Disclaimer: I don't own the hit sitcom 'Reba.'
Note: I want thank you everyone who reviewed the first chapter of my story and urged me to continue writing it. I hope that you all enjoy the next chapter!
Chapter Two: Episode 6x15 – The Attic Incident
"Hey Mrs. H, we're back!" Van yelled from the front door of the living room, carrying Elizabeth in his arms.
Reba walked into the room from the kitchen with a smile on her face and asked, "How was the zoo? Did you kids have a good time?"
Cheyenne walked into the house with a huge grin on her face as she put her purse on the coat hanger next to the door and looked at Reba. "We had such a blast, Mom. Elizabeth had so much fun looking at the monkeys playing and she really enjoyed the bird show."
"Yeah, one of the trainers got bird crap all over his shirt and then he had to leave the stage to go get cleaned up. It was hilarious!" Van laughed as he put his five-year-old daughter on the floor and she ran towards her grandma.
"Grammy, I missed you!" the little blonde girl said excitedly as her grandmother picked her up for a hug.
"Oh, I missed you too, sweetheart! I'm so glad that you had such a good time at zoo." Reba placed her back on the carpet floor and looked at her softly. "Hey, why don't you go upstairs and ask Jake to play with you for a little while, okay?"
"Okay, Grammy!" then Elizabeth ran upstairs to find her uncle and play with him.
"What's for dinner?" Van asked as he plotted himself on the couch and switched on the TV with the remote.
Reba sat in the chair next to the kitchen's bar counter and replied, "I'm making Kyra's favorite, homemade Mac 'n Cheese. She told me that Jake's team only gave the other team five goals in their game this morning. Isn't that great?"
Van groaned impatiently and let out a sigh. "Do you anything about soccer or do you actually like to see people lose, Mrs. H?"
The redhead gave him a bored look. "Do you remember when he was seven? We were lucky to see him only give up ten goals. Jake giving up five goals is enough for me to throw a party."
"Yeah, yeah…I've heard it all before," then the ex-football star said as he continued surfing through the channels on the television.
After fixing her makeup with her compact mirror, Cheyenne came over to the couch and sat down with her husband. "How was your day, Mom? Did you do anything with Barbara Jean?"
"No, she had another Beanie Babies meeting so we weren't able to do anything today, but we might go out for drinks tomorrow night. You're welcome to join us if you want to."
"Oh, I wish I could, but I can't. Van and I still have a lot to do to fix up the house. Tomorrow we're going to finally paint Elizabeth's bedroom and maybe the new baby's room too if we're up to it."
"Yeah, if we're up to it," Van eyed her liked he already knew that he wasn't going to be able to.
Cheyenne simply threw a look at him and continued talking with her mother. "So do you have any plans for tomorrow until you and BJ go out for drinks?"
"Well, I was actually thinking about cleaning up the attic."
Van shot her a look of surprise. "What?! I already cleaned up the attic like…three years ago… Man, has it really been that long since I cleaned it?"
"My point exactly," Reba chimed in while pointing to her son-in-law.
Cheyenne looked at her almost concerned. "Should you really be doing that stuff by yourself, Mom? I mean, moving around all those boxes and lifting all that stuff—it gets pretty heavy. Don't you think Dad should come over and help—?"
"No!" Reba cut off her daughter's question. The last thing she wanted right now was to be bothered by her ex-husband after the last two conversations she had with him. "I don't need your father's help. I can clean the attic up myself, thank you very much."
Van and Cheyenne both had their eyebrows raised with suspicion at Reba, wondering what her sudden outburst was all about. "Is everything okay between you and Dad, Mom? Did you two have another fight?"
"No," the redhead said while standing up. "I just don't wanna bother Brock when cleaning the attic has got nothing to do with him. It's my attic and I'm gonna clean it up on my own. I'll be fine. Now, if you two don't mind, I'm going to go start dinner so you guys don't get home too late," then Reba walked out of the living room into the kitchen.
Once she was an earshot away, Van whispered to his wife, "Did you buy anything of that?"
"Not at all," Cheyenne responded while looking at her mom in the kitchen trying to get dinner started. "Something definitely happened between my parents since the last time we talked to them. I'm gonna call Dad later tonight when we get home and see if he'll tell me anything."
"Well what if he doesn't?"
"Then they'll just have to work it out themselves, I guess…"
Van quickly caught onto what his wife was planning on doing. "So you're gonna call your dad to come over tomorrow to help your mom with the attic and we're gonna spy on 'em to see what they're hiding from us?"
"Yeah, that's pretty much the plan," Cheyenne nodded and left the couch to go check on Elizabeth and Jake.
(The next morning in the attic…)
Reba just had dusted off all of Kyra's baby things in the large chest by the attic window and had moved onto the boxes containing old photographs of her marriage with Brock.
The redhead sighed when she saw and picked up a large framed photo of her wedding day. The picture was of her and Brock, holding hands and smiling happily like any newlywed couple would. Reba's hair was long and curly and Brock had a mustache. "God, it feels like that happened a million years ago. I can't believe how much time has passed since that day."
"Since what day?" the voice of a very familiar person asked as they were walking up the steps towards the attic.
Reba whirled around, the wedding picture in still her hands, and saw her ex-husband looking at her with a questioning look of expression on his face.
"What are you doing here? And how the heck did you know I was up here?"
"Cheyenne called me last night and told me that you might need some help cleaning up the attic so I came over," Brock quickly explained.
"Cheyenne told you to come over after I specifically told her not to?"
"C'mon, Reba, this is Cheyenne we're talking about. She doesn't exactly have the best track record for doing everything we ask her not to do."
Reba said under her breath, "Yeah, that's for sure."
"But why wouldn't you want me to help? This stuff belongs to me just as much as it belongs to you. I wanna help out."
"Brock, all this stuff is our children's old baby clothes and the items of our failed marriage. I didn't want you up here because none of this stuff concerns you anymore. It doesn't really concern anybody. It's all in the past. I just wanna clean some of it up and move on with the rest of my day. So if you don't mind, will you just leave?"
"You're wrong, Reba," the middle-aged blond told her as he moved further into the attic. Unknown to either of them, Cheyenne and Van were watching them silently while sitting on the stairs heading down towards the hallway.
"What?"
"This stuff does concern me because all of it belonged to us when we were happily married."
"You know, you have a wife at home that could help you clean out your own attic. So if you're really in the mood to walk down memory lane, go stumble off the road with Barbara Jean, okay? But don't clean it for too long because we're goin' out tonight."
Brock just rolled his eyes and ignored her sarcasm.
"Man, do you think those two are ever nice to each other?" Van whispered to Cheyenne.
"Shut up, Van! I'm trying to hear what my parents are saying." Then the young married couple continued to listen to the divorced couple talk to each other.
"So what's that in your hands?" Brock pointed to the framed photograph Reba was gripping onto and walked over to her to see it.
The redhead didn't want to show it to him, but figured he was going to see it either way so she just handed it over to him. "It's our wedding picture."
Brock almost showed feelings of sadness by staring at it and finally said, "Oh."
"It was in one of the boxes I was going through and I found it before you came in here," Reba explained while they were both still looking at it.
They were quiet for a good couple of moments before Reba could finally say something. "Brock, I'm sorry that I got mad at you. It's just—after you and I got all upset with each other the last two times we talked I didn't want to rehash that again so that's why I didn't want you to come over here."
He turned around to look at her after putting their wedding picture inside the closest box to him. "So this has nothing to do with the fact that you're going through all of our old stuff?"
Reba hadn't thought about that before. Subconsciously she probably didn't want him over here while she went through all of their old things, taking a trip down memory lane when their lives were so good. Every time they were getting along, she seemed to remember their marriage and how wonderful everything was before they got separated. The feeling scared her because she didn't want to be pulled back into that world and then have it be ripped away from her again. Reba liked the way her life was now and she didn't want it to change. "Yeah…I guess a part of me didn't want you here because of that, too, but you can really blame me for feeling that way?"
"No, I guess not," Brock responded and then looked down at himself for a moment before turning his attention back on his ex-wife. "I'm sorry, Reba."
"For what?" the divorced, single mom asked while she went back to dusting off all of the dirty items around the attic that wasn't in a box.
"For coming over here unannounced and trying to butt in on something I know you wanted to do alone," he apologized.
Reba let out a small laugh and replied, "Please, that's never stopped you before."
"They seem to be getting along better now," Van told Cheyenne while they were continuing to listen to Brock and Reba.
"There's just something I don't get."
"What's that?"
"Why is it that my parents only seem to be nice around each other when nobody else is around?"
"We're here watching them and they're being nice to each other."
The blonde gave Van an are-you-kidding-me look and said, "Yeah, but they don't know we're here, you mo-ron!"
"Cheyenne, you just said it again."
"Craaaap!" the blonde woman groaned with upset. "I'm turning into my mother!"
"Honey, you're not turning into your mother, you're already there."
"Reba, what are you doing?" Brock asked her as he suddenly saw her climbing up their old wooden ladder to the top of the attic.
"I wanted to see if there's anything up there that I need to get rid of," she told him as she reached the top. "I might as well do it while I'm cleaning the attic, right?"
Brock started getting antsy and concerned about his ex-wife's safety. "Well, maybe I should do that. You're not as strong as I am and I don't want to see you fall."
"Oh, please, Brock. I was doing scarier stuff when we were working for Terry at his bar—!" Reba's foot suddenly slipped off of the ladder when she shifted her weight around too fast and she started falling off.
"Reba!!!" Brock yelled out in panic as the redhead was falling for the ground.
Reba closed her eyes shut, expecting to hit the wooden flooring hard from several feet up in the air, when she all of a sudden felt someone catch her and hold on her tightly, trying to maintain their balance while doing so. She opened her blue eyes to see Brock holding onto her as best as he could after catching her like that. "Brock? You—you caught me? You—you saved me… Oh, my God, you saved my life!" Reba spoke out unevenly while shaking in her ex-husband's arms.
Brock let out a huge sigh of relief after getting out of his state of shock for reacting so fast and he slowly placed Reba back on her feet. His hands immediately went to cup her face and looked to see if she was really alright. "Oh, honey, are you okay? God, you scared me half to death!" Then he quickly wrapped both of his arms around her back and pulled her into a tight hug.
Reba could only smile at his reaction and hug him back by wrapping her arms around his neck until she realized something. Honey? Brock hadn't called her honey since he accidentally did back when they were getting divorced and she told him that Cheyenne felt Elizabeth move for the first time when she was pregnant with her.
The redhead was just about to say something to Brock when out of nowhere she heard the screams of Van and Cheyenne, who had been standing there in complete shock while watching the whole frightful "moment" happen.
"MOM!"
"Mrs. H!"
"Are you alright?!" the panicked married couple said in unison while running into the attic towards them.
Reba pulled away from her ex-husband's embrace and immediately hugged her daughter when she came running into her arms. "Oh, Mom! Are you okay? We saw what happened, and if Dad hadn't caught you, you could have been really hurt."
"Sweetheart, it's okay now, I'm fine. I'm just lucky that your dad was there to catch me, huh?"
"I'll say!" Van interrupted. "You must have been 12 or 15 feet up in the air, Mrs. H. You scared the heck out of us."
"I'm sorry you guys, but—but wait a second!" Something had just dawned on Reba. "Weren't you two supposed to be at your house painting today?"
"Uh…" Van and Cheyenne said nervously together.
"Well… We were just taking a break from painting and we wanted to see if you needed any help, Mrs. H," Van said the first thing that popped into his mind for an excuse.
"Yeah! We just came over to see how things were going over here. We walking up the stairs to come and see you, and that's when we saw you falling off the ladder," Cheyenne added, trying to make their lie more convincible.
Reba eyed them suspiciously for a few more seconds before finally believing them and nodded. "Okay, all right. I'm glad that you guys wanted to come over and see if I needed any help, but I think I've got it covered. Besides, that housework needs to get done before the new baby comes. Houses don't paint themselves, ya know."
Brock chuckled at the comment and walked over to Reba, placing a hand on her back. "Hey, can you guys give me and Reba a moment to talk? We'll be right down in just a minute, I promise."
"Sure," Cheyenne agreed and then gave her mom one more hug before leaving.
Van gave his mother-in-law a small kiss on her right cheek and silently walked out with his wife.
Reba turned towards her ex-husband as soon as the kids left and smiled at him. "Thank you, Brock. I don't know what would have happened to me if you hadn't been here to catch my fall. I guess now I'm a little grateful that Cheyenne disobeyed my orders and called you to come over here."
Brock laughed in amusement. "Yeah, me too. Maybe our kids shouldn't listen to us more often."
"So what did you need to talk to me about?" Reba tried to change the subject so they could get downstairs and get out of her stuffy, old attic that she had been in for over two hours now.
"I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry I wasn't holding onto that ladder when you climbing up it. You might not have actually fallen if I had only been there keeping it steady."
Reba's face softened at his innocent apology. "But it's not your fault. At least you were there to catch me, and isn't that what matters in the end anyway? You're always there for me, Brock, always. And even though our marriage ended badly I've always remembered that no matter what, if I ever need help you'll be the first one in line to give me a hand—unless Barbara Jean beats you there first."
He laughed again and nodded. "Uh-huh. You can say that again."
The redhead smiled and moved closer to him. Without thinking about it, she wrapped her arms around his neck again and pulled him closer to her. Brock was surprised by the gesture and gladly hugged her back with smile on his face. The divorced couple shared their sweet embrace for about half a minute before Reba finally let go. They parted and started walking towards the attic's stairs when Brock instantly thought of something. "Since I'm here, can you make your world famous grilled cheese sandwhiches for lunch? I'm starving!"
"Brock!" Reba's eyes widened as she yelled out his name while chasing him down the stairs and all through the house.
So how was chapter two? PLEASE REVIEW!!!! It's really the only way I know what you guys think of my story anyway. LOL!