Hello(!) It's been so long, hasn't it? I'm so, so sorry. This story is so special to me. It's my first attempt past an extended oneshot at a real LP story and I really want it to be the best I can make it. Unfortunately, of late, I've hardly written a scrap of anything. There's been a lot of changes in my life recently (good changes) but they've taken up a lot of my time and impeded on my writing. So I apologise to each of you readers, I know how frustrating it is when a writer disappears for a while when you've invested time in their story. I have such plans for this story though and I hope to make much more regular updates.
Thank you for sticking with me. I hope you enjoy this chapter. As ever I love to hear your thoughts, Lexie.
...
Sawyer lies back on her bed and presses her eyes shut tightly. The house is quiet, unnaturally so. It's Saturday morning and although she would ordinarily still buried under the covers at this hour, she knows for a fact that the rest of the house is normally so alive. Her Mom works most Saturdays, sometimes at her office but mostly at home and Sawyer's used to being woken up by the ebbing sound of new music slipping under her door. Her Dad and brother are both earlier risers and often play basketball in the back garden against Sawyer's wall, she complains about it every week but now, in the silence, she kind of misses the constant thumps against the brick work.
In a fit of restlessness, she kicks her comforter away and swings herself out of the bed. It's a cool morning but she doesn't stop to grab a hoodie, instead she yanks open her door and runs barefoot down the stairs. She reaches the empty kitchen and reaches for her cup out of habit but realises she feels sick at the thought of putting anything into her stomach.
Her eyes glide over the countertop; her Mom and Dad's regular mugs already sat beside the coffee pot. Her Dad's crazy like that, doing little things that make everyone's mornings easier. Sawyer sets down her own cup and picks up her Dad's. It's really old, the glaze crazed and the sloppily painted word Daddy faded from deep raven blue to the colour of a summer day sky. She slams it back down on the side in anger but jumps when there's a definite cracking sound. The handle snaps from the force of her hand and shards of broken china rain all over her feet, the sound of the cup hitting the slate floor echoes through her eardrums.
She gasps and crouches down to collect it up in her hands. It's only then that she realises how hard she's shaking. She exhales deeply and lifts herself up, bracing herself against the sink.
"Stay right where you are." Her Dad's voice calls out from the doorway, soft and protective like always.
She looks up at him, watery eyed, and sees that his attention's fixed on the broken mug. He's not concerned about the gift though, more her bare feet. When he looks up at her, his expression melts into another.
"What's wrong, See-Saw?" He calls her by a name no one really uses for her anymore unless Elliot wants to be particularly annoying. "What are you crying for? It's only a cup."
Sawyer swipes her fingers beneath her eyelids and shakes her head furiously, "It's not just a cup, Dad! We made it for you-!"
"Hey, hey," Her Dad's expression is between amusement and bewilderment. He presses a kiss into her curls, "I had over ten good years of morning coffee from that mug. It's okay."
He sweeps around her feet with a dustpan and brush, and then deposits the fragments into the trash can as Sawyer watches on, her face now impassive.
"I broke a wine glass the other day." He goes on to muse, "You must get your heavy-handedness from me."
Sawyer pouts, "I'm not heavy handed. I was angry."
"About what?" Her Dad is quick to ask but she's already out of the room by the time the question leaves his lips.
…
Nathan brushes his thumb across his wife's hip as she fusses up into a seated position. It's late on Saturday morning, later than either of them usually rise but somehow they can't seem to face the day. They stayed at Quinn and Clay's far later than anyone had planned on stopping there. It was so late that Nathan had practically had to carry Lydia to the car.
"You've spent the whole night over-thinking Lindsey being back, Nathan." Haley points out, turning her head over her shoulder to narrow her gaze toward her husband.
He scoffs, "And you haven't?"
Between them he bets that they've barely slept at all. He can't imagine how Lucas and Peyton even attempted sleeping.
Pursing her lips, Haley stands and grabs her dressing gown to wrap around her, leaving Nathan alone in the bed, "Of course I have. But deep down…deep down I guess I always knew she'd come back."
She watches as Nathan processes her words, as his brow furrows and then relaxes out again as he sighs. Deep down she thinks he's always known too but it's the kind of thing he'd never admit to himself.
"You did?" Nathan asks for confirmation as he pushes his quilt away. "After sixteen years you really knew she'd turn up."
Haley heaves a deep sigh, "Nathan, I don't want this anymore than anyone else but maybe it's about time Elliot knew."
Nathan disappears behind his hands, "He's just a kid."
All Nathan ever wanted for both his kids and his friends' kids is for them to stay young for as long as possible. He never wanted for them to have to deal with the sorts of things all of them had to when they were back in school. The idea of ruining Elliot's world with this revelation turns Nathan's stomach a little. Through his eyes he still sees Elliot as the little guy who always held tightly onto his shorts when they crossed the street, he's the boy who always cried in thunderstorms, he's the kid who carried around a smelly old piece of comfort blanket until he was eight so that he could always have home close to hand. Despite him now being seventeen, to Nathan he's still just a kid.
"And he's been protected for this long. You'd already dealt with hell at his age." Haley reasons in her usual practical way. "He's a good kid, we'll-"
She pauses at the sound of their doorbell ringing through the house, inclining her head towards the sound, "I should get that."
"Yeah, yeah, I'm right behind you." Nathan resigns, pulling on some discarded jeans and a t-shirt. "I'll meet you down there."
Haley smiles and dips in for a quick kiss before opening the bedroom door.
"Moooommmm!" Lydia's shouts echo up the stairs, "There's a lady at the door for yoooouuu!"
Haley frowns back at Nathan who shrugs, wondering how she expects him to know who's at the door. He rolls his eyes a little, she's always doing little things like that; expecting him to know the person she's talking about in conversation, or remember an event that he swears he never went to.
Lydia's voice bounced again along the landing, "She said she's an old friend! Her name's Lindsey!"
Nathan and Haley lock eyes with one another, wearing a mirror image expression of shock and terror. Haley covers her mouth with her hand and shakes her head as Nathan's face clouds darkly.
"We are not being nice to her." Nathan instructs, pulling past his wife to be first down the stairs.
"Nathan!" She calls after him. She doesn't want him to do anything impulsive, nor to fight this fight in place of Lucas and Peyton but she knows in reality he will do both. "Dammit, wait for me!"
…
Peyton knocks at her daughter's door and waits for a grunt and a protest that it's Saturday morning before slowly pushing open the door. Sawyer, surprisingly, isn't in bed. Instead she's sat at her desk, her long legs stretched out and rested on her windowsill. There's a notebook across her thighs and a page of loopy writing in violent red ink. Ordinarily Peyton would smirk at the sight; her little girl looking so like her but doing something so incredibly Lucas. Today though she can't even hint towards a smile.
Nudging Sawyer's feet slightly aside, Peyton perches herself at the edge of the windowsill and sets a steaming mug of coffee down on the desk, "You forgot this."
Sawyer sighs but hesitates when she sees her Mom's arched, inquisitive brow.
"Dad said you're angry." Peyton says. "Possibly at him for some reason?"
Sawyer shrugs, despite knowing that her Mom will see right through it. She snaps her notebook shut quickly to make sure her Mom doesn't snoop all over her rant and rolls her eyes, "What happened last night? I heard you two arguing. You never argue."
Peyton purses her lips together for a second as though contemplating her response, "We argue sometimes. But we are always on the same side in the end, okay?"
"It didn't sound like it." Sawyer flashes back.
"You have to trust me, Honey." Peyton tells her, tickling her hands over Sawyer's feet as she speaks. "Your Dad and I are fine, and we're always going to be."
Feeling her lower lip wobble slightly at the thought of her parents splitting up, Sawyer turns her head slightly away from her Mom, "You didn't seem fine last night. You were shouting and crying,"
"Baby," Peyton squeezes her feet gently and her eyes mist a little.
Guiltily, Sawyer looks up into her Mom's eyes and she can tell she's devastated that she heard them arguing. Her parents have always been pretty careful about that sort of thing, she guesses. Some of her friends tell her she lives in a fairyland for thinking her Mom and Dad have the perfect marriage but she's always believed it. They share looks like teenagers and use soppy little nicknames with one another, some that are older than Sawyer herself. Her Dad wrote Ravens about her Mom and there are about a dozen copies of it around the house.
She wants to believe in that story again. Now though, there's a fracture running through the fairytale, a crack that could spread through the pages, breaking apart their marriage and their family.
That fracture has a name, a name that has been rolling around in her mind all night, one that sounds like acid whenever she whispers it under her breath.
Meeting her Mom's gaze again, Sawyer sets her jaw, "So, who the hell is Lindsey?"
She watches, as the crack she'd almost convinced herself wasn't strong enough to break them, tears through her Mom.
"Oh my god!" Sawyer covers her face with her hands and feels a sob take hold in her throat. "Dad really…he actually had an affair."
"Honey, okay, you need to look at me, right now." Peyton cups her hand under Sawyer's chin and forces her red eyed gaze to meet hers, "Daddy and I need to talk to you today but he did not have an affair, okay? It's complicated and we will explain it all but we need some time. The last thing that is happening though is this family splitting up, do you hear me? I would fight forever for you three, you'll see."
Sawyer frowns at her Mom's words, not understanding in the slightest. She has questions, a canyon full of them, but her Mom's already standing up and tugging her shirt down.
"Mom!" Sawyer protests as she heads towards the bedroom door. She can't leave like this.
"Go wash up." Peyton says in a voice that shows Sawyer that she's pushing all of her own emotions away, "Clear those tears away for me."
Sawyer scrambles up and chases her Mom into the hall, "We need to talk about this, we need to talk about it now!"
Down the hall Elliot's door clicks open and he squints his brooding eyes over his Mom and sister curiously. He still has unruly bed hair and is wearing a worn Ravens shirt and shorts that he often substitutes for pyjamas. Looking at him though it's clear that he's been awake for hours.
"What's going on?" He asks, his voice soft and light, a natural peacemaker between the women in his family.
Before either Peyton or Sawyer can answer, Lucas appears at the top of the stairs. He frowns over his family all huddled together on the landing before turning to his wife, his expression stern.
"Okay." He says simply.
"Okay." Peyton returns in a faint tone, tears sparkling in her eyes. She looks over her family, the family that she and Lucas have spent years crafting, knowing that in one fell swoop, it will all be changed forever.
Elliot glances over the exchange worriedly, "Guys, what is going on?"
Seeing his wife chewing her lip, a breath away from crying, Lucas sighs, "There's something we need to tell you."
…
Nathan paces back into his kitchen, ignoring the woman sat at the kitchen table and instead looks towards his wife, "I called Luke. He knows she's here."
"Okay." Haley pushed her hands back through her hair and rests them there for a moment as she always does when she's stressed out. "Where's Lyddie?"
"I sent her over to Brooke and Julian's." Nathan says stiffly, running his eyes over the three mugs sat on the counter. "You're making her a drink?"
"Nathan," Haley says breathily. Her husband is the kindest man she knows, she's forgotten over the years how his protective nature can bring out an entirely different side to him. She respects his opinion, of course, and she can understand his being hostile but she cannot be the same way.
He shakes his head back at her, and drops a kiss onto her head, "Of course you're making her a drink."
Giving a soft sigh, Haley indicates towards Lindsey as though to remind him that she's in earshot but Nathan shrugs her concern away. He knows that Lindsey can hear every word and he wants her to. He wants her to sit at his kitchen table and squirm as she realises how wholly unwelcome she is in this town. He wants her to itch to speak, to protest against his rudeness, but know that her arguments can never stand up against everything he's holding in.
Leaning into his wife's ear he whispers, finally in a lower tone, "What are we going to do?"
Haley licks her lips anxiously, "I don't know. But whilst she's here, she's not near Elliot."
Nathan can't help from agree with that. If it meant them never having to meet, Nathan might well offer Lindsey a room but he knows he can't hold her back forever. Having just hung up the phone with Lucas, Nathan knows that Elliot's about to find out the truth. Soon enough, no doubt, Lindsey and Elliot will meet. Until then though, Nathan is going to make it his mission for Lindsey to understand exactly why they've all dreaded the day she would decide to return.
Haley collects two of the mugs from the counter and moves to the kitchen table, offering one to Lindsey with a kindly kind of smile. Nathan collects his own drink and marvels as his wife's ability to brush away her emotions in way of politeness. He isn't so blessed and instead falls into a seat besides Haley and throws Lindsey a glare.
She fidgets in her seat and clears her throat, "Thank you for not sending me away."
Nathan scoffs, and he's sure Lindsey understands that were it his decision she'd be walking back up the drive right now. Haley though silences him with a nudge of her knee.
"I'm glad you came here first, before going to see Lucas." Haley says softly.
"Something tells me Lucas will not be pleased to see me again." Lindsey muses, purposely keeping her eyes on Haley rather than Nathan whom she can see rolling his eyes in her peripheral vision. "Which I understand, of course. Please don't be mistaken in thinking I expect to be welcomed."
Nathan sets his jaw, "Why are you here?"
Lindsey swallows thickly, nervously, and threads her fingers together, "I'm here to right the wrongs I made years ago. I made an error, a grave, grave error but it wasn't without it's reasons. I have gone sixteen years without seeing my boy. Sixteen years of not knowing if he's okay, of not knowing what he's like, of not knowing anything about him. I love my son-,"
"All of that is your fault, you realise this, right?" Nathan says flatly, not wishing to entertain any kind of sob story from Lindsey.
"Nathan." Haley warns and he gets the feeling he's going to hear a lot of his name said in that tone over the coming days. "Blaming people isn't going to help anything."
"Huh." Nathan huffs, folding his arms over his chest. He can see that Haley isn't going to entertain his argument and honestly he knows that she's right but he can't ignore the anger he holds towards the woman across the table to him.
Lindsey brushes her long hair over her shoulder and purses her lips, "It's fine, Haley, I expected this reception."
Haley sips at her tea and sends a hooded glance towards Lindsey, "I have to ask, where did you go? After that meeting in the restaurant? Lucas and Peyton searched and searched for you. They scoured the country trying to find you but there wasn't a trace."
"Hales." Nathan grunts, "No one cares where she's been. She could have been living on the moon for all we care, I want to know why she's back."
"I want to know things too." Haley says quietly.
Largely ignoring his wife, Nathan leans forward on his elbows and stares Lindsey in the eye, "What made you come here, now? What do you want?"
"I want to know my son!" Lindsey shoots back, emotion shaking through her voice.
Nathan grits his teeth, "Do you realise what this is going to do to them? They're a family. Peyton is his Mom, Sawyer's his sister. He has no idea about you! And he's happy, he's such a damn happy kid, the way he is."
Lindsey presses her lips together momentarily as though digesting his anger. Her deep blue eyes that Nathan realises she gave to her son, swim back at him, "I'm grateful for that; to know that he's had a good life, that's all I ever wanted for him. I couldn't give him what he needed. I was unwell when he was born, oh, not like that, post-natal depression, I mean. I couldn't see past it or I didn't want to. I'd lost my soon-to-be husband, my home, my entire life. And then I found out that I was expecting, I was expecting the baby of a man who didn't love me. By then I was too far gone to even consider anything but having him. So I made the necessary preparations. I rented an apartment outside of town, I decorated the nursery, went to all the classes and appointments. I did it all on my own; picked the paint colours, financed the new addition, took in all of the knowledge being forced onto me by judgemental eyes. I did everything that was expected of me but I felt numb. Completely numb. Everyone said this would change, once the 'bundle of joy' arrived. They were wrong though, it just got worse. I resented this baby that had forcibly changed my world. This baby that looked back at me with all the same expressions as Lucas. This little baby that reminded me of everything I'd lost in loving Lucas Scott. I was no longer a career woman with my dreams in reach. Instead I was invisible; scarred and plump, forever tired and chained to a fussy infant who seemed to be as fond as me as I was of him."
"So you're blaming Elliot now?" Nathan cries out.
"Not at all." Lindsey returns in a clipped tone. "And Haley, in response to your earlier question after the restaurant I went back to Massachusetts. I visited my Dad one last time and cried over how I'd failed him. Then I left for a job in Seattle, a real opportunity. But you're wrong Haley, when you said there wasn't a trace of me because they found me. They found me in Seattle but it didn't matter. We could all see by then that I'd made the right decision. They were already a family, after only a few months together. They achieved in that small time frame what I'd never mastered. And then I watched them drive away, I watched them drive away in the Comet. The girl saw the Comet and she felt as though her life had meaning. And when it went away, she waited her entire life for it to come back."
…
Elliot stands silently watching as his Mom disappears into her wardrobe and returns with two heavily decorated boxes. He recognises them, right the way back to his childhood, he realises. They've been up there forever and he'd supposed that she maybe kept some things of her Mom's in there; Anna or Ellie, he didn't know, but one of them at least he imagined. The one thing he'd always gleamed from them was that they were private. He wonders how those notions come to be, how a child can have the intuition that something is completely out of bounds, and how that thought stays with someone as they grow up.
His Dad's mirroring his own position, leaning against the doorframe of the bathroom, his posture as though he may be holding the entire house up with the strength of his back. His Dad's attention is fixed on his Mom, as though he's convinced that she'll fall to pieces at any moment.
Across the room, Sawyer's sat on the bed. Her knees are drawn high to her chest and her eyes are swimming with tears. She looks how he remembers her as a child when they'd had an argument; wounded but stubbornly determined not to cry. Back then all he'd have to do would be pull a funny face or call her ET and she'd spring back to life. These days though her moods are a lot harder to sway. It'll take the exact right song or a quote from the author who's speaking to her soul at that exact moment to even get her to quirk a smile.
"Okay." Peyton sets the two boxes side by side at the foot of the bed and nods towards her husband. "There are two stories inside these boxes,"
Instantly Elliot looks towards his Dad, the writer, but he just shakes his head, "These are your Mom's stories."
"I made them when you were little, to explain a few things." Peyton continues on, her ringed hands pressed down on each of the boxes. "I made them because I wanted you to hear this from me."
Her voice breaks and she rolls her eyes to the ceiling to try and stop the tears from falling. Elliot goes to comfort her but his Dad beats him to it, wrapping his strong arms around her shoulders and stilling her. Elliot glances over again to Sawyer who seems between terror and rampant curiosity. He watches her edging forward steadily on her knees, almost to get a better look at them.
His sister is ripper when it comes to Christmas and birthday presents, every year she'll greedily tear through her gifts in a matter of minutes, never able to wait and speculate. He can tell she feels the same about these boxes; itching to find out what's inside. Elliot's different. Seeing the way his parents are, he's not sure he even wants to know what's in the boxes. His stomach starts to churn as he speculates, not that he can think of an explanation that fits.
"Explain what things?" Sawyer presses, her green eyes questioning the room.
Peyton licks her lips, "I made them just in case. Just in case I wasn't around to watch you both grow up. I wanted you to know about me, I wanted you to know how much I loved you both and how I would've done anything to be your Mom. Because it's the best job in the world."
Elliot matches his sister's frown, "I don't understand."
"I know, Baby, I know." Peyton turns and runs her hand down her son's cheek, as he squints his dark ocean blue eyes back at her, "But you will, it's all in here."
She taps the box nearest to him and bites down hard on her lower lip.
"So this one's mine?" Sawyer bounds forward and lays her hand on the round black box.
"Sawyer." Lucas speaks over her anticipation. Elliot can see that despite his stoic expression, his Dad wants to do this as much as his Mom does, which seems like not at all.
Swallowing thickly, Elliot takes a cautious step forward, "And what if I don't want to look in this box?"
Peyton attempts a watery smile of encouragement to her boy, "Sweetheart, I'm so sorry but you have to know what's inside here."
"It's that bad?" He hesitates. Peyton recalls his first day of nursery when he was too afraid to let go of her hand and join the other children. Not wanting to ever see her little man cry she'd slipped off her heels and joined him in the foam seating area by the books. She played with him until a few of the other kids came over and joined them, figuratively held onto his hand until she knew he was safe from tears. She wishes now that there was some way for her to go through this with him like she did all those years back.
Lucas shakes his head fiercely, "It changes nothing, okay? Nothing at all."
"Your Dad's right." Peyton agrees but in a weaker tone. "I just want you to know, both of you, that the only reason we didn't tell you about this is because we love you so much okay? You both need to know that. Promise me that you know that."
Elliot almost laughs at her persistence, "Ma, of course we know that."
Somehow though his words only seem to make her dissolve into more tears and Elliot feels completely helpless.
"Okay," Peyton clears her tears and reaches for both of her children's hands. "You're my babies and I have dreaded this day for a really long time,"
"Peyton," Lucas cuts in, his voice laced with concern.
She only looks up to him with her eyes he could never say no to, "You're the writer, help me out here."
With a little reluctance he clears his throat, "This is going to hurt. It's going to hurt like hell but the thing to remember is that when you're going through hell you have to keep going. Your Mom and I have both been there ourselves and at the end of it, there's always the people who love you. And we love you kids more than you could begin to imagine."
With a small nod to Peyton, he lifts the lid on Sawyer's box. "It all begins with a happy day. I was away on a book tour and your Mom called me from home with some news." He passes a piece of artwork into Sawyer's waiting hand, depicting Lucas presenting Peyton with a red rose. "She told me she was pregnant."
Sawyer struggles her lips around a smile, "Okay, so where's this going?"
"I got sick, with the pregnancy." Peyton explains, "Placenta Previa, it's a condition that complicates pregnancy. There was a risk that you or I might not make it through, Kiddo."
"Hey," Lucas tries to coax away his wife's tears, "Obviously this story has a happy ending, both my girls are right here."
Sawyer peers into the box, sifting through images of her parents' relationship; memories of high school, proposals and dreams coming true, "So what's so bad about this? It all turned out okay, right?"
"Mmm." Peyton muses, "But there were months I spent carrying you inside me, thinking that I might never get the chance to meet you. So I made you this, just in case. I wanted you to know about how you came to be; how you were born through love and that despite the risks all I wanted was for you to arrive safely. And you did. But there's never a day that goes by that I don't think of how different it could have been."
Curling her arms around her Mom's back, Sawyer lays her head on her shoulder, "I can't imagine you not being around, Mom."
Elliot watches as his Mom smiles into the moment, clutching onto Sawyer tightly. He lays his hand on the top of his own box, speculating wildly about it's contents. He saw the way his parents had silent communicated their fear to one another, and he knew that their worry wasn't wrapped around telling Sawyer that she was a miracle baby. Whatever their concern was about was hidden inside his box.
"So," He taps his fingers on the top of his box, "What's in mine?"
…