Chapter Fifty-Four: The Gearhardt Family

…

It had been quite some time since she took this much of a risk. Not since her first meeting with Rachel, has she ever been quite this nervous… god, what an absolutely terrible time to quit smoking.

Sera knew the moment she told him what her most private desire was, a countdown would begin to when she would find herself in this position. James was always proactive about these matters. Ripping the band aid off the wound as the old saying went. She both admired and feared the sort of drive James possessed, and subsequently passed onto Rachel. It made time with the two of them exhausting from just how inexhaustible they were.

But that sort of passion was something she could appreciate when it was the little things. Reuniting with a family she had not seen in a decade and a half was something altogether different. She had expected that James would need a at least a few days to arrange things, but that was an expectation not based in this decade. Through the miracle of technology (or that James was the boss of his department) the two of them were on the road, Cali bound 36 hours later.

It was strange to be back in the state after so long. Contrary to what James might have thought, she did not spend her exile in California. She moved from state to state, running from what haunted her. She had only been back to California once in order to humiliate herself in front of her family at the peak of her addiction. It was all a genuine haze, but she remembered insulting her mom in some way. She called her old and fat and a whole slew of things for a reaction.

Looking back on it, the only conclusion Sera came to was that she did it all just to feel something. The drugs weren't working anymore and she was left with that terrible void and she could no longer ignore it. Perhaps she wanted violence inflicted upon her. Perhaps she wanted to hear them tell the truth about how they felt for her – which that to them, she was a disappointment and they were ashamed that they had wasted so much time on her. If she could convince them to hurt her, then maybe the drugs would give back that comfortable haze that they should have been.

Yet, the words she sought for them to say never came. Instead something far more terrible happened. Mother and Father walked away without saying a word to her. There was no expression of hatred, or love, or regret. They left her completely devoid of the pain that would fuel her addiction. She was left hooked to something that didn't bring any sort of fulfillment. Worse still was that it left her completely alone. She could at least pretend her parents still loved her, but in that moment she had nothing left.

This cataclysmic silence….It… fueled a lot of the worst moments of her life. She kept hitting what she thought was rock bottom, only to find there were still levels to keep falling to. Now, however, maybe… maybe it did her good in the long run. It was the first real eye opening on what she had become. She was alone with an addiction that did not love her back; and she threw away everyone she loved for it.

There was a festering hated in her for doing this – this near constant reminiscing about the past. Just when she felt as if she was finally moving past it, something invariably came up that brought it back to the foreground of her obsessions. This time, it was family and a pregnancy doing it. It always felt to her that she was picking at a scab on a wound on the verge of healing. She confided this annoyance to James, of course, and James being James told her that it was an investment. Endure a little heartache so that you get it into the past and leave it there. It was, after all, what she had done with him and Rachel, so why not her family?

It made… sense on paper, but James wasn't the one who screwed up his life like she had. Still, confirming that James plotted destroying her brought a grim satisfaction to her. For too long now, James had been untouchable. He wasn't the one who abandoned their child after all. She always looked on him like he was perched over her. Not so much in an oppressive way… just. He was a better person than her. It came to her as a relief that James was as human as she was. Ready to make extreme mistakes to protect others from threats he thought were real.

She did not like to see James embarrassed like that. It was cute to see him being shy back in their youth, but that was for whole other reasons. Still, she did take a little pleasure in seeing him knocked off his throne.

She did not know what to expect, but she hadn't expected the two floor family house they were parked across the street from. The neighbourhood looked like an affluent place for raising families. Mom and Dad were sixty… sixty-three if she remembered correctly. They should have been trading in a big place for something more manageable. If Dawn and Aaron weren't living out of state, she might have thought it was a reasonable purchase.

"Do you want to wait in here?" James broke their hour's long silence. "I could go ahead, warm up them so that you don't just… you know… startle them."

It felt like a stay of execution. Sera did her utmost to look cool, collected and causal as she nodded. James more than likely could see through her façade. It was more for her than for him. She reached down and unbuckled her seat-belt, and found James was staring inquisitively at her. The resolve she thought she had collapsed nearly immediately under that damn intoxicating gaze he possessed.

"I saw a park a few blocks back," she spoke up. "I think I'm going to go have a smoke…"

James squinted at her somehow more judgmentally; his expression was enough to wash all of her desires to smoke from her thoughts. He turned away from her and stared ahead. Although his focus on her was removed; she felt his hand rest on top of hers. She could not fight the impulse to squeeze the tips of his fingers. If he noticed her reaction, he did not show it. Although he was better at concealing fears, James was clearly as nervous as she was.

These past few days, she had been so wrapped up in what she wanted to say, that she hadn't fully comprehended what this reunion meant to James. They were family once, and he had to sever all ties with them. They all could have resented him for what he felt he needed to do to protect Rachel from her. Yet, in spite of this he was here willing to help her with this. It meant more than she could ever express to him.

"Sera, it's going to be fine one way or the other," he tried to reassure her, and ease some of that jitteriness bubbling in her. "If they accept you after you make amends, then that will be wonderful. If not –and they are well within their right not to forgive you - well, we can close this chapter of your life and just try to move on. We'll have our own little unit: you, me, Rachel…"

James tried off and looked slightly sheepish upon bringing up their daughter who was still in the dark to any of this. It seemed these days that Rachel's reactions to things were predictable in that she was unpredictable in her reactions. She may have loved Sera, but Rachel adored Rose and this… thing between her father and Sera was not something she would likely be comfortable with. Not given the history she knew about.

"Well… maybe Rachel," he amended as he pulled his hand away from hers and opened the driver side door. "I mean, if she doesn't disown us and flee with Chloe and the baby."

As James turned away to unbuckle and step out of the car, Sera could not help but nervously laugh at the mental image he had painted for her. The very idea of Rachel and Chloe, both of them in the height of their teenage, young adult rebellion raising her child as their own… god what a shit show that would be.

Sera was brought back to reality by James who turned back to face her. His expression seemed a little off. It was very reflective… thoughtful.

"Look, If it means anything, you should know that I'm proud of you for doing this," he spoke to her, his voice sounding genuine. "It takes a lot of guts to look your sins in the eye. If it all goes wrong, then I'm proud of you for even trying. Not many can say the same."

There was no time for a response, James closed the door, and with the confidence Sera envied, he had already begun his march across the street. To her, his pride in her meant a lot. But that pride wasn't enough for her to keep her in this car for any longer.

…

…

James shook his head and bit back the urge to laugh as he watched Sera pull classic Sera tactics and flee to somewhere quieter.

He knew that she would stand and fight to prove herself to them, but that did not mean she would do it on a drop of the hat. She seemed to prefer picking her own battlefield, and a public park was a much better place to engage from in her mind. Neither side had an advantage at a public place.

So with that, James loitered across the street for a couple extra minutes to give Sera time to escape in case her parents decided to talk to him outside. AS soon as she disappeared from sight, he took an unsteady breath and tuned back, silently contemplating what it was he was going to say to a family he walked out on nearly two decades ago. If Sera thought she was the only one who was nervous, then she was dead wrong.

Truth was he was just as nervous as Sera. He was just not afforded the luxury of showing it. He had no idea what he was going to say, or how he was going to broach the subject of Sera. How could anyone stand there and sell Sera – a poison still in their eyes – to people who were unintended causalities to an illness Sera suffered through alone. In their eyes, he spent almost twenty years in isolation from them, only to suddenly drop back into their lives and proclaim Sera was a changed, or at the very least recovering, woman?

It was going to take a thousand things going to right to even begin fixing this this ruptured family, and yet it would only take one misstep from each of the very human, and very hurt parties for it to all come crashing down. As much as he wanted Sera to feel closure for this, the likelihood that this was going to end in tears was astronomical. As for him, he just didn't want to see Sera hurt.

Yet, as this desire to protect Sera seeped into his thoughts, he still knocked on the front door and took a step back.

It did not take long for the door to be opened; he expected to see Peter, or Martha. He had not thought that he would be standing there, with a lack of words ready with Dawn Gearhardt standing right there in front of him.

Dawn, of course, shared quite a bit of similarity to her elder sister. She was a little taller and more filled out then Sera, whose body seemed to be perpetually thin. Dawn looked a lot more of a mom, James reckoned. She was also significantly more tanned than Sera. Life in Arizona seemed to take its toll on her. Not in a bad way, she just didn't look like the Cali girl he remembered.

He watched as she slowly came to recognize him. He could not blame to delay it took. She must have been eighteen when they last met each other. The realization…well… dawned on her just of who it was standing in front of her after years of absence. She seemed flooded by the wave of memories the two of them shared together during his brief time in the Gearhardt family.

Of course, she was not the only one struck by gravity of this reunion. It brought back that flood of memories of the old days. Driving Sera's siblings around whenever they were back at the Gearhardt's, family dinners and holidays; and all it did was serve to tear his thoughts back to all those terrible unanswerable what-if's, which only served to indict a woman he was trying to forgive. Years now, James had been making an effort to express how he really felt. It was part of his penance for his failure to Rose.

So James did what James did best. He put the mask back on, and slowly offered Dawn a smile that he perfected for a decade and a half, yet physically hurt him to perform right at this moment.

"Hello, Dawn," he softly greeted her.

That was all that it took for the levee to break. James felt arms which flew around him, and before he could step back Dawn had pulled James into a crushing hug, polar opposite to her sister. Sighing, James returned it and unconsciously let his hand behind her head, which she immediately buried her head against the nape of his neck.

"Look at you," James commented idly. "You grew up and got old."

Dawn pulled back, a flash of anger resonating in her eyes before she softened and chuckled.

"I could say the same for you," she exclaimed as she pulled back to inspect him, a wide genuine smile granted to him. "God, look at you, you're dressed like a…"

Dawn trailed off. James knew exactly what she was on the verge of saying. The fact that she refused to say 'Dad' told him all he needed to know about how she felt about the last time they met. It was a furious mess with him having to explain to a pleading and hysterical Martha that he had to cut ties with them. The silent defeat in Aaron and Peter, and the fury of Dawn cursing and screaming at him for a betrayal she thought he was committing. She was right to be mad. She had lost three family members on that day.

"So…" she started once again. Her tone much more measured as reality seemed to set back in for her. "What are you doing here?"

Dawn was not a naïve girl the last time he knew her, so he suspected it would be far less so now that she was grown. Instead of inquiring further for the moment, she quietly reached forward and pulled James into the house and shut the door behind them. As he looked at her while she gestured to a row of shoes, James obliged and bent over to untie his laces.

"I was hoping to speak with your parents," he semi-lied to his former sister as she removed his trainers. "I thought that it was time to check in with them. I wanted to see if you all were doing well… and give updates."

The smile Dawn had, slightly vanished. She appeared much more curious now.

"It's a good thing you came by when you did," she murmured as closed the door behind them. "Mom and Dad are out of the house right now; they took the children out to see a movie. Mom and Dad... they're getting up there now, and I'd rather them not get a sudden shock."

James nodded curtly.

"Right…" he murmured apologetically. "This was a rash decision on my part to not call ahead-"

He did not get to finish his apology. Dawn dragged him back into another hug.

"James Amber, you don't need to worry so much," she reassured him. "I'm just so happy to see you doing so well."

As they moved a little further into the house, James found himself staring at a wall of pictures of the family, taken over the years. None of them featured Sera. He supposed that was to be expected. Pete and Martha were… pretty stern people. At least Martha was. Martha's father was a combat veteran, who marched across Western Germany in the dying months. So it came to no one's surprise when Martha joined Radio Free Europe in '68 to promote freedom to the repressed eastern European peoples trapped under the thumb of Soviet control.

What was not expected was her falling for a beatnik West German boy named Erich Peter Gearhardt, or Peter as he preferred. He himself was a son of a combat veteran who marched…well… everywhere in Europe and ended the war fighting men like Martha's father. Papa Gearhardt apparently loved to gloat that while the war was lost, the war for Martha was won by his son, and god did it ever lead to family rows. Decades later, even on the day he married Sera he saw it happen; although by that time they were both a little old for fist fighting.

While Sera and Martha were polar opposites, Peter and Sera were attached at the hip. She seemed to idealize his youth and sought to live it as much as she could. It probably played a role in her downfall, but he would keep that theory to himself. Sera loved her dad so much, that she went out of her way to learn German, something Dawn, Aaron and even Martha seemed indifferent to learn. The two of them would have long conversations in his native language and it drove the rest of the American Gearhardt's up the wall. James thought it was sort of nice they did that together, even if German was like nails on a chalkboard to him.

However, this was so long ago. Everyone was different now, gone was Peter's pride and joy, erased from their life and he had seemingly replaced her with a near doppelganger of Sera. Standing there with an arm around peter was an early teenage girl. She was one of Dawn's children by the look of it. It appeared that they had fully transitioned into grandparents now. They had found a new stability after the mess Sera and he created for them.

Yet here he was, near twenty years later, ready to shake up the foundation they had built. It made him almost want to flee.

"Dawn, who is it?" a deep voice called out as Dawn took his jacket with a smile.

Entering the foyer to join Dawn and James was a familiar man and a visibly pregnant woman who he did not know. It was Aaron, gone was the awkward teenaged boy he had to leave behind. He was all grown up and confident looking. He was a little taller than James now, and just like his sister, Aaron immediately charged forward and gave James a crushing hug.

"James Amber!" he exclaimed as he pulled back and gave James a playful shove like they were both kids again. "Holy shit… you got old."

"We all got old," James corrected him, earning a laugh from Aaron.

"Someone care enough to tell me what's going on here?" the second woman inquired. Inquired was sort of a polite term, it sounded more like a demand, but she did not seem to have any malice.

James glanced from Dawn, who looked a little annoyed by her, to Aaron who was clearly head over heel for her. From the accent, English was not her first language. She sounded Mediterranean… Greek, Albanian, Italian, something like that. She had long dark curled locks, pulled back into a ponytail, accentuating her bright wide eyes and a head or two shorter than Aaron.

"James Amber, this is my wife, Isadora," Aaron introduced the woman to James. "James was… close to the family back when Dawn and I were kids."

Although Aaron was downplaying what James actually was to the Gearhardt's, everyone in the room could look into her frighteningly large emerald eye that Isadora was not dumb enough to take Aaron's words at face value, but she chose not to push it just yet. Instead, she stepped forward, ignoring James' outstretched hand and instead kissing him on each side of his face.

"I shall pretend to believe that for the moment," Isadora dramatically breathed into James' ear before pulling back and taking a step next to her husband. She gave him a small shove and pretended she hadn't done it.

Amused to see Aaron under Isadora's thumb, he turned back to Dawn, who appeared much less amused by it.

"If I did my Facebook homework correct, then Tristan is somewhere around here?" he asked her causally.

The air between the group of adults suddenly intensified and Sera wasn't even the topic point of discussion. Aaron and Isadora glanced at each other, and both of them took a step back from James and Dawn. Dawn looked either on the verge of tears, or ready to explode on him for an insult he did not intend to commit.

Dawn's fury gave him a moment to remember Sera when she had swung to the other side of the pendulum. It wasn't all crippling, secretly medicated with opioids. Sometimes Sera collapsed into total fury, breaking anything in her path and screaming for hours on end. Sometimes the cops would be called, and the assumption would be that he did something, but the cops always washed their hands of it. They'd give him a warning and a sympathetic pat and leave him to her growing madness.

"Tristen and I are separated," Dawn spoke as briskly as she could clear the air before it got too strained. "It's… sort of a new thing. We haven't made it official, but it's over."

James blinked at the news. He looked to Aaron, who nodded, his mouth pursed shut. He was clearly as angry about it as Dawn was, so something bad must have happened. James, having spent a long time now dealing with Sera, stepped forward and wrapped an arm around Dawn, who immediately hugged him.

"I'm so sorry to hear that," he sympathized with her. "May I ask how bad it was?"

"Bad enough that I'm changing my name back to Gearhardt," was her dark toned response.

Okay, so it was that bad.

"I'm not licenced in Arizona; I am in California, but practicing family law is for masochists," he informed Dawn. "If you need to lawyer up, I got a few cold-hearted people in California and Arizona that I know who could help you out."

Dawn emitted a small chuckle into his arm and pulled herself back from her embrace. She wiped her eyes and nodded as she looked up at him.

"I'll hold you to that," she muttered to him as she crossed her arms over her chest. "And how is Rose doing? Has she… has she sanctioned this sojourn to our family?"

Like Dawn had done with the divorce talk, he took a page out of her book.

"She passed away," was James' brisk, impersonal response, as though he was discussing it in a courtroom. He watched as Aaron and Dawn's mouths fell open at his words.

"I… Oh my god, James… I'm so sorry… how… oh… hell… I'm sorry…" Aaron was the first to speak. As stern as she seemed to be, it was all just a show and James watched as Isadora wrapped her arm around her husband in support.

"A dumb kid with a gun, too much alcohol in his blood and something to prove to someone who didn't feel the same," James informed him trying to usher through it quickly so that he did not have to dwell on it and leave it to fester in his thoughts. "…It… was a few years ago now… hard to believe that... even now."

Dawn pulled her hand away from her mouth to carefully read James for a moment.

"I didn't like Rose when you brought her," she confessed to her former brother-in-law. "It felt like a betrayal when you brought her. You were walking away with a new woman and she had stolen something so absolutely precious from us; But… but it makes sense now and…"

She trailed off, her voice losing all her strength for the briefest of moments. She took a breath and recollected herself.

"Did she love her?" she was her final inquiry.

Four words, four words from a woman whom he hadn't seen in two decades was enough to nearly crack through the barrier he built to protect himself from her ghost. He did not want to weep at the question. He had put so much time and effort into dealing with his grief that he was not about to let it overtake him once again, especially not in front of the Gearhardt children.

All that James could physically do was nod to the question.

Thankfully for him, Dawn accepted the answer. She stepped forward to him, there was a question on the tip of her tongue which he knew was going to spill out.

"Do you…" Dawn struggled, looking to her grim faced brother for a moment. "Do you have photos of… of Rachel?"

James pulled out his phone and handed it over to Dawn. On it was a collection of photos, some taken in recent years, some taken when Rachel was still just a child. Turned out Sera was surprisingly tech-savvy and she converted some of the older photos he had around the house into digital copies. He didn't like them as much as the originals. That was something Sera teased him for, but he liked what he liked.

It was not long before Aaron pulled away from his wife and joined his dumbstruck elder sister in scrolling through the gallery, leaving Isadora visibly confused until Aaron came to his senses. He looked up to her and took the phone from Dawn, who was visibly annoyed by it. He brought it to Isadora. On the screen appeared to be a photo from this year. Before Rachel decided she needed to tattoo herself.

"Isadora, this is Rachel Amber, your eldest niece," he introduced Rachel to the wide eyed woman. "James was a member of this family once. He was married to Sera back in the early 90's. After… after Sera got sick-"

"-Feeding heroin into her veins at every opportunity," Dawn viciously cut across her brother. There was no respect, no sympathy, worse there was no love at the mere mention of her elder sister.

It told James all he needed to know how this reunion was going to be. A blood - and possibly bloodied – nightmare.

"Sick," Aaron repeated his defense of his elder sister, earning a roll of his sister's eyes. "James had to leave her. He took their daughter, Rachel, and left."

So far, the only upside he could see was Aaron. He did not seem to hold the same hatred Dawn did. There was still a lot of grief in his explanation to his wife, but it was far more reasonable than the sister, who felt betrayed by what had happened so long ago.

James glanced from Dawn to the living room. Dawn nodded and ushered everyone to follow her. James slumped onto the loveseat and sighed as he folded his hands onto his lap.

"It was not an easy thing to do, walking away like I did," James spoke as Dawn, Aaron and Isadora sat down on the couch opposite to him. "Dawn, Aaron, you both were old enough to know how much I loved you both, how much I loved your parents."

Aaron nodded; Dawn remained stoic as she seemed to be working out why he was actually here.

"I had to leave, so that Rachel had a chance at a normal life," he continued before Dawn could work through it on her own. "She didn't need to have two mothers - one of them abusing drugs and mentally ill - competing for her. I've seen what chaotic families collapse into since I got into criminal law, and I'm unapologetic for it, no matter how much it hurt the two of you."

He paused for a moment and sympathized with Sera's cravings for cigarettes. The tension was boiling over now. This was well beyond the point of no return now.

"The reason that I am here, is not because of Rachel," he informed the silent brother, and the near furious sister. "It's that I want to talk to you all about Sera."

"Is she dead? Is she finally dead, James?" Dawn was the first one to speak; not that her brother had time to contemplate something to say. It came right away, her words breathless like she was anticipating good news. "

Her near glee at the thought of Sera's death startled him. It suddenly hit him just how much agony Sera had caused to the family. Aaron was not taken aback. It seemed like that he was not with Dawn on that opinion of Sera, but he was not going to condemn it either.

"No… no… she's clean," James said to the two siblings, unable to hide being startled by Dawn. "She's been clean and sober now, going on three years now."

Dawn rolled her eyes and puled herself out of her seat.

"Trust me, I was just as cynical about her as you are now, Dawn," he informed Dawn rubbed her temple. "I trusted her with Rachel, and she abused it in the past," "She got clean, waited a year and then she found us. Rachel knows about Sera. Rose and I set ground rules; rules which she followed to the letter. I expected her to fail, for a while I wanted her to fail. But she didn't. She's held onto a job, respected the rules."

"Why are you here, exactly?" Dawn growled at him. Her teeth clenched as she glared into James' eyes.

"Dawn, you're not fooling me, you know what I'm doing here," he answered her, already growing exhausted by this.

Dawn laughed humourlessly at him and shook her head. To her, even broaching this topic was madness. Like him with Rose, she too seemed to be trying to bury the past so that it stopped hurting. He did not blame her for doing this; but this wasn't a death. This was a chance at renewal. All it took was a little trust.

Trust, however, seemed not something Dawn was ready to give out. Not with her divorce fresh on her mind, and now an old wound being wrenched open by his meddling. For Sera this was going to be an uphill battle. He hoped that she was ready for the struggle.

"This wasn't my idea, I didn't know she wanted to try this until a few days ago," he informed the room as Dawn turned away. "She'd been sitting on this for years after Rose died. She placed Rachel's wellbeing before her own needs. If she was willing to do that for me, then I am willing to do that for her."

Aaron's mouth contorted into the slightest of smiles as he looked to Isadora for a moment. He seemed to dare to hope that the nightmare was over, and that he was going to get his sister back after all these years. Dawn did not acknowledge this; she instead walked to the window and looked out onto the street.

"Is she outside, waiting in your car?" she snapped, rounding back to face him. James shook his head.

Quietly and quickly, Dawn approached him and took a seat next to him. There was nothing but repressed rage as she examined James.

"She is a poison to this family. She brought nothing but ruin to us. She drove Rachel and you away," she reminded James, her voice barely more than a whisper. "Do you know how many nights my Mom cried for Sera? It took years – years- before Mom and Dad could smile again and have one day where Sera wasn't haunting them… and now that she's clean, she thinks she can just walk back into our lives? Worst still use you and your daughter to slither herself back into our lives?"

James shook his head.

"Sera's not dumb, nor is she naïve. She knows that there was harm she inflicted on you all," he defended Sera from Dawn's bitter fury. "All that she wants to stand before you, show her contrition, listen to everything you want to say, shout, scream… whatever you feel to her. If, at the end of it, you still hate her and want nothing more to do with her, then you are well within your rights, but at least give her the opportunity to say her piece, and give yourself the freedom to say what you need to say."

Isadora leaned out of her seat and pressed her hand on Dawn's knee to get her attention. She immediately got it.

"Dawn, what happened between Sera and your family is… not something I can understand," Isadora addressed her sister-in-law. "But I have sisters, an elder sister too and she's your sister no matter what. You must respect your elder sister enough to listen to her story. If she placed that much effort into changing her life, then she has the right."

Dawn pulled Isadora's hand from her knee and pushed it aside.

"You're right, you don't understand," Dawn spoke with as much patience as she could produce. "I love you, Isadora. I do. But I am asking you to stay out of this."

"She's in this family, she gets to voice an opinion," Aaron snapped at his sister before turning to James.

"I want to hear what Sera has to say, James," he spoke to his former brother. "Dawn thinks she has become the head of this family, but she isn't. If Sera wants to see us, I think we should let her. She's not expecting us to forgive her, right? She might be genuinely mentally ill, but that's not carte blanche to do the shit she did."

"Sera only wants some time to let you all vent," James reassured him. "Forgiveness is entirely at your own discretion."

Aaron fell silent for a good long moment before he sighed and nodded. While James was happy to have him on board, all this did was drive Dawn deeper into rage. It must have felt like a betrayal to her. The two siblings were probably closer thanks to Sera's problems. Neither wanted the other to fall down the same hole she had. Now, after all these years, one wanted to hear her out and the other was not so forgiving… It must have burned Dawn.

She emitted a disbelieving laugh and shook her head.

"Fuck Sera, fuck her temporary recovery, and fuck you James for trying to screw our lives back up," She said, staring at the floor. "I thought you were smart, not this dangerously naïve!"

Done with this conversation, Dawn stood up and walked away, leaving Aaron, Isadora and him alone together. It was clear she wasn't a fan of being this outnumbered by dissenters. He could not blame her for feeling that. He watched as Aaron whisper something into Isadora's are and kiss her cheek. He did not need to hear what he had to say. Not as he too stood up and followed after his sister.

Isadora and James were alone now in an awkward position of being two strangers left alone together. They met each other's eyes and James smiled apologetically to the woman who was still digesting all of this new information.

"I am sorry that I put you in this situation with Aaron… where he didn't tell you about this," James apologized to the woman. "When I left, I had no intentions on ever coming back. We would have been effectively dead to this family; but… situations change, people change and here we are…"

A thin smile crossed her lips. If she was annoyed by it, she wasn't going to reveal it so easily.

"I knew about Sera, of course, but Aaron must have taken your secrecy to heart, and I respect he felt that way," "Tell me, are you staying?"

James nodded to her. With the confirmation that he had no intentions of walking away from this just yet, she nodded. Isadora attempted to get to her feet, but it was clear she was struggling with it. James stood up and stepped forward and helped her up onto her feet. He reckoned he was going to being doing this quite a bit in the coming months…

"Thank you, Mr. Amber," she murmured. "Tell me, would you like some tea? I brewed some tsai tou vounou… It's a… a mountain tea. It should calm the nerves."

"It's James," he corrected her formality. "And yes, I would, thank you."

Nodding, Isadora patted James' should and beckoned for him to follow her, presumably to the kitchen.

"It's good to have you here, James," Isadora idly spoke to him, amusement growing in her voice now that the ice was broken. "After the break-up, I thought I was going to be the only outsider to this family of mad men… and we have time before the children come home, they are hitting the park first."

James did all he could to not explode with laughter. Poor Sera ran away from the snake nest just to stumble into another. He wished her all the best.

…

…

Sitting on a park bench, a lit cigarette between her lips, Sera could not help but feel guilty for it.

By the time that she made it to the park, Sera ended up degrading herself by breaking down and buying a cigarette off a group of teenagers hanging out at the part. Little bastards charged her five bucks, and like an idiot she didn't even try to haggle.

She knew she was trying to quit, but that wasn't going to be an easy road. She could rationalize it. She could tell herself that the cigarette smoke wasn't going to affect the pregnancy this early along, but that sort of thought process led to paths she did not want to ever travel on again. So, with that in mind, she would smoke the cigarette and promise to start again tomorrow with better resolve. She didn't quit drugs overnight either; it was a miserable psychodrama of trial and error.

She knew that she should not have been smoking, but she knew she had time before she had to quit for good. With what was about to happened, she would figure anyone who mattered in her life would forgive her for needing some sort of stress release.

There was no going back now; James was in the minefield that was Dawn Calvert nee Gearhardt. She felt guilty for leaving him out there, but honestly she did not want to have a confrontation with Dawn, who never liked being surprised for as long as she could remember. She would, at the very least, listen to what James had to say.

So in silence she smoked and pondered just what she was going to say to everyone when James called to summon her to the house, or brought them all here as she preferred. She reckoned all that she could do was listen. There was never going to be an explanation which she could use to explain why she had done what did. Rachel was far easier to explain everything to. She was too young to understand what it was that she had done, but her family. She had poisoned the well long before and long after James had left. They were not going to make this easy.

Sera glanced around her surroundings. There seemed to be more children in the playgrounds. Two girls and a boy, one of the girls was significantly older than the others. She was pushing the girl and boy on the swings with a wide grin on her face. She seemed to be genuinely having a good time with the children. It was very strange behaviour for a teenager.

For a moment, just a flash, the eldest girl locked eyes with the staring Sera. She seemed visibly confused, but smiled and nodded for her. Sera looked away and took another drag and tried to wash away that creeping feeling that something familiar about her. It sent a shiver up her spine and that urge to run came bubbling back up. The girl was a splitting image of Dawn. It was like looking into the past.

She pushed the fear aside, she was just nervous and it was leeching out into her life right now. She had to calm down, read Rachel's latest texts for the umpteenth time and pretend that everything was fine. Everything was going to be fine. She looked again and noticed that the girl was no longer alone with the children. Standing there with them was two ghosts of Sera's past. A man and a woman, both of them looking right back her, dead in her eyes.

Of the two, the woman was the more proactive, she always was. It both bugged and frightened the shit out of her that someone like her could exist. She was cold looking, like she refused to allow any optimism to cross her. With near robotic precision, she approached Sera.

Sera, feeling a sudden flash of adolescence rushed to drop and stamp on the cigarette, as though she was going to get into trouble for it. Silently, she pulled herself out of her seat, her hands clinched at her sides. It felt like she was standing at attention in front of a woman she hadn't seen in nearly fifteen years.

"Sera?" the woman called out to her.

Her hair was longer than she had remembered; much more grey was mixed into the blonde. The lines on her face were a little deeper now. She was also significantly thinner than she was in 1996… or 1997… 1998 perhaps? Whenever it was, she looked very healthy for a woman of her age. She did not know what she expected, but it was not this.

"Hello Mother," Sera greeted her mom, there was more formality in her voice than she had intended.

Mother stepped forward, like she was approaching a live bomb. It was not that long ago that Sera was just that. She seemed to be inspecting her daughter's face, and then without any warning, she snapped her hand out with unexpected speed for a woman of her age. She grabbed Sera's hands and turned her arms over.

Mother and daughter looked down and stared at the many track marks left behind during Sera's act of slow self-destruction. All of them were fading, but none of them would ever leave her flesh. They were scars which Sera was learning to live with. Each one, a reminder of an era she never wanted to go back to.

For a moment, and just for a moment, there was a strange… relief that creeped onto mother's face. It did not last for long. Hope was not something Martha Gearhardt was willing to fall for so quickly.

"I had to check," she whispered, still looking at the marks, clearly unable to look her child in the eyes. "We have children here and I wasn't about to expose them to… that. How long have you been clean?"

"For years now," she informed her, a look of near amazement crossing over the older woman's eyes.

Unable to keep looking at her marks, Sera gently pulled her away from her mother and took a step back. She wanted to hug her, to show her the love she needed to know that she still felt, but she did not. Doing such things was too soon. Slow and steady, like she had with Rachel… especially when it came to the Gearhardt women.

"I had to admit I had a problem, which was easy compared to learning to love myself again..." Sera elaborated for her fully attentive Mother. "Honestly, I still… struggle with that. But I have outlets now. I have people who love me, I think… no… I know they do now. I have… reasons to be better than I was…"

Clearing her throat, Sera reached into her pocket and produced her phone for her mother. She tapped the screen to an image of Rachel taken only a few days before Rachel left for her trip. She had ensnared her daughter in a hug and Rachel was faux struggling against the pressure. With a slight, warm smile thinking about her, Sera handed the phone to her Mom and let her take a look for herself.

Sera watched in silence, watching as mom judged her grandchild. There was a ghost of a smile at the image.

"Rachel Dawn Amber… God, she's so beautiful, Sera," Mom breathed as she looked up from her eldest grandchild to her eldest daughter and added. "Sera, I'm… happy for you."

She said the words, but it was questionable if she had meant them. There was still so much pain which echoed through her mother, and that was a reality which Sera had to accept. There was going to be so much bitterness she would have to wade through. There was a very real possibility that James' warning was right, that she would have to wash her hands of her. If she was going to be a mother again, then Sera couldn't do it with toxic relationships, even if she was the reason for it.

She would try to save this relationship, she would put her efforts into it, but she could not drain herself to make her Mom love her after a decade and a half of resentment. She had a future to think about now.

"You know, this wasn't how I thought it would happen," she started to confess to her mother, who was now a little more attentive. "I kind of…well…"

Sera trailed off as she looked up and found her father standing there, several feet behind her Mom. He gazed at her, transfixed by her. Sera reckoned it was night and day between the last time they saw each other and now. Sera glanced at her Mom for a moment, and watched as she inclined her head. Sera stepped by her and closed the gap between father and daughter.

He was silent, even into his sixties Papa was too cool to make the first move. Or perhaps it was some sort of Teutonic parental punishment meant to drive the child into a frenzy of guilty confessions. So, knowing he was not going to crack. Sera took the first step.

"Es… umm…" Sera started, and stopped herself just to rack her brain on correct pronunciation. "Es ist so schön, dich wiederzusehen, Papa…"

Papa stood there still in silence, but he was not turn. If anything, he looked like he wanted to cry.

"You have not been keeping up with speaking the language," he lightly chastised her, his moderate accent still as heavy as the last time they met. "You sound like that blasted internet translation - google, or whatever - has."

Sera could not help but chuckle at the language critic. The only thing she could do was nod.

"A lot of old things… they don't come so easily to me anymore, Papa," Sera informed her father. "… and I haven't really had a reason to keep speaking the language for a very long time…"

Without speaking another word, Papa wrapped his arms around her and openly wept.

Sera did not know if she had ever heard such a thing from him before. Maybe once when he found out he was going to be a grandfather. So Sera stood there, frozen in his arms, rubbing the back of her father as he cried on her shoulder. She looked back to her mother, who unmoved, her eyes glancing back to the swings. Sera glanced in the same direction as well and found the girl was staring at her like she just knew what Sera was to her grandparents.

Sera turned her attention back to her father. It was a taste of what her mother, Dawn was going to react. It wasn't going to be a pretty reunion; she anticipated that Father was going to be the highlight of the reunion.

"I shall teach you to speak again," Papa announced to her confidently, a watery smile granted just to her as he cusped her cheek. "I… missed you so much, my little girl. So much..."

Sera nodded and pulled back from her father and gave him a moment to recollect himself. Honestly, she would like that. She wanted to salvage whatever good she could from her mess of a past. If he was willing to help her, she was ready to accept it.

"I… sent an envoy to the house so that I could avoid Dawn and Aaron until they were ready to see me," she informed them, deciding not to drop the James bomb on them just yet. "There is so much I want to tell you... all of you. I… made so many mistakes…"

Papa shook his head. He looked so upset that she would place so much blame on herself. It was sweet of him to try that, but she was going to bear the weight of her actions regardless of his attempts to shield her.

"The worst was made by us," her father spoke, wiping his face and breathing in deep just to steady himself. "We didn't pay attention to what was wrong; we did not help you when you needed it. By the time we understood what was broken in your head, you were gone, and we never thought you would… you would come back to us… not alive."

Sera bit her lip at the dark, but not unreasonable feeling her parents had and smiled. Deciding that she did not want to venture further down this path for now, she gestured off to the children.

"So… these are your grandchildren?" she said as lightly as she could. "I have nieces and a nephew now… You know, Dawn really had her young…"

Her words sparked a look between her parents. Like they were deciding what they wanted to say to their absent daughter Dad looked amused, and Mom looked like she wanted nothing to do with this, but she ignored all her instincts to shut down. Instead she turned to the children.

"Cassandra," Mother called out to the eldest girl. "Cassandra, could you come over?"

The eldest girl, Cassandra glanced at her siblings and reluctantly she bit the bullet and approached the adults. She looked like she wanted to be anywhere but here in this moment as she stood between mother and father. Papa pressed a hand on Cassandra's shoulder, whom looked up and smiled faintly to him. The smile vanished as soon as she turned her attention directly to Sera.

"Michael… Mike and Lauren are your nephew and niece, Sera," Mother stated to her, she gestured to the teen and added. "This is Cassandra Gearhardt, your sister."

The information took a moment to register. Sera stood there, staring numbly at the family. She squinted to her father, as though needing confirmation. Papa nodded. She looked to her mother, and suddenly all the pieces clicked into place… she wasn't fat when she showed up at their home for the first time, she was…

What in the absolute hell…

Her throat was dry. She turned her attention right back to Cassandra, who clearly knew about Sera. She still remained locked in silence as she inspected a woman she was probably taught out of date information about. Then, out of nowhere, a thought hit her, and it was so absurd that she just had to laugh right in front of her parents, in front of her new baby sister… who her own daughter was older then by easily half a decade…

She had always thought herself her father's daughter, but she was more like her mother than she ever anticipated…

...

...

Uh Oh.