Part 5- Lucas Among Teenage Girls

It was the quiet more than the light that woke Lucas the next morning. Prison was loud. Prison was full of hard surfaces; the smallest sound carried and echoed. The guest room in Will's house seemed unnaturally, unnervingly silent.

Despite the early hour, Lucas had no desire to go back to sleep. He had to restrain himself from crossing the short hall to Will's room to remind himself that he wasn't the only person left in a post-apocalyptic world.

Prison was lonely; Lucas had been permitted minimal opportunities to communicate with his family and friends for thirteen years. Holidays, birthdays, weddings, and funerals had passed without Lucas' presence. Still, though he might have been lonely, he had rarely been alone in prison. There was a parade of cell mates; there was always a guard nearby. Someone was always yelling about something. Lucas and the other inmates had been herded from place to place like so many cattle.

No, the concepts of alone and private hadn't existed any more than quiet.

He walked around the room on bare feet. Prison hadn't had a brightly colored braided rug on the floor. (He was fairly sure that that had once belonged to Aunt Maggie. Someone had given it to Will, at any rate; there was no way his son had decided he needed an area rug and chosen one for himself.)

Prison definitely hadn't had a shelf of girlish-looking books with pastel covers: green, orange, yellow, purple. Lucas pulled the orange one into his hand at random. "Georgia's Compact, by Chelsea Fallon," he read aloud. The first page had an inscription in Chelsea's messy handwriting.

Dear Will,

Whatever you say, I know that you would probably rather read computer manuals with Nick than read chick lit written for twelve-year-old girls. That's okay. It only makes it mean more to me that you supported me all through this project. I've been blessed with the most amazing family, and you're a big part of that. I'm so glad you're back in Salem!

Love,

Chelsea

The green and yellow books were inscribed with similar messages from Chelsea; the inscription of the purple book ("Correspondence on Bad Ideas by Chelsea Fallon and Abigail Deveraux") was more intriguing:

Dear Dr. Will,

I wish you could have come to England under better circumstances. You've had a couple of really bad days, even by your/our family's standards. But I'm going to ask you for a favor anyway. When you look at this book, try not to think about why you were in London for the release party where Chelsea and I signed it for you. Instead, think of how fantastic I think you are and how honored I am that you're my cousin.

All my love,

Abby
June 20, 2018
London

Dear Will,

What she said.

Love,

Chelsea

Lucas sighed. He hadn't known that Will had been in London two years earlier; obviously, it hadn't been a pleasure trip even before it ended with a dutiful visit to his cousins' book-signing. He thrust the book back on the shelf; he founded it suddenly repulsive. (Or at least more repulsive—he'd never had a particular desire to read books about teenage girls who worried about their hair and how their parents didn't like them to date axe murderers, which was what the volumes appeared to center around. Abby and Chelsea were both his nieces, so perhaps someday he would force himself to read at least the book they had co-authored. But someday wasn't now.)

The books, with their nasty reminder of how little he knew about the world that had kept turning while he'd spent his days in concrete-iron cages, were the most interesting thing in the still-quiet room. Lucas was ready for his first full day of freedom to start.

When he left his bedroom for the bathroom, though, Lucas received another nasty piece of correspondence, this time addressed to him and taped to the mirror over the sink.

Dad—

I had to go back to work. Sorry. I'll see you this afternoon, I hope. Money, credit card, car keys, and cell phone (family numbers are programmed in) are on the kitchen table. Food in the fridge. Password to the computer is "snake." Anything you need, have me paged at the hospital.

Will

If Lucas had had any doubt that he was now the child and Will the parent, the note would have relieved him of it.

Lucas ate breakfast and explored every inch of the house. That took about an hour.

He looked at his watch. He'd been out of prison for less than a day and he was already back to marking time.

In a futile attempt to pretend that Will actually needed him, he went grocery shopping so Will's kitchen would be more properly stocked. It appeared that Will preferred takeout and delivery to cooking, which made sense considering how much time he spent at work.

He looked at his watch again, berated himself for being an idiot, and found the checklist of things to do before and after leaving prison that had been provided to him the previous afternoon. Philip and Will had done everything for him. He even had his own bank account in his own name thanks to a small stipend that Victor's will had specified should be paid to him upon his release.

When he looked at his watch for the third time, he seriously considered reading Abby and Chelsea's awful-looking books. Wayward teenagers were lucky. They were a good topic for candy-colored prepubescent best sellers, and if they were completely at loose ends, at least the Horton Center would take them in.

Lucas grabbed his jacket and keys.

He hoped the Horton Center still existed.

A bright-eyed, dark-haired pixie of a girl bounced up to the door and opened it. Her eyes widened as she took in the sight of Lucas.

"Oh," she said. Her eyes grew wider and a grin split her face. "I know who you are."

"Then you have the advantage," Lucas told her.

She waltzed around him, raking her eyes over every inch of his body as if he were the most fascinating thing she had ever seen. "What's prison like?" she asked eagerly, not bothering to identify herself.

"Cold," he told her. "Kind of like standing on the front step in October when someone hasn't invited you inside."

"Sorry," she chirped, but he didn't think she seemed especially ashamed. "Come in." He followed her inside gratefully.

Like everything else in Salem, the Horton Center had been refurbished since Lucas had last visited. His own photograph still sat amidst the collection on the mantelpiece, however. There was also a photograph of the young teenager who stared at him with such avid interest. Her arms were wrapped around Bo Brady's neck, and her cheek was pressed into his graying beard.

Lucas smiled slowly. "You're Ciara. Bo and Hope's daughter."

The girl—Ciara— sighed and threw her head back, flinging her arm over her eyes and staggering sideways to drape herself onto the back of the couch. "Bo and Hope's daughter," she repeated. "Claire's aunt, Chelsea Fallon's sister. Why can't anyone just leave it at Ciara?"

She punctuated her statement with a broad, vague gesture which caused her to lose her balance and fall from the back of the couch with a shriek and a thud. Lucas rushed forward and fell to his knees beside her. "Are you all right?" he asked frantically.

"Ci?" called a voice from upstairs. Bare feet ran down the hall and jumped over the last five steps before sprinting to Ciara's side.

Giggling ensued, so Lucas assumed that no permanent damage had been done.

The new arrival was a little older and a little taller than Ciara. Her strawberry-blonde curls were pulled back from her face in a French braid. She smiled as she noticed Lucas for the first time.

"You're my Uncle Lucas, aren't you?" she asked as the three of them climbed to their feet. "I'm Claire Brady, and I apologize for letting my aunt answer the door when she's in a mood."

Ciara giggled some more.

"It's nice to meet you, Claire," Lucas told her. "We've met before, but I don't think you'd remember."

Claire shook her head. "Not really, but my parents have told me all about you, and of course Will's my doctor. One of them."

"You have more than one doctor?"

"I had a liver transplant when I was a baby. I get lots of checkups to make sure I don't suddenly reject it or something," said Claire matter-of-factly. "Aunt Julie and Aunt Maggie are going to be so happy to see you. They should be back soon. They were who you were coming to see, right?"

"Right," said Lucas, because he couldn't very well tell an impressionable young girl that her storied "Uncle" Lucas had been so dulled by his long incarceration that on his first day of freedom he had nothing to do and no one to see.

"Can I get you anything? A drink? We made chocolate-chip cookies this morning."

"I'm fine."

"Want to help us with the Halloween party masks?" asked Ciara. Claire sent her a scolding look. "What? We have to do it on our day off from school. He doesn't have to go back to school tomorrow, so he shouldn't mind."

"We agreed to do it because we're happy to help the Horton Foundation," said Claire primly.

Ciara brushed this detail off as unimportant. "Maybe he's happy to help the Horton Foundation, too."

"I'd love to help if I can. I used to be in charge of administering the Tom and Alice Horton Fund, but that was before either of you were born." Saying it out loud drove home how very old he was. Ciara had barely started walking and talking when he'd left for prison, and now she had a whole life which included, at minimum, school, volunteer work, and asking hideously inappropriate questions of recently released felons.

"You don't have to," Claire said, brushing her hand against his own in a reassuring gesture that turned his stomach with its innocence. "You can come up and just hang out until Aunt Maggie and Aunt Julie get here. Are you sure you don't want any cookies? I'll bring them up just in case."

Sensing it would be fruitless to argue, Lucas accompanied Claire, Ciara, and the cookies upstairs.

The entire floor of the largest bedroom was coated with feathers, glitter, beads, sequins, ribbons, paint, glue, and who-knew-what else. As chaotic as it looked, though, Lucas soon saw that Claire and Ciara had a plan and a system. The masks, he learned, would be distributed to everyone who tried to enter the Horton Foundation's Halloween Fundraiser without one. ("You'd think it would be cheaper to buy them in bulk from the Halloween store at Salem Place, but it's not.")

He noticed that this bedroom, like his room at Will's house, had a shelf which proudly displayed a set of Chelsea's books.

"Have you read those?" he asked the girls, once he'd run out of things to say about their artistic talents and how good it was of them to give up their day off from school to help out a great cause like the Horton Foundation.

"Everyone has," Ciara told him. "Everyone at school is always saying stupid things about how it feels like Georgia—that's the girl in Chelsea's books—is talking just to them. You should see some of the letters Chelsea gets, girls telling her she saved their lives with her books. Then Dad says Shawn is out saving lives as a cop, and Chelsea is changing the world with her writing, and I should stop being the failure of the family."

Lucas couldn't imagine Bo saying anything like that, but his thoughts were over-ridden by Claire's "You know that's not what Grandpa said."

Ciara didn't argue the point; she was still relaxed and smiling amidst a sea of glitter and sequins. "Whatever."

"Anyway," said Claire, "the books are semi-autobiographical, I guess. Georgia finds out she was adopted when her parents die, and she goes all badass when she meets her biological family. I think Georgia's more badass than Aunt Chelsea was, but I don't really remember Aunt Chelsea as a kid."

Lucas wasn't sure what to say next. "Does the biological mother end up sleeping with Georgia's boyfriend?" and "Does Georgia accidentally kill her little brother?" came to mind, but if those things didn't happen it probably wasn't his place to tell Claire and Ciara that they might have.

What did one talk about when conversing with teenage girls? He'd never spent much time with teenage girls… except for when he'd been a teenage boy. (With a jolt, he realized that Sami hadn't been any older than Claire when she'd snuck backstage at a Cherish concert so long ago.) Then, girls had been pretty, sexy things he'd wanted. Now, Claire and Ciara were small children. He could barely believe that Julie and Maggie had left them alone. He was half-surprised when they answered his questions, as if he couldn't quite accept that someone so young should be capable of something like speech.

Soon, though, it became quite obvious that Ciara and Claire were essentially bilingual. They spoke polite English to him, and they chattered to each other in a bizarre shorthand that included not a little giggling. They had an entire culture of which he was completely unaware, but of which Chelsea's books were clearly indicative.

He wondered if Claire and Ciara would have seemed so foreign if he'd spent the past thirteen years raising Allie instead of rotting in a cell.

Would Allie have liked Chelsea's books?

Would Allie have volunteered at the Horton Center?

Would Allie have found pleasure in transforming these immeasurable mountains of color and sparkle onto masks?

Would Allie have been friends with her cousins, Ciara and Claire?

Would Allie have shared Ciara's flair for the dramatic? Or Claire's solicitousness?

Might Johnny have come along to help? Or perhaps he would have been with Tyler, wherever he was?

For his own sanity, Lucas had not allowed himself to think about this kind of thing while he'd been in prison. Feelings were kept at arm's length if one wanted to survive behind bars. But it was harder to stop himself from going down that path when he was presented with two living, breathing examples of what might have been.

Had her hair stayed blonde like Sami's and Claire's?

Or had it darkened like his and Ciara's?

His own breath caught in his throat, and it was good luck that Julie and Maggie chose that moment to storm upstairs, muttering invectives against a caterer as they did. The previous night's experiences with Billie and Kate had prepared him for what came next—hugs, tears, and expressions of love.

"And poor little Allie and Johnny," said Julie when the initial greetings were done. "So help me, Lucas, as much as you were punished for protecting your family, you should have gotten to kill the bastard!"

Ciara's bright eyes sparkled with interest; Claire was more subtle, but she, too, was clearly fascinated. Julie waved a hand in their direction. "There will be no repeating that to any police officers or former police officers, even though it's true." Then she grabbed Lucas by the arm, leaving Maggie behind to check on the status of the teenagers' work.

"That seems to be a popular opinion," Lucas said when they were away from impressionable young ears. "That I should have had better aim."

"There should have been more than three guns pointed at that man—and I use the term loosely—when he married Sami," Julie corrected. "One of us would have made a proper job of it."

His panic over his daughter's fate retreated to the back of his heart where he usually kept it, and he seized on a safer emotion: bemused disbelief. "I don't think many people get out of prison and come back to families who say 'I wish you'd gotten away with it, and I wish you'd done worse.'"

"You weren't the average convict. And we aren't the average family."

TBC