21

Elijah was half sleepily watching the ten o'clock news when his house phone rang. He frowned, that was weird the hospital and everyone else who generally tried to reach him usually called him on his cell phone. Sometimes he even forgot he had installed a house phone.

He stood up and picked it up from where it had been resting on his kitchen counter. "Hello?"

"Dear?" the voice sounded high pitched and unclear at the other end. "Dear? Elijah, is that you?"

Elijah tried not to stiffen and hold any hostility in his tone as he calmly replied. "Hello, mother."

"Why didn't you answer?" Esther's tone sounded reproachful.

"I'm sorry," he said as he turned off the TV and sat on the couch, bracing himself for the worst. "A little late for you to be calling, isn't it?" his parents most of the time were in bed by nine.

Esther said at the other end. "It's only seven in San Diego," His parents had lived in New York and when Mikael had retired they had moved to San Diego, California for nicer weather, not that any of his children complained very much. They only rarely saw each other on Holidays and sometimes Elijah made an excuse not to go. "Did you just get home?"

"Yeah, around eight," he said. It wasn't like Esther to call to see how he was doing.

"Good, dear," Esther replied absentmindly, clearly not paying attention. "Listen, dear Mikael is having a reunion with his old college friends at the Yale Club this weekend in New York and we were hoping to have dinner with all three of you."

Elijah both looked and sounded surprised. He couldn't remember the last time that all three of them had, had dinner together. It had been years and all he could remember from the last time they had, had dinner was that there had been a lot of fighting and that Rebekah had ended up in tears.

"Klaus is back from Europe?" he knew that Klaus was stubborn and that he loved Europe so much that he wouldn't go back to New York unless it was absolutely necessary.

"Yes, I convince him. Are you free this weekend?" Esther prompted. "I already spoke to your sister and Klaus, so the only one left is you."

"I guess." Elijah said weakly, honestly after a hard week the only thing he wanted to do was to see the football game with Stefan or maybe Marcel and spend the weekend with Katherine, not with his parents.

Esther wasn't surprised by his response. "All right. I planned dinner reservations for Saturday at eight at The Riviera. You can bring a guest if you want, I wanted to meet your sister's new boyfriend, but unfortunately he is going to be working this weekend."

Smart move, Salvatore, Elijah couldn't help, but think as he hang up the phone.

"There's the new Amazing Spider man 2 movie coming out on Saturday," Katherine said as she and Elijah walked through the streets of New York on Thursday on their way to dinner. "We should go see it."

Elijah didn't respond.

Katherine whacked him playfully on the shoulder. "What gives? You've been zoned out all afternoon."

Elijah shook his head as he forced a smile. "It's nothing."

Katherine rolled her eyes. "Want to try that again? Come on, Elijah we both know that you're a terrible liar. So what gives?" she lowered her voice. "Is it the nightmares-"

"No, it's not the nightmares." Elijah answered tightly as he rummaged a hand through his hair. Katherine had never really seen him this angry and frustrated before. "My parents are coming to visit this weekend, and they want all of us-including my brother Klaus to have dinner with them on Saturday and it's just not something I'm looking forward too. Can we please talk about something else?"

Katherine squeezed Elijah's hand. "Elijah, you know you can tell me anything, right? Why do you and Rebekah never talk about you parents? Why are you so angry at them? Elijah, please tell me." She lowered her voice. "I want to know, please."

Elijah sighed as they continued walking towards the restaurant, he knew Katherine wasn't going to give it up, like with the nightmares. "My parents, Esther and Mikael are just very difficult people to get along with, let alone like. They spend our whole lives, grooming us to be everything they wanted us to be. They weren't shy about expressing their opinions every time they were disappointed," he said bitterly. "It was like a constant competition between me and my siblings to see who the best was, and there was always so much yelling and blaming, it wasn't a happy home. And worse, now that we're older they act like nothing's wrong, like nothing has changed that we still need to fight for the position of favorite child."

Katherine rested her head against his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Eli." She couldn't help but think of her own childhood when her parents and Elena were alive, it hadn't been perfect, but it had been happy. Elijah's own childhood sounded miserable. "Hey, how about I come with you to the dinner. They can't be that bad if I'm there, right?"

"You would be surprise," Elijah said ruefully and sighed. "Honestly, Katherine I appreciate the sentiment, but I don't want you to suffer-"

"Elijah," she said firmly as she opened the door of the Italian restaurant. "I'm a strong girl, I can handle it. Besides you were there for me when I needed you, now let me do the same thing for you."

The next day Katherine knocked on Eloise's door. She hadn't seen her for a month, not since Emma's funeral. She wasn't sure exactly how she felt, but now that the anger had left her she knew it wasn't fair to completely blame Eloise, it could have happened to anyone. But Katherine wanted to make peace with her, she didn't want to lose anybody else and then later regret it. The door opened and Eloise looked surprised to see her there. "Katherine?"

"Hi," she said awkwardly. "Can I come in?"

Eloise nodded. "Yes," they walked back to the living room and stared at each other in awkward silence. "What brings you here?"

"I wanted to . . . apologize," Katherine said finally. "I know you lost Emma too, and I shouldn't have blamed you for something you had no control over."

"Losing Emma will be something I will always blame myself for, Katherine." Eloise whispered. "No matter what anyone says, but I'm glad that we are able to mend things between us, we only have each other left. How have you've been doing?"

"Fine." She said as she fiddled with her fingers. "Everything at the magazine is going well and I'm dating Elijah."

Eloise wasn't surprise, especially since Elijah had told her that he would be taking her to Cancun. "I'm glad you're finally dating a nice boy." She replied.

Katherine sighed as she rested her back against the couch. "The thing is that I'm having dinner with his parents and let just say that they are not the most wonderful people from their description and I'm nervous and I'm afraid that they won't. . .approve of me so to speak. How can I make them like me?"

Eloise paused and stared at her for a few moments. Katherine looked so much like her mother. "You can't make anyone like you, Katherine." Eloise said after a while. "You just have to be the kind of person that you are even if others don't like it. If your friends and Elijah like you for who you are, if you like who you are, then why does anyone else's opinion matter? If someone doesn't appreciate the kind of girl you are, then that is their lost. Maybe those kind of people don't matter."

-End of Chapter Twenty One-