by Leigh Morgan
“Physics mostly.” Ethan answered.
“Never was much good at math.” Ram lied. Math was his worst subject, but he understood more than just the basics. If he didn’t over-think it, math or at least patterns, came easy to him. It was like music, if he just let it flow it took on a life of its own.
He watched the kid shrug. “Math is okay. But its quantum theory I’m really interested.” Ram could tell by the quick glance Ethan shot him that the kid didn’t expect a response. This was probably where most people’s eyes glazed over.
Thank you Cowboy for stocking the tour bus with all those Scientific American magazines.
“I don’t understand all the equations, but the concept is cool as hell. Does the mere fact that an object is observed change it? Yea. There’s more there than just science. What about the theory that thought travels and changes things on the physical level? And the theory that there are myriad outcomes for any given choice we make, none of which can be predetermined? Hell Ethan, poets, philosophers, priests...” Ram shot the kid a quick glance, “...even musicians have been asking these kinds of questions forever.”
Ethan just looked at him. His father shut down if Ethan even mentioned the word ‘science’. His mom listened, she even understood some of what he said, but the only person Ethan knew who truly gave a damn about his studies was Hunter. She always stood up for him when anyone called him a ‘science geek’. Hunter believed he was the smartest person she knew, and that was the reason Ethan granted her the luxury of calling him ‘brainiac’.
“I haven’t met too many rock-stars who are interested in physics.” Ethan said.
“Yea”, Ram laughed. “And just how many have you met?”
“Including you?”
Ram nodded. “Including me.”
Ethan’s smile transformed his face. The kid was a handsome devil. If the girls gave him half a shot, it was all he was going to need with a smile like that.
“One.” Ethan answered. “But that’s cool, because I’m suddenly related to him.”
Ram smiled back, finishing his coke. They were sitting at a high-top table in the café section of the movie theater. Ram had his hair stuffed into a baseball cap and he’d thrown on a pair of thin glasses to obscure his eyes.
Throw on a pair of white tennis shoes, base-ball hat, glasses and a sports team t-shirt and suddenly you’re invisible, Ram thought.
No one was paying him or his step-children the least bit of attention and that was a good thing. He was having a hard enough time with the concept that he had an instant family and his new children were already adults.
“I can fix the number of rock-stars you’ve met, but I can’t do anything about you being related to one. I’m afraid you’re both stuck with me.” Ram’s heart started to pound as he looked into their serious faces. It didn’t take a quantum physicist to know what they were both thinking.
“Mom doesn’t have any tattoos now does she?” Hunter asked slurping her soda.
Well maybe it does take a degree in physics to sort these two out.
“No, I think she’s afraid of needles.” Ram retorted, not sure where this was going.
“She’s definitely afraid of needles.” Ethan nodded in agreement.
“She only had her ears pierced once. I tried to get her to pierce her left lobe at least one more time and she had a fit.” The seriousness in Hunter’s voice and Ethan’s silent affirmations led Ram to believe what she was telling him was vitally important.
So this is what it’s like to be sucked into The Twilight Zone. Do...do...do...do...
“She wears loafers. With tassels.” Hunter added.
“Yea, she’s got a closet full of those. Fuzzy clog slippers too. God, I hate those things.” Ethan said, cringing.
Ram couldn’t keep up. “Okay guys. Just spit it out, I don’t have the slightest idea why we’re talking about what’s in your mom’s closet.
“Tweed. She’s got a lot of tweed.” Ethan muttered.
“Okay.” Ram said standing. “On that note I think I’ll get some popcorn before the show starts.” Hunter’s hand on his stopped him.
“She was singing in the shower this morning.”
Two sets of pale blue eyes, so much like their mother’s, implored him to understand. He didn’t. Not yet anyway, but they were both being receptive to him so he would try to put the pieces they were hinting at together.
“Mom lost her job. A job she’s worked hard at and taken pride in since I was a little girl. Pictures of her punching Becca Stonehaven have been plastered everywhere and they showed the footage on T.V. She’s also got to deal with my dad who will blow a gasket, if he hasn’t already. He hates being embarrassed and he will see all this publicity as reflecting badly on him.” Hunter said earnestly.
“Yea, like mom was really thinking about him when she decked that lady.” Ethan muttered.
“You know dad. That won’t matter. All that matters is how the partners react.” Hunter said before looking back at Ram. “By all accounts mom’s life should be falling apart. But she was singing in the shower this morning. She hasn’t done that in years.”
“I watched her throw out those old loafers. She gave me two bags of clothes for the Goodwill dumpster too.” Ethan added.
“She’s happy. Everything she worked so hard for, her job and her position at the college, her house, they don’t seem to matter to her anymore. She’s lightened up and she’s writing more. She never used to have time to write and that she’s always enjoyed.
“What we’re trying to say is that you are good for her. It’s good to see her smile and to hear her singing in the shower even though she can’t carry a tune.” Ethan said finishing his Coke.
Ram didn’t know what to say. Rhia’s kids loved her and wanted her to be happy. They seemed perfectly happy to have him in their mother’s life. This hadn’t been so hard, in fact it was almost too easy. Ram waited for the second shoe to drop.
“And...” he prompted.
“We will back you one-hundred percent as long as you keep making mom happy.” Hunter said.
“Whoa. Slow down there. I love your mom and I’ll do everything in my power to make life good for her and for you too, but there’s no way I can ensure she’ll always be happy. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee she won’t be. Sooner or later I’ll do something to piss her off and she’ll stomp and scream and end up buying a damned castle on e-bay.” Ram was losing it, so he shut up.
Hunter and Ethan exchanged an unreadable look. Ram had always envied the ability of siblings to communicate whole conversations with just a look. Being an only child he’d never experienced anything like it. Until Rhia.
“Mom yelled at you?”
“She bought a castle?”
They asked at the same time. She’d done both but he didn’t feel like explaining his role in the events that precipitated both reactions, so Ram kept quiet.
Hunter started laughing first, but it didn’t take Ethan long to join in. Ram didn’t think what he revealed was particularly funny, but what did he know about teenagers besides the fact that they downloaded his music?
“Mom? Screaming?” Ethan shook his head. “Well that’s new. She counts every penny, I can’t believe you made her mad enough to buy anything, much less a castle.” Ethan dissolved into peels of laughter again.
Hunter’s smile lit her whole face. She was a knock-out with her dark hair and pale water blue eyes. She was taller than her mom and had an almost jaded air about her that Ram had never sensed in Rhiannon, but was just as lovely as her mother.
Hunter had been hurt by life in a way Rhia hadn’t. Ram decided then and there, as he watched her wipe tears of mirth from her eyes, that he would do his best to make sure life didn’t disappoint Rhia’s daughter again. He couldn’t help himself, he smiled back at both of her crazy, but sweet kids.
“If you can make mom mad enough to scream and happy enough to sing in the shower then you’ll have no problem with us.” Hunter said and Etha
n nodded, still laughing.
“And if I don’t live up to expectations?” Ram asked.
“Then we’ll kill you.” This from the quiet one.
Ram threw an arm across each of their shoulders and laughed with them. He felt better than he had in years. He had a family now and he wasn’t about to let go whether tomorrow brought screams and castles or singing in the shower.
“Fair enough guys. Fair enough.” Ram answered unable to wipe the smile from his face. He couldn’t wait to get home and tell his pixie how much he liked her kids. He couldn’t wait for the four of them to make a life together. Tomorrow, and every day after was going to be like visiting heaven.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Hell.
Her life had just taken up residence in hell, although Rhia was fairly certain she was still on earth. Hell on earth. Damn William anyway.
Rhia heard her new garage door open, car doors slam and the sounds of laughter and gentle teasing as her family walked into the kitchen. Since Ram promised to do personal interviews with anyone who didn’t hang out on her door step, the reporters had pretty much left them alone, except the lone cameraman Rhia had seen parked down the street. It was only a matter of time, however, before they returned, en masse, to harass Ram and her children.
There was no hope for it, she was going to have to sell the house, for real this time. She talked to the realtor Ram had ‘hired’ to sell the house and signed off on her exorbitantly high fee on the promise that the woman could have her house sold in thirty days, provided Rhia was willing to sell it fully furnished.
She was more than willing. After William stormed out, Rhia wandered through the rooms of the house she’d worked so hard to pay off and had taken such pride in. Now she wondered why. Aside from the memories of her children growing up, which she’d carry in her heart and in her extensive collection of photographs, and her grandmother’s roll-top desk, there wasn’t one thing keeping her here. She would take the desk, but that was all she wanted to take with her.
That thought should have made her sad. It didn’t. Maybe it was the time she’d spent in Wales at Pentla House that helped her realize that it wasn’t the minutia, but the people, who make a place home.
“Hey mom.” Ethan said by way of greeting.
“Hey big man, how was the matinee?”
“Good. A little over the top with all the toys the hero used to save the day, but it was good. The leading lady sure was hot.”
Ram grabbed a beer and sat down across from Rhia. He took one look at her face and asked, “What’s wrong?”
Rhia smiled wryly. She was more transparent than she wanted to be with this man. “I called the realtor this morning. I signed a listing agreement.” She wasn’t sure how her children were going to take the news, so she gave them a second to absorb what she was saying.
“You don’t have to do that. You can keep the house. I never intended to sell it.” Ram said, taking a sip of his beer. He didn’t take his eyes off her. “I was just yanking your chain, you know that, don’t you?”
“It’s not about you.” Rhia looked away. “Well to some extent it is. We can’t stay here now that every reporter in the Midwest knows there’s a chance you might be here, but it’s more than that. I don’t want to live here anymore.”
Rhia looked at Ethan, who was sitting on the counter across from her eating Oreos out of the cookie jar. She wanted to feel Ethan out first. He still lived at home primarily, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear what her uncharacteristically quiet daughter had to say.
“What do you think sweetheart? You can take whatever you want with us, or...” Rhia had trouble swallowing past the lump in her throat. “Or you could go live with your dad until you graduate in December.”
Ethan popped another cookie in his mouth. Not much worried him, but Rhia didn’t expect this nonchalant attitude. She was selling their home for goodness sake.
“Graduation’s just a formality. I’ve got enough credits to start my junior year of undergrad. You’re the one who insisted I stay and graduate, I’d just as soon be done now and take the rest of the semester off.” Ethan shrugged. “Do we get to live in the castle you bought?”
Rhia looked at Ram who smiled like the Cheshire cat and finished his beer in one long swallow. “You did buy the place Rhia. Sight unseen.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, totally unrepentant. “It’s a great story. I don’t think your kids really believed it until this moment.”
Rhia turned toward her daughter. “What about you? I know you don’t spend much time here anymore, but it’s still your home.”
Hunter had grown even more beautiful this past year, Rhia thought. At nineteen she was just growing into the woman she would become, and Rhia was glad she’d have the chance to see it. There was no doubt Hunter would be lovelier at forty and fifty than she was now. She had the kind of face that would benefit from laugh lines and crow’s feet. Given Hunter’s propensity to laugh and frown in the space of a heartbeat, she was sure to have character lines earlier than most.
“There’s more going on here than the house, isn’t there?”
Her daughter may be full of vim and vinegar, but she wasn’t stupid. Unfortunately for Rhia, Hunter had always been more perceptive than her mother. It was time for the truth.
“Your father wants you both to go with him to Hawaii tomorrow. He and Candi are going to celebrate their marriage, and he wants to share that with you.” Rhia managed to get that bit out without choking on her tea.
Hunter wasn’t buying it. She arched her brow, an affectation she’d learned from Rhia and mastered by the time she turned three. It always made Rhia smile when she did it and now was no exception. What was she going to do without them? Her logical side told her she’d never be without them. Her irrational, selfish, over-protective maternal side wanted to shoot William for trying to take them away, even for a little while.
“Your father filed for custody and placement of Ethan until his birthday. He’s got an order transferring custody to him until we go to court in a few weeks. Ethan has to be at your dad’s condo by eight tomorrow morning. He wants you to go too, honey. I think you should go. At least to the islands with him.” Rhia smiled, teary eyed, and knew her children saw right through her. “Hey, it’s not every day you get a chance to go to Maui.”
Complete silence.
Ram pushed his chair back, but didn’t say anything. Ethan put the lid back on the cookie jar, and Hunter busied herself peeling nail polish from her thumb.
Ethan jumped off the counter and gave his mom a hug from behind. “Has he served the school yet?” He asked.
Rhia didn’t understand why Ethan cared about that when there was so much more to worry about right now. School wasn’t set to start for another few weeks. “I doubt it. There wouldn’t be any reason to.”
“Good. I’ll be right back.” Ethan gave her another quick hug and bounded out of the kitchen. Judging from the sound, he was running up the stairs two at a time.
Ethan had changed over the summer, even more so than Hunter. He was as tall as his father, six one or there about, although he hadn’t grown into his shoulders yet. Both he and Hunter got her blue eyes, but where Hunter’s hair was almost as black as William’s, Ethan’s was warm clover honey. He didn’t inherit his mother’s curls, but his hair did wave nicely and he wore it long to annoy his father. He wasn’t just smart, he was handsome too. If only he’d grow into his feet, Rhia thought, he wouldn’t look so awkward when he moved.
“I don’t care about the house mom. I think you should sell it.” Hunter said as Ethan made his way back down the stairs, his laptop under one arm.
Rhia didn’t have a chance to question Hunter further. Ethan was on line, fingers flying over his keyboard in a matter of seconds. The energy radiating from him had every pair of eyes in the room mesmerized.
“What are you doing?” Rhia asked.
“Hacking into the principal’s e-mail account.” Ethan answered, not looking up fr
om the screen, a big smile on his face.
“Ethan.” Rhia warned.
“I’m not living with dad. Not one day longer than I have to. He’ll keep you in court until my birthday, and you know it. I can make him change his mind, but I’m going to need your help.” Ethan looked up at her with those entreating puppy-dog eyes, and Rhia knew she would play whatever game he had in mind. She looked into her soul and knew she wasn’t above breaking the rules if it meant Ethan could stay with her.
Taking her silence as permission, Ethan looked back at the screen.
“Okay. Here we go. I’m in. Let me just send a few e-mails from people in his address book first, so no one questions the date on yours. Done.” Ethan moved the computer around so the keyboard was facing Rhia. Sure enough there was the principal’s e-mail.
“He’s got ‘Mature Betty’ on his e-mail list?” Rhia asked.
Ethan’s smile was particularly wicked. “He does now.”
Rhia didn’t bother scolding him. What would be the point? Ethan would simply go to his room and do what he thought needed to be done on his own, and she wouldn’t know what evil plots he was hatching. At least this way she could keep him from turning completely to the dark side.
“I’ve dated your e-mail with yesterday’s date. With the bogus e-mails I’ve added before and the one’s I’ll add after, no one will doubt that’s when it came in. Okay, mom, tell him you’ve changed your mind and I won’t be attending the fall semester.”
“Ethan, you should...”
Ethan cut her off. “School is the only thing tying me here mom. I don’t need the credits and I don’t want to go. I know you don’t like to lie and I know you think it’s good to be with kids my own age, but I don’t like kids my age. And here’s a shocker, they don’t like me much either.”
Rhia started to speak and Ethan held up his hand to stop her. In that moment, Rhia got a glance at the man Ethan would become, smart, determined and peerless. He’d find his way, and he was right, it wouldn’t be in high school.