Father's Day. Yet another occasion most people happily celebrated, taking the ability to be able to do so for granted, while the children at Ashdene Ridge spent the day reminiscing about the fathers who'd abandoned them or imagining what their fathers looked like and what might've been. Prior to the current year, Jody had never been one of those kids, instead reserving all of that wistfulness and anger for the next Mother's Day but this Mother's Day had been spent listening to everyone else talking about her becoming a mother herself to a Gray-Lewis baby and thus all of that pent up anger and wistfulness had to go somewhere. Why not on the coward who'd left the family more than a dozen years ago only to reappear and lurk around the cemetery, searching for his lost progeny?
She sighed in frustration. She didn't know a thing about him. Where would she even start? She walked past Finn who was blathering nonsense about some Billy McLaine, stopping in front of the door to the narrow porch and wondering what to do next. Going to the gym was the most plausible option but something told her that the intense fire blazing underneath her skin wouldn't abate after throwing a mere few punches at a sparring partner or punching bag. No, she needed to land a good, hard one on the actual culprit.
"Jodes?" Tyler called, coming out of the lounge. "What's up?" She didn't answer, her mind going a mile a minute. Was it time to ask Mike and May-Li to locate Kingsley Gray? They could probably do it within a matter of days, especially if he was in or around Pottiswood, but then they'd be angry when they later found out why she'd asked them to, wouldn't they? "Are you going to see Brandon again?"
Her eyes shot up to meet his, and she glared at him. Something about the way he'd wearily said 'again' rubbed her the wrong way. He'd practically pushed her into Brandon's arms more than three weeks ago so why was he complaining now? "No, believe it or not, my life doesn't revolve around him!" she snapped. She didn't need this now, not when Candi-Rose and Floss' shipping wars were beginning to grate on her nerves.
"Woah, alright!" he exclaimed, crossing his arms. "I was just trying to make conversation!" He fixed her with a look then, narrowing his eyes a little. "What's wrong?"
Oh, of course, he could still read her like an open book. He wouldn't be Tyler Lewis if he couldn't. "Nothing," she lied, twisting the door handle and pulling the door open. The cemetery was her best bet if she was going to find Gray without official help. "There's somewhere I need to be."
Intending to leg it to the cemetery as quickly as possible, she hurried out of the house and down the driveway when she heard Tyler calling her name out from behind her. Turning around, she was surprised to see him running up to her. As he came to a stop next to her, she shot him a questioning look.
"Don't you need a navigator?" he asked, dangling his phone in front of her face. Oh.
She smiled wryly. "Hmm, I was just going to do that," she fibbed, reaching into her pocket but faltering when she remembered she had no mobile data left. She proceeded to retract her hand and clear her throat, sheepishly peering up at him.
"Shall we?" he proposed, clicking on something on his phone. "Where to?"
"Wait," she said, digging her hands into her pockets. "Aren't you seeing your mum today?"
"Nah, not today," he answered, rubbing his nose. "She called Mike to say she's not well. Not seeing her for another fortnight."
She raised an eyebrow; he didn't even appear to be upset. When Sally had first decreased the frequency of their meetings from weekly to fortnightly, he'd gone off into a bout of sulking that didn't end until she did her level best to cheer him up but now he didn't even care that he essentially wasn't going to see his mother for an entire month... When had he grown up?
"So, where to?" he repeated, his finger hovering over the touchscreen.
It took her a moment or two to recall the name of the cemetery. After all, she'd only been there twice.
.:. QK .:.
After approximately forty minutes of walking and occasionally getting lost thanks to the way Tyler was holding his phone and thus screwing up its GPS, the two best friends finally reached the wrought iron gates guarding the cemetery. Standing outside, Jody noted that the entire place looked a little creepier this time 'round, though she had no idea why. It wasn't even dark or dreary. In fact, the weather was better than it had been the last two times she was here.
"Are you going to tell me why we're here?" Tyler questioned somewhere from her right as they entered the fray. "You didn't even buy any flowers."
"I'm not here to lay flowers," she mumbled, scanning her surroundings for a woman who looked like she frequented a cemetery. What did such a woman look like anyway? A poor soul who didn't have a life?
Other than a pair of male gravediggers, there were three women and one man scattered throughout the cemetery, actively mourning their loved ones. One woman, in particular, was wailing loudly over a grave that definitely hadn't been there the last time, effectively ruling herself out. That left the old woman standing quietly in front of an equally old looking grave and the young(er) woman kneeling in front of another grave, handling the flowers in the grave's allocated floral tin. Charlie hadn't described the woman who'd asked about the Jacksons at all so she had nothing to go on. Nevertheless, she decided to approach the younger woman first. Old people (besides PoPo) were always such a bother what with their bad hearing and forgetfulness.
"Excuse me," she spoke up as she approached the woman with Tyler in tow.
The woman turned around to face her, and Jody immediately regretted her earlier conjecture that the woman didn't have a life; the unmistakable and undeniable baby bump she was sporting said otherwise. She really hoped the grave didn't belong to the father of the baby but given the birth and death dates—he was recently deceased and around the same age the woman appeared to be—she wasn't so sure. "Yes?" the young woman responded, the blank expression on her face not exactly instilling Jody with confidence.
"Are you the one who was asked about Denise Jackson's children?" she asked uncertainly, nearly sure that she had the wrong woman. It seemed like she would have to talk to the old woman after all.
Luckily for her, the young woman's eyes lit up in recognition. "Oh, you're the girl who visited her grave, aren't you?" she questioned, looking as if she'd snapped out of a trance. "Sorry, I was"—she smiled sadly at the grave in front of her, shaking her head—"never mind." She looked back up at Jody. "How can I help?"
"Err," Jody began, momentarily glancing at Tyler out of pure habit to see that he was regarding her in confusion. Right. She hadn't told him a single thing yet. When had she started to hide things from him? She forced herself to break eye contact, reverting her gaze back onto the woman. "My friend told me what you told her about the man who was asking you questions."
"Oh yes," the woman replied, nodding. "He approached me a couple of months ago to ask if Denise Jackson's children had visited recently. The pastor told him to ask me because I'm here most days, more often than him. Anyway, he pointed the grave out to me and I remembered seeing a young man there just a few days before but since I didn't speak to him, I didn't know if he was Denise's son. I told him that and then he just left without another word. And then, of course, I saw you a couple of days later and wondered if you were her daughter. I asked your friend as much when she next visited but she didn't tell me."
"Okay..." Jody trailed off, racking her brains for a way to find out if the man was Gray or not. She obviously had no photos of him and he didn't have any social media profiles (not when she'd last checked, anyway).
"Jody?" Tyler whispered, disrupting her train of thought. "Please tell me you're not spying again."
"I'm not the one doing the spying this time," she told him through gritted teeth, turning to him. "Someone else is spying on my mum's grave and on me, Luke and Kingsley." Kingsley. Her brother who bore a strong resemblance to their father and did happen to have social media with tons of pictures (he was pretty vain, after all). "Give me your phone." Tyler looked a little taken aback but complied, nonetheless. She quickly went to Google and typed in Kingsley Jackson, locating countless photos of him within a matter of seconds. Judging from his hairstyles, some of them were even from just before his second imprisonment. "Did he look like him?" she inquired, holding the phone out to the woman.
The young woman squinted at the photo presented to her long and hard but sighed. "It has been two months and I've only seen him once," she admitted regretfully. "Maybe he looks a little like him. I don't really remember his face but he was definitely dark haired... and good looking for someone his age." Good looking. It was nothing conclusive but Denise had oft said that Kingsley was her most beautiful child. His many girlfriends over the years had seemed to agree with her.
Jody sighed in defeat, handing the mobile back to its owner with a mutter of 'thanks'. "How old did he look?"
"Late forties, maybe early fifties..." The right age. Denise would've been forty-six this year and Gray wouldn't have been any younger than that, though not significantly older either.
"Did he say how he knew Denise? Or her children?"
"No," the young woman answered confidently. "But he did spend a good amount of time observing her grave before even approaching me. I thought that maybe she was very dear to him."
It was difficult for Jody not to snort right then. Denise had been anything but dear to Gray.
"Thanks," she told the young woman, dejectedly turning to a still-confused Tyler and tipping head towards the exit.
"Wait!" the young woman interjected, interrupting Tyler who was about to say something. Jody appeased him with her eyes before giving the other woman a pointed look. "The pastor who was on duty that day is in the chapel right now. I'm sure the man would've left him a number just in case Denise's children turned up."
Oh, of course. Why hadn't she thought of that? Thanking the young woman again, she proceeded to make her way to the chapel, telling Tyler she'd explain everything to him later. It'd take ages to tell him the full story anyway.
.:. QK .:.
"Why didn't you tell me that you were looking for your dad?"
Jody looked up from the phone number the pastor had given her, biting her lip as she tried to formulate a response. This wasn't something she wanted to discuss right now because she still had to find out where Gray lived and had no idea how to do so, but telling Tyler nothing at all seemed harsh and uncalled for. It was no way to treat a best friend, that was for sure, even one she'd been having a difficult relationship with as of late. Her withholding things from him really wasn't helping much. But what could she say? That she was looking for her dad because she wanted to punch him? Even he, the person who knew about her temper better than anyone, wouldn't look too favourably upon that explanation.
The pastor had been most forthcoming after she'd told him that she was one of the children Gray had been looking for and, fortunately for her, he'd confirmed that the mystery man had in fact been Gray; apparently, the man had told the pastor he was looking for his and Denise's children. However, the most he'd been able to do for her was give her the mobile phone number her father had left him. It wasn't even a landline so she couldn't look it up on some sort of register. She was at a total standstill.
"Well," she began, taking in her best friend's expectant expression and realising he wasn't going to let her get out of this one without answering. "You've never talked about wanting to find yours... Not really."
"Because my mum didn't know him," he said, steering her towards the next turn. She'd nearly gone the wrong way; she still didn't know her way around this area. "You know that."
Indeed, she did know; a few years ago, he'd told her himself that his parents had met at a party and that he was the result of what adults called a one-night stand. Strangely enough, she'd always envied him for that. If she'd been conceived in similar circumstances, at least she would've been able to mollify herself with the knowledge that her dad wasn't in her life because he'd never known about her in the first place. It would've been nowhere near as painful as knowing that her dad had consciously walked away from her.
"But that's the thing," she stated, absent-mindedly playing with the zip on her jacket. "Your dad isn't around because he doesn't know he has a son. Mine isn't around through choice. How could I admit to even wanting to find him? It's so lame."
"It's not lame," he countered softly, shaking his head. "If I was in your situation, I'd still want to know. Especially if Mum was dead."
"It's easy for you to say," she muttered, frowning. "You'll never know how it feels to be dumped like that... By either parent."
That was the sad difference between her and Tyler, the sad reality of her life. Sally had to put him in care because she was ill, and only as a last resort. Denise had all too readily ditched her to escape police custody and had always been a shit mum anyway, never failing to let her know from the very beginning that she was a most unwelcome accident. Given what he'd told her of his parents, Tyler had to have been an accident too but his mother had never told him that—he was clearly a happy accident. They'd never be the same in that regard; he wasn't unwanted by either parent but she was unwanted by both.
"Maybe not," he digressed, "but I do know what it's like not to have a dad. To have to imagine what he looks like and what he would've been like if he was around."
She bristled. By the time she was old enough to realise that Gray was a piece of shit, she'd never fantasised about him being in her life again. Kingsley had made sure of that.
"You know what one of my earliest memories is?" she asked, shivering despite the warm atmosphere. "Not Mum being nice to me or even her scrubbing me to death in a bathtub. No. It's Kingsley losing his shit at me for the very first time." Once had been enough to sear the horrifying image of her raving-mad big brother into her mind. "I must've been in Reception or Year One. The teacher asked us to draw a picture, any picture, just something that made us happy. And back then, there was only one thing, one silly fantasy that made me happy. That day, I took my picture home to show Mum. I was so excited. But she went off to bed straight after bringing me home so I showed it to Kingsley instead." She took a deep breath, her eyes stinging.
"What happened then?"
"He pushed me on the floor and ripped the picture up right in front of me. He'd already stopped being nice to me by then but he'd never been violent, just indifferent, so I was shocked," she narrated hoarsely, wrapping her arms around herself. "He was so mad... I thought he was gonna kill me, but he obviously didn't. What he did do, though, was tell me never to think about that bastard again. He said that there was no place in our lives for the man who'd walked out on us for"—she wavered, recalling her brother's disgusting choice of words—"fresh pussy."
Tyler swallowed deeply, visibly disturbed by her story, but managed to say, "He shouldn't have done that. You were only a kid... and it was just a picture. I think I drew me, my mum, and my dad together as well, at one point."
"Yeah, well, he stopped caring about everything when he joined that gang," she stated somberly. "He couldn't care less that me and Luke were just kids or that Mum was... our mum." She sighed, shaking her head. "Anyway, looking for that man feels like a betrayal to Kingsley and to Mum, even though they've both betrayed me loads of times." She purposely left out the fact that she was searching for Gray with the intent to harm him. For some reason, looking for Gray for such a purpose still felt like betraying the disbanded Jackson family. She'd thought she'd left them, with the exception of Luke, behind for good but she clearly hadn't. Not yet.
"You don't need to worry about betraying them anymore, though," Tyler piped up, gently touching her arm and stopping her in her tracks in the middle of a quiet footpath. "Kingsley's in prison—"
"and Mum's dead, I know," she finished, having heard his comforting reassurances enough times to know them by heart. It never got old, them finishing each other's sentences like that. Not in the creepy Trent twins way, of course, but just enough to receive raised eyebrows from the others. Not that anyone else in the house besides Floss looked upon them as a couple anymore. No, it was Jandon all round now.
"You can find out where he lives using his number, you know," he informed, waving his phone at her like he'd done earlier in the day. "There are a couple of sites you can put his number in and get his address from."
"Yeah, right," she said, moving out of the way as an old woman barged through the gap in between them. "That only works for landlines."
"No, it works for mobiles too."
She raised a challenging eyebrow at him. "Prove it."
"Alright," he fired back sassily, moving closer to her—perhaps too close—and typing her number in the search bar of a dodgy looking website. She couldn't help but smile, thinking it was sweet that he knew her number by heart. She, of course, knew his as well. Her eyes widened in surprise as the results came up with the name of their house.
"No way," she breathed, spooked. "How does it know that?"
"I don't really know but I messed around on it one day and it knew literally something about everyone. Mum. My mates from school. Mike." He pressed his lips together. "Only problem is that it doesn't usually come up with house names cos most houses don't have names. Sometimes it gives you the street name but mostly it gives you the first half of a postcode." She slumped her shoulders in disappointment. The first half of a postcode would only give her an area, not a specific street. "But there are other sites that track people through their numbers and names. If you give me his name, I can put that in with his number."
Hmm. What did she have to lose? "Okay," she conceded, nodding at his phone. "Put in Kingsley Gray."
He shot her an astonished look as if to say 'couldn't they have named your brother something else?' before typing in the name.
A/N: I don't like how this one turned out. Thanks to CharlieSMarts12 for the review and favouriting me as an author, and to Sonicspeed12 for the follows and favourites.