Chapter Twenty-One: Sometimes Home No Longer

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A terrible time followed that terrible night, most of which won't be discussed here. There were doctors and hard talks and cruel truths. Emily woke the morning after with no idea that her friend had spent the night facing his fears and coming out older. She had no idea what was coming when she sat down for breakfast with her mother, still buzzing about skating and catching up to Spencer at school and all the good things coming—until the door opened and Spencer slipped in, still in the clothes from the day before and with his eyes red-rimmed.

"Mom's sick," he said quietly.

Emily would always remember the look on his face, just as Spencer himself would always remember this day.

Elizabeth just lowered her fork and looked very, very sad, but not at all surprised.

And life changed.

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"It's back," Diana told Elizabeth, returning from a doctor's appointment. "They're going to try a new regime of medication, but…"

"They're not hopeful?" Elizabeth snorted, tossing her pen onto her desk and rubbing her forehead to stave off a headache. "No, they never are, are they? They weren't in college. But you got better then—you can get better now."

Taking the seat across from her, Diana picked up the pen Elizabeth had thrown and fiddled restlessly with it, very much like her son in this moment. "New medication means I'm going to be erratic for weeks, possibly months." There was a heavy kind of misery settling into Diana's voice as she said this, because she knew exactly what it meant. "I can't guarantee I'll be able to keep up with Emily's tutoring, although I will try my—"

"Ridiculous, you're being ridiculous," Elizabeth snapped. This was just like Diana, she was thinking, always putting others first. Just like when she'd been pregnant with Spencer and refusing to take her medication in order to keep him safe. "You're not going to work while this is going on."

"We'll have to find somewhere to stay—" Diana fell quiet at the look Elizabeth shot her, all haughty Prentiss with a lingering frustration. It was a look they'd clashed over in the past, and probably would again, but still intimidating. "I'm not taking charity. Staying here without working is charity—"

"If you leave here, what kind of life can you promise Spencer?"

It was cold, perhaps, but Elizabeth hadn't been a politician for this long without learning when to be cold and when to be kind, even if she sometimes struggles with the kind. And it worked—Diana stopped talking instantly, her already pale face paling further. There was a clarity in her eyes that Elizabeth knew would come and go over the coming months, unless she was given the space to work this out. And of course, she'd work this out—she had before and would again, because Elizabeth refused to lose her friend once more.

"I retract nothing that I offered you when you left William. I told you then: if you left him before he abandoned you—and don't look at me like that, you know he was planning on it at the first sign of this recurring—you would have a home here. That has not changed."

"Spencer's schooling—"

"Is paid for the next three years and wouldn't be a factor anyway. That was never a part of you working for me."

The two women looked at each other, before Diana slowly laying the pen down on the desk. Before she could take her hand away, Elizabeth laid her hand over hers. Gone was the politician's mask, leaving just stark worry in its place as she noted how much weight Diana had already lost, the tired misery in her eyes.

"Emily can't stay with me while you're gone," Diana said finally, closing those eyes. Elizabeth was already late to fly to DC in order to take up the ambassadorial position she'd been offered, finally. What she'd been working on her entire career, and what she was putting on hold in order to help Diana through the last week. "Spencer is already going to have to see… I won't expose another person's child to that."

Elizabeth nodded. She already knew this. Emily was not going to like it, but Emily had to learn that sometimes life was hard. "She'll attend DC with me. I've already applied for the transfer through her schools, since it's likely she'll have to spend at least a full term there. Will you tell Spencer?"

It was Diana's turn to nod, the weight on her shoulders crushing. Not only was her mind failing her, slamming the door shut permanently on her slim hopes of returning to her career, but for it to so horrendously impact her son right when he was happiest… she didn't think she could forgive herself for this, and doubted he'd forgive her either.

"Do I tell him it's only temporary?" she asked, not really expecting an answer. Right now, no one could answer that. No one knew.

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They had climbed their tree. Neither really knew why they'd walked so wordlessly to the tree they'd first climbed together, except that it had just felt right. There they sat, two children with their faces tipped up against the wind, watching the sun on the lake and the people who weren't affected by their world changing. It was three weeks after the night Diana had seen voices in the dark, and the fallout was here.

"I don't want you to go," Spencer told Emily, his fingers gripping tight to the tree branch below. Like he could hold onto this moment much like he could the tree, refusing to be flung from the boughs to the uncaring ground below. "A whole term? What will I do without you?"

Emily just shook her head, because if she talked about it, she'd cry.

She didn't want to go either.

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The morning that they were to leave was tumultuous. Emily had responded to the news of their leaving with a terrifying kind of calm, with Elizabeth wondering if maybe her daughter was going to take the lessons on composure that she'd been given for years and finally put them to good use.

As it turned out, Emily had simply been biding her time.

Elizabeth woke to find that Emily had been up for hours. That was concerning, even more concerning as Emily did nothing but sit at the breakfast table moodily eating cereal as Elizabeth found that things that had been in place the night before were suddenly no longer in place anymore.

"Have you packed?" she asked Emily as she darted through on a search for a packet of personal documents, including their passports.

Emily chewed her cereal and said nothing.

"Emily, I asked you if you'd packed?" Elizabeth barked twenty minutes later, having still lost the passports and now also her purse and plane tickets. The passports weren't integral; the rest was very.

The cereal now a mushy mess that refused to be chewed, Emily swishing it around in her mouth and swallowing loudly, maintaining unblinking eye-contact with her mother, who stopped and narrowed her eyes at her.

"Why aren't you dressed?" she asked, folding her arms and staring her daughter down. Diana and Spencer took this moment to enter, finding themselves in the middle of a stare-off, neither daughter nor mother flinching. "Alright, where did you hide everything?"

Emily put her spoon down, wiping her fingers on a napkin and smiling sweetly at Diana.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Mommy," said Emily. "But we'd better hurry. If we miss the plane, we'll have to stay."

Elizabeth took a deep breath. Emily squared her shoulders.

And the household exploded.

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The drive to the airport was silent. Spencer huddled close to his mom, ignoring Emily. Emily sat alone, ignoring everyone, both her ragdolls on her lap and her expression monstrous. The missing documents had been found—after some liberal guilt-tripping applied by Diana. From there, Emily had refused to dress, declaring all her clothes 'unwearable' and screaming until she almost threw up when Elizabeth tried to forcibly dress her. That was followed by finding that the neatly packed suitcases sitting beside Emily's desk had all been very neatly unpacked. With time very quickly running out and Emily's tantrums turning into genuine shrieking fury from the overworked nine-year-old, Spencer and Diana watching in mixed horror/awe as Elizabeth resorted to screaming back at her daughter, Elizabeth had repacked the suitcase by picking up random items and throwing them into the waiting suitcases.

Emily, with astounding strength for a sobbing nine-year-old, had picked up the suitcase and thrown it out the open window, all of them staring as dresses and underwear spiralled through the air to scatter on the lawn below.

"I hate you and I'll never leave!" she'd screamed, slamming her foot on the ground below.

Elizabeth, taking a deep breath, considering smacking her daughter for the first time in her life.

Instead, she'd smiled, said, "Fine," and then picked Emily up. Ignoring the hands battering on her back and the kicking, shoeless feet, she carried her downstairs, out the front door, and tossed her boldly into the almost-packed car. "We're leaving, now. If you won't pack your belongings, then you don't get belongings. Diana, are you ready?"

Spencer, running after, had stopped only to grab the two ragdolls sitting on the bed. They couldn't be left behind—they couldn't. How would Emily remember him without them? Sliding into the car beside his mother, as the housekeeper simultaneously waved at them as she collected scattered bits of clothing, he hugged the dolls close and watched Emily.

She had looked stunned, staring at her mother with her mouth agape. Eyes ticking back and forth from her mom to the door, as though expected that Elizabeth would say, "Just kidding—we'll get your stuff and then leave."

But Elizabeth hadn't, and here they were. Driving to the airport with Emily staring at her shoeless feet, her face pale and stunned, the dolls that Spencer had handed her on her lap.

"If you make a single sound in the airport, you'll lose those too," was all Elizabeth had said upon seeing the dolls. Emily said nothing, hugging them close and curling up, ignoring Diana suggesting that she put a seatbelt on.

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And before they knew it, it was time to say goodbye and neither Spencer nor Emily had been able to speak to each other for their final, frantic morning. The boarding call for the plane that would take them away came, Emily standing watching the planes out the window with her socked feet scrunched up against the cold tiles. Spencer came up behind her, looking as well. One of those planes was hers…

This was it.

"I don't want you to go," he said again, glancing at her and seeing a tear drip from her nose to her lip. Blinking rapidly, tears on her lashes and her breath hiccupping, his own face began to burn.

"I tried," she whispered, wrapping her arms tight away the two dolls. "I thought…"

Spencer swallowed around a lump in his throat, lurching forward and hugging her tight, his cheek against hers and plenty of tears between them. The dolls hit the ground as she let go and fiercely hugged him back, fingers digging into his shirt and crying openly.

"Maybe if I don't let go," she mumbled wetly into his shoulder.

But her mother was calling her name and she was terrified of losing her dolls too, along with everything else. So, she let go, reaching down and picking up the Emily-ragdoll, looking at it and choking on a wet lump of sadness in her throat. She thrust it at him, shoving it into his chest and letting go so he had to take it before stooping and grabbing her Spencer-ragdoll, hugging that instead of him.

"Take it," she said, rubbing her eyes on her sleeve. "I'll come back for it, okay?"

"Okay," rasped Spencer, hugging it like she was hers and watching as she turned and marched away to the waiting plane, shoeless with unbrushed hair, just like the first day they'd been friends. The last he saw of her was her vanishing into the boarding gate, refusing to hold her mother's hand and with the Spencer-ragdoll looking back over her shoulder.

She didn't look back.

He stood and watched until the planes all flew away, waving at each and every one of them just in case she was still watching. And there he stayed, until Diana picked him up and carried him from the airport, her heart breaking as he cried into her shirt, clinging like he was scared of ever being forced to let go.