey asked.
"Yup," Nathan intoned.
Picking a place to start cleaning was proving difficult, until Audrey finally directed to one side of the room while she took up another. As she dusted the china hutch, Nathan excavated the buffet. Without prompting he began musing about is childhood, recounting stories from crazy holiday dinners and normal family meals in the Wuornos household. Audrey couldn't help but smile as Nathan went into detail about a particularly bad Christmas dinner in which the prime rib was burned to a crisp by a malfunctioning thermostat in the oven. He was detailing how smoke had come billowing out and a neighbor had called the fire department when they noticed, and of course by then the Chief had everything under control. They had ended up joining the Teagues for their turkey dinner.
Together they tackled the dining room table, with Audrey cleaning the crystal candlesticks when Nathan took the dust encrusted table cloth and placemats down to be washed. The candlesticks were beautiful and most likely reserved for holiday meals, and given that the table cloth and placemats were also out, she began to wonder when exactly Nathan's mother had died. It wasn't as if the Chief had been interred next to her and she really had no business poking about in Haven's cemeteries.
"I've got the wash still going. I may take the table cloths and the placemats back to my place. I may not have a use for them now, but who knows. Maybe I'll feel like making a fancy dinner sometime," Nathan announced as he strode back in.
"You can cook?"
"Don't sound so surprised," he deadpanned. "I'm actually a pretty decent cook, and yes, I can make more than pancakes."
"I didn't ask!" she replied in mock offense, but the quip had been on the tip of her tongue. Exactly at what point did the two start responding to unasked inquiries?
"I'm not a fantastic chef so it's not like I'm going to be opening a restaurant any time soon, but I can make more than ramen," he explained as he opened up the drawers on the buffet and started pulling out table cloths. "What about you?"
"If it comes from a box or a bag, I do all right. For put in me in front of a recipe, and I'm doomed. I can't make anything from scratch," she admitted as she began her investigation into the bowels of the china hutch. She pulled out several large serving platters and a set of tarnished silver candlesticks.
"I have no memories of huge family meals," she noted as she started piling up her finds on the now vacant dining room table. "The concept of the good china with the silver service and the crystal candlesticks is completely lost on me." She paused for a moment before adding, "You know, beyond the Normal Rockwell paintings, that is."
This earned a hearty chuckle from her partner, who was currently elbows deep in linen. Apparently his mother had table cloths with matching napkins and placemats for every possible occasion. There was deep rust colored one that Nathan remembered from Thanksgiving, a cranberry red one with poinsettias woven into it from Christmas, the Easter one had daffodils, lilies and grape hyacinths on it. He could remember nearly every single meal he had eaten with the table cloths, memories of his mother and his father to go with every stain.
"So how much are you going to keep? I can't imagine that you're just going to ditch your mother's china," Audrey said as she observed the growing plies of stuff on the table.
"I don't need all of the table cloths, napkins, or placemats. I don't really have a use for them," Nathan shrugged. "But the silver belonged to my grandmother and my great-grandmother before that, so I should keep it. As to the china, I really don't know. What would I use it for?"
"To use when you get married and start hosting the big holiday dinners?" Audrey suggested.
"Maybe," Nathan grunted, which Audrey knew to be, "Probably not but I don't want to say as much to you," in Nathan-speak. She decided it would be best to not press the issue with him.
"Okay, so I'll start boxing up the linens to be donated. Have you decided what you'll do with the rest of the things in the hutch? The snow globes and the little clay art projects? I'm kind of fond of the snowman. He's cute," Audrey grinned.
Her partner scowled at the mention of grade school art projects. He had rather hoped that they had broken or been lost, but his mother had always treasured those projects and had carefully stored them. After her death Nathan had stopped bringing the projects home, instead opting to leave them in the art room to be used as examples or disposed of. Not like the Chief would have had a use for them.
"I'm going to go check on the wash," Nathan said before making a hasty exit.
With a grimace, Audrey wondered if she had crossed a line somewhere. Nathan, on the best of days, was difficult to read. She felt that she understood him a little better than most people because she spent so much time with him, but Nathan was one to play it close to the vest. It certainly wasn't like he told Audrey every little detail of his life. She decided it was safer to return to packing up the linens before moving on to the silver coffee set.
The silver coffee set was an antique, with a date carefully engraved on the bottom of the tray, dating it back almost two hundred and twenty five years. There was a matching coffee pot, sugar caddy and milk jug, along with a spoon for the sugar and several smaller spoons that could be used to stir the coffee once served. With a bit of polish and some elbow grease, they would shine brightly in their former glory and hearken back to Haven's early days. Audrey had little doubt that the set could tell her everything about the mysterious town she called now home – granted it came to life and decided to chat her ear off. Mrs. Potts the coffee pot was not.
She was staring at the coffee pot as if it held the all of the secrets of the universe when Nathan walked back in. He raised his eyebrows before commenting, "You know, Parker, just staring at it won't polish it."
"I was just wondering the history this thing has seen," she replied dryly before grabbing some old newspaper to wrap it up in. "The date on the bottom of it is 1786. This set is almost two hundred twenty-five years old."
"Maybe I can sell it to the historical society," her partner responded sardonically.
"Aren't you even a little curious about your family history?" Audrey asked. As an orphan, or believing herself to be an orphan, meant that Audrey had plenty of memories of searching for her identity. The revelation that she was also Lucy had only added fuel to the fire.
"Not really," Nathan shrugged as he started to wrap up the brass candlesticks in newspaper.
"Not even a little?" she wheedled further.
"No."
She let out a small huff of irritation before she decided to make herself useful again and began to unpack the contents of the hutch in earnest. The snow globes were the first to come out, and with child like wonder Audrey pulled each one out and gave it a shake, smiling to herself as she watched the scene within. She had been wrong in thinking that they were the tacky, souvenir type snow globes. Instead they were beautifully crafted collectors pieces. There was the snowflake ballerina, of course, but then there was also a snow covered village, a wedding scene, one from Gone With the Wind and another from The Wizard of Oz. Audrey was now extremely curious about what kind of a person Elizabeth Wuornos had been, but she knew better than to ask. Duke had warned her that Nathan's mother was something of a sore point and the last thing Audrey wanted to do was antagonize her partner.
She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she jumped when Nathan turned on the vacuum cleaner to attack the cobwebs around the ceiling. She mentally steeled her nerves, as she didn't want to spend the rest of time cleaning the Chief's house jumping out of her skin every time Nathan opted to start the vacuum cleaner or smack a few pillows to free them of their dust. Really, getting so wrapped up in her thoughts that she lost touch with reality was not the best way to spend the weekend.
So she set her shoulders and went to work, one ear open to what Nathan was doing. She wouldn't let herself be taken by surprise again for the rest of the weekend.
Raise your hand if your mother kept your crappy clay art projects from school because she thought that they were cute.
Yup, mine too. Including a rather dumb looking snowman that's buried in the bowels of her china hutch...which served as the inspiration for the china hutch in this chapter.
I also based the china pattern off of my mother's - it's Old Country Roses by Royal Albert. The pattern was launched in 1962 and is an enduring favorite and by far one of the most popular china patterns of all time. And no, it cannot be put in the dishwasher, which meant that big holiday dinners involved a lot of hand washing. I thought about using my china pattern (Countess by Royal Doulton), but it's a shade too contemporary to have been around in the early 1980s.
I love to hear from my readers. Reviews are most welcome.
Mercy_Angel_09
