Series: Snapshots of the Past
Story: Back Home Again
Chapter 15
Disclaimer: See Chapter 1
Previously: When Lizzie disappeared, Abbey had to tell Jed about John's involvement
Summary: Jed fights his father for his daughter
- - -
The unseasonably warm weather couldn't stop the chill that slithered slowly up Abbey's spine at the dreaded words she heard from Rebecca. Liz was with her grandfather, the same grandfather she had been forbidden to see, the same grandfather that had been warned to stay away from her, the same grandfather that undermined her confidence in her parents' love only weeks before.
The look of confusion that crossed Jed's face was almost unbearable, compounding the guilt she already felt.
"Her grandfather's been with me all afternoon," Jed said to Rebecca.
That simple misguided belief was about to be shattered into a million pieces and there was no way to prevent the shards of glass from cutting him deep inside his soul.
"No, Jed, her other grandfather."
"He wouldn't dare." The words were uttered without any emotion or underlying protest, his resignation prominently shining through his clenched teeth.
"He already did," she started. "Two weeks ago, he pulled her out of school."
Rebecca stared at the couple, now sensing that something was terribly wrong. "I'm sorry. I didn't know. I mean, Lizzie was happy. She introduced us and said he always picks her up, that you would be fine with it..."
Jed abruptly cut her off with a brazen response. "She lied."
His feet ripped through the grass at warp speed, leaving shredded blades in their wake. Abbey struggled to keep up, but found his fury overpowering. He charged inside their apartment and grabbed his keys from the kitchen counter, then spun around with a type of steely determination she had never seen before.
Out of breath and exhausted from their sprint, she used the energy she had left to block his path to the door. "Don't go. Not like this. You can't drive like this."
"What's going on?" Mary asked.
Abbey kept her eyes glued to her husband, her body planted firmly in front of the exit. "Jed's dad took Lizzie from the playground."
"What? He knows you didn't want her around him, right?"
"Yes, he knew!" Jed answered his father-in-law. "There's no doubt that he knew!"
"Do you want me to call the police?" James offered.
"Yes!" Abbey exclaimed.
"No." Jed's response followed immediately.
"Why not?"
The room fell silent as the focus rested solely on Jed. Only he could explain. "Because he's my father, Abbey. And if he's hurt her, I don't want the police there. I'll take care of him myself."
He walked around Abbey, his strides so powerful that she relinquished her quest to stop him. "Jed, wait. I'm going with you."
His body turned immediately, almost colliding with hers as she approached. "How did you know - about what happened two weeks ago - how did you know?"
"Lizzie told me." The soft-spoken admission fueled his anger.
"When?"
"On Thursday."
"Five days ago. Why am I just hearing about it now?" He was eerily calm, the brunt of his rage still aimed towards his father.
She followed him out with the same intensity as before. "We can talk about it later. Lets just go to your Dad's and get her."
"What makes you so sure he took her back there? We don't even know where the hell we're going!"
"Where else would he have taken her?" Standing next to their car, he glared at her blankly. "Jed, I'm asking you."
"Now you want my input?" he exploded, a small glimmer of blame now evident in his tone. After a few quick breaths to simmer down his temper, he opened his door. "Fine. Lets go."
Abbey held on to the door handle and positioned herself hard against the seat as Jed sped through the streets of Boston. "Please slow down. You're going to get us both killed."
"What did they do?" he asked.
"What?"
"When he took her out of school, what did they do?"
Unable to look at him, she turned her attention to the scenery outside. "They talked." Her teeth pierced hard into her bottom lip, almost breaking the skin. "He's the reason she had doubts about us having another child. He told her we'd take her things and give them to her. He convinced her that we wanted a baby because she wasn't perfect."
There it was. He suspected John Bartlet's infamous mind games hadn't vanished over the years and he was right. The thought of him misleading Liz stirred up a new batch of resentment he had long since buried.
He slammed his hand on the steering wheel in disgust. "Damn it! Why didn't you tell me?"
It was a reasonable question, asked with an undercurrent of indignation and audible tension as if holding back some of what he wanted to say.
"I was going to. I just didn't want it to spoil Christmas." Her eyes focused on the road in front of her, her last two words said in a whisper.
He tilted his head to get a clearer view, then stepped on the gas, allowing a few moments to pass before he scoffed his reply. "You didn't want it to spoil Christmas. How did that work out?"
Okay, so he was being a jerk. She expected it. Jed's anger usually manifested itself with an abundance of sarcastic retorts, expressed exclusively to share the displeasure. She bit her tongue in a valiant effort to prevent things from escalating. Her eyes burned into him for a few minutes, then returned to the window, her hands gripping the seat, tightening their hold at his attempts to dodge between the cars in his lane. He caught her discomfort out of the corner of his eye and released his foot from the gas pedal to reduce his speed.
- - -
Like a madman, possessed by the need to protect his child, Jed parked the car inches from the front door and stormed inside John's house. A startled Liz sat at the small table in the center of the room, a Candyland card in her hand and a look of shock on her face. John Bartlet stood up and glared right into the spark of fire he saw flickering in Jed's eyes.
"What are you doing?"
"Getting my daughter." Without a word to Liz, Jed scooped her up in his arms.
Liz struggled to get back down, her legs kicking at the air below her. But with each struggle, Jed tightened his grasp and held her body closer to his own, refusing to let her slip into the lion's den he saw in front of him.
"You're scaring her!" John shouted to his son.
"Stay out of it!" he yelled back. "Elizabeth, stop it! We're going home."
"I don't have my skates!" Lizzie whined.
"I don't give a damn about your skates!" Jed replied harshly.
It was a tone Liz had never heard before and it was obvious by her sudden intake of breath that she was caught off-guard. As Abbey watched Jed twist her around so she was positioned more securely, she extended her hands, hoping to calm her frantic daughter as she took her out of her father's arms.
"It's okay, baby. Come here."
"Mommy!" Liz cried, burying her face in Abbey's shoulder.
John was visibly bothered by the scene. "Look what you did! This is my home, Jed. And you will NOT come in here like a psychopath!"
Jed's temper was only a degree away from the boiling point. "You're lucky I don't have the police here ready to haul your ass away for kidnapping!"
"I didn't kidnap her. She wanted to come with me."
He clenched his fists at his side and took a deep, calming breath, then turned to Abbey. "Take Liz to the car, please."
It was a request made for Liz's sake more than his own. Abbey reluctantly left him behind as she walked out the door, shutting it to block the little girl's view of the two men.
"She's my daughter. I decide where she goes and when I say she isn't allowed over here without me or Abbey, I mean it." Jed's forehead twitched with the protruding vein that teased the surface of the skin.
"We were playing a game. That's all."
"What kind of game? A mind game maybe, like the one you played with her when you pulled her out of school?"
"What mind game?" John asked, his dysfunctional brain genuinely confused.
"You convinced her that Abbey and I wanted another baby because she wasn't good enough."
"I never told her that. Jed, I mean it, I never said that. I love that little girl."
"The way you loved me?" Jed shot back without missing a beat. "Forget it. I'm not going to give you a chance to do to Liz what you did to me."
"What I did to you? What did I do to you except raise you and clothe you and feed you? I sent you to the best schools in the country. I made you the success you are today!" His delusions only served to anger his son more.
Jed pulled his arm back, ready to swing at the elder man, but stopped just short of striking his face. Perhaps it was the Bartlet blood that ran through his veins, or the startled look on John's face that gave him pause, he didn't know. But he lowered his shaking hand to his side, jaded by the impulse that motivated such a physical response.
"I became a success despite your brand of love, not because of it." A master of words, he knew it was better to express his emotions verbally. "It hurt, didn't it - that regardless of what you did to tear me down, I had more promise, more potential than you did?"
John pursed his lips together, fighting the urge to go down a destructive path. "I want to make up for some of the mistakes I made with you. I want to try again with Elizabeth."
"You don't get to use my daughter as a guinea pig to try to fool yourself into believing that you're not absolutely worthless!"
The unmistakable sound of a physical confrontation echoed through the door, jarring an eavesdropping Abbey. She swung it open with such force that it rattled the frame around it.
John held Jed against the wall, his back crushed against the plaster. This was the sight she feared. He was still the same man that Jed had known as a child - an intimidating man, not afraid to use his strength when backed into a corner.
But Jed was no longer a child. He was old enough to fight back. He could fight back. Hell, he could pound his father into the ground if he wanted to, but he never did. He accepted the abuse he had always suffered for reasons escaping Abbey's understanding. But just because he cowered in the little boy mentality striving to be set free in an adult body, didn't mean she had to.
She took a threatening step towards John, causing Jed to violently shrug off his father's grip on his collar and stand in front of her to shield her from his wrath.
"Don't." And if the verbal plea wasn't enough, the hands Jed held out to keep her back did the job.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"Where's Lizzie?"
"She's in the car. I came to get her skates."
"I don't give a damn about those skates."
"Jed, they were a Christmas present," she reminded him. "She doesn't want to leave them behind."
He conceded with a nod and turned his fiery eyes to John.
"They're on the back porch. I'll go get them."
Abbey snatched the skates from John's hands, paying no attention to the way she scraped them over his skin. She grabbed her husband's arm then, leading him out of the house and into the car.
Her eyes peered through the back-seat of the window to see Liz staring down at her dangling feet. She opened her own door and sat down, twisting her body to comfort the little girl.
"Lizzie, it's okay, Sweetheart. I got your skates." It was little consolation, but it stopped her sniffles almost immediately.
- - -
During the drive home, Jed sat stoically behind the wheel, presumably lost in his thoughts about the events of the evening. "You were right. We should have just called the police," he finally said.
"We still can."
With a roll of his eyes, he dismissed the idea. "It's over. I don't want to revisit it."
She reached behind him to rub his back when she noticed it wasn't pressed against his chair. He wiggled free from her touch, leaving her to wonder if it was because of the physical pain inflicted during the confrontation or the anger he harbored towards her. Probably a little bit of both she surmised.
Her concern was equally divided between Jed and Liz, whose shoeless toes were still wiggling and whose face still donned a helpless frown. Another battle would begin when they arrived home. It was going to be a long night.
TBC
