Marta watched as Jo succumbed to all of the pain she'd been put through and took it out on the most innocent among them. All the manipulation and abuse finally taking its toll on her sweet spirit. While Jo, screamed from the top step, Eli just stood and took it, as if he was truly the one who committed all those crimes against her. Marta glared over at Spot. He looked on like a wide eyed child. He dragged his eyes to hers, both knowing that his day of reckoning had come. Both knowing that this might be the last they would see of the third member of their little clusterfuck family. Both knowing that he wouldn't come back if he left again.
Her hand covered her throat as she watched the dark-haired boy she raised try to keep from falling apart while the love of his life unravelled in front of him. His heart wouldn't be able to take losing her again. It would break him completely. He was crushed when they were separated the first time. Jo's mother booked passage to take her daughter abroad while the gossip among the hoity-toity types of Gramercy Park died down after Jo called her dinner partner a "spoiled milksop" during a dinner party. Until she told Gordon to go home and not come back, Marta had never been so proud of the meek, shy girl. Trout's face when he arrived back home at the Lodging House after all those months of being so happy and so well understood at the school squashed all other feelings, though. He turned down a scholarship to stay at the school as a student to come home to them, but he didn't seem at all happy to be home. His eyes pleaded with her for for some space to tend to his woulds before facing the boys…and Spot. Most of all Spot. Both boys were still raw from the argument they had at the party, and she could see that Trout was in no fit state to face his old friend yet, so she let him sit in her sitting room while she went about her duties. "Come sit with me, if you want. Show me how to talk to you like JoAnna while I make supper." She wondered how much that played into it. He'd spent the bulk of his time at the school able to say exactly what he thought with the signs they taught him, instead of struggling through, expression three words where he really wanted to say twenty. She wanted so bad for him to have that with them at the Lodging House. She always had. The scowl that crossed his face spoke volumes, though. He'd already asked Spot to learn and in true Spot Conlon form, he'd squelched the idea. Her hand clutched into a tight fist as Trout winced a bit at the sound of JoAnna's name. He touched his pocket. She nodded, "I'll keep him out." He nodded, propping his arm up on his knees, and rested his head on his cast. She smoothed his hair back, "I promise it won't hurt forever." How she wished she hadn't promised that in years to come. It would always hurt just a little.
She left him sitting on her floor and moved slowly to the kitchen to put some soaked peas into a pot to cook into soup. Once the fire was hot underneath them and they were starting to simmer, she started chopping onions and potatoes to go in to help stretch the soup to fill the bottomless pits that she fed nightly. The skins of the potatoes came off in delicate complete ribbons, piling up on the scoured tabletop like party streamers. The slam of the back door made her jump, cutting off her ribbon of potato skin early and nipping the knife into the flesh of her thumb. She stuck the offended digit in her mouth and ran out of the kitchen to catch Spot. "Stop right where you are, Spot Conlon!" She ordered as he prepared to climb the stairs to the bunk room. She could punch him in his smug, elfish face for wanting to add to Trout's misery.
"He's here," Spot gritted, turning to keep on his warpath. "Stack told me he came home and I got shit to say to him."
She grabbed his arm, feeling him stiffen at her touch. He hated being grabbed, and was just barely able to keep himself from shoving her hand off of him. "He's here, you're right. He's in my room and you're going to leave him alone."
"He owes me. . ."
"Jack shit, Spot," she answered in the low even voice that seemed to work best to get her way with the boys. "Trout owes you jack shit." She could practically feel the rage simmering under her touch, but she didn't pull away. Sometimes he needed that to know she was serious. "He gave Jo his notebook, I can't understand him with all his new signs and Jo's mother is taking her abroad in the morning. You are going to leave him be because I think he will snap if you go in there and poke at him. So, you are going to back the hell off. If he comes out, you're going to give him his space and if I catch you so much as skulking outside that door, you will find yourself without a bed for the night, you got me?"
He shook her off and gave her a glare, "Yeah, I gotcha." He turned back to the stairs and rolled his shoulders. "She hurt him?"
Marta sighed, "He's hurting, but I think more because there's nothing he can do to fix it. He gave her one of the two things he cares about in this world, so I don't think they parted badly, it just hurts to part before you're ready. She's all that's held him together while he's been away and now he has to pick up his pieces and learn to stitch himself back together."
Spot snorted and cracked his neck, the pops making her cringe and shiver. "Serves him right, getting messed up with someone he can't have. At least he chose right."
"Chose right?"
"Yeah. He chose us." He turned and sauntered out the front door, arrogant and self righteous. She watched him go with her mouth hanging open. The levels he would stoop to when threatened never ceased to surprise and disappoint her.
Just like now. She could hardly look at the man that smug boy became since he told her the truth. Eli glared up at Marta, seeing right through her disappointment to guilt she felt at having missed the clues all those years ago. She closed her eyes and covered her mouth with her hand. Darcy watched her carefully, pointedly refusing to give Spot her attention. "I d-d-d-didn't ssssssssssend it." Eli mumbled, wincing against the stuttered words. Gordon's insults opened the deepest wounds on his heart, and his pride was in tatters. How many different ways could one man be humiliated in a single hour? It took everything in him to keep speaking, to not shut down and go mute. "I thhhhhhrew it a-a-away. I was g-g-g-going to let you be. I d-d-didn't mmmmmmmmean for you to rrrrrread it, b-b-b-but I meant every wwwwwwwword. You buh-boh-brrrr-broke me; you t-t-t-took sssssomeone else with you."
JoAnna half ran half fell down the stairs, knocking him over, swatting and hitting wildly. "I waited for you! You were supposed to be there but you weren't because you have the worst taste in friends and you ARE loyal as a damn dog and twice as stupid because of it! Like an idiot, I trusted him because you did." He stopped trying to block her strikes and slaps and let her shove him as the words sunk in. "You had to show back up here with your stupid eyelashes, and your eyes that understand me when I don't understand myself, and your beautiful smile and your beautiful words and you ruined me! I can't pretend anymore!" He pulled her in tightly and held her to his chest, burying his face in her hair and tried to breathe normally while he processed all that she just yelled at him. She fought weakly for a few seconds before collapsing against him, sobbing even harder than before, and fisting his dirty, ripped shirt in her hand.
"You….you…w-w-w-w-w….." he couldn't get the words out. They were stuck in his head. He closed his eyes and breathed in the sweet scent of her hair. "Wa-way…."
"She waited," Spot croaked, finishing his word for him. "She wanted you there with her on the train. She bought you a ticket." His voice broke, and he held his hand out to Darcy. Relief washed over Marta. Finally, the dark cloud of his ages old lie would lift. The secret was killing her and making all of this so much worse on JoAnna.
She refused to soften the blow of his actions, stepping away from his hand as she murmured, "Tell him" Darcy murmured.
He nodded absently, looking haunted as he relayed what happened the night everything fell apart. "You was in Marta's room and she wouldn't let me talk to you, because I was gonna let you have it for what you said to me at the party. I woke up to Jo trying to climb the fire escape in the middle of the night and she told me to give you your book. Your words. She kept saying to make sure you got it first thing." Eli listened intently, but couldn't make himself meet Spot's eyes. They clung to one another. Each seeking comfort that the other wasn't able to give. He buried his nose in her hair and inhaled deeply as he grasped for a way to keep calm. "The ticket fell out on the bunk room floor and I panicked." Eli stood, pulling her along with him and gently tucked her back into Marta's embrace. Marta pleaded with him with her eyes as he pried JoAnna's hand open to release the handful of his shirt that she was clutching like it was the only thing holding her on earth. "Trout," Spot pleaded behind him. "Say something, please."
Eli stared up at her and her stomach coiled. Her arms pulled JoAnna in more tightly as his eyes wavered between pure rage and unspeakable pain. He stared at Marta and tried to gather his wits enough to ask, "D-d-did…you knnnnnnnow too?" His voice shook.
She groaned inwardly and pulled herself up to her full height without releasing JoAnna's still shaking body. "Only for the past day or two. Talk to him," she looked at him steadily, giving him permission to follow his gut even if it meant clocking Spot in front of everyone, "do what you have to do, and then we'll talk." She caressed his cheek with her hand, but he jerked away from it and turned to slowly go down the stairs.
"Why?" he growled, crossing his arms over his chest and standing over Spot. Spot might not be the skinny kid he was back in Brooklyn, but Trout still towered over him as she shrugged his shoulders and stared at his boots. Trout shoved him back, "Why?" he demanded, stepping right back into his personal space.
"You know why."
An animalistic growl ripped out of his throat. He hadn't made noises like that in years, he had words and could express himself, but this was too much. 'Go on!' he signed, using the old signs that he made up as a child, shoving his hands forward.
"Because I'm a god damned coward, that's why! That's what you want to hear, right?"
He opened his mouth to demand the truth, but couldn't muster the words. He tried and tried, but couldn't get more than a few syllables out. It was the last straw, he couldn't take anymore and he tackled Spot, throwing wild punches until his already sore arm couldn't draw back anymore. Spot scrambled away with an eye that was already swelling and a split and bleeding lip. Eli tucked his arm into his chest and cradling it. He slowly picked himself up off the ground and turned away from them, slowly staggering back to his cabin.
"Trout," Spot called after him, "you's hurt, let Darcy take a look atcha."
He stopped and stood still for a moment before shaking his head and walking away. He needed to be alone, he needed space to think. His best friend lied to him for years. His best friend knowingly cost him the love of his life. She was back now, but she was broken and fragile. Spot stepped forward, but Marta let loose a low growl. "Leave. Him. Alone." She drew in a slow breath and tried to keep herself from finishing what Eli started. "You've done enough here, Spot. Don't 'help' anymore." Darcy went to her house alone, and Marta pulled Jo inside, knowing that her husband would give Spot the compassion and fatherly guidance that he so desperately needed, but that she couldn't give. She couldn't even look at him.