AN: a little bit of a shorter chapter today. Just felt like the perfect place to cut it. But we'll see, maybe I'll have time for another - I'll try. Reviews are truly appreciated.
"Naptime is heaven," Logan exhaled as he sank down onto their parlor couch, laying his head on top of the backrest. He truly hadn't had much such time when he could just lounge around his own house during daytime, not this house at least. There had been the kids, anything related to the move and renovations he'd needed to make sure got done, work, guests and more kids. it was the best kind of exhausting that followed after spending a day, or half a day as in this case, with the kids, but this definitely was something he missed too. Logan had just sent Owen and Charlotte Christmas shopping with the company credit card, telling them to indulge themselves a little before they were all flying to London the next day. With Maya having retired for the duration of the kid's nap as well - smart woman like she was, it was only him and Rory who were left in the parlor now.
"I know.., It keeps me sane," Rory replied and flopped down on the couch next to him, but quickly flipped through the baby monitor app on her phone to make sure all three of them were sleeping peacefully upstairs.
"You're a superwoman, you know that, right?" Logan said, appreciatively.
"I'm not," Rory disagreed, shaking her head. This wasn't modesty, to her this was simply an overstatement. She was no single mother doing this by herself like many were - that's what the definition of a superwoman was. She had all the help that money could buy, more if she would've wanted it - to her that was not enough to qualify for the superwoman title.
"I'm out of breath with the three of them after two days, you do this every day. Plus your sister. Soon work…," Logan reminded her. Logan had taken Friday off to hang out with the kids, knowing he'd be off Sunday morning already and not be back before late on Christmas Eve. It was just a few days - it almost felt ridiculous to fly over just for that, but he wanted to show Owen the ropes himself, at least for the first few days.
"Yeah…," Rory rolled her eyes, sighing disheartedly. In her eyes she wasn't doing any of it as well as she was supposed to. Least of all when it came to G. And she hadn't even had time to open the files she was supposed to to start reading for going back to work.
"What?" Logan asked, seeing something was up with her.
Rory couldn't believe what she was about to say, and hence delayed her response. "I think maybe... I shouldn't go back to work. Yet…," she said not wanting to burn that bridge completely. She'd recently read a few essays on being present and the unbusy movement. While she didn't agree with everything she'd read, it had opened several trains of thought for her. She wanted to be really paying attention to the kids growing up and there was also that what Owen had said at his interview that had made her realize that she didn't really need an employer to do what she wanted to do. Sure, university connections were important, valuable, but she didn't need funds to be set aside for her position, deadlines and obligations. Maybe without those strings she'd be more in charge of her time?
"If you're worried about the kids being left with the nannies too much, I was actually thinking about taking it a little easier nd being home more when you start work," Logan said, realizing that this might be a contributing factor he hadn't really shared with her before.
Rory truly appreciated him saying that, and she let her hand caress the back of his neck and hair in gratitude as she turned to her side.
"I don't think it's going to be enough…," she said. "Not from you.. But from me," she added.
"But you need to fill your cup too," Logan urged. Rory had had moments of self-scarification before, he just needed to make sure she wasn't forgetting about herself.
"I know. I think I need to really give this a try too. I want to be more than an adequate mother who is hardly around. I want to be there for G too. Every person I know that has grown up with absent parents has had a rough time and no matter how much I want to make a difference in the world, I think I need to find some other way to do it…," Rory explained, continuing on to explain to Logan what ideas she'd gotten from Owen's interview. She knew Owen would have his hands full for the foreseeable future, but so would she - hence what she thought she could do was start reading, researching, little by little, and set up a game plan during this time, letting her be in charge of the timeframe.
"You are an excellent mother no matter what you do," Logan assured.
"There is a finite number of hours in a day I don't want to spend those I have to spend with the kids dead tired and thinking about my deadlines," Rory explained. She was going to hate telling her supervisor that she couldn't take the job she'd already agreed to, especially before Christmas, knowing there was only like six weeks before the semester started. But she was willing to help her find someone else, even if that took a personal donation to her project. She was finally realizing what it meant to be the carrier of the Huntzberger name and the way it bought her the freedom of choice, which she was no longer afraid to use.
"If that's what you want..," he shrugged, observing her. She did look tired, a lot more tired than she had before he'd left, perhaps had a few deeper lines around the eyes he'd really paid no attention to before making him feel even more guilty. He certainly wasn't going to force her to work, but he still worried, wondering whether that would indeed be enough for her. Working had been such a defining aspect of life for Rory, he wasn't even sure he recognized her without it, but he just had to hope that this development that she was going through was indeed something good, and not about to change in the Rory he'd fallen in love with. He loved seeing that drive in her eyes when she wanted to make something happen - and right now there was very little of that or at the very least it was different.
"I don't think with Finny… I don't think I really tried. I felt out of my element and instead of waiting to feel like I could do it, I just escaped it. I let someone else handle it. Now I just need to…," Rory clarified, still feeling guilty for it. Sure, she'd needed to do it at the time. But now having really tried with Leigh and that having worked, she knew that instead of fleeing what she needed to prove to herself instead was hanging in there and being present, was really not the solution.
"You know G really shouldn't be your responsibility, right?" Logan reminded her. He saw that their relationship had improved, and that was a good thing. He loved his sister too, but he did worry perhaps she was taking on more than she had to.
"I know. But she needs me. The kids might be just as fine with the nannies but she really needs me, my attention," she emphasized.
"What's going on with her..?" Logan inquired, raising his head from the couch back. "I mean there's teenage rebellion and acting out, and trust me I'm the expert in that. But the way you make it sound it sounds like something more serious," Logan asked with concern.
"I don't really know what the root cause is… but she's just getting started in pulling that ball of yarn apart. She went to a counselor, but honestly I think she needs a therapist, a really good one. She has all these little behaviors that worry me...Celeste agrees…," she added, shaking her head. She wasn't going to spill all G's secrets to Logan, knowing she wouldn't want to and it really wasn't something he needed to know. "The gala night - that really was just a tip of the iceberg which she really didn't mean for to happen...," she explained.
"Then I'm sure you'll find her the help she needs if her parents don't..." Logan assured, stroking her shoulder. It was funny how he had a lot more belief in the concept of parents nowadays than he'd ever had before - that they'd do the right thing and make the right choices. Being a parent, even though feeling like the absent one right now, had skewed his viewpoint of these matters significantly.
"I hope so," Rory sighed.
"That was the last of them," Jess exhaled as he returned upstairs from the store, having handed over the final batch of deliveries to the courier. These were the last ones that would make it to the customers by Christmas, and while there were still orders to pack those could wait a few days, allowing Jess and Celeste a tiny breather. The first month at the Apparatus Bay had been good. Definitely more active on the web store than on site, which Jess was a little sad about, but he hoped things would pick up there too in the summer when people would start travelling more.
"Good," Celeste replied, as she sat on the floor with Evie in her lap flipping through 'Whistle for Willie' with her.
"I'll open the store on Monday but then I think we'll try the European approach to Christmas," Jess added.
"Closed and unreachable?" Celeste inquired with a chuckle.
Jess simply smirked at her as affirmation and watched her and Evie with the book. The girl had surprising patience for sitting still like that, he had to admit.
"Any word from Natalie?" Jess asked, hating to ask, knowing how the topic really wasn't easy for her. She'd had her therapy session that week, thankfully, and he hoped that had helped. But she hadn't really talked to him about it other than assuring that she had contacted Natalie.
"She said that proving who I was was definitely an issue now that I don't have any documents, which can work for my benefit in this case," Celeste explained. "Though if they were to find a good reason they could just do that biometrically, but this usually requires a court order," she added. "And inheriting anything by will is still possible if she decides to write me into her will, but she said she wouldn't force it on me. And I really hope she won't," she said. She had heard the words but it just didn't seem like her mother to be that relaxed about things like that. "She can involve me in the company a lot more easily though, but technically not without my signature, and I guess that's what I need to be the most careful about," she added, realizing that the company could be a lot more rotten from the inside than it seemed, especially after her brother's influence on it for nearly a decade.
"Then why do you look so worried?" Jess asked.
"If she could find me, Henri definitely could too - and even though right now he is detained. What if it becomes the matter of who gets the money and he blames me. I don't want to deal with him, let alone be subject to his envy. That'll seriously mean I'd be running and hiding, at the very least looking over my shoulder. So I'll just need to be extra careful and keep my nose clear of their issues," Celeste explained. She was looking over her shoulder as it was.
"That shouldn't be such a difficult thing to do, should it?" Jess assured, trying to stay optimistic. He didn't like to see her worry like this, definitely beginning to see the downside of this interaction. Seeing her mother might have cleared some air, but it definitely raised more worries than she needed.
"Yeah," she replied, hoping that was true.
G had just spent the day driving around some small villages North of Paris -Auvers-sur-Oise, Chantilly and Senlis among others with her mother, stopping at a couple of small cafes and museums along the way. They hadn't really needed to do any Christmas shopping, but had ended up doing so anyway, G getting a couple of small items for Rory to bring back home and getting some handicraft jams and treats for the Christmas table. Their holiday tradition, when she'd lived there, had been to spend Christmas dinner relaxing and mostly making up the entire feast out of snacks, treats and wine, usually coming out far more elaborate than in most homes, while skipping the laborious hours in front of the stove. Sherry was never much of a cook and she wasn't that now, Remi doing most of the cooking.
Now G was up in her room, physically tired but too alert to go to bed just yet. She'd been watching some stupid comedy on Netflix, but it really wasn't growing on her and she was sick of scrolling her feed looking at everyone's photos - it always seemed in those photos like everyone had things so together, while she didn't feel like that at all.
Leaving the movie playing, she decided to give the issue of La Monde, she hadn't really finished but had half automatically shoved to the side of her backpack at the airport a few days ago, another try. Reading something in French, which on occasion she worried, she might be forgetting for the lack of practice, especially the formal vocabulary a newspaper had, made her feel more in tune with her current location and while she didn't really read physical papers much back in New York, here she on occasion had.
She perused the paper, mostly reading some different angles on the transportation strike and politics. Having for a moment skipped to the back of the paper to check the weather - which was promising an unbelievable 17 degrees Celsius after Christmas, which was more like spring temperatures than December, she was almost about to give up on the paper, thinking she might just as well head downstairs to see maybe she could hang out with her mom, knowing she was probably still up, when while flipping the paper up, she caught sight of a familiar name on its pages - Aubertin.
She read the lengthy article quickly, giving an overview of Celeste's brother's legal matters, as they'd become part of public interest. The man had apparently beaten his wife regularly, careful not to harm her in any ways that would be visible for the public. There were pictures of her bruises - mostly back and stomach, but also thighs. It really wasn't light reading. She felt sorry for the wife and more so for the children, realizing what they were going to grow up with articles like this that were always going to be searchable in the future. There was a lengthy subpiece on the Aubertin family, their assets, as much of it as was public information and there she stopped reading for a moment and observed the accompanying table. It listed numerous properties, companies, stocks and more. But right there, in black and white, there stood a a few lines with of assets, including a villa on the outskirts of Nice and another property in Paris, behind which it was printed plain and clear 'owner Odette Aubertin'.
She snapped a picture of the table in question and sent it over to Celeste without hesitation. She hadn't spoken to her since the day she'd found out Celeste had been keeping things from her. But this seemed like such an insignificant thing in comparison - so many things having happened in between, this seeming certainly more urgent.
Did Celeste know about these? Surely she must've, right? - she pondered to herself while waiting for Celeste to reply.