I have returned!
Okay, so I kind of already returned, as you may know from the Birthday Omake, which I published just minutes after midnight on the 4th, much to my chagrin. But I have now officially returned, with a real chapter! It's entirely about Alfred's personal situation, with no historical references (the first chapter to do so, may I add), because he as multiple loose ends to tie up before moving on with the plot.
... And now I will embark on the thanking of reviewers, of which there are so many! Thank you guys ten thousand times over!
*Deep breath* Thanks to Pain and Betrayal, RenofAmestris, Maiya123, Divinehearts, ShippudenFlower, Ember Hinote, Miri, petaltailify97, Hikari Kaiya, Oniongrass, Samuelljacksin, RomericaGO, RasalynnLynx, ShadedRogue (and the Reviews Lounge), Night's Flower, and Zeplerfer for reviewing the last chapter, and again Ember Hinote, petaltailify97, Oniongrass, and ninja82 for reviewing the omake!
ALSO thanks to *second deep breath* AkiTsuki-chan, I Am Sweden, Unknown Variable, Natusyuki, shadowwolf64, typicalyaoifangirl, Red Night Moon Sky, Kai Luna, Zeplerfer, Breathing Fire, CyilSyderik, Sunako-s-wrath, marianbri, chibibeanie, PrussiaRocks, Castor Black, Gibbelbeans3, Anylinde, bookworm12091, and again to ninja82 for your favorites and alerts!
*sigh* Done!
I feel so popular... Thanks again, all of you, for being such amazing people! And while I'm at it, thanks to all of my anonymous readers too, and to those just starting to read this story. You're great too!
Anyway, here's the chapter!
I disclaim, and own nothing.
Alfred's brain felt rather fuzzy.
It was like moving in a daydream, really. He was aware that things were happening around him, but they never stayed in the forefront of his mind long enough to register.
He was vaguely aware of the fact that he had returned to Boston. That it was the first time since the Revolution was pushed aside as a minor detail, to be pondered in greater thought later. That he still considered coming to Boston a bit like coming home was a bit of self-evaluation that he didn't quite feel up to at the moment.
But, standing in the rain outside the doors of the Wetherby estate, Alfred was very much aware that he probably should be feeling something other than mild confusion.
As he made his way inside, dripping unceremoniously on the polished wooden floor, he concluded that his current state of mind was a vast improvement over the wreck he'd become at Jefferson's. Either way, he'd have to put on a good show of not caring, because to all these people who filled the central hall of the Wetherby house, Alfred was a complete nobody. He was a stranger at his sister's funeral, and after a few moments of thought, he realized how grim that statement sounded.
Unwilling to mingle with the crowd lest he bump into one of the Wetherbys (or anybody, really, he wasn't ready for people), he decided to do what he'd always done at Jefferson's fancy Presidential galas. He grabbed a glass of some unknown drink from a table, slunk into a corner, and pretended that he didn't exist. It was a strategy that had served him well among the big political names, because frankly, nobody wanted to talk to the President's young assistant when the President himself was in the same hall.
Alfred's wallflower exercises were going quite well until, in a moment of spacing out disguised as slightly mournful pondering, he was bumped into. His glass, grasped very loosely anyway, clattered to the floor and shattered. The remaining drink (all of it, because he hadn't had a sip) splashed across his shoes. He noted vaguely that it was, judging by the smell, punch. He didn't even have time to wonder if it would stain before a voice screeched in his ear.
"Alfred Jones!"
Alfred nearly jumped out of his skin. He glanced madly about, his newly soaked shoes temporarily forgotten, until his eyes lit on a very small, curiously purple person standing next to him. It took him a moment to realize that the screeching was still going on.
"You're just as abysmally coordinated as ever! Honestly, can't even knock you with my handbag without you breaking something! My word, boy, will you ever learn?"
Peering closer, Alfred realized that the small purple person was, in fact, a small purple old lady with a massive purple hat and an equally massive purple handbag.
"Sorry, ma'am," Alfred said, not really knowing why he was apologizing, because the only lady had done a pretty good job of avoiding the spill. She didn't have a drop on her.
Suddenly, the fact that she'd addressed him by name struck him. "Er… do I know you?" he asked, hoping she'd be a bit quieter, because at the moment, she was doing a spectacular job of ruining his invisibility.
"I lived next door to you for ten years, you dunderhead!"
Risking a glance at her face beneath her hat, Alfred saw wrinkled features that he certainly didn't recognize, but the angry set of her eyebrows definitely rang a bell. The purple old lady was suddenly an equally purple young girl, with long, dark hair and a loud voice, who screeched more often than she spoke.
"Dorothea Prewitt?"
The old lady's glare sharpened. "That's Mrs. Dorothea Finnegan to you! I can't believe you had the audacity to miss the wedding! He's dead now, of course, my husband, but it's the principle of the thing! I always knew you were a rude, disrespectful boy."
"Rude!" Alfred exclaimed indignantly, falling back into a long-forgotten pattern of arguments, never mind that he didn't look like someone who should remember all that. "I never bothered you once, because Em thought you were a nice girl and wouldn't let me! You were always the one who never shared your candy and threw rocks at me whenever I left the house!" The rocks had only started when the elder Prewitts had bought the idea of Alfred's unnaturalness, but Alfred didn't want to think about that.
"Well, at least I stuck around, unlike you, who up and disappeared without good reason! Couldn't be bothered for so much as a decent goodbye! You tore poor Emeline up, I'll have you know!"
Alfred opened his mouth to respond that he hadn't wanted to leave, it tore him up too, but he had to keep his family safe, and why did Dorothea Prewitt care so much, but she just kept going. "You've grown up some while you've been away. You don't look like a scrawny ten-year-old anymore, at least, but I'd recognize that hair of yours anywhere."
Alfred instinctively reached up to flatten his cowlick, while the old lady chuckled madly. He was worried she was going to keep going when a voice called from behind her,
"Aunt Dot!"
The old purple lady spun (more like tottered) around, and exclaimed in a sugary-sweet voice, completely different from the one she'd used with Alfred, "Peter, darling! How good to see you!"
Sure enough, over the top of Dorothea's purple hat, Alfred caught sight of a slightly red-faced, significantly older looking Peter Wetherby. His cheeks were in the process of being pinched to bits by Dorothea's razor-sharp fingernails, turning his face even redder.
"Have you been eating properly? You're looking a bit peaked… come closer, dear, I can't see your face…" Dorothea continued, yanking Peter down to her eye level by his necktie. Peter just smiled good-naturedly and allowed it. When he was at last released, he shot glance at Alfred over her shoulder.
"Hello, Alfred."
"Hello, Peter."
"Oh, so you've met my favorite godson already, Alfred?" Dorothea exclaimed, interrupting from between them. "You'd better be treating him well! If I hear one word from Peter that you've been the same old insufferable brat I've always remembered, you'll have me to answer to!" She shook her fist in Alfred's direction before tottering off to bother someone else. Alfred resisted the urge to stick his tongue out at her retreating figure, turning to Peter instead.
"Er…" Peter said, watching the slightly hunched back as it was swallowed by the crowd in the main hall, "what was that all about?"
"She bumped into me, and has been mistaking me for some neighbor of hers for some time now," Alfred said smoothly.
"Oh." They both paused, a bit unsure of how to continue. After having no contact for several years, it was hard to pick up where they left off, as assistant and assistant's-assistant.
"So… um… nice to see you again," Peter said. "I'm glad you could make it all the way from Washington. Father was a bit worried that you wouldn't get the letter in time."
"No, I got it all right."
"Mm. Good."
"Are you… are you all right?" Alfred asked. It had been a few years, but Peter had looked so young the last time he'd seen him, in that abruptly aborted carriage ride away from Washington, that to see him looking so old was disturbing. Sadness added years to a face, Alfred knew.
"I'm fine," Peter replied, which Alfred knew was a lie.
Silence filled the space between them again. Alfred looked about for anything else to occupy his attention but the boy before him who happened to be his nephew. Oddly enough, the only thing he could think coherently about was the fact that Peter had called Dorothea his aunt, putting Alfred on her level. He shuddered, as if shaking off the comparison.
Noticing the shudder, Peter asked, "Are you cold? You look a bit damp." Glancing down, his eyes found the shards from the shattered punch glass at Alfred's feet. "Oh, I'll get someone to clean that up…" he muttered, and hastily bustled off, leaving Alfred alone again.
Having nothing else better to do, Alfred stood in the same place until Peter reappeared, a maid in tow. Once the mess was clean, the awkward silence resumed.
"How do you know Aunt Dot?" Peter asked, abruptly shattering the quiet. "I mean, even if she was mistaking you for a neighbor, she still knew your name…"
Alfred's brain flicked through possible answers, something he'd gotten used to doing when people asked a revealing question. Childhood friends was definitely out of the question, particularly because he'd never liked Dorothea Prewitt as a child in the first place, and because she looked a good forty years older than him. Neighbors would require some explanation that he'd be hard-pressed to give, and would contradict his life story. He could, however, blame it on Dorothea.
"She called me someone else first. I corrected her, but she just kept going anyway. She seemed a bit off her rocker anyway."
Much to Alfred's relief, Peter nodded, accepting the story. "Yes, Aunt Dot isn't all there anymore, I'm afraid. It must be her old age getting to her. But she was mother's best friend, and my godmother, so it's not like we can just leave her be."
Alfred, if he had been holding anything, would have dropped it. As it was, he stared at Peter, shock written across his features. "She's Em's best friend?"
"Em?" Peter asked. Alfred could have smacked himself. "You mean my mother?"
"Yes, your mother," Alfred replied, attempting a quick recovery. "Her name is Emeline, isn't it?"
"Yes," Peter said slowly, "but she refused to let anyone call her Em. Not even my father does—did. Why are you so surprised anyway?"
"Well," Alfred said, bitterness creeping into his words, "she and Dor—Mrs. Finnegan don't seem like the type that would get along well. Emeline was always so well-mannered, and Mrs. Finnegan's an old bat."
"Don't insult my family, Alfred," Peter said icily. "If you must know, my mother lost a very good friend of hers when she was younger, someone who was like a big brother to her. Aunt Dot befriended my mother then, helping her cope, and they've been very close ever since."
Alfred was at a loss. "Oh," he muttered. That's your twelfth guilt trip today, his mind unhelpfully supplied, and he wondered again why he was keeping track.
Peter sighed. "Anyway, my father wanted me to find you. He says you need to meet him in his office."
"Why?" Alfred asked, genuinely surprised. What could Paul Wetherby possibly want with him?
Peter just shrugged. "You'll have to ask him. Come on, I'll take you there."
_V~-~-~V_
"Would you like something to drink? Coffee, tea?"
Alfred shook his head. He sat in an armchair, stiff and awkward, in front of the desk in Paul Wetherby's office. "I had some punch earlier, thanks," he half-lied, leaving out the bit when Dorothea spilled it all on his shoes.
The lawyer sighed, pouring himself a cup of tea anyway. He set it down on his desk to steep, and settled in the squishy-looking office chair opposite Alfred.
"How are you doing, Mr. Jones?"
Slightly taken aback, Alfred replied, "I'm doing all right, sir. I really should be asking you that."
Paul fingered a pen on his desk for a moment, before setting it down with a sigh. "She'll be buried beside her parents. That should make her happy."
That stung. "I'm sure it would," Alfred said.
Paul nodded, but said nothing, allowing the silence to settle between them. When it became clear he didn't intend to speak first, Alfred said, "Thanks for helping me get into Harvard. I'll be starting this fall."
The other man seemed to brighten a bit at this change of subject, but quickly faded back to his former expression. "You're very welcome." He paused briefly before saying, "Emeline was happy to hear that you were applying. She said you were, 'finally doing something with your life'."
Alfred swallowed. "I'm glad she approved, sir."
Paul waved his hand. "Stop with the formalities. It's nice to meet someone with manners, but please, just call me Paul."
Alfred nodded slowly. Whatever had caused this change in attitude, it was certainly rather abrupt. He didn't even know the man that well, and he was putting them on first-name basis.
"Call me Alfred, then."
A twitch of a smile from the man across the desk. "Of course, Alfred."
Before the silence could return, Alfred spoke again. "Peter said you wanted to see me. Was it for something in particular, or just to chat?"
"Actually," Paul said, speaking slowly, deliberation on every word, "I wanted to tell you a bit of a story."
Alfred nodded, a bit uncertain. Paul was a lawyer; he didn't just "tell stories."
Before Alfred could wonder, Paul plunged on. "I grew up on a farm, with all of my younger brothers and sisters. I loved all of them, and I knew our parents did too, but as the oldest and the heir, I was naturally the focus of more of their attentions."
Alfred raised an eyebrow, but didn't interrupt, because Paul looked like a man confessing, and he couldn't quite fathom why. Surely, his childhood had nothing to do with Emeline? But Alfred didn't interrupt, just kept listening as the older-looking man laid his thoughts out.
"I never had much interest in farming. My younger brother, Orin, loved the animals and the crops we grew, and was always set to take over. So I decided to go to law school instead, to make my parents proud with a professional position and a degree."
"All of my other siblings had some sort of plans too. Baird wanted to be a fisherman, Lillian wanted to move west, Irene wanted a quiet family and a townhouse in Boston, and Sally carried the family's hopes of an upstanding marriage, because she was the youngest and prettiest."
A budding sense of foreboding told Alfred that he didn't like the direction this conversation was taking, but he was powerless to stop it. Paul's words washed over him in waves, soft and relentless, and Alfred could do naught but listen.
"I had one other sibling, a brother." Paul swallowed, clearly uncomfortable as well broaching this subject. "His name was Zachariah, but we all called him Zach."
"He never had a plan in life. He was never much good at farming, and had little to no aspirations of achievement. While I had my grand dreams and left home for college, he had no idea what he was going to do. Our father never said it to his face, but he always thought Zach a useless son."
"And one day, he just disappeared. I got a panicked letter from my mother at my university, saying that he'd vanished and no one knew where he'd gone. A few weeks passed, and all of us were worried sick, until we got a single, brief letter from Zach telling us that he'd joined the Continental Army."
Paul took another deep breath, his eyes meeting Alfred's quickly before flitting away again. Alfred was doing his best to look impassive, but was fairly certain that he wasn't doing a good enough job.
"I wrote to him personally, asking what had possessed him to go and do something so utterly rash and idiotic. He replied, again very briefly. He said only, 'I don't want to spend my entire life being useless'."
"And that was the last time any of us heard from him, until he wrote again, and told us about someone he'd met in the army, a fellow foot soldier like him." Paul's eyes met Alfred's, holding his gaze in an iron grip. No matter how much he would have liked to pull away, Alfred found he couldn't; not from those brown eyes so much like Zach's. Clearing his throat, Alfred spoke.
"His name was Alfred Jones, wasn't it." It wasn't a question, because Alfred already knew the answer.
Paul nodded, looking away again. "His name was Alfred Jones," he repeated, in a voice almost a whisper.
"We received a message telling us that Zach was dead a month after Monmouth. We all tried to find this Alfred Jones, just to see if he was alive still. In those few letters, it was clear to all of us that the Army and this Alfred, however much we wanted to deny it, were the two best things that had ever happened to our brother."
"But we couldn't find him, and eventually gave up. I graduated from law school and settled in Boston, opening up my practice. Eventually, I met Emeline, fell in love, and a year later, we were married."
"I'd always thought it was a strange coincidence that Emeline's last name was Jones, the same name as the boy from Boston my brother had met, until shortly before Peter was born. She had, when we were considering names for him, suggested Alfred."
Alfred's breath hitched. So she had still cared, after all, enough to almost name her son after him. Paul paused at the sound, glancing again at Alfred before continuing.
"I asked her why, and she told me the story of a brother who left her family when she was still a young girl, all for their protection. The story of a boy found on the side of the road and adopted, who never seemed to get any older no matter how long he stayed."
"And you believed her?" Alfred asked, and suddenly, he realized just how much the answer of that question would mean to him.
"I was skeptical at first. I am, after all, a lawyer with a better education than most. But she was Emeline, and Emeline never lied, especially not about important things. I sought other explanations at first for why someone wouldn't appear to age, something scientifically creditable, but came up empty. Eventually, I was forced to admit that her story was true. I was also forced to admit that, based on Zach and Emeline's descriptions of the man, that their Alfred Joneses were one and the same."
Alfred smiled wryly, a half-quirk of his lips. "That's quite the story."
Paul gave him a slight smile in return. "I'd hoped you would enjoy it."
It became clear that Paul had nothing more to say, so Alfred stood to leave. "I'm sorry for your loss," he said, "but I'm glad it was you that Emeline was able to spend her life with."
Paul smiled again. "I appreciate your saying so."
Alfred turned to go, but was stopped again. "Alfred?"
"Yes?"
"Thank you. For everything you've done… just, thank you."
_V~-~-~V_
Emeline's coffin was borne away on a carriage, with the entire funeral party following. Dressed in black (save for Dorothea), they made their silent parade down the damp streets to the cemetery.
It was a tiny place, beside the little church that Alfred remembered attending as a child. Everything from the single spire, to the stained-glass window above the door that was the church's pride and joy, to the façade too intricate for a small-town church, he recalled intimately. He could picture the wooden pews inside, worn from years of people sitting on them, the little hymn books in every rack from which Sarah had taught him to read English, and the little old priest who had described to Alfred personally the then-strange concept of one god. He smiled at that, remembering Sarah's horror at his nonexistent religious education, and how she'd set up that meeting herself to inspire him. Emeline had laughed at him for weeks after that.
Turning, Alfred looked away from the building and back towards the wake. He stood back in the crowd, allowing close friends and family to push ahead of him. A priest had arrived, different from the one Alfred remembered. Of course he is, Alfred thought, chastising himself for that fleeting hope of anything else.
The priest spoke, but Alfred didn't listen. The whole ceremony felt superficial, like Emeline would appear beside him at any moment, wearing that striped green dress she'd had in Washington. "What are you looking at, Alfie? I'm right here!"
But she wasn't. The coffin lowered, and Alfred kept watching, even as the priest left, as other mourners left, until it was just he and the Wetherbys, watching until the last clod of earth was dropped and the man holding the shovel that had delivered it left too.
The Wetherbys turned then, in the unison Alfred noticed developed in large, close families. They all seemed to notice him at once, and Alfred had to look away from that veritable sea of chocolate brown eyes, punctuated by a single pair that was painfully sky blue.
Paul gently tapped his shoulder as he passed, something supposed to be a kind gesture and an indication that they were done here, there was nothing more to see. But Alfred just shook it off, stepping closer to the grave instead of away. They left him, throwing backward glances as a group, but he ignored them as he crouched on the wet ground outside the church.
The earth overturned was still fresh, a rich brown. Remembering what Paul had said, Alfred glanced to the right. Sure enough, there were two more tombstones, identical to the one before him, albeit more weathered.
Franklin Peter Jones and Sarah Felicity Jones, they read. He smiled faintly at the sight of them, wondering why he never knew that this was where they'd been buried, that so many weekly visits to this place had culminated with two slabs of stone in the ground. It was sad, really. But if Sarah's God was to be believed, all three would have found each other again.
But where does that leave me?
Alfred stood, wanting to leave before he started crying. He'd already had his breakdown; he feared that if he started again, he'd never stop. Daring a parting glance at the stone before him, he was surprised to see an inscription where the other two were blank.
Emeline Sarah Jones
Loving daughter, wife, friend, and sister.
Alfred smiled down at the stone, embedding the final word in his heart, because he would always remember her as nothing more, nothing less, than his sister.
"Goodbye, Emeline."
V/~-~-~\V
I think that was the longest chapter yet. I hope you enjoyed it, despite its gratuitous amounts of depressing things and the fact that it was centered entirely around a funeral. Next chapter, we shall move forward in history, skipping a few of the more boring years in the 1820s, because nothing of import that would make good plot really happens then.
Some explaining? I think yes.
Paul drew those conclusions on his own. Emeline helped some, yes, but it was him and his lawyerly mind that made the important connections to figure out Alfred's identity. No, he hasn't told Peter yet. Yet.
Yes, Peter is named after Franklin (I didn't just run out of names).
The Wetherby estate is on the outskirts of Boston, near enough to New Haven that the wake could go there. So, more on the outskirts of New Haven than Boston, I guess, though they're quite close anyway.
Sally is the sister whose dowry Zach's military paycheck was funding, if you recall chapter 5. I don't expect you to, which is why I mention it here.
Nobody knew where Alfred went after the Revolution, not even Emeline, which is why tracking him down didn't happen. Also, Paul's never had much interaction with Alfred face-to-face before, hence why he didn't "tell his story" earlier.
On a side note, all of the Wetherby siblings are based off relatives of mine (my father's cousin's cousin's name is Orin, and he owns a farm, etc.). Dorothea Prewitt/Finnegan is based off of my great-aunt Dot, who's completely barmy too.
Thanks for reading, despite the depressive-ness! As always, if you have anything to say, I would appreciate any time you took to review!