Part 8 – Defying Expectations

Whatever Megan had been expecting when she walked through the door – yelling, thrown dishes, sulking in corners, Don and Will gone home and Charlie in the garage –

whatever she had expected, it was certainly not this. David had dropped her off and taken Nena to a local diner for a milkshake. David and Megan had thought that Megan might be needed to calm some people down before bringing Nena back. Now Megan stared, jaw open, at the cheerfully domestic scene in front of her.

Alan, Colby, Charlie and Don were sitting around the dining room table, poring over various sheets of paper. Colby and Don seemed to be having a debate, but it was a cordial one, and it was about … Nena's reading level? And a lovely smell was coming from the kitchen. There was still some tension in the air but, oddly, it seemed to be directed at Alan.

As she stood there, gaping, Will pushed open the door from the kitchen, a plate of homemade cookies in his hand.

"Here are the ones with nuts," Will said, setting the plate down in the middle of the table. "Ones with orange are in the oven now."

Multiple hands reached for cookies.

"Orange?" Charlie asked. "Did you use the last of the orange juice?"

"Nope, orange extract."

Charlie stopped with a cookie halfway to his mouth. "We have orange extract?"

Will grinned. "Well, you certainly didn't have any Grand Marnier."

"Huh?" Charlie asked, his forehead crinkling.

"Eat your cookie, brainiac," Will laughed.

"Cookies?" Megan asked in confusion.

Everyone looked at her. "Oh hey," Colby said and looked past her. "Where's Nena?"

"David dropped me off and took her for a milkshake," Megan said, examining Colby's face. "In case …"

"In case we needed an intervention," Colby said wryly.

Megan nodded silently.

"At the moment," Don grumbled, "What we need is a definition of reading levels that doesn't take an education degree to interpret."

"Education …?"

"Paperwork for Nena to go to school," Alan said, holding up a mess of paper. "Due tomorrow."

"Oh …" Megan said faintly.

Will winked at her and went back to the kitchen. Megan followed him.

Megan waited until the kitchen door closed behind her, then snapped. "Did I just walk through some sort of warp in space/time and end up in an alternate universe where the big fight never happened?"

Will chuckled.

Megan raised her eyebrows impatiently.

"Okay, okay," Will smiled, then his face grew serious. "You want details, I assume."

"Yes!"

Will nodded and moved over to the counter. He picked up a spoon and started dropping scoops of dough onto a cookie sheet. "It wasn't a long conversation," he said at last. "Colby first talked about how he never planned on Nena and him coming to live here so he never really told people what he expected from them in terms of taking care of Nena. That people had just done it and he had just taken it for granted. He said, 'I treated you like staff instead of family.'"

Megan stared at him. She'd thought the same thing but figured that if Alan and Charlie were okay with the way Colby expected them to take care of Nena, then it wasn't Megan's place to say something. She tried not to meddle if she didn't have to. But that didn't stop her from thinking things.

Will continued, "Colby said that he didn't want to admit that Nena might be growing up and picking up stuff around her that we don't think she is."

Megan nodded. People don't realize how much kids see.

"He said that Nena had asked for a gun for Christmas."

Megan sucked in a gasp. Maybe this whole fight had come just in time.

Will grimaced in agreement then said, "Colby said that he didn't want to admit that Nena's growing up and one sign of that was he hadn't signed her up for school yet."

"Still?" Megan said in surprise. "She's way old enough for it!"

"I know. Colby then said that he hoped he would have been rational if we'd come talk to him about giving Nena 'hands-on gun experience' but that he can't say if he would have. And he needed people to tell him if he was walking off a cliff."

Megan nodded. "Good, good. Good for Colby. How did you guys respond?"

"Umm, didn't really," Will said, turning away from Megan towards the oven. "I said something first." He turned on the oven light and looked at the cookies currently baking. Megan waited.

"I, uh, told Colby that I fucked up and was sorry. That I thought I knew why I did what I did, but I did it for the wrong reasons. I think I could have talked Colby into it if I had tried."

Megan put her hand to her mouth and Will gave her a wry, tired look. "Yeah, smart girl, you were right. Don hit me with that today."

Megan grimaced. "Sometimes I don't like being right."

Will shrugged one shoulder and reached for the hot pads. He opened up the oven door and released a wave of cookie-scented heat. Megan backed away while Will got out the done cookies, set them aside, and put in a fresh tray to bake.

"The deal is I'm not to be alone with Nena, ever," Will said, without a change of expression. "Don's to keep a watch on me that I don't use Nena as 'a game piece' again. That if it happens again, Colby will take Charlie and Nena and leave LA."

"Whoa …" Megan said, her eyes going wide. "That's pretty harsh. There's plenty of blame to go around here, not just you."

Will gave another one-shouldered shrug and Megan eyed him. He didn't seem overly upset by being declared the bad guy in the situation and 'punished.'

Megan said slowly, "You … you're more comfortable with that, with being the black sheep, the family pariah." She shook her head in amazement. "Jesus, Will, you're a profiler's wet dream."

Will glared at her and she held up her hands. "Sorry, sorry."

Will turned away from her and spent a long moment getting a spatula out of a drawer. When he turned back to her, his face was composed, unreadable. Megan was actually honored that she rarely saw Will's 'undercover' face. She knew he didn't trust easily or often and she mentally castigated herself for her rude words.

"After that," Will said, "it really got interesting."

Megan snorted. "Got interesting?"

"Yeah." Will took the spatula and started removing cookies from the sheet. "Don asked his Dad if he really was okay with him being in the FBI."

"Oh," Megan said with a feeling of dread.

Will nodded, confirming her fears. "Alan said that he had finally gotten okay with Don's job then he found out that Charlie had been working with the NSA and CIA and who knows who else. He said that Charlie's worked with 'every government agency that's done every foul thing the US has ever done' and that Charlie was giving them tools to do more."

"Ouch," Megan said.

"Then his boyfriend is an ex-army 'interrogator' and I'm a drug cop and," Will flushed slightly. "'Scary as Hell.'"

Megan made a choking sound, unsure whether to be amused or horrified.

"Everyone started arguing with him and he just said, 'we'll talk about it later' and went to go get the paperwork for Nena's school."

Megan's jaw dropped. "He just said, 'Never mind?'"

Will gave her a sideways grimace. "Pretty much."

"Whoa," Megan said, feeling overwhelmed by the sheer complexities of what Will had called 'not a long conversation.'

"Here," Will said, his voice understanding. "Have a cookie."

Automatically, Megan took the cookie and bit into it. She blinked and looked up at Will. "These are really good."

"Of course, they are," Will smirked and went to spoon the rest of the cookie dough onto a cookie sheet.

Megan followed him. "So how did Charlie and Don react to Alan's statements?"

"Upset, of course. Don said that he couldn't just say he didn't like me, and Alan said that he liked me and Colby just fine, just not our jobs."

"Hate the sin, not the sinner," Megan mumbled.

Will raised an eyebrow at her but she shook her head. "And that's it. Nothing else except 'let's do paperwork.'"

"Well," Will said uncomfortably. "Colby did take me aside and make sure I understood he was serious about his threat to take Charlie and Nena and leave if I messed up again."

"And you said?"

"I said 'of course.' What else could I say?"

"What else indeed …"

Megan slowly shook her head, feeling overwhelmed. She waved vaguely towards the cookie sheet. "Anything I can do to help?"

Will flashed her a smile. "You can always do the dishes."

Megan chuckled and rolled up her sleeves. A simple manual task would be good for her brain at the moment. She could write an entire doctoral dissertation on this extended family.

After working through a pile of dirty dishes, Megan was drying her hands when her phone rang. She checked the caller ID, although she was pretty sure who it was. She answered it, saying, "Hey, David, bring her in."