~#~ (Chapter 37)

The vid-phone unit sounded while Jeff was outside talking to Kyrano and Tin-Tin. Scott stuck his head out of his door to see if anyone was about. Deciding that no-one else was going to answer the call he wandered into Jeff's office and dropped down into the comfortable leather chair. He looked at his watch, grinned and pressed the button to connect the call. "Hi John."

John's face appeared on the screen and he looked temporarily taken aback that Scott had answered the call instead of Jeff. "Uh, hi Scott," he began. "I wasn't expecting you. Where's Dad? Is he OK?"

Scott smiled. "He's fine. He's just talking to Tin-Tin and her parents," he explained. "…out by the pool. Look, John, you need to know that he got Grandma and the four of us together in the sitting room this afternoon and told us what's been going on. It's…well, to use Alan's description…'huge'. I can kind of understand now why Father got so frazzled after he opened that letter."

John shrugged. "I know. I didn't have a clue why he suddenly recalled me from Five but I wouldn't have put 'you have a six month old son' down in a list of a hundred reasons he might have needed to speak to me. That couldn't have come a lot further out of left field if it had tried."

"Hmm, impregnating women and using baseball analogies?" Scott raised an eyebrow and smirked. "Who are you and what have you done with my brother?"

John chuckled. "Scott, behave," he said and then blushed. "I guess the…um…impregnating thing was my fault…um…sort of but you can blame the baseball solely on Alan. About a week and a half ago he was raving on and on about some big game that he'd watched. He couldn't sleep and ended up talking to me about it for hours." John stopped and breathed deeply. "So, everyone knows?"

"About Jacob? Yes." Scott nodded and smiled at his younger brother. "Oh, well, no. No-one's spoken to Penny yet so neither she nor Brains know anything." Scott leaned nearer to the screen. "Have you got Jacob with you? I wouldn't mind catching a glimpse of the little guy. From the pictures he looks a lot like Alan."

John smiled and then shrugged. "I think he looks like Alan but Father says he looks like me. He sure looks like Alan when he's upset though, he gets the same little tram-lines on his forehead that Alan gets when he's angry." John paused and chuckled as Scott theatrically grabbed at his chest and gasped "No, tell me it's not true. There can't be another one!"

John rolled his eyes and shook his head at his eldest brother's antics. "Anyway, you can't see him at the moment. I'm not allowed to take him further than the hospital gardens until he's discharged, I just came back to the hotel to call in at my usual time. I worked it out right, didn't I?"

Scott nodded. "Yeah, you did. I noticed it was nine o'clock when I answered but I think Father's timing's a bit screwed up what with flying across the date line and everything. I thought he was looking a bit washed out when he got back here but he fell asleep after talking to us all and seemed a lot brighter when I woke him for dinner. Do you want me to go and get him?"

John shook his head. "No, it's OK," he said. "I just wanted to tell him that I have Rosie's keys but, Scott, I don't know what to do now. Do I wait for him to come back before I go in or do I go with Uncle Jo, tomorrow?"

"I can't answer that for you, John," Scott replied. "Only you can decide that one for yourself but if Dad's planning on staying here for a few days it might make sense to at least take a look inside with Joel. Father said something about you getting the keys to the apartment when we were talking about furniture."

John cocked his head to one side. "Furniture?" he asked. "What furniture?"

Scott smiled. "Furniture for Jacob, you great dolt. I don't know if you've noticed but most of the stuff here is kind of grown up sized? You see, Dad was saying how Jacob couldn't come here until his arm's all sorted and then he had some sort of epiphany about the fact that the infirmary isn't currently equipped for small children. He set Virgil on the case and told him to get Onaha to help get it ready for Jacob's arrival. Grandma then whapped him with the fact that the whole house was going to need work to make it child-friendly and used our holiday in Saint-Tropez as an example of what can happen with a toddler around."

John frowned in thought. "Oh God, not Gordon and the pool?" he asked and then burst out laughing. "Wow, that was so long ago. So it went from preparing the infirmary, through childproofing the house and ended up on furniture? Oh, I see. Jacob's going to have furniture in Rosie's apartment…I hadn't even thought about that. When I thought about the apartment I was thinking mainly about Jacob's clothes and toys and maybe any photograph albums, or the like, that I could find. I don't have all that many good pictures of Rosie and Jacob's going to need photos of her around if he's going to feel any sort link to her when he's bigger. It's the same as Dad keeping so many pictures of Mama out on display so that Alan…and Gordon to some extent, can remember her when they had so little time with her when she was alive."

Scott and John took a quiet moment to ponder the fact that out of five boys there were only three of them who truly remembered their mother. Gordon had a few scarce real memories of his time with Lucille but Alan had been forced to learn most of what he knew about her from his brothers, grandmother and, on the occasions when he felt up to talking about his deceased wife, his father.

Eventually Scott broke the silence. "Father was wondering about the practicalities of shipping furniture from there to here. He said that he'd speak to you about it but I think he was working along the lines that it might be easier to start again from scratch. He put forward the idea of gathering everything together in one place and getting it shipped over here as a job lot, I assume he meant getting a container or something…"

John nodded. "There's a lot of sense in that and to be honest I think I'd feel a bit…weird taking Rosie's things…even if is all legally mine now." Scott raised his eyebrows at this so John explained. "Dad wanted Alex and Joel to check over Rosie's finances before I signed anything but apparently it was a pretty easy job. Rosie hadn't had any sort of job since she moved over here and had been living on her savings…which were running out. A couple of weeks ago she'd applied for help from the local council to pay the rent but the application was still under review so I don't know what she'd have done over the next couple of months because she wouldn't have had any money left to live by. Scott, why didn't she get in touch? She didn't need to live like that. I could have given her anything she needed…even if she didn't want to take anything from me for herself then I could have at least provided for Jacob."

Scott was dismayed to see tears building in John's eyes when he was stuck so far out of reach. "Aw, Johnny, don't," he pleaded, automatically falling back to using the diminutive version of his brother's name that he used to use when the pair were little. "You can't start second guessing Rosie's decisions, that'll just eat you up inside. You may never know why she did what she did but you just have to tell yourself that she had good reason and that she thought what she was doing was for the best."

John nodded briefly and ran a hand across his eyes to clear the unshed tears from where they were clinging to his pale eyelashes. "Sorry," he mumbled. "I've been doing that a fair bit over the past few days; I think my emotions are way too close to the surface at the moment."

"I think that's only to be expected," Scott said quietly. "…and don't think anyone will think anything bad of you for tearing up. What is it Penny always says?"

"There's nothing like a good cry to cleanse the soul," John replied. "And you know, I think she might be right. I've done more crying over the past few days than I've done in years but I think I'd have probably exploded somewhere along the way if I hadn't. I've cried all over Dad, Scott, I've yelled at him, got in his face and dumped all my problems on him. He's been great about everything and I don't know how I'm ever going to repay him."

"Don't you worry about that, John. I think you'll find that giving him with his first grandchild will have been payment enough," Scott suggested. "Unless one of Gordon's wild oats accidentally takes root then I can't imagine that the next generation of Tracys is going to be particularly numerous and if I had to hazard a guess I'd say that any other grandchildren would have to come from Tin-Tin. For Alan's sake though I would hope that won't happen any time soon." Scott had no way of knowing that he'd used almost the exact same expression that Tin-Tin herself had used when assuring Kyrano that she wasn't planning on becoming pregnant in the immediate future. "Back to what we were saying before though," he continued. "If you don't want to take anything from the apartment then someone else might be able to make good use of it. I'm sure one of the goodwill shops or charities would be more than pleased to take the furniture off your hands for someone who really needs it."

John nodded thoughtfully. "That's true," he agreed. "And at least that way Rosie will have helped someone around here who is possibly in a worse situation than she was…"

Scott refrained from commenting even though he heard John's unspoken 'even if she'd chosen to put herself in that situation in the first place'.

John sighed. "I guess I might take Joel and have a look tomorrow," he said eventually. "At least we'll know exactly what is and isn't there then. We were messing around with paperwork most of this morning so I haven't got to see much of Jacob today. I want to get back to the hospital as soon as I can then I can spend the rest of the afternoon with him."

Scott nodded. "Are you sure you don't want to speak to Dad?" he asked. "I'm sure he won't mind coming in to talk to you."

John shook his head. "No, Scott, leave him be. If he's still talking to Kyrano and the others then I wouldn't want to interrupt. I'll disappear and let you get back to whatever you were doing before I called."

Scott smiled. "I wasn't doing a lot," he chuckled. "Give Jacob an extra cuddle from me…and John?" he added, "Don't be a stranger. You know where I am if you need me. If you feel you can't talk to Father for whatever reason or if you can't get hold of him but need to talk then please, call me."

"Thanks Scott." John nodded as he replied. "I will. Say hi to the others for me?"

Scott smiled. "No probs. Gordon's probably going to lynch me for not letting him speak to you but never mind…Night John."

John looked towards the window and grinned. "Good afternoon Scott," he said and then pressed the button to disconnect the call. He flopped back onto his bed and let out a deep breath as he stared at the ceiling. He had been worried about how his eldest brother was going to react to the news about Jacob and he was grateful that Scott had turned out to be nothing but supportive. John chuckled to himself as he thought back over the end of the conversation. Joel had always said that it was Scott's responsibility to father the next generation of Tracy children and none of the others had ever had a mention in that respect. He wondered what Joel would think if he knew that Scott had silently handed all responsibility for that down to the youngest member of their family. He then snorted and wondered what Alan would say if he ever realised the same thing.

John dragged himself up from where he had slumped on the bed. He then tidied himself up a little and headed out of the hotel to spend the rest of the afternoon with his son.