Post by Zee Pritchard on Oct 29, 2011 1:36:53 GMT -5
| [atrb=border,0,true][atrb=valign,top][atrb=style, background: url(http://i52.tinypic.com/27zjc40.jpg) center bottom no-repeat; outline: 1px solid #a0978c; width: 500px; height: 600px; padding: 0px;, bTable] "Are you sure you wouldn't like something to eat? I could make up sandwiches or there's some cinnamon buns left from this morning." "No thank you, Miz Pritchard, I'm fine. But thank you for offering." In another time, another world, it might have been a scene out of a 1950s sitcom. The daughter bringing home a boy to meet her parents, both the kids sitting ramrod-straight side by side on the sofa while her parents grilled them. There was even that overintent suspicion to the father, the fluttery attempts at peacemaking by the mother. Though Zee Kerrick, who was actually Mackenzie Pritchard, wasn't anybody's ideal of a sitcom daughter. No matter how straight and polite she sat with her knees together and her hands folded in her lap, she still had that thick black fringe across her forehead and far too much black eyeliner, and she still had that too-direct gaze and those jerky, near-violent movements. She'd even tried to tone it down for this visit, she was wearing something as close to 'normal' clothes as she owned and of course Louis always looked like the answer to a protective father's dream. But somehow they were still out of place in this tidy suburban home, and everybody could tell it, including her parents. That sense of not-belonging was part of what put the edge in Gerald Pritchard's voice as he asked his daughter for about the eighth time that afternoon, "Where have you been, Missy? Why couldn't you ever call us, just to let us know you were okay? Didn't you wonder how much we'd worry?" Zee had given up asking her parents not to call her by the old, childish nickname. It made her twitch a little inside every time, though. "I did think about it. But I never knew what to say. How to explain. When I left, I--" she licked her lips, she'd been dancing around this subject all afternoon. "I just had to get away. At first I wasn't thinking about anything but that, anything but getting away from what had been happening. And by the time I had my head together at all, I didn't know how to explain it. I still don't--" But much to Zee's surprise, her mother nodded and sat down on the arm of her father's chair. "We know about that, sweetheart." Zee flinched away from that, clearly shocked. "You do?" One hand crept out behind her, found the tail of Louis's shirt and her fingers wrapped up into it. She sounded a little breathless as she asked, "How do you...what do you know?" Her parents looked at one another, and again maybe it was surprising that Lucy was the one who spoke. "That man, Lowell. Your...teacher." The soft-faced woman played with the fabric of her husband's shirt sleeve, a gesture so much like the way that Zee clung that it was a little bit heartbreaking to see. "About a month after you disappeared he killed himself. Hung himself. There was a note, and it...talked about you." Small fingers wrapping tighter and tighter into Louis's hem, she was pressing wrinkles into the fabric that wouldn't come out even in the wash. "Oh." It was barely a whisper, dieaway and afraid. "Missy," her mother leaned forward without letting go of Gerald's shoulder, "they found photographs. Videos. Of you and him doing..." she trailed off. "We thought you were dead," Gerald said flatly. "We thought he'd killed you and dumped the body somewhere. And the cops kept asking us how we could have not known. How we could have missed it." The anger there, like Zee's anger. Controlled, but only just. And his daughter shook her her head helplessly, clinging on to a great fistful of Louis's shirt and trying not to jump up and run. "I tried to tell you. Show you. All the ways I could, all the ways I was...allowed." She gave up on the shirt thing and caught Louis's hand instead. "I felt like I was screaming, begging you to notice. Bruises everywhere and blood on my clothes, I thought you had to see. You never did. I figured that meant you didn't want to." "Oh, love--" Lucy came up off the arm of Gerald's chair, arms out like she would move across the room to hug her daughter, but Zee cringed away from it, ended up practically hiding behind Louis to avoid it. Later she would regret that, she'd try to find a way to apologize to her mother for that rejection, but in that moment all she could do was cower behind the one safe person in the room because if her mother touched her right now she would break, she'd finish the shattering that she'd felt coming on for weeks now. Louis put his arm around Zee, pulled her in against his side because he couldn't draw her onto his lap, not here and now. "I think we'd better go," he said in that soft, calm way of his. "It's been a rough morning, I think maybe Zee needs to rest." "No!" But Gerald laid a hand on his wife's arm, settled her to say, "All right. As long as you promise that you'll come back. Tomorrow, lunch. Deb and Pete will want to see her, and we do too." He'd been speaking to Louis, but now turned to Zee. "Please come back tomorrow and talk with us. We'll find your birth certificate, and I'll call Doctor Gillfrey this afternoon about getting your records released to this clinic in Colorado. So just come back. Talk with us a little more before you disappear again." Zee looked up at Louis, it probably looked like she was looking to him for moral support though really she was checking whether he could spare another day. What she saw there reassured her and she nodded. "Okay. We'll come tomorrow. Noon?" "Noon's perfect." Lucinda would have agreed if she'd said five in the morning, or midnight. Anything. All Zee could manage was to nod, she let Louis draw her up gently to her feet, direct the farewells and the polite reassurances all the way around. This time Zee managed to hug her mother, then her father, then her mother again though when Lucy started to cry Zee almost cut and run. Anything not to be in the middle of a scene like that. But Gerald kept a hold on his wife and Louis kept a hold on Zee and they all got out of the situation without anybody breaking entirely. At least not right then. [style=padding-left: 35px; font-size: smaller; text-align: left;] Location: The Pritchard House, Couer d'Alene ID Outfit: It's still black and grey but she's at least trying for normality Music: Yesterday - Yesterday Notes: Home is where when you have to go there, they have to take you in. |
