WHO: Gavin Sterling WHEN: The wee hours of the morning on Friday, April 20 WHERE: The Sterling’s McMansion in Vintery SUMMARY: Gavin reflects on the past few months and makes a choice. WARNINGS: -- STATUS: Complete!
Gavin eased himself into the rocker and closed his eyes, careful not to disrupt the heavy sound of hard-won silence that he had become intimately familiar with at three am.
To the outside world, the Sterlings had it all. They had a picture perfect relationship, a house that could easily grace the cover of Better Homes and Gardens, practices that were highly regarded in town, and two beautiful babies with their parents’ enviable dark hair. They were Snow White and her Prince, a romance tale of True Love. Everyone loved a happy ending, and what could be happier than their story?
As the saying goes, never judge a book by its cover. Things behind the perfect wreath on the front door weren’t as tied together as they seemed. Items were strewn across the house, abandoned as soon as a small cry tore through the air. Normally immaculately pressed clothing sported questionable stains and wrinkles, and it seemed like they could never keep up with laundry. The oven had been cold for weeks, traded for quickly made sandwiches or re-heated meals unearthed from the depths of the freezer. Finley was exhausted trying to reconcile who she was as a person with who she was as a mother. Gavin, ever the optimist, kept telling himself that things would get better. They had a job to do, expectations to live up to. They had convinced the world of their perfect marriage for over ten years. It hadn’t been easy, but it was what was they believed to be morally right.
Gavin’s world had been greatly altered three times in his life.
The first time was when Amelia was brought home, tightly wrapped in a pink blanket and already protesting the world she had been brought into. Grayson Sterling had been quick to impress the expectation that Gavin was to look after his sister, protecting her from harm and providing her with a shining of example of how Sterlings were to act. He was the eldest; he had the most responsibilities. The expectations were high and substantial.
The second instance was when he had met Finley, his True Love and Prince. The Earth had seemed to shift when he saw her, but in all reality it had been dehydration that brought him to his knees. Snow White had waited a century to find him; it had felt just as long for Gavin. They both agreed to make it work because they were tale mates, but it hadn’t been without its ups and downs. She was strong-willed where he was accommodating, affection hard won where he freely gave it, but they were a team. There were times where it would have been easy to give in, call it over, but they had stuck together. Again, there were responsibilities that he had as a husband and partner that he couldn’t easily let go of. Walking away would not only go against all of the beliefs he stood for, but against who Snow White was. Their softness wasn’t weakness; it was pure and good in a world surrounded by things wanting to see the world burn.
Cameron and Esme had reshaped his world from the moment Finley said she was ready to try for a family. Children had been a dream of his for longer than he could remember, one he had pushed aside over the course of the years as it became more apparent that it wasn’t a dream he shared with his wife. He had his practice to retreat to, but tending to other people’s children wasn’t the same. He didn’t see his eyes on them and the confident tip of Finley’s chin in their movements, but he did now. The pregnancy had tested their marriage yet again, both of them saying things they had kept inside for years, but they had weathered through the storm. They were a team; they could do this for their family.
Then the sky had opened up.
Gavin opened his eyes as one of the babies shifted, the rustling cutting through the calm. He steepled his strong hands in front of his face as his father’s earlier words to him rang loudly in the silence. His family depended upon him to keep them safe, and they weren’t safe here in Woodsbridge. There were too many questions about the crack that had appeared, too many uncertainties over what had happened to the people it took. There were other fissures in his life that he could manage by himself, carefully holding them together with strategic decisions and actions, but that wasn’t one of them. Even though the falling scrolls seemed harmless for now, the instances over the past few months had shown that things could turn deadly in an instant.
He clasped his hands, squeezing them together in a rare show of strength, and rose from the chair as an idea started forming in his mind. He took a moment to kiss his children before he left the room, his touch a promise to keep them from the impending storm he felt brewing on the horizon. He felt the heavy mantle of responsibility draping around his broad shoulders like the cape he had worn in a past life, but he was convinced this would be for the best.
There was a stack of paper under Finley’s mug when she woke a few hours later.