Setting the Tone for Summer “Were you planning to come to the concert?” Avery asked, her thin eyebrows arching subtly in a way that worked the faintest notion of surprise into the suggestion.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Cynthia asked, staring levelly at her sister in law, just as clear that this remark was a challenge.
“Your boys aren’t even in the show,” Avery observed, “So there’s no real need. We thought it might be better if you didn’t, actually,” she added bluntly.
We thought. So, unless Alexander and Avery’s marriage had become so damned perfect that they’d developed spontaneous telepathy, or only had a single line of thought between them, she had been discussed. Again. Behind her back. This was becoming a repeated pattern. Her in laws discussed her, concluded that she was an embarrassment, and pushed her out. Normally it was coffee mornings or cocktail parties, but now they could tell her not to come and see her own children! The sheer affrontary of it stung badly enough, and it was like salt being rubbed into the wound when she realised they were right. Because, after all, what was she supposed to do? Force her company on them? Make a scene? That would only prove their point that she was an embarrassment. It felt more and more like her in-laws were dictating how she ran her life, and she was sick of it.
“Fine!” she snapped angrily, not wanting to give Avery the satisfaction of having to grovel to her for permission to see her own boys. She could still have her pride, whatever they thought about the matter. She regretted the word as soon as it was out of her mouth. They were her children. Should she be doing more, fighting more? But her tolerance for any interactions with her in-laws was getting shorter by the day.
That was the reason. Those were all the reasons. She was trying to protect Nathaniel and Jeremy from embarrassment. She didn’t want to give Avery the satisfaction. She was sick of her and Alexander.
And she felt guilt because she’d given in so easily. Because they were her children. Not for any other reason.
Nothing else was going on.
*
“Can I stay over?” Jeremy asked, as they all exited the Floo at Uncle Alexander and Aunt Avery’s.
“Jeremy,” said Nathaniel, making the one word a scold. “You shouldn’t tonight. Mother is waiting for us at our house.”
“Maybe mother won’t be feeling up to seeing us,” Jeremy pointed out, crossing his arms firmly across his chest. “She isn’t well, after all. I wouldn’t want to disturb her.” Nathaniel was always saying Jeremy didn’t care enough, didn’t take mother’s imagined illnesses seriously enough. Well now, he could take those words and damn well choke on them, couldn’t he? If mother could play up her headaches to avoid them, then there was no reason why Jeremy shouldn’t take just as much advantage in return.
Nathaniel’s mouth thinned with irritation. He did not enjoy having his attempts to teach Jeremy to be nice and to be considerate of their mother thrown back at him. “Fine, but do be home for lunch tomorrow,” he said.
*
Claiming a headache had allowed Cynthia to avoid standing about like a servant to see Alexander and Avery off. After that point, with no snooping relatives to judge her, the evening had taken a pleasanter turn for a time. But now she was back home, and she had found it difficult to settle herself. The walls of her boudoir had seemed to be closing in on her. Perhaps she had given herself too long. She had come back with plenty of time to spare. Wandering restlessly around the house, nursing her resentment against her in-laws, she had settled in the sunroom for a time, and had remembered Nathaniel’s last birthday party there and struck upon an idea.
The sunroom would not work for what she had in mind now, though. The boys would come home through the Floo from Alexander and Avery’s, and there was no Floo connection in the sunroom. Instead, then, it was in the living room that she charmed a banner to read ‘Welcome Home!’ and prepared a small table with three place settings and a small cake for them to share, and…
...saw only one son emerge from the fire after the green flames died down and were replaced by more normal ones.
“Where’s your brother?” she asked Nathaniel anxiously.
Nathaniel flushed, and she knew, really, at that moment that there was nothing wrong as such - except that everything was wrong, and had been for years, now. She was already steeling herself to put on a stoic face, then, when Nathaniel said, “Jeremy...decided to stay with Uncle Alexander and Aunt Avery tonight. He was worried about you,” he added quickly. “He thought you might still have a headache, so he was going to stay out from underfoot - especially since he’s tired, you know, he knows he’s cranky when he’s tired, so he stayed with them. He’ll be home tomorrow.”
“Of course,” said Cynthia, as brightly as possible, though she doubted she was really much better at hiding her hurt and disappointment and frustration than Nathaniel was at hiding his. Because of course she was barely better at this most crucial of exercises than a thirteen-year-old boy....
“We’ll save him a piece of cake,” she said firmly. “But for now - Welcome home!” she exclaimed, opening her arms for a hug.
She kept her face on, and by the time they retired to their respective bedrooms, she had even slightly enjoyed her little party with Nathaniel, and thought he had too. Alone in the double bed in her room, however, lying on her back and staring at the shadows playing over the ceiling, her eyes burning, she thought again of Avery and Alexander and could not completely suppress, for one moment, the thought that perhaps she could after all acknowledge that Nicky might have had a point in wishing to abandon at least parts of his family.
*
Nathaniel had said to be home by lunch. Nathaniel was not the boss of him, and Jeremy was sorely tempted to choose his own time to arrive back. Except Aunt Avery and Uncle Alexander were quite busy and he was always aware that he was treading quite a fine line there, seeing as he was not really their child. He thought it might be possible for him to overstay his welcome. He thought it might not be possible to keep his bad moods to himself and then he’d be in trouble. He tumbled out of the fireplace well in advance of noon.
“Sweetheart! Welcome home!” Cynthia smiled, running forward to draw him into a hug which was received with a stiff back. The banner still hung behind her.
“You’re feeling better then,” Jeremy stated. “I thought I should stay out of your way last night, seeing as you were too ill to see us.”
Cynthia flushed. “Much better today, yes,” she said. “And that much more now that you and your brother are both home. Come, sit….”
“We saved you some cake,” offered Nathaniel, who had just entered the room.
“What do you mean?” Jeremy asked, frowning.
“I ordered a cake to welcome you boys home last night,” said Cynthia. “Or today, I suppose. Chocolate with strawberries,” she added, coaxingly, hoping to tempt him into good behavior as the frown warned her that he might well quickly divert into bad.
“You had a party without me,” he stated, his eyes passed again over the banner. It hadn’t impressed him much as it was, but learning that it was just Nathaniel’s sloppy seconds, all just left over from mother and Nathaniel having a cosy little get together without him, made him loathe it. “You were too sick to come to our concert, but not to have a nice little party with Nathaniel when he came home?” he glared.
“It - I wouldn’t really say it was a party, Jeremy,” said Cynthia. “I - I just - had this planned for a few days,” she blatantly lied. “For both of you.”
That part, at least, was true. She had wanted to welcome both of the boys home. Perhaps Nathaniel coming home was less complicated - perhaps she rarely felt half the apprehension in a year about what was going to come out of her older son’s mouth that she felt in two days about the younger one - but Jeremy was her son, too. If anything, Jeremy was even more purely her own than Nathaniel - she doubted Jeremy even remembered Nicky, at least not in any detail.
“You still did it without me, whatever it was,” he pointed out angrily, ignoring the fact that he had chosen to stay away. “I was staying out of your way because you weren’t well,” he glared, just daring either of them to call him out on that because if they crossed that line, there was so much more to come their way - mother’s fake headache, for example, the one that hadn’t stopped her having fun with Nathaniel when he got in.
“That was sweet of you,” said Cynthia, still hoping to preserve a semblance of decorum. “You couldn’t have known I was feeling a little better last night.”
“No. But you could have waited,” Jeremy glared. “I guess it was just too exciting given that-” he stopped as he realised, glancing between Nathaniel and mother to see if they had too. “Why were you planning this for days?” he asked. “You were sick for days but suddenly better the second Nathaniel got home?” he pressed, “Or you’d been planning to let us down for a week already?”
“Jeremy!” snapped Nathaniel, going red, his hands clenching by his sides. “That’s enough!”
“Nathaniel, please,” said Cynthia, more sharply than she meant to. She was also flushed, though in her case with embarrassment at being caught so easily by Jeremy. That, however, was a secondary concern now; she was certain that it was not a good moment for Nathaniel to play at adulthood with his brother, no matter how noble his intentions. “Things - things just - were going to be here when you got home, that’s all - as they are,” she fumbled desperately.
“Right. Well, I’m not hungry right now,” Jeremy answered, a small voice in his head nagging him that maybe all that could be true. But, even if it was, the bitter sting of being made into a mean, unreasonable person didn’t help him want to back down. It just made him angry that he’d been made to feel that way. The one balm to his bruised feelings was hearing mother snap at Nathaniel. Maybe he wasn’t golden boy after all. He would still be better than Jeremy, of course, but Mother’s patience with him was finite too - because she was a shrivelled up and bitter old hag who didn’t know how to be a decent parent to anyone. “Maybe later,” he glared, stalking past his mother and brother and off up to his room.