Hello from a bit of a break! I'm able to do a little more now, and could finally see my 'Hallie' this past weekend for the first time in ages. Don't worry, though, this fic isn't going anywhere.
I'm not necessarily happy with this idea, but I couldn't put it down so now you're all stuck with it. Things are going to take a bit of a turn from here, as you'll see! You can still leave me requests, of course, for pop culture artifacts you'd like the Carsons to see. Music is about to become even more important, if that's a fun prompt/teaser for you.
Thank you all for your note, thoughts, and kind words! I'm glad to see you all having as much fun as I am.
TW: (sexual) assault
Charles could hardly manage to hold his novel today, let alone decant wine for him and his wife after dinner. But tomorrow, Saturday, was her full day off, and it felt appropriate to indulge tonight.
Elsie breezed through the door. "I'm home, Charlie," she called as she unpinned her hat and hung it on the hook beside his. She strode into the sitting room and he smiled so brightly to see her confident and happy in their home. For song long Elsie had been this uncertain, unknown creature without Mrs. Hughes to fall back on in their little cottage; now, more than a year on, the two were beginning to merge and she had positively bloomed. "Hello dear," she said as she crossed to where he sat and kissed him.
Charles rested his hands, even his shaky right hand, on her hips and rose to meet her, "Hello, love." Feeling the tremor against her hip, Elsie took his right hand between hers and lifted it to her lips, pressing gentle but firm kisses to his knuckles, his palm, his wrist.
"I had hoped to have wine prepared for us with supper tonight, but alas," he held up their hands, the tremor that had calmed but not entirely stilled with her ministrations.
Elsie smiled softly up at him, kissed him lightly again. "Well then, I suppose it's time you teach me to properly decant a bottle, hmm?"
xx
"And now just pour steadily," Charles instructed as Elsie held the bottle of merlot in her hands over the well-prepared decanter. Carefully, she began to tip, a steady stream of deep red liquid pouring, careful not to tilt it too far forward, lest the wine spill or splash, or the sediments seep through.
Across the table, though, a certain guest was not being nearly so cautious, as Charles watched her all but dump a large bottle of wine into a jug. Cords hung yet again from her ears, and she sung out some nonsense he could hardly track. "Just one look!" she all but shouted before devolving into humming. "One more look!" and she hummed again.
Elsie shook her head, refusing to break her concentration until the bottle was properly poured out. Charles, however, glared at whatever she was doing to that wine. The contents emptied into the jug, Hallie placed the empty bottle to the side and picked up a cutting board, on which sat a sliced apple. She dropped the apple slices into the jug, then grabbed an orange and began to slice it as well. He glanced at his wife with a furrowed brow and, noticing that the bottle she was gracefully decanting was nearly empty, spoke up: "what on Earth are you doing with that wine?!"
Hallie started and pulled the cords from her ears after looking up and seeing her irate grandfather. "Ahh, hey Gran, Granda. What are you up to tonight?"
The room felt tense, but Elsie gave a small smile. "Just having a relaxing evening," she said in a clipped tone that only Charles could pick up served as a warning. "That's an awful lot of wine for one person," she commented archly.
Hallie rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to drink it all tonight," she retorted, choosing to leave out that she'd planned on consuming quite a bit of it that night, in fact.
"And why are you mixing in fruit?" Charles all but demanded.
"Because I'm watching a movie with some friends tonight. Wait, movie? Picture? A film," she settled on, "and that film absolutely requires sangria."
"How's that?"
"It's really bad," Hallie explained airily, reaching for a small bottle of brandy, then sprinkling in a handful of berries, "but it's my friend Gina's favorite movie. Honestly I was surprised she even texted me—reached out to me—we haven't talked in ages but it's her birthday and I guess she's feeling nostalgic, and we made a great drinking game for it back in high school."
"And this is an enjoyable activity," Charles grumbled.
Hallie rolled her eyes, dropped the orange slices into the jug. "Yes, Granda. It's fun! The movie is silly, and we drink lots of wine and sing along and bicker about which of the dads is main girl's real father—"
Charles hadn't been aware that Elsie was still holding the empty bottle of wine until he heard it clatter to the ground, luckily not breaking. Only he caught the slight twitch of her nose, how her eyes widened. "What do you mean?" she managed to ask as Charles retrieved the bottle, placing it gently as he could on the table.
Hallie's head tilted just a degree or two, observing her grandmother's odd behavior, before she explained. "So Mamma Mia's about this girl Sophie, and she doesn't know anything about her father, so then she reads her mom's old diary and finds out she has three possible dads, and she invites them all to her wedding so she can figure out which one is her real dad and he can walk her down the aisle. And they don't ever tell you who the real dad is so we can just argue about it forever. And Chloe somehow thinks it's Harry, which is completely insane when it's obvious the real dad is—"
Elsie's mouth went dry, her heart racing. "That's a cruel thing to do to your mother," she spoke softly.
"Oh yeah, Sophie's the worst," Hallie agreed breezily, stirring the mix in the jug. "We really watch it for the mom and her friends, who are the best."
Elsie managed to give the lass a tight smile. She wanted to leave the room, but her feet felt frozen to the ground, heartbeat pulsing in her ears. Charles stood helplessly by as his wife tensed, and Hallie noticed it as well.
"Gran, what's wrong?" she asked gently.
Elsie shook her head, "Nothing, lass. This all just caught me off guard," she turned away and paced toward the sink, hoping breaking eye contact would clear her mind.
"It's got a happy ending," Hallie called out, her pitching raising in desperation at the end of her sentence. "The mom gets married and all three dads decide they don't want to know so they can all be her father. It's sweet, really."
Elsie turned back, her face stricken. The walls seemed to close in around her, it was harder to breath, and Hallie was staring at her with such concern that it made her want to run and hide, feeling incredibly exposed in the cottage's tiny kitchen. She could feel the hems of her skirts lifting as Peter, the first footman, balled the hands at her hips into fists, bunching the fabric between his fingers. "Just be good like the other night, hmm?" he whispered menacingly in her ear, pulling her that much closer, "and I won't tell Jenkins and Mrs. Williams how I found you and Carson."
Fear. Panic. He pressed his lips to her neck and instinctively her hands went to his chest, shoved him off of her. She only glimpsed the fury in his eyes for a moment before the first blow came across her cheek and her back made contact with a wooden shelf. One hand snaked its way into her hair, pulled hard, forced her to look up at him—
"What's wrong? What did I do?!" Hallie turned to Charles, her eyes fearful and concerned.
Charles look as hopeless as Hallie, his brows raised in concern. "Opened a wound you couldn't have known about, lass," he replied quietly. Charles walked slowly to his wife, placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, but she shook her head.
"I'm alright, Charles," Elsie began shakily before taking a breath. She took a seat at the tiny kitchen table, and Hallie mimicked her movements. "You asked me some time ago why we didn't marry earlier, do you remember, lass?" Hallie nodded cautiously. "The truth is...we had a bit of a courtship, I suppose, many, many years ago." She turned her head toward Charles and almost managed a smile. What followed was disastrous, but Elsie still relished the memory of his lips on hers, his strong legs between her thighs, keeping them upright as he drove into her against the wall of the shed, how she clung to him, stifled her little cries of pleasure against the woolen shoulder of his day suit as she came undone beneath him.
"Then there was an...incident." Then, no louder than a whisper, "and a child."
Hallie's eyes widened almost instantly in recognition. "Oh Gran," she whispered, "oh I'm so sorry." Then, after a moment, "Can...can I hug you?"
At Elsie's nod, the girl rose and wrapped her great-great-grandmother tightly in her arms. Elsie shook her head to clear her mind before deciding to divulge: "A friend of mine raised the girl in Ireland. I...we haven't heard from her for many years now. But...we have wondered..."
Elsie pulled back from the embrace to look meaningfully at Hallie, blue eyes locking with blue eyes. The girl froze.
"My nana's mom was adopted," Hallie breathed, eyes going wide. "After Nan's dad died, her mom got a job in Dublin but her and her sister stayed with their grandparents, and that's when she found out..."
She backed away from Elsie as it sunk in. "Oh god. Gran I'm so—I didn't mean to—I'm so sorry Gran, I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault, Hallie, don't be ridic—"
"I'll let you both...I'm sorry, Gran. I didn't know. I'm sorry."
Hallie vanished from the room. Charles stood shocked, while Elsie brought a hand to her eyes, wiping the tears that had gathered before they'd get the chance to fall.
"Well, then. There's tonight ruined." She muttered grimly, feeling drained and defeated.
Charles shook his head sadly as he rushed to her side. "Oh, my darling," he whispered in his ear as he lifted her from the chair, tremors be damned. She acquiesced, and he carried her to the settee and settled them with her lying in his lap, arms snug around her as his hand soothed her back in long, comforting strokes. "Nothing's ruined, lass, I promise," he rumbled as she slumped against him, sounding far more confident than he felt.
xx
Hallie waited impatiently in the garden with tea in a mug. It had been several days, now, and she hadn't seen her Granda in the garden since before. She inhaled deeply, held her breath, exhaled deeply. Took a sip. Stood, paced, stopped. Sipped again.
That did it. Charles now stood before her, staring blankly out into the horizon with a teacup in hand. She smiled softly up at him. "Hello, Granda."
He sighed a bit, though it was not directed at her per se. "Hello, Hallie."
"I've been waiting for you," she confessed. "It's been a few days."
He nodded. "Indeed it has. Eventful ones." He sighed again. Elsie lay stiffly beside him. "Darling," he murmured with tears in his eyes, draping an arm over her middle.
She tensed. He sighed, pulled her closer. "I'm sorry, Charles," she whispered, curling in on herself. "You don't have to...if you don't want."
He shook his head, hushed her. Why this impulse to run, to hide, to push him away, still now?
"Okay, I'm just gonna ask the hard question. Alright?" She resumed speaking at his nod. "Should I go away? I mean, should I just, like, stop showing up to dinner and tea and things?"
Charles's jaw nearly dropped. "Why would you do that?"
One corner of her mouth twitched upwards. "That way Gran doesn't have to...look at me all the time." She bit her lip as the statement settled between them.
"Oh lass," Charles murmured, "That would make things immeasurably worse."
Hallie gasped. "She still wants me here?" Her Granda nodded, and Hallie teared up a bit. "Absolutely not," her mother vetoed before Hallie, then 14 and only two years a stepdaughter, even made it down the stairs. Baggy, but clean, black pants, a black scoop-neck shirt, and a too-large emerald cardigan.
"I'm following all the rules!" She counted off on her fingers: "No shoulders, no boobs, no legs above the knee, no holes, no leggings, no sneakers, no toes, no ponytail, no boy's clothes, no bright makeup, no black nail polish—"
"You look sloppy."
"I've worn this to church with Nan." Her bangs fell into her face and she smoothed them back to the right of her face where they belonged."I put on ballet flats," she offered weakly.
"Not Paul's mother's church. Go put on a dress." Her mother's mouth a thin, angry line.
"I don't own a dress," Hallie whined.
"Borrow one from Laura."
"Mom, she's skinny," the girl argued.
"And you're not?" Jeanine Russo was getting fed up.
"She's an A cup," Hallie emphasized. "I'll look stupid."
"Then you can stay home. You are not going to embarrass us with this today, Hallie Jo, you look...inappropriate."
Hallie knew that wasn't the word she meant. "Mom—"
"Get the hell upstairs," Paul's voice thundered—
"She's worried you don't want to see her again."
Hallie shook her head. "Of course I do. I thought she wouldn't want me...in her safe place. Not if..."
Charles managed to give the lass a small smile. "It's nothing to do with you. She loves you, Hallie." Another sigh. "It's the uncertainty, I think. There's so much we just cannot know."
Hallie pursed her lips, and it was a long moment before she responded. "What if...what if we tried to piece it together?"
His brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"
She almost smirked. "I don't know much about my ancestors. You want to find out about your...descendants. You've got primary sources and lived experiences. I've got the inte—I've got access to really good research tools. What if we just, like, try to figure this all out? Together?"
Charles paused to think. "Elsie couldn't know," he warned. "Not unless we find some proof either way."
Hallie nodded solemnly. "Deal." She took a sip of her tea and continued, "When is Gran always working, when we can meet up?"
"Mornings are safe. She won't have another full day off for quite a while now."
She thought again. "Tuesdays then? Nine in the morning?" She extended a hand toward Charles, a gesture of her absolute seriousness.
Charles shook her hand without hesitation. "I'll see you then, lass."
Endnote: A few of you have asked me about incorporating DNA testing. I tried, really I did, but combining science I do not understand with purposefully-vague magic made for complicated and uninteresting plots in the versions I drafted. I hope you'll all be content in the track I've settled on instead, and I'm so grateful to all of you for your enthusiasm and your ideas, so please feel empowered and encouraged to continue shooting them my way.