Thornton's rental car was already in the driveway at Blythe's house when the van pulled in, and Thomas was standing in the front yard looking at the flower beds. He quickly came over to the van to open the sliding door and help them disembark (really, Cuddy thought, it was almost as much of a process as leaving a ship, luggage in tow), and Marina passed him two large bags of toys and supplies for the girls. They had packed well for the girls back at the hotel, over House's protests of, "One hour, remember? We aren't camping for a week." Thomas accepted the bags and backed away as Marina started to unbuckle Abby.
House gingerly extracted himself from the front passenger's seat, careful about his leg as he landed. The van was higher than a passenger car. He felt the familiar stab of longing for a world in which a few inches in things here and there wouldn't make such a laborious difference. Arriving safely on terra firma, he turned to Thomas, who was closest and had obviously been watching him. "Of course, you'd be here. Don't remember inviting you to join the party."
Cuddy sighed as she rounded the front of the van and hoped Thomas realized the physical source of that additional edge in her husband's tone at the moment. House hadn't told Thomas not to come, either, and he'd had a few floors of opportunity in the elevator after arrangements were made and before Thomas got off first. He wanted him here; he just didn't want to have to say so. "We're glad to have your help, Thomas," she said quickly. "The more of us there are to sort things and also look for that will, the better." She went up to the sliding door and took Abby from Marina, who turned to Rachel's car seat next. Jensen and Wilson were waiting in the rear to exit last, Jensen having silently communicated that decision to give Thornton and House a minute without them in the middle of it.
Thomas took another step back with the bags, leaving plenty of room for Cuddy and the others to get the girls, but he was watching his son. Greg had limped away from the van, his leg stiffer for the first few strides and then easing up a little, and now he stopped in the front yard, lost in study of the flowers. After a moment, tentatively, Thomas came up next to him.
House was staring at the flower beds and the shrubs. Hours and hours of painstaking work here. He had been surprised at the landscaping on his brief visit nearly three years ago after Blythe's accident, but there was so much more now. That visit had been the first spring after John's death, his mother just starting to unfurl a little like a flower to the sunlight as she crept out of the shadow of his rigid influence. Since then, no doubt, this yard had been one of her passions. It was beautiful, even in winter with most of the plants asleep and leafless, tucked in snugly under their mulch blankets. House wondered what it would look like now in spring, in full, blazing glory. She wouldn't see it. He blinked hard a few times.
"I never even knew she liked flowers this much," Thomas said softly at his elbow.
House tightened up for a moment, considering an arch comment that that was just one other thing on a long list that Thomas had missed, but he couldn't make himself say it. He hadn't known, either. Perhaps his mother hadn't even known fully herself until she had the opportunity. "Flowers," he said, almost inaudibly. "Her . . . her stone. Something with flowers."
"Yes," Thomas agreed. "That's perfect."
Cuddy, holding Abby, came up on her husband's other side and joined in the silent inspection. "Would you like a bush, Greg?" she asked finally. "We could take one home to Princeton and plant it there. These are still pretty little." She left the cause trailing. They were little because they had been Blythe's, hers alone. They had never been John's.
Caught for a moment between the pathetic appeal of the thought and the bitter necessity of it, he fled to protest. "Oh, yeah, like we don't have enough junk already to haul around with us. We were already a traveling sideshow in the airport, and you want to add a plant? You'd have to hold the damn thing in your lap the whole flight, too. If we checked it, it would be turned over inside a minute once the baggage apes got their paws on it." He shook his head. "Try to remember once we get inside that every souvenir you pick up has to get back home."
"Obviously, we're going to have to ship some boxes. I'd already decided that. But of course we couldn't ship a potted shrub. I'd be willing to hold it."
"Take an azalea. They have shallow roots," Thomas put in. "Very easy to transplant one just a year or two old, and winter is a good season for it while it's dormant."
"So now you're a plant expert, too?" House fired at him.
Thomas held steady. "No, but Emily was."
House looked away. Not since his one shot last fall, the only time he'd ever succeeded in getting the other man mad, had he ever said anything against Thomas' dead wife.
Rachel came up at that moment. She had been later out of the van than her sister, being on the far side, and the other adults had been trying to stay back and give House, Thomas, and Cuddy some privacy for a minute, but Rachel's patience, as always, was short. Tired of being shut out of things, she broke away from Marina and ran up to them. "Let's go in!" she suggested. She understood that they were going to Grandma's house, where Grandma didn't live anymore, but now that they were here, she saw no reason to stand around looking at uninteresting, twiggy, bare plants. There wasn't even snow here to play in, but the grass was an icky brown. Nothing about this yard appealed to her at all.
Cuddy and Thomas laughed, the mood broken, and House shook off the spell of the flower beds and started for the door. "We were just waiting for the keeper of the keys to open the door. Tell your mother to hurry up." Cuddy went up the front step with him, fishing out the house key with her free hand.
Rachel in following wound up right next to Thomas, and she stopped, looking up at him, distracted by a thought. She tugged on his pants leg as he took a step. "Thomas." He paused and looked down inquiringly, and she surveyed his impressive height. Just like her father. "Were you really little?"
He smiled and set down the bags, bending over to get closer to face level. "Yes, I was. A long time ago. In fact, once I was even littler than you are now. Smaller than Abby, too."
"Wow!" She was obviously encouraged by this news.
"Everybody starts little, Rachel. We all grow. You won't get as tall as I am, because girls are smaller, but you'll probably at least be as tall as your mother someday."
House interrupted them from the porch as Cuddy was unlocking the door. "Come on." Cuddy, looking back, saw Thomas' hands twitch as if for just a moment, he thought of picking Rachel up. If so, he also thought better of it. He picked up the girls' bags again instead.
"Come on, Rachel." He walked on to the door with her beside him, and Marina, Wilson, and Jensen followed.
Cuddy pushed the door open, and slowly, House first, they entered.
The house was a single-level, fairly compact, in this neat neighborhood of mostly retirees, and it had the standard design of living room with kitchen behind and a hall leading back to bedrooms and bathroom. The living room had the feature Cuddy remembered most from her sole visit, that far wall solidly covered with pictures. The last time they were here, Blythe had obviously been rearranging them, removing all with any visible signs of injuries to Greg and most that included John. They had found those later in the back, largest bedroom. Now there were none left on the wall containing John, though plenty of Blythe and Greg, alone and together, more of him. The wall behind the pictures had also been repainted; no longer could the sun-fading outlines be seen on close inspection that marked the many years that others had hung there in different order. In fact, she thought the color of the whole room was different now, too, a pleasant sky blue. She couldn't remember what it had been before. She just remembered the visible, recent adjustments to that picture wall, because of how strongly her husband had reacted to them. Now, no one would have known what the wall had looked like for all those former years.
She quickly looked back at House, realizing she had lost herself for a minute in comparison. He had started for the picture wall himself but had stopped halfway at the piano. It was on the long wall that divided the living room from the kitchen. He ran a hand over the top as if verifying that it was in fact the same one. Just a small upright, but she knew how many memories were attached to that. It had been easily the most positive thing in his childhood. It had probably saved his sanity.
Just now, the cover was open, the keys exposed, and there was a music book open on the rack and a few others stacked on the edge of the top. He looked at the song that had been left open, apparently the last one Blythe had picked her way through with her slow but determined playing. My Favorite Things from the Sound of Music. He flipped back to the cover while holding her place; the book was a collection of several songs from the musical. House played the first line single handed, just the melody, testing the instrument. It was in tune. Blythe had taken care of it.
Abby in Cuddy's arms was almost flip-flopping out of them by now. Cuddy set her down, and she ran over to the instrument, trying to scramble up onto the bench. House sat down himself, picking up his daughter. She reached out for the keyboard eagerly. Rachel came up, too, and House caught Abby's hands just before she hit a note as his other daughter appeared. He and Cuddy were trying hard to avoid rubbing Abby's musical brilliance into Rachel's face, although supplying alternative activities Rachel was good at, like running, was working to help her frustration. "A little later, Abby," he said. Like when Rachel was distracted with something, not while she was standing right here at his elbow.
Abby settled into her stubborn look - a very familiar stubborn look - and struggled against him for a few seconds. "No!" she insisted, claiming her rightful heritage. Here was a piano, and she knew what they were for, no matter whose house they were in.
He went for the best way to distract Abby from playing a piano, which was to play it himself. "Hold still," he admonished and released her little wrists, reaching around her. He rarely used sheet music himself, but at the moment, he simply played the piece in front of him. Abby settled back against him, and Rachel, who wanted to hear him instead of her sister anyway, watched happily from her position standing just beside the bench, looking at those magical fingers as if wondering how they could do this so easily when she knew by now it wasn't easy at all.
Cuddy turned to look at Thomas. He was rapt, watching the scene, his face lost in both longing and in memories. She wondered how many times he must had stood next to the bench and watched his father play just as Rachel was watching now. Physically, House easily could have been Thomas' father had the latter lived into his 50s. The present wasn't shoved aside by the past, though, and Thomas was drinking in every moment of it, actually hearing his son play for the first time.
House finished the song, and Rachel smiled. "Yay!" She pranced a quick loop around the back of the piano bench, switching sides.
Abby had enjoyed the music but also obviously wanted to hear something a little more challenging. She twisted around to face her father, though as always being careful of his leg. "Play Bee, Dada!" she requested.
House abruptly remembered for the first time who was watching. He turned his head, looking for Thornton. "Play Bee!" Abby insisted.
He knew from their emails that that piece was his father's favorite. "Not a good choice. Pick something else, Abby. This piano won't sound like ours at home; it's too little, and on that piece, you could really tell the difference. It won't be as good."
Rachel was getting into the act now. "I wanna hear Bee, too."
Abby widened her eyes, looking straight at him, close range. "Please?" she asked, giving the line all the delivery she could, which was considerable. The other adults fought not to laugh.
House sighed. "Kid, you are going to kill me someday with those eyes."
"Poetic justice," Cuddy muttered.
Slowly, he set Abby down. "I need my arms free for that one." She didn't protest, taking up her position on the floor, she and Rachel flanking the bench like bookends. "And I was serious about this piano. It won't sound as good as you're used to." They both ignored the disclaimer, waiting eagerly. House picked up the book off the rack, started to close it, then stopped. Leaving the book open to Blythe's place, he set it on top of the piano, out of the way, and he took a deep breath. Cuddy, meanwhile, knowing what piece was coming, had pulled out her cell phone. House had commented when they had listened to the CD of his grandfather that Thornton loved this one. She would record it, and she would send the file to Thomas.
House flexed his fingers, then almost leaped at the keyboard, starting off with the long glissando and then into the rapid-fire Flight of the Bumblebee. Thomas stared, not having realized what "Bee" was to the girls until now. His favorite piece. So many times, his father had played that by request for him. He stood spellbound, watching, almost forgetting to breathe, as for the first time in over sixty years, he heard and saw his father's full talent on display right in front of him again.
All too soon, the piece was over. Thomas took a deep breath himself, trying to break the spell before Greg noticed, yet not wanting to break the spell at all. Cuddy nudged him and silently pointed to her cell phone, the saved file there on the screen, safely captured, and he gave her a look of unspeakable gratitude.
Sure enough, House, after recollecting his senses himself, quickly turned on the bench to face the assembled adults behind him, and his tone was challenging, defying anybody to call this even silently an emotional moment or any sort of milestone. "Don't you all have a will to find and inventory to take or something? I told you I wasn't going to help, but if none of you do anything but stand around all day, we'll never get out of here."
The knot of adults slowly broke up and drifted away. Cuddy made a quick tour of the house herself, looking in each room, finding a small desk in the kitchen that looked promising legally. Returning to the living room, she gave assignments. "All right. Best way to do this efficiently is to divide it up. Just see what's here and make a list of bigger things or important-looking things. If you find any legal papers or anything that looks like it might have emotional value, ask about it." She quickly handed out notepaper she had brought. "Jensen can take the back master bedroom at the end of the hall." That was John's, the old bedroom of their marriage, and she thought the psychiatrist was by far the best choice to excavate that minefield. "Wilson, you can do Blythe's bedroom, halfway down the hall, opposite the bathroom. I've got the kitchen; there's a little desk in the corner I want to go through. Thomas, you start in here, and I do want the pictures that you don't want yourself. Whoever finishes first can move on to the bathroom, the spare room, or the garage. And Marina, of course, will watch the girls." Rachel at least would drift away from the piano after a while and want more active pursuits. "Everybody understand?"
Thomas promptly snapped to attention and saluted her in perfect, crisp military style. Wilson and Jensen laughed, Marina smiled, and even House was surprised into a rare grin. Cuddy sighed and turned away, heading for the kitchen, and Wilson came up close enough to whisper in her ear. "Sure you want two of them?"
"Get to work," she replied, sotto voce, and went into the kitchen straight to that tantalizing desk. It was a small, personal-sized rolltop with a feminine style and ivory knobs, not at all ponderous looking as some are. The first thing she spotted on opening it, sitting right in the middle for prompt attention, was a power bill, due Friday. With another sigh, she filed that in her purse and dug in, keeping her ears open at the same time for the status of things from the next room, where House had resumed playing, taking lighter requests from the girls now, Disney songs, and where no doubt Thomas, as he took inventory, was soaking up every note.