I was stir crazy and George knew it. He threw me a bone, arguing Davey down and backing me in my decision to return to work. He wouldn't agree to me staying in my apartment alone, but small victories, right?
Keli had The Little Drip running like clockwork, but she pretended she missed me to make me feel better. "Bout time you showed up for work," she muttered, smirk on her face as she nudged me with her hip, eyes glancing from the clipboard to the supplies and back to me. "How are you doing?"
I shrugged, looking around the coffee shop, seeing the pastry case filled reminded me of George stepping up to bat for me, but all I could think about was how much I missed the hustle and bustle, AND my favorite feisty four. Jensen's table was bare, no black suit jacket flashed into my path, Pooch's bright smile wasn't peeking out from a corner, and Cougar wasn't perched anywhere I could see him. Sighing, I begged off inspecting the main shop, telling Keli and the others that I'd be in the office going over the books.
Ensconced in my office, the peace that once would have overtaken me, the shop laptop, the scarred top of the desk, the cramped space, all of it would have just worked somehow to make me feel in control of my world wasn't present. A quiet knock and I let out the huff of hair that wasn't quite a sigh, but wasn't quite a simple exhale.
"Come in," I offered, expecting one of the baristas, or an uncle, but instead got Walter. Great. "Now get out." I woke up the laptop and pulled the stack of paperwork that Keli had carefully piled and sorted for me closer. The door closed, but I knew he was inside of it, instead of outside. Damn it. "Seriously?" This time there could be no mistaking the sigh. "What, aside from the literal unluckiness of my actual birth, did I fucking do to deserve this?" I gestured to the man who gave me my last name and theoretically part of my genetic makeup.
"Charlotte," he'd taken the chair that Clay had sat in before, and I flinched at the memory. "Why must you make every single meeting between us awkward or-" he sighed and unbuttoned his suit jacket, forcing me to make peace with the fact that he was settling in for a visit of some length. "What do you know about this Clay you've been seeing?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Are you going to have the 'talk' with me, Walter?" A snort left me and he glared. "You missed that boat by YEARS." I was almost impressed by how narrow his eyes could go without shutting. "I guess that Matthew and Alex have been whispering sweet horrors in your ears, and you, being my-" I considered the best adjective for whatever Walter was roleplaying as and came up empty handed. "I'm sorry, Walter, what precisely are you in this particular scenario?"
"Charlotte, regardless of what your-" was he really pursing his lips like a displeased auntie? "Uncles have inferred about me, I am your-"
"Jesus, are you going to mangle a Star Wars quote?" I shook my head and sighed dramatically. "You, Walter Ramble, are my biological sperm donor, nothing more, nothing less." I sat back in my chair and studied him with a growing smirk. "You really think that my memory doesn't go back too far, or far enough, do you?" He was staring with some interest at me and my smirk grew in smugness. "I was five, she'd worked so damn hard on that dinner, wanting it to be special to make it so fucking perfect for you." My head fell to one side, remembering how my mom had fussed over my dress and hair, making me look like a miniature of her, like the miniature house/mailbox and my dollhouse. Make-believe all the way, but she wanted so fucking badly for it to be real. "And you came in, sneering at her, and me, and then, like you'd wanted to since I imagine the first moment you got your little title, you told her EXACTLY how you felt about her. And me. And I remember every fucking moment."
He flinched, and paled slightly, and I watched his Adam's apple bob. Clearly this meeting wasn't going the way he'd hoped. "Charlotte, when a relationship is ending-"
I laughed, harsh and humorless. "Ending? It never should have begun, you told her how she REPULSED you, how I repelled you." I sighed, and shook my head. "Get out, leave me alone, keep Clay's name out of your mouth and give me a wide berth, Walter."
"Do you know what happened in Bolivia?" I'd refocused on the stack of papers and I didn't look up from them, since I DID know what happened in Bolivia.
"Yep," I grabbed a highlighter from the cup I kept nearby and started marking the lines that I'd be inputting first.
"I don't mean the explosion that supposedly killed his team, Charlotte," I didn't stop marking my work, since I thought I knew what he was playing at. Their efforts to get back to the United States, their back channels, like it mattered? "Him and that woman he's got along burned down a motel." I hesitated, Asha, or Aisha wasn't it? "That's extreme foreplay isn't it? Then again, arson seems in their wheelhouse."
"This again?" I glanced up and saw that Walter was studying me. "Honestly, it's like all of you are on repeat. I have NO idea what happened to Matthew and Alex's building, and the insinuations are getting stale. Nice try with the added spice about Clay's sexual escapades from the past."
"Past?" He raised an eyebrow and I worried that it was a family trait. "Charlotte, isn't she with him now? And from my understanding, he was screwing her right up until they arrived in our little town, she shot the computer nerd one and it didn't seem to sour their fervor." Jensen? She shot Jensen and he kept her around? "Of course, from what I've heard, Clay seems to attract the less than stable types." His eyes were boring into mine and I felt a twist inside of me at his implications. "He's been shot and one attempted to blow him up."
"Is there a point to this?" My mouth was dry so my voice came out quieter than I'd wanted it to. "I mean, if nothing else, I should be thanking him for bringing us closer together, Walter. After all, I've seen more of you in the past few months than I have since I was five years old."
"Again, Charlotte, regardless of what you've been told by-" his nostrils flared at the mere thought of Davey and George. "I'm your father, I don't want to see you hurt or worse, made a fool of in front of the entire town."
"Maybe you and Mom weren't so different after all," I offered as he finally stood up, buttoning his suit jacket, and his eyes meeting me in astonishment. "Image is everything, isn't it?"
