Chapter 2 is here: just to let anyone who cares have an advance warning: I didn't make Nick's mother very nice. At all. In fact, I was kind of mean to Nick in general. Angst is such fun. Oh, and I forgot to mention this in the first chapter, but for this story the end of the episode The Stalker is a little different.

"Chap 2"

I.

My mom picks me up at the airport. She looks skinnier than I remember, her bones nearly sticking out of her skin. I wonder briefly if her newfound thinness arose from grief or just a diet that she had picked up that had actually worked for her. Her hair is gray and short; her lips thin and pale. There is nothing in her eyes that mirror a happiness to see me.

I ask her how she's doing as we wait for my luggage.

She laughs dryly, never bothering to look at me. "Nicky," she says, "I thought you ran away to Vegas to be a 'hero', not a comedian." She put up her fingers and made quote signs around the word 'hero'.

My jaw clenches and I try to not be angry with her, though that venture is not particularly successful. "Mom, I didn't run away," I tell her, trying to keep my teeth from gritting as well. "Going to Vegas was a great opportunity for me. The lab I work at-"

"Is the second best in the country, I know," my mom says snidely. "Something to make any mother proud." The sarcasm in her voice is too thick to ignore.

"Yeah, Mom, it should," I snap, now glaring at her instead of the spinning luggage. "You should be proud of me for making my own choices and being successful, not just resentful because I didn't follow the same path as Dad-"

Mom slaps me right then, hard, before I can finish my sentence. The diamond on her wedding ring cuts my chin and I step backwards, my hand going to the blood that begins to trickle down my skin slowly. "Don't you ever speak your father's name," she hissed at me. "You don't deserve to speak it."

I stare at her. She breathes heavily, as if she's just run a race, and her eyes are no longer cold and impartial but glaring at me with as much love as a girl has for her brother's murderer. I remember her making me peanut butter and jelly when I was a kid and treating me as though I was special, as though she loved me. This woman in front of me did not look like my mother.

I felt eyes watching us and my mom and I suddenly become very aware that we were standing in the middle of the airport with a thousand people walking around. My mother took a breath and looked away from me, her glare faltering but her composure not yet retained. I managed to take my eyes away from her face but it's hard because I want to be able to find something wrong with it, something that proves she's an imposter, so I can yell, "You're not my mother!" and find the woman I remember from childhood.

I look back to the where the suitcases are and see my luggage slowly circling.

"There it is," I say quietly, and after I pick it up, we leave.

II.

"Your brothers and sisters are here," my mother says to me while we're driving down the street. It's the first words she's said to me since she slapped me in the airport. "You can sleep in your old room with David tonight before the funeral tommorow."

I don't know if I want to talk. I do anyway and my voice comes out slightly hoarse, as if rusted. "How are they?" I ask, curious about my siblings. I haven't seen or spoken to any of them in a very long time.

"As to be expected," my mother says. "They're in mourning." She gives me a pointed look to show how inadequate my grief is, and I shake my head and look out the window. A few minutes later, she sighs.

"Jennifer's doing well," my mom says, her voice a touch less sharp. "She just got promoted again, and she's making a good deal of money. Marianne thinks that a promotion might be coming her way too. She keeps hinting that partner might be around the corner. She didn't bring Carl with her. I think he couldn't get away from work. Lilly's about five months pregnant-"

"Again!" I interrupt, immediately laughing, and my mom glares at me. My laughter abruptly fades into silence. 'Right,' I tell myself. 'No laughing. Dad's dead, and I'm not really welcome anymore'.

"Yes," my mom says, her voice ice once again. "She thinks it's going to be a girl this time. Michael keeps telling her that she's been wrong before and she's wrong now but you know Lilly. She's got her mind set on the baby being a girl. David brought Kathleen and the twins with him. Kathy isn't working anymore but David makes more than enough to support them. And Richard, of course, is doing well." Mom stops talking for a moment and I watch as she warms up a bit, talking about Richard. "He's dating a beautiful young woman named Sandra, and he just got a commendating for bravery three weeks ago. He's a REAL hero, you know, out there in the face of danger every day, doing REAL police work. . ."

"Oh, give it a rest," I tell her quietly, and surprisingly she does. I guess she still remembers when I used to be the prodigy child, the good son, the favorite. I used to hate it because I felt pressured all the time and I knew my brothers and sisters resented the hell out of me for it, but now, playing the black sheep, I missed my mother thinking I was worth something.

We were silent for awhile. I waited, but finally I had to ask, "What about Luke?" I tried to keep my voice even, but I don't think I did a very good job. It had been a very long time since I talked to Luke. I wasn't sure if I had ever planned on talking to him again.

"Luke?" my mom laughs. "Luke's the same as ever. He works at that shitty roadside garage and spends most of his time over at Hank's Pub. He's living across town in some rundown trailer where all the crooks and whores live. In fact, I think Richard just made a drug bust over there." My mom sniffs, clearly disdaining herself from anyone who didn't live in the upper middle class, and then looks at me. "Still, at least Luke visited his father before the end came."

That's it. That's just too much. I can't stand it any more.

"I tried to come out, Mom!" I yell then, too infuriated to keep silent. "I tried to come a couple of weeks after the first stroke and what did you do? You told me not to bother, not to waste another minute on this family again. You told me I wasn't even a part of this family anymore!"

"And what were you doing that was so important?" Mom yells back at me. "Working at your stupid, pathetic job that you think is more important than your own flesh and blood! If you had been in any kind of accident, any kind at all, your father would have been in Vegas before you could say 'Wayne Newton'! And you! You couldn't make time for three whole weeks before you could visit your father, the man who raised you, the man who sacrificed for you! I'm surprised you could even find time in your busy schedule to fit this annoying funeral in!"

"Mom, you don't know anything about me."

"And what's to know?" Mom looks like she's speaking pure venom. "You're a spoiled brat, a selfish, self-important bastard who doesn't give the first thought to his family. Where's the son I raised, the good, courteous son? Where's NICK?"

"He died 27 years ago," I snap, and then abruptly shut my mouth.

Did I just say that?

I didn't just say that.

My mom doesn't appear to notice my horror. "What idiocy are you babbling now?" she asks. When I don't move, she looks at me closer and asks, "Nick?" Her voice is almost close to caring.

I close my eyes, shake off the memory that's fighting to have me relive it, and refuse to look at Mom. "Never mind," I say flatly, opening my eyes and staring resolutely out the window. "Never mind."

We're silent the rest of the way home.