Shock! A 12 page update! I didn't expect to post anything before my test, however Brucas equals love and stagediva sent really encouraging messages. So, thanks to everyone who gently prodded and reviewed. It really does make me stop studying and write, which probably won't help my test score any! I will update when things calm down. I appreciate all feedback and replies are always motivating.

A Season in Purgatory

Chapter 67

The heat from the fireplace cracked as Keith stoked the burning log, finally easing his worn frame back on to the couch next to his silent nephew. Concerned about Lucas, he'd invited his nephew and his girlfriend over to his newly decorated house. Keith sensed that their relationship needed more of a stoking than the fire. He was at a loss for what to do about Lucas and the rapidly deteriorating relationship between the boy and his parents. God knows Keith had more than enough to preoccupy his time, with an impending baby and a new house, but he couldn't stop himself from wanting to intervene. The fact that his parents were now getting married after an entire lifetime of estrangement was more than any kid could handle.

"So what do you think about the house?" he asked, waving a hand vaguely toward the newly painted walls. Anna had gone through a manic bout of nesting since the last time his nephew had been over. His beautiful wife was currently upstairs, showing off the nursery to Brooke, who had been only too happy to oooh and ahhh over the baby furniture and paint selection.

Lucas leaned back against the over stuffed couch and smiled at his uncle. Keith radiated concern despite his attempts at casual conversation and inquiry. "It's nice. Anna's really talented with colors and stuff," he replied, not knowing how to describe all the things she'd whipped Keith into changing. "She's got you on a tight leash," he said, smiling at the proud look on his Uncle's face.

"Damn straight," Keith said, owning up to the fact that this woman had him completely under her control. "And it's a wonderful feeling, Lucas." He watched as his nephew's face dropped.

"I guess babies and new marriages should be happy events," he sadly replied, knowing that at least Keith was happy even if Luke's life was a living hell.

Keith picked up on his nephew's growing melancholy and decided to dive right on in. "Dan told me that you are all going to counseling," he commented, watching the anger that crossed his nephew's deep blue eyes. "How's that going for you? Do you like the shrink?"

Slowly exhaling, Lucas forced himself deeper into the shadows of the couch's deep cushions. "Dude's okay but he's not going to fix anything with me unless he gets Dan out of my life." It was hard for Lucas to admit that his drinking was causing problems but he wouldn't be drinking if Dan wasn't taking over his life.

Keith ran a hand through his hair in frustration. There were no good outcomes here, as everyone's intentions were such a vastly different end game. Dan wanted to do right by Karen and the baby, Lucas wanted Dan vanquished from his life, and Karen wanted a picture perfect family that never really existed. "I don't know what to say, Luke," Keith slowly began. "I've tried talking to both Karen and Dan. It's like there are no good answers."

Luke carefully evaluated Keith, not sure where his duty as an uncle or brother started or ended. "I told them that I wanted to move in with you."

To his credit, Keith only paused a second before replying. "You know we've always got a bedroom for you, Luke." It was one thing to let his nephew crash occasionally, but Keith knew that Karen would never let him live away from her.

Lucas scoffed at his uncle's intentions. "Dan said you didn't need any 'distractions' with the new baby coming." He was still upset at the idea of being a burden to his uncle. Keith had always been one of the few people Luke could trust. His eyes shifted toward the hardwood floors, realizing that he used to be able to trust his mother. Things were changing.

Keith stood up in anger and turned to face Luke, who was still staring resolutely at the floor. "Luke, you know that you could never be a distraction to me. Anna and I would be more than happy for you to live with us," he firmly stated, knowing that Anna would never turn away a kid in need. It was her nature to help people in trouble. "Dan has no right to infer that we don't want you."

Part of Lucas felt embarrassed at thinking so little of his uncle's loyalty. "But at the end of the day, you have no say where I live," he quietly asked. No one had to tell Luke that until he was 18 he had no rights at all.

Keith gave Luke what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "It will all work out, Luke. I know things seem so overwhelming right now, but things always tend to get better with time." In the mean time, Keith would make sure that Dan would never make Luke feel like an imposition in his life. That was one of the few things he could guarantee.

"You could give me 100 years and I'll still never live willingly with Dan," Luke stubbornly replied. He didn't know where he'd end up sleeping at night but he was absolutely sure it would never be under Dan Scott's roof.

Brooke smiled as Anna pointed out the intricate wall border that surrounded the nursery walls. It was refreshing to watch Keith and Anna prepare for their impending bundle of happiness. She'd never really been around anyone who wanted a baby and it was nice to see adults genuinely happy to expand their family. Besides, it was easier to smile and listen than to talk. Brooke was worn out after not sleeping for several nights and didn't have the energy to do more than listen.

Anna paused for a moment and blushed. "I'm rambling, aren't I?" she asked, knowing that she could go on for hours about anything baby related. Poor Brooke was standing there, smiling at her as she ran on about details no teenage girl could be interested in.

Brooke shrugged her shoulders at the older woman. "I'm a people person. It's in my nature to listen," she perkily replied. "I'm just happy that someone wants a baby enough to go through this all this effort."

"Babies should be happy experiences," Anna replied, noticing for the first time that the younger girl was a bit unsteady on her feet. She reached out to help the girl regain her balance. "Are you okay?" Anna asked, concern now clearly written on her face.

Brooke leaned up against the cherry colored crib for a moment, trying to remember the last time she'd actually eaten something. She smiled at Anna, who looked the picture of motherly concern. "I'm fine."

Anna attempted to cross her arms around her swollen belly before giving up. "When was the last time you ate?" she asked, unable to avoid looking at the girl's gaunt frame. The last time she'd seen Brooke at a basketball game, her cheerleading skirt had hung around her hips like a sheet on an unmade bed. Not waiting for an answer, Anna took Brooke's arm and escorted her down the stairs. Ignoring Keith and Lucas, who appeared lost in their own conversation in the living room, she steered Brooke into the large kitchen and placed her in a chair at the dining table.

She cut off Brooke's protests with a wave. "You're too thin, Brooke. I know it's fashionable to be skinny but you look unhealthy." Anna was surprised that no one had told the girl that she needed to gain weight.

Brooke watched as Anna pulled out some peanut butter and proceeded to make sandwiches for the two of them. She glanced over at the oven, seeing what was clearly their dinner. She wanted to feel guilty about making a seriously pregnant lady prepare two meals for her, but at the same time, she was lightheaded.

"Are you excited about the baby?" she asked, for lack of a better topic. It was obvious from the attention to detail that she'd put into the nursery that she was excited, but Brooke needed to steer the conversation away from her weight loss.

Anna screwed the lid back onto the peanut butter and looked over at her. "Terrified is a better word," she said. "Having a crack head for a mother tends to make you a bit uneasy about being a parent."

Brooke digested that information for a moment before smiling at the woman. Her mom might not be a crack head, but she was still a horrible parent. "I get what you mean. There are times I think that everything I know about families I learn from the Brady Brunch," Brooke confided.

Pulling out a chair, Anna handed Brooke a sandwich as she sat down next to her.

"Peanut Butter and carrots?" Brooke asked as she crinkled up her nose.

Anna smiled for a moment before answering. "Hey, I'm pregnant. I need all the nutrients I can get," she replied. "So who is making sure you get any nutrients?" she casually asked, knowing that Brooke was evading the eating issue.

Sighing, Brooke played with her sandwich. "I don't really have any parents, other than the adults who live with me and who pay for my expenses," she admitted, knowing that she could go missing for weeks before her parents realized she was gone. At this point, the only person who cared for her was her boyfriend.

"I know you've taken great care of Lucas for the past few months," Anna replied, "but who is taking care of you, Brooke?"

Brooke looked at her in confusion. "My parents are fabulously busy people and they don't have time to hang around and make sure I'm okay," she admitted. Or safe, she sadly thought.

Anna understood the pride and anger that lingered in the girl's soul. "I get it," she softly replied, gaining Brooke's attention. "My home life was a wreck. My mother was neglectful and abusive and should have never been allowed to breed," Anna clarified.

The silence in the room grew, as Brooke fiddled with a hangnail to avoid a response. "So what is your home like?" There was something compelling about Brooke that made Anna want to dig deeper. She knew from her own drama that something was wrong with the pretty girl in front of her.

"My house," Brooke mused for a moment, playing with the strange sandwich, as she tried to think of an apt description. "Cold, marble, …hard," she decided. There wasn't any other way to describe it. "It's like living as an exhibit in a museum. People walk through and stare at things and then walk out. We're all just objects placed around this lovely, marble house."

Anna considered her words as she also noted her lack of eating. Brooke played with food, moving it around the plate, tearing it in pieces, but rarely put food in her mouth. "You need to eat something, Brooke," Anna gently admonished. She needed to make sure that Lucas understood that he had to monitor Brooke's eating and to make sure that she actually ate something.

Brooke stared at the floor. "I'm trying," she admitted softly. "I just spend so much time worrying that my stomach hurts most of the time." It was hard to eat when she was terrified of being molested in her own home.

A thought suddenly flared up in Anna's memory. "Are you friends with Haley?" she asked, trying to maintain a casual level of inquiry.

The mention of Tutorgirl made Brooke smile. "Well, I think so," she uncertainly replied. "She didn't like me when I first started dating Luke, but we've been hanging out and I think she's my friend."

The uncertainty in her voice saddened Anna. She knew the power of teen age girls. She'd been alienated by many girls who were put off by the fact that she was a foster child. "Friends should stick by you no matter what, Brooke." Anna could only surmise that Haley's friend in trouble was none other than Brooke Davis.

Brooke shrugged her shoulders. "My best friend ditched me a few months ago because I told her something," she softly replied. She didn't like talking about Peyton and how her childhood friend had pretty much ignored her the past few months. "But that might have been because she also wanted Lucas and I got him," she coyly replied. There were few things Brooke was happier about than winning Luke's affections. He'd turned out to be way more loyal and kind than her best friend.

Anna thought about Brooke's words as she polished off her sandwich. "Life is too short for conditional friends, Brooke. What did you tell your friend that drove her away?" she asked out of curiosity and to see if she could get behind the drama that Haley had hinted about at the Café.

Brooke stared at the floor, unable to met Anna's eyes. All she needed was another woman in the Scott family who hated her and looked down at her for things she couldn't control. "It's nothing big. Peyton is just being bitchy and she's never been one to offer constructive advice," Brooke lied. She quickly stood up and put her half full plate next to the kitchen sink. "I need to go ask Keith to help me change my windshield wipers before it gets dark," she mumbled as she hastily left the kitchen.

Anna stared silently after her wondering what could be causing the fear she saw in Brooke's eyes.

Dan flipped through some paperwork for a moment before stopping and forcing his shoulder muscles to relax. The paperwork from his and Karen's businesses seemed to grow daily. He turned around in his chair at the kitchen table glanced over toward the sofa in the living room where Karen was trying to keep down some toast and tea.

He gave up on the paperwork and quietly walked into the living room and settled in the large armchair that he'd practically lived in for the past month. He learned forward toward the couch and gently squeezed Karen's hand. She'd had a bad day with extremely high blood pressure and had spent most of the day on the couch.

"Are you doing okay?" he softly asked, greatly concerned about her health. Toward the end, Deb had the same pale look and washed out complexion. Maybe Lucas was right. Maybe Dan did kill everything he tried to love.

Karen smiled over at him. "I'm fine. Just a bit tired." She felt like she'd been pregnant for years. She'd experienced some problems carrying Lucas but she'd been so much younger back then. Sixteen years made a big difference.

He moved to sit on the floor next to her. "It will help that you aren't working as much now," he firmly replied. They'd finally found someone to run the Cafe who was both experienced and friendly. "I think Yvonne is going to do a great job running things."

Karen nodded slowly, realizing that she couldn't take care of everything right now. The Cafe had always been her baby but now she had to take care of her family. The doctors were optimistic that she could carry the baby to near full term with bed rest and reduced stress levels. Now all she needed to do was reign in Lucas before he was arrested and sent off to juvenile hall.

Dan read the frown lines on her face. "He'll be okay, Kar. We just need to control the drinking and show him that living together can work," Dan firmly replied. He was forcing himself to keep a positive attitude because he'd throttle the boy otherwise. Dan could handle all of Luke's hatred but the boy's attitude toward Karen infuriated him.

A tentative knock at the front door interrupted that line of thought. Dan swiftly made his way to the door, surprised to find Nate standing on the front porch. To Dan's knowledge, his son had never stepped foot onto Karen's porch before. Nate followed him into the living room and placed a bag of food on the coffee table.

"Haley wanted to send some food over so you wouldn't have to cook," he awkwardly said, not used to being inside Karen's house. He'd been hanging around the Cafe when Haley asked him to do a food run.

Dan dug through the bag, thrilled at the idea of not having to cook. "It's kind of Haley to not force Karen to eat my cooking," he joked, realizing that his culinary skills were the joke of the family.

Nate laughed at the idea of feeding frozen lasagna to a sick woman. "How are you doing?" he tentatively asked Karen. Nate might not be happy with the impending marriage and insto-family but he knew the physical toll of being pregnant. Luke might be willing to be a brat toward Karen but Nate was a bit more mature than that.

Karen smiled up at him, grateful that he was being so nice about the situation. "I'm a bit tired, but fine," she replied. "Thank you for bringing the food over." Dan came back into the living room with plates and silverware.

"Are you going to join us, Nate?" he asked, wanting to include his son in something mundane. Nate stood there uncertainly for a moment, before consenting. "Sure, I guess that'd be okay."

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Anna waited until Brooke got Keith under the hood of her car before pulling Lucas aside.

"We need to talk about Brooke," she said, pulling him over to her overstuffed couch.

Luke looked at her in confusion. "What about Brooke?" he asked, wondering why she waited until his girlfriend was outside to talk to him. He'd had enough people talking about Brooke behind her back for a lifetime and he didn't want to be angry at Anna for acting like Karen.

Anna slowly lowered herself onto the couch, taking care with her stomach. "I'm worried about her, Luke," Anna confided, not missing the suspicious tone in his voice. His mother had been so negative about his girlfriend that he was justified in that suspicion, she thought. "She's not eating enough."

He considered her words for a moment. "She's a girl. I've recently found out that they don't tend to eat a lot," he replied, having watched Brooke and her fellow cheerleaders graze for the semester. None of them particularly seemed to eat anything of substance, unless Diet Coke was now considered a food group.

Anna's eyes narrowed at his lack of concern. "Does Haley tend to graze?" she asked, knowing that Luke and Haley were very close friends at one point.

Luke's brow furled. "No, Haley eats more than I do," he admitted.

"Then it follows that not all girls diet," she said, pointing out the logic to him. "Brooke was so lightheaded earlier that she almost fainted," Anna said. "She basically admitted that she's not eating because she's stressed out."

Lucas leaned back into the couch, suddenly remembering all the times his girlfriend had been too lethargic to go out or when she left more food on her plate than she actually ate. "She's had a really bad year," he said, not wanting to spread her business around, especially since Anna apparently had not pried any information out of Brooke.

"What's going on at Brooke's home?" Anna inquired, realizing that everything kept coming back to Brooke's family. "Are her parents nice?"

Scoffing, Lucas turned to face his aunt. "Her mother's a stone cold bitch and her father ran off with a girl two years older than Brooke," he confided. At least Anna could understand the screwed up family aspect of things, he realized. "Her mom married this really possessive guy with a skeevy son."

Anna's eyes narrowed at that information. "Do you ever see any bruises on her?" she instantly asked, knowing that with a stepfather and stepbrother, abuse was a very real possibility.

He nervously avoided her eyes. "Her stepbrother goes to boarding school and he lives with his mother so she only sees him on holidays," Luke carefully replied. "Her stepfather always seems to be around though. Brooke doesn't like him very much. But I've never seen bruises on her."

She thought about what Luke WASN'T saying. "She doesn't feel safe in that house?" It was more a statement than a question.

"I think she'd rather be living somewhere else," he admitted. "But her father doesn't want her to move to Charleston with him and so she's stuck."

Anna was still concerned. The closest person to Brooke was concerned for her safety and something was making her physically ill. "You do know that if I suspect any abuse is taking place or that Brooke's needs are not being met, that I have a legal obligation to report it?" As a teacher, Anna was expected to report things like this.

Luke looked up in surprise, concerned if he'd said too much. "She's got all the money in the world, so I'm not sure if anyone cares if she's happy or not."

Hearing the front door open, Anna put an end to the discussion. "I want you to stay on her about eating. Insist she eat as much as possible," she softly replied. "And if you suspect someone is hurting her, I want you to tell me, Luke."

Lucas nodded solemnly at his aunt, unsure about what he should do. He knew Brooke's stepbrother was a threat, but he had no evidence that her parents were abusive. He knew Brooke was keeping secrets from him, but Luke didn't know if she'd ever tell him what was really going on.

He smiled as Brooke and Keith walked into the room. He just needed for her to trust him a bit more, he reasoned. She'd eventually tell him the complete truth once she felt safe enough. It was just a matter of time.

Thanks for reading and replying. I hope to get to the big Thanksgiving scenes before Thanksgiving actually comes, but that might be a bit too optimistic. Thanks to Stagediva who kept asking about this chapter. Have a great weekend!