Reviewers:
Kath – Again, thanks so much! Lucas and Ronilyn both know how to push each other's buttons as you'll see in this next chapter. It's that love/hate thing that's all part of being a family. I think there's a quote from author Erma Bombeck that goes "Family – the ties that bind…and gag". I always thought that was a clever phrase. Anyway, this next chapter is titled Family Ties.
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The glass in Lucas's hand shattered from his grip. Ronilyn automatically jumped from her chair, napkin in hand, but his voice stopped her.
"Don't bother," Lucas said harshly. "It's only a cut."
"Well. I guess we're done with dinner then." Ronilyn flung the napkin on the table and walked out of the dining room.
Lucas followed her into the den. "Is that why you came back?" he demanded. "You pretendin' this is River Heights and you're some Nancy Drew wanna-be? Well, snoopin' through private medical records is a crime, and I don't allow that in my town."
"Yeah, yeah. Only if you're the one doing the snooping, right?" Ronilyn brushed his remarks aside with a wave of her hand. "For your information, I didn't break into any records."
She wandered over to the window which overlooked part of the front yard. Dusk had settled over Trinity, but she was sure she could still see some of those gargoyles out there, leering at her.
"Is that right?" Lucas crossed his arms against his chest. "Well, why don't you tell me exactly how you came upon this so-called information?"
"Maybe my mother told me," she said, squinting at the winged lion gargoyle near the hedges in the yard. Hmm. Was that one new? She didn't remember seeing it on her last visit here.
"Your mother couldn't tell you what two plus two is," Lucas said as he strode over to Ronilyn. He grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around to face him. "Now enough of this. I don't want to hear anymore talk about miscarriages and children pushin' people down stairs, you hear me?" He gave her a little shake. "And I don't want you sayin' things like that in town either."
Ronilyn's eyes flicked down to Lucas's hands gripping her arms. At the rate this was going, her arms were going to end up bruised by the time she left Trinity. She'd had fewer physical encounters riding the crowded buses and trains in downtown Chicago during rush hour.
"Alright then, let's talk about my mother," she said, meeting Lucas's gaze.
He frowned. "What about her?" he asked, releasing his grip.
"What happened to her?"
"Well, darlin', you know what happened to her. She went crazy from losin' her sister." He chuckled and twirled his index finger at his head. "Flaky as pie crust. Lost her mind."
"Hey!" Ronilyn grabbed his hand and jerked it down. "What the hell is the matter with you?" She glared at him. "Don't you dare make light of this, Lucas," she said, pointing a finger at him. "Whatever you did to her, you'd better fix it right now!"
"What I did to her?" Lucas tapped his chest with one hand. "You think I made her crazy?"
Ronilyn crossed her arms. "Didn't you?"
"No. Is that why you didn't want me to know you were in town?" He took a step towards her and she backed up. "Are you afraid of me, Ronilyn?"
"You're dangerous," she said flatly, without directly answering his question.
He considered that statement for a moment. "Well, that goes without sayin'," he said, "but not to you, or to your mother. Her and my mother were thick as thieves, always visitin' each other. Why, I remember when you were gonna be born." Lucas slowly approached her again and Ronilyn continued to scowl at him. "You caused your mother so much trouble that my mother went and stayed with her in Ascension for most of the pregnancy and even after you were born. How could you think I would do something to your mother, especially right after my own mother passed on?"
"I don't know. Who knows what goes on in that mind of yours?" Ronilyn shrugged. "Maybe you were jealous because I still had a mother and you didn't."
"What I should've been jealous of is all that time my mother spent with you, but the first time I held you..." Lucas's voice trailed off as he recalled the moment the infant Ronilyn had been placed in his teenaged arms, his mother and Aunt Sarah anxiously hovering nearby. The baby had stared at him with wide eyes, then clutched his finger with her tiny fist and drifted off to sleep.
Ronilyn watched him, trying to determine whether he was telling the truth or handing her a shovelful of sentimental garbage. "Well, somebody did something to her," she said, as Lucas frowned and shook his head as if to clear the images from his mind. "My mother was completely sane until she went over to *your* house the summer after your mother's funeral." Ronilyn jabbed Lucas in the chest with her finger. "She dropped me off at Mrs. Broomley's house and left. That's the last normal thing she ever did. A person just doesn't snap like that out of the blue without help."
"Went over to my house? For what? To talk about my mother?" Lucas's brow furrowed. "I don't remember..."
"She never thought Aunt Hester had a heart attack," Ronilyn said, walking past Lucas to stand in front of the fireplace. "She told Mrs. Broomley right from the start that Hester was too young for that to have happened." Ronilyn stared at the cold ashes in the fireplace, blinking her eyes against the tears that were forming.
"Look, Ronilyn, I never did anything to your mother."
She whirled around. "My father found her huddled on the floor in the kitchen, crying, screaming, talking crazy. She'd torn the place apart. Pots, pans, dishes, chairs, everything was all over the place." Ronilyn pointed a finger in Lucas's direction. "You're lucky, Lucas. At least you remember your mother. You had real conversations with her. I've never seen my mother outside of Juniper House. She's always sitting in that damn room, staring into space, not saying a word. I don't even know what her voice sounds like."
Lucas reached out a hand and brushed away the single tear that lay on his cousin's cheek. "I'm sorry, honey," he whispered, "but it wasn't me."
Ronilyn slapped his hand away and took a shaky breath as she stalked back over to the window. Lucas was the only family she had left. She remembered looking up to him when she was a little girl, everybody in town liked him. "Whatcha doin', Lucas?" she'd ask, scampering after him. "Where you goin'? Can I come with?" Most of all, she remembered that terrible day two years ago when she left Chicago and came back to Trinity and her terminally ill father. Not trusting herself to drive, she'd numbly endured the bus ride from Ascension after the flight. Lucas had been waiting for her when she arrived at the Trinity bus station, and when she got off the bus, he wrapped his arms around her without a word.
Ronilyn blinked away her tears. How could this be the same man who would take another child's father away? She wanted to believe Lucas, to trust him, but that image of the wife and child at Councilman Stiles's grave was too fresh in her mind. If Lucas was capable of causing that man's death, then driving someone insane would be easy as pie.
Then she frowned, remembering one of the images in her dream. A man in black holding a bible. The Reverend Christopher Buck. Her uncle. Lucas's father.
"What about your father?" she asked.
"What about him?"
Ronilyn turned around. Lucas had remained near the fireplace. "Your father. You still lived with him. She could've been going to see him that day. Did he do it?"
"I don't know, Ronilyn."
"What do you mean, you don't know? I thought you knew everything that went on in Trinity."
Lucas sighed. "Apparently I missed out on a few things back then. I was a boy, a teenager, you know. I had other things on my mind."
"Well, if it wasn't you, then it had to be him," Ronilyn said. "He's the only other person who could have done it."
"Why do you say that?" he asked, watching her closely.
"That doesn't matter," Ronilyn said, shaking her head. "I don't care about that right now. I just want you to fix what was done to her. Make her better."
Lucas slowly shook his head. "Ronilyn, I can't do anything for your mother."
She stared at him for a long moment. "Don't tell me that. I don't want to hear that."
"If my father did this, he's long gone. He's already paid the price."
"No, Lucas, my mother is paying the price! Every day for almost thirty years!" Ronilyn shouted. "And so am I! Don't you care? I thought that deep down you cared about me."
He took a step toward her. "Of course I do."
"Then why won't you do anything?" Ronilyn hated the desperate tone that had crept into her voice.
"Ronilyn... I can't."
"There's that word again. Can't, can't, can't. I didn't think that was part of your vocabulary, Lucas," she said, desperation slipping into anger. "I thought you were supposed to know everything, could do anything. It's nice to know that the mighty Lucas Buck isn't so powerful after all, but this is probably the one and only time that I'm not happy to hear that." She glanced around the room until she spotted her purse on a chair. "The hell with it. I'm leaving."
"What you need to leave is the past," Lucas said, following her down the hall. "Leave it behind and get on with your life."
"Get on with my life?" she repeated, yanking open the front door. "Well, thanks for the words of wisdom, Lucas," Ronilyn said. "You've just been so damn helpful tonight. Why don't you write an advice column? Or better yet, get a talk show." She stomped onto the porch and down the steps.
"Don't live in the past, Ronilyn," he called to her departing figure.
"I have to," she shouted back, without turning around. "That's where my mother's living right now."
Ronilyn drove off, uttering a steady stream of curses until she pulled into her own driveway. She slammed the car door and leaned against the vehicle, her heart pounding. Bastard, she thought. So much for taking care of his own. Well, she'd just handle things herself, like she always had.
A neighborhood cat approached and rubbed its head against Ronilyn's ankles. She leaned down and, as she stroked the cat's head, her breathing slowed and her heartbeat resumed its normal pace.
"Thanks," she whispered. The animal meowed and scampered back into the darkness. Ronilyn stood and walked across the street to Mrs. Broomley's house. The elderly woman answered the door with a broom in her hand.
"Yes? What can I do for you, dear?"
Ronilyn took a deep breath. "Mrs. Broomley, I'd like to talk to you about the City Council."
The woman held the door open. "Come in, dear, come in. You'll have to excuse the way the house looks. I haven't gotten 'round to sweepin' up yet."