Chapter 4 Not wanted on voyage

It wasn't often that Scott felt totally helpless. All through his life, as the eldest Tracy boy and then a leader at school and in the airforce, he was used to gathering information, assessing the situation and making a decision, then acting on it. Even when they lost Mom he'd been able to see his path clearly. It was Scott who gathered the younger ones, who comforted them as he gave John and Virgil jobs to do, as he shielded his father from those first few days of intrusive phone calls. It was not a burden but a calling, and one that defined him. This moment of chaos, in a place that should be a sanctuary for them all, had him bewildered, and it was a sensation he hated with every fibre of his being. He needed information, he needed clarity, and he needed action.

Because losing a brother was not an option.

"Is John alright?"

"John?" That threw Virgil, then he clearly replayed the last minute of conversation. "Yeah, yes, I guess. John's fine. It isn't – " he drew in a breath. "It isn't John."

"Fine. It's Gordon. I'll ask again," he said, through gritted teeth.

"Alan, go upstairs," his father ordered. Alan rolled his eyes.

"Oh my god, Dad, relax. I figured it out already. O plus O plus AB means that Gordon's got a different dad."

If the baldness of the statement set his father back on his heels, it was nothing to the effect on Scott.

"We did basic genetics at school about a year ago," Alan continued. "It's all about-"

"Yeah, maybe not now, Al." Virgil was looking at Scott, worriedly. "Scotty? It's a bit of a shock, I know. Just take your time with it."

For Scott, his four brothers had always seemed like the four pillars of his world. They were his north, south, east and west. John, with his calm intelligence; Virgil with his empathy and insight; Gordon's good-nature and light-heartedness; Alan's enthusiasm and curiosity. The loss of any one of them would rock the ground beneath his feet, leaving him lurching, flailing.

Alan's summation of the situation was shocking in its implications, and Scott grasped them almost at once. There had been lies and secrets, big ones, and people he loved and admired – his dad, his mom, and his brother – were at the centre of them. But nothing he'd heard yet explained why their brother was alone in the cold and dark, facing this without his family around him.

This fact was a problem that Scott could fix.

"Alan, go and grab our coats, and gloves for everyone too. We're going to bring our brother home."

"That is not your decision to make." Jeff looked to have aged a decade in the last ten minutes, but his voice was firm. "Scott, son, I need some time."

"What's there to think about?" Virgil said, fists clenching by his side. "I mean, I get it, Dad. It's a shock to you that Mom had someone else's baby. But that all happened a long time ago, and she's gone. And none of it is Gordon's fault."

"Of course – of course it isn't. Good lord, do you think I blame him?"

"If it looks like a duck…" Alan said.

"I think," Virgil said quickly, "you're looking for someone to blame, and Gordon is the nearest target."

"Well, if you're looking for someone to blame, Jeff, you might start a little closer to home," said Grandma wearily, taking a seat on the sofa.

His father glared at her.

"How is this any of my fault?"

Grandma returned the glare, much to Scott's astonishment.

"I know I raised you to think for yourself, boy. I hope I also raised you not to be a hypocrite."

"I don't understand you, Mother. You're not making any sense." Jeff scrubbed his face, wearily. "I daresay it's just one of many things that are not making sense tonight."

"Why don't you just think for a minute. It'll come to you."

"What do you want me to say? Lucy, she lied to me, all those years ago. How do you expect me to just accept that?"

"How about," Grandma began, leaning forward, eyes glinting, "you remember exactly what was happening about 18 years ago?"

Jeff shook his head, but Scott had modelled himself on his father from the moment he was old enough to say his name. That took dedicated study, attention to detail, constant reification. And that meant he could see what his father, the indomitable, inscrutable Jeff Tracy, was doing.

His old man was bluffing.

"Very well, then. And no, your boys are going to hear this, because they're old enough to accept the fact their parents aren't perfect. Neither one of them."

"I don't see how I could possibly be held to –"

"Well stick with me, kiddo, I'm about to rock your world." Grandma looked at her son meaningfully, then each of her grandsons in turn. "Now, I'm giving you the shortened version, because Scott is absolutely right and you are going to go out there soon to bring your brother back. But you need to hear this, and that boy has sense enough to keep himself safe until you get him."

"He didn't take his coat," Alan said doubtfully.

"Alright. He's got no sense at all and you will need to hurry." Grandma sighed. "Boys, your mother was a lovely woman, and I loved and respected her. When you're old enough to have a partner of your own, you'll know that parent-in-law approval isn't as common as you'd hope. What was I going to think of the woman who took my place in my boy's heart?"

"She was good to you," Jeff said gruffly. Accusingly, as if what his mother was doing was disloyal to his wife. Scott struggled to read the currents of this conversation.

Grandma nodded. "She was. You don't know this, boys, but Lucy came out to stay at the farm when she was pregnant with Scott, and she only ever intended to stay for long enough to get settled into a routine with the baby. But then, your father was building Tracy Industries and off to training and the moon and goodness knows what. He came home often enough to get her pregnant again, then he was down in Florida or up in Washington, or California, being the wonderful man she'd married and leaving her as near as anything to a single mother's life. Three young boys under the age of six, and there she was, stuck on a farm in the middle of Kansas, no friends, no career, no family but a grumpy menopausal woman having marriage problems of her own with a grumpy old grouch who couldn't handle getting older and thought the way to keep ageing at bay was to work so hard on the farm he nearly worked himself to exhaustion."

"You – you never mentioned any of this," Jeff said, obviously surprised.

"Oh, for goodness sake. You couldn't figure out your own marriage, Jefferson, let alone your parents'. And when would you have been around to hear it, anyway? Lucy and I both decided we'd keep out problems to ourselves. And then Grant was so exhausted that night he drove us off the road and he ended up with a leg in a cast, I had a broken pelvis that kept me in bed till I got pneumonia. Do you remember that?"

"Of course I do. I was so grateful that Lucy was there to help."

"Yes, she was there to help. Dear god, Jeff, do you ever hear yourself?" At Jeff's blank look, she picked up a cushion and threw it at him. "What part of three children under six do you not get? Well, of course you don't get it, you weren't there."

"Forgive me," said Jeff, with asperity. "I was working every hour of every day building a business that would guarantee my children their future. I daresay I had different priorities, but I only ever did what I thought was best for my family."

"Including Alison Reynolds?"

Scott had a brilliant flash of memory to a moment during his flight training, when he flew the old Piper-Hornet up into a tight loop and stalled the engine at the peak. He remembered frantically hitting the ignition again and again and glancing across at his instructor. The look on his instructor's face was something like the one on his father's face right now.

"Wh – " Jeff cleared his throat. "What?"

"Ah! Don't you dare." Grandma raised her finger, and Jeff's mouth abruptly closed. "Yes, I knew, son. So did Lucy. That opening ceremony for the new plant in Seattle? We both took one look at her and you and we knew. We know what it means when a woman reaches over and adjusts a man's collar, without asking, when she puts her hand on his wrist to get his attention. When he can't take his eyes off her. We both knew what it meant when you always had meetings and travel and could only make it home one day in thirty."

"Dad!" Alan's eyes were huge.

Scott risked a look at Virgil. What he saw there made him subtly interpose his body between his brothers and his father.

But Jeff Tracy was always able to take a blow and find his footing again before his opponent had time to blink.

"So she had an affair out of revenge? Is that what you're telling me?"

"Revenge? That woman adored you. Jeff. Sweetheart," and Grandma's voice gentled a little, "she was the only person on that farm keeping everything together when she thought the one person she could always rely on had let her down so badly she could barely function. She didn't seduce anyone, and she wasn't seduced by charm and looks – though goodness knows, he had plenty of both. If I'd been fifteen years younger -"

"Grandma!" Alan wailed.

"What then," said Jeff, almost sullen. It was a new look on him, and Scott was startled to realise he could see the boy he'd once been in his father's face.

"I think it was kindness. Just that. Simple kindness." Grandma smiled faintly. "He was hired along with another man to work the farm while Grant was laid up, and while the rest of us were asking her to do this, do that, cook and wash and comfort and forget about her own hurts, he came along and really saw her."

"What do you mean, Grandma?" Virgil's voice was careful, as if he was holding on tightly to all his emotions while the court heard the evidence before it.

"He talked to her. Adult to adult, no strings, just a friendly ear and face when she was crying out for someone to see her as a human being, not a maid of all work. And he saw that she needed help. She was drowning on dry land, that girl was, and he threw her a lifeline simply because he was a kind man who asked nothing of her."

The pain in his father's face was no longer childish. It was the pain of a man hearing how he failed the ones he loved the most, and knowing there was nothing he could do to heal it. All too long ago, too lost in the haze of work and risk and grateful acceptance that somehow, his wife would always come through for him, would always do what needed to be done to keep the family ticking along in his absence, no matter what it cost her.

"He started coming out on the weekend and taking you boys off her hands. First afternoon he did, she said she'd paint, and I found her there, sound asleep, face on the palette and covered in oils. So damned tired she couldn't get past the opening of her paintbox. He used to take you out to the river, showed you how to fish. Do you remember, Scott?"

Another lurch of memory, and the shock of recognition brought a little gasp. "He built the fort." He turned to Virgil. "You were too little, Virge, but this guy, he came out and built a fort out of old tires and timber from the barn. We loved it, used to play in there for hours. I made it a spaceship. John wanted it to be a cave."

They looked at each, then said in unison, "Weird."

A small man, with yellow hair and a ridiculous grin. The memories started to flicker faster in his mind, there but just out of focus, a blurred reckoning of days almost forgotten. A scar on his hand that he said came from adventures on a fishing trawler. A man who couldn't read, even though Scott could, and he was only six; but who could tie fishing flies that brought the fish to the surface of the river when he flicked his line and sent one skimming across the water. A man with a gentle voice, and a big laugh, who took him aside one day and told him that his ma needed his help, and could he step up to be the man around the place? Look out for her, look out for his brothers, because his ma was a small thing and needed Scott's big strong arms to help carry the load.

"And yes, Jeff, he looked at her like she hung the moon, and maybe, for a moment, she needed to feel that she was a desirable woman still. I'm not saying she was right, son." Grandma sighed. "I am saying she was human."

Jeff sat in silence.

"And he did have a wonderful butt."

Scott pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Not the time, Grandma. So, Dad. What happened? How did you get past this, the pair of you?" He gestured towards Alan. "I mean, clearly you got past it."

"Yes." Jeff said heavily. "We got past it. I guess – I guess I put that time behind me because we got past it so well. Your mother called me, and gave me an ultimatum. If I wanted to save our marriage, I had to get home by midnight that night." He gave a tired chuckle. "I was in Orlando. She rang at 5pm and I made it home with twenty minutes to spare."

"Sounds like you really hustled, huh." That was Virgil, with the first glimmer of approval in his voice for half an hour. Jeff shook his head, but not in denial.

"I had no idea things had gotten that bad."

"You mean, you didn't know that she knew about you and that other person," said Alan. Scott found his expression hard to read, and that alone was unusual in this bizarre night. Of all his brothers, it was Alan who was the most transparent, the one whose wholeheartedness and energy made the most sense to Scott. It was as though the entire Tracy family had been rattled about in a tumbler then tossed in the air to fall into new and crazy patterns.

"I guess not."

"How could you, Dad?" The words almost choked in his throat as he said them, but Scott forced himself to give them air. This was the man he had built his life around; his model, his hero, his dad. Something cold and hard was growing inside him as this conversation continued, and he couldn't bear it. Don't let me down now, Dad, he thought, because you never have before. I can't recognise much about any of this, and I need to recognise you if I'm going to put our pieces back the way they should be.

"I – well, I guess your grandmother has given you the story from Lucy's point of view."

"You're welcome," said Grandma.

"I can only tell you how it was for me. It's fair to say I was driven. I thought I had a window of opportunity – as an astronaut, as a businessman. I daresay – I daresay it's true that I didn't recognise I also only had a window of opportunity as a husband and father."

"But you were a good father." Virgil, ever the diplomat, trying for fairness even as he gave his father the evil eye. "I remember you playing with us. I remember sitting under your desk in the office here, playing with old thumb-drives, and you made a road out of string to go around under the legs. I played for hours under there, and you'd forget I was there and then you'd scratch your butt and yell in fright when I laughed." When Scott and Alan blinked at him, he said, "What? I do. It's a good memory."

Jeff bowed his head in brief acknowledgement. "I tried, Virgil. After the ultimatum, I came here and set up the office so I could do much more work from home. And I could afford a plane, then, the little Cessna 1200 that we built the strip for out back. That meant I could commute a lot more often. But before that – I was busy, working hard, and then I would come home whenever I could and it – I felt like a stranger in my own home." He shook his head, remembering. "We'd bump into each other, apologise. I can't explain it, but I was always in the way, and Lucy was always running after one of you boys."

"World's smallest violin, son. That was her life! You can't blame her for it."

"No, of course I don't. But she was pregnant so soon, and after we married I was gone almost straight away. We never had time as a couple, just getting used to each other, and we never had a moment to find our feet as a family."

"You never had your shakedown cruise," said Scott, softly. His father pounced on it.

"Yes! Exactly! We loved each other, I had no doubt of that, but we didn't know each other. Not in that intimate way that married couples can have. I didn't know who I was as Jeff Tracy, husband, or Jeff Tracy, father. But as Jeff Tracy, astronaut, head of Tracy Industries? Him I knew and felt comfortable with. And I guess Alison Reynolds belonged with that version of me." He spread his hands in honesty. "I was lonely, and I made a poor choice. I never spoke of it to anyone – not your mother, not anyone – because I didn't think it would do any good to come out. And precisely because I did love Lucy, and didn't want to see her get hurt. When we spoke that night – God, we talked for hours, about so much – I realised what I'd nearly lost, and I made a vow to myself that I would never forget it again. And I didn't."

"But she didn't tell you about ..?" Scott frowned.

"No, son. And I didn't tell her about my own indiscretion. I guess we both held back for fear of hurting the other. Oh, I wondered. Maybe part of me did more than that."

"It didn't take you long to put two and two together when Gordon said about the blood test," said Virgil.

Jeff dropped his hands to rest on his knees, looking tired and old.

"No, it didn't." He gave a mirthless chuckle. "Came to me so fast it was almost like I've always been waiting for it. But I couldn't have told you that." He looked up at his boys, as close to pleading as he ever came. "We made a happy family together. I will believe to the day I die that she didn't know she was pregnant when we talked that night. I never asked, nor did she, and we both welcomed that little boy into our lives with so much love. I told myself he was proof that we were going to be fine. He was our make-up baby."

For a long moment, unusual in the Tracy household, there was silence save for the crackling of the fire. The jury's retired to reach a verdict, thought Scott. We're waiting to hear if the accused gets parole or a life sentence. No chance of acquittal. But perhaps, a chance for mercy?

Someone had to lead the way. No rangers about. Guess it was up to the airforce.

Oo-rah indeed.

"Right." Scott clapped his hands together. "We're going out to find Gordon. Alan, get the coats, and don't forget to grab one for Gordon."

"Hold on a second!" Grandma Tracy got to her feet. "There's a thermos in the kitchen, Virgil dear. Fill it up with the eggnog on the stove."

"Thanks, Grandma," and Virgil headed into the kitchen. Scott nodded.

"Dad, I'll take that bottle of Pappy's beside you there."

His father looked at him, tiredly but with a glimmer of something hopeful.

"The Pappy's? That's more than a pound of flesh, isn't it?"

"Yes." Scott put his hand out. "It's a cold night, and our brother's gonna need a warming draught. No arguments entered into."

"None offered." Jeff reached into the drink trolley and pulled out the bottle of bourbon. He hesitated as he put it into Scott's hands. "Just – bring him home."

Scott nodded, a promise. But he paused, too. He didn't need to put the question into words.

His father nodded in his turn. "Bring him back, Scott."

For a ridiculous second something like tears stung in Scott's eyes. He stepped back, tucking the bottle into the pocket of the coat he hadn't even had a chance to take off yet. As he did he was startled by the sound of the front door opening, and of someone carefully closing it behind himself.

Gordon? But as he stepped into the hall he saw the tall shape of his other absent brother, John. Before he could say anything in welcome or warning, Alan rushed past.

"Hey, John! No time for questions. You gotta come with us. We're going to find Gordon."

"I – yes?"

Virgil pushed past Scott, working his coat on.

"John, great, good timing. We're going to find Gordon."

"Apparently." John blinked about him. "Scott?"

Scott gestured with his head, back the way John had just come.

"Ah. Right. Well – hello Dad, Grandma." John eased past Scott to put his head into the living room. "I'm off to find Gordon. Should be fun." He noticed the fire. "You might want some more logs for that."

"Alan!"

"Come on," and Alan grabbed John's coat sleeve and tugged him back up the hall, to where the door now stood open and Virgil was rummaging for his car keys.

Scott paused for a moment to meet his father's eye. An astonishing night, and now that he had his bearings, his duty and his inclination were once more aligned. He would worry for his father later; now, his worry and his focus were on Gordon. He saw that his dad had taken the moment to pour himself a glass of the inferior whiskey, and now he raised it in a salute and a promise.

There would be a welcome for his brother when he found him.