coming to terms chapter twenty
Disclaimer: The boys are all owned by Chris Larabee... well you try telling him any different!
A/N: Your Honor I plead extenuating circumstances and totally refute the charge of laziness that has been placed before you. In my defence your most worshipfullness may I offer into evidence my work load which has been grievously increased of late due to the necessary and long awaited hip replacement surgery of my colleague (that's true... get well soon Sandra) which accounts for several...um, four weeks of my lack of updates. As to the rest, I can assure your holiness that I have without doubt a valid... that is, there's the christmas cross-stitch, I mean would you like to attempt to stitch and type at the same time? A moment of confusion resulting in a chapter made up of the letter x in the shape of a robin? I though not.. then there's... I... Um...I plead the 5th!...What do you mean I have to be American to do that?... Oh just read! Oh and this is a bit of an odd chapter. No story as such but more a mental appraisal of events so far by Chris. It's shorter than normal but I figure something is better than nothing and I wanted to look at events so far through someone else's eyes, and it is the hiatus before the plot picks up next chapter. So have a very Merry Christmas and I hope to update in the New Year.
.
Four months. Chris shook his head slightly at the realisation. A third of the way through their twelve month ordeal and he couldn't pinpoint the moment when it had stopped being just that, an ordeal, and became natural. The point when he automatically began setting the table for seven instead of three. The moment he didn't have to think before separating the milk products when unpacking the shopping. For the splutter and clank of Vins jeep and Josiah's old wreck, not to mention the aggressive purr and growl of Ezra's sports car to join the everyday sounds of the ranch. How it had become normal to be pounced on without warning or provocation by a raving lunatic of a cat who for some reason had taken a liking to him. Feeling protective of JD who had fitted into a slot marked youngest brother that he hadn't known his heart had been reserving a space for or the weird telepathy he seemed to share with Vin. An instant bond so deep that the lack of childhood memories of him felt more like amnesia than absence. The feeling of relief at having an older brother in Josiah with whom he could share his burdens and the wonder that Buck had gone from being the feckless party animal to protective big brother in an instant, especially towards JD which was understandable given the young man's inexperience but also, more surprisingly, towards Ezra who had managed to cram more experience into his twenty-something years than anyone could possibly imagine. But Ezra, for his part, had not only tolerated Buck's mother hen nature but seemed to take some sort of comfort in it... though you had to read between the lines of his constant denials of the fact. He was pleased that Buck had this new role. He may have been older than Nate but their doctor brother had an old head on young shoulders and big brother Buck had never been an option... heck, sometimes it seemed that Nate was the only adult in the family!
And then there was Ezra.
He had hated Ezra before he had even met him thanks to their father and once he did he hated him more. The man was a mystery wrapped in a riddle and Chris hated mysteries. The southerner's morals had been suspect; his career had been an enigma and therefore, given his almost paranoid secretiveness, suspect. His secrets were layered so deeply that he suspected that the southerner himself couldn't unravel them without a map and compass. All in all his anti-social, anti- rural, anti-anything even vaguely non designer or culturally off-key urbanite of a brother had been everything he despised and everything that was beyond his experience or understanding. But dammit, the man had this annoying habit of growing on a person! And what was worse (yet oddly comforting) was the knowledge that Ezra hated that tendency as much as he did. But it was true. For all the southerner's irritating quirks and determination to remain a mystery they had been slowly able to begin unravelling the riddle.
Their first shock had, of course, been his disability. Chris was still kicking himself for missing out on that one. There had been enough clues for pity's sake. The whys and wherefores were still a mystery and even Elizabeth had refused to help out with any details but just knowing that some things were difficult for the southerner made his quirkiness a little more understandable... though his stubborn refusal to move out of the attic, for some unknown personal reasons had everyone else in the house looking at HIM, not Ezra, as though he were the bad guy! Even the man's damn cat would sit halfway up the stairs and glare as his master came slowly down each morning... damn judge and jury furball!
The second shock had been that they, the Larabees, had a professional poker player in the family. Chris was no slouch when it came to the cards but just a few minutes with Ezra and he realised just how different a breed a pro poker player was, like the gap between a fun runner and a dedicated marathon running athlete. But what impressed him most wasn't the skill with a deck (although some of those shuffles had to defy the laws of physics) but the fact that, raised by Maude Standish, who was undoubtedly a crook of the first degree - and whatever their Dad had been wrong about, he had been right about her - her son had resisted the woman's training and temptations and turned her passed on shady skills into a legal and profitable career. Chris exchanged stares with his only companion of the moment and Madame Butterfly's cool blue gaze seemed to soften slightly in response to his positive thoughts about her Daddy. Chris shivered, he was really going as crazy as the rest of the family if he thought that a darn cat could read his mind!
Fly smirked and Chris looked away quickly. Just a cat... just a cat... just a cat, he mentally chanted.
The third shock had been the affinity with children. Oh he'd known that Ezra had written a book for children in long term hospital stays and it was damn good too. In fact that and JD's excellent computer game based on it had taken off like wildfire. Just a few emails from Nate to fellow doctors in other hospitals and the package was becoming standard all over Colorado. Josiah had had a few words with the nuns in Seattle and JD had passed word to a fellow graduate in the IT department of a top Boston childrens hospital. Now thanks to word of mouth Ezra was regularly receiving letters from grateful parents all over the country and Nate had just happened to let slip the details to a colleague who was about to leave for a conference... in London. Chris smiled a slightly evil smile. The success was already embarrassing their normally ice cool brother; international recognition would leave him a blushing fool... Chris couldn't wait! But they had thought that the one book was all there was to it. They hadn't realised that he was already a fairly successful author under a pen name. Not until one of the children at the clinic had recognized him from the dust jacket photo of his latest children's novel. Okay so maybe he wasn't as famous a JK Rowling but still Chris felt the same pride in his brother's success as he did in JD's 1st from MIT or Buck's growing wood crafts business (Elizabeth hadn't kept quiet about his skills and he was now exporting select items to New Orleans and various other cities both in the southern states and places closer to home, like Boulder where they were snapping up his walking canes like they were christmas candy canes. He's even taken on some part time help from Vin who was a quick and talented learner. Buck with an apprentice! who'd have thought it? These brothers had changed their lives just like he had feared, he'd just never imagined that it could be for the better.
Chris had to admit, although only to himself and the cat, that it still irked him that none of Buck's success and new found mature confidence as a respected craftsman and businessman (although they'd gotten Josiah to handle the finances... Buck would never mature THAT much!) would have ever been likely to happen if it hadn't of been for Ezra's encouragement. For putting the idea into his head or praising his skills. It irked him, not because it was Ezra, though if you'd asked him a couple of months ago... No it was his own failure to recognize and nurture his brother's talents that disturbed him. How many other aspects of his family had he failed to see, caught up in his own grief and bitterness as he had been for so long? How could he answer that? All he knew was that this new dynamic and crazy family had made him feel as though he had woken up after a long sleep filled with nightmares. An image of Dorothy stepping from a black and white world into a world filled with color filled his mind and he snorted inelegantly... He was definately not Dorothy and Ezra was not the Wizard of Oz! Fly sneezed... it seemed that she agreed.
But in many ways that was how he felt. For so long his world had been grey and dull and now it was a riot of color and noise. Quite literally he mused as he looked across the memorial garden... his favourite place on the ranch. The roses were now in full bloom and the fountain was bubbling away with a tinkling laugh that reminded him of Sarah. He liked to think that she was looking down and laughing at him... she used to laugh at him a lot. He smiled. And that was big step forward because a few months ago the mere mention of her name would have had him looking into the bottom of a bottle of bourbon. But that was then and this was now and he felt the unfamiliar but pleasant feelings of contentment as he looked over to Nate pottering in his new herb garden, his range of herbal remedies and creams selling well in Mrs Potters store and then across to Miz Nettie harvesting some early pickings from the renovated kitchen vegetable garden... poor Vin wouldn't be happy at all that greenery! The only thing missing as far as Chris was concerned was the lost members of the family and while his Dad might have been embarrassed at his extra sons he knew that his Mom would have adored them as would Sarah... and his unborn son would have worshipped Vin and Ez, would have seen JD as an older brother rather than an uncle... Chris stopped himself there; some things were still a little too raw to dwell on but he was getting there. Redirecting his thoughts he wondered if maybe they should put in a fish pond.
Fly purred and licked her lips.
Perhaps not.
Levering himself off the comfortable Buck built bench (Bucklin brothers woodcraft to give the business its full name... and Vin had blushed at his inclusion - not missing the fact that Buck had left out the Larabee name in deference to him and his fellow newbies - and had insisted that the brother appellation represented all of them. Chris was pretty sure that the Texan's modesty had been inherited from his Ma, it certainly wasn't a Larabee trait) Chris began to make his way over to help Nettie with the picking. Frankly he was of the same opinion over veg as Vin was but as the second eldest he was obliged to show an example. Nate and Ez were the only ones, in fact, who enjoyed the veg more than the meat and potatoes... peculiar men both of them. And it was nice to see them getting on better now after such a shaky start, though Ezra was still keeping his medical details a secret worthy of the Pentagon and Nate was still trying to prise them out of him with the tenacity of James Bond; it had become a gentle competition. Nate knew that Ezra would tell when he was ready and Ezra now knew that Nate wouldn't push too far.
But that wasn't to say that there wasn't still an awful lot to learn about their new brothers. Vin knew some things about Ezra, given in confidence, that he wasn't telling and Chris respected that even though he itched with curiosity. He had the feeling that the southerner's life had been far from the bed of roses and privilege that they had presumed and that some of those secrets would be traumatic to hear but that was what family was for. To be there for the good times and the bad. JD, thanks to his mothers teachings already knew that, as did Josiah but Vin had never had that and Ezra seemed to have been denied it so it was down to the rest of them to show them what they had been missing.
They would be there for their new brothers and for each other whatever the future held. A loud meaoww attracted his attention and he automatically picked Fly up and set her on his shoulder before resuming his steps. Fly was thoughtful as she was carried towards the kitchen. She was pleased with the way things were progressing and she just hoped that they had finally found a home and a family because her Daddy was going to need his family soon and they were going to need her Daddy. And as for her? Well she was going to have to work on it but that fish pond sounded like a really good idea. Lunch on the fin served alfresco sounded quite civilized... and if she could get that friendly horse to help with the messier aspects all the better... after all a lady should never have to do menial labour!
TBC