RP:Que Será, Será (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)

Part of the Laugh Now, Cry Later Arc

Summary: Hudson makes a surprise visit to Alvina and their children in Schezerade. Harper, the eldest of their twins, explodes in rage while the other children clamor for his attention as if nothing has changed. The Landon's dance around the awkwardness of a failed marriage with the tether of their children and Hudson discloses that he's supporting Valrae's intentions to run for Mayor of Cenril against Uma. No doubt the campaign will re-air some of the trio's dirty laundry.

Rental Bungalow

At Brennia’s behest, Alvina takes up temporary residence in Schezerade near the bard’s college campus. She’s moved all four of her temperamental children into a plainly painted bungalow situated picturesquely next to a lush park frequented by various college students. The front door is propped open to welcome the unseasonably warm air in. Luna is sprawled out on the small porch, belly down, towering over a plush novel that had seen better days. Bryce is in the fenced off section of their side yard, complaining about playing with Meadow. Meadow is, classically, nipping at his shoe laces in wolf form, waiting for him to throw the worn ball he has tucked in his palm. At 12, he’s viciously rude, and pretends to throw the ball to watch his sister scramble in confusion more often than actually throwing it. Meadow maintains her childish charm at the werewolf equivalent of 9. She whines and yelps loudly at her brother’s cruel tricks.

“Bryce, be nice to your sister!” Alvina yells from the kitchen, digging through her purse in search of a particular portfolio she swears she’d brought home. The house is furnished with luxury items; multiple couches, extravagant coffee tables with decorative books, too pretty to read. The living room is cast in sunlight from the plethora of windows along the ceiling. Mercifully, she finds the portfolio and pulls it free just as Harper enters the kitchen and opens the door to the ice box.

“Hey sweetie,” Alvina’s expression softens at the eldest, who only bristles under her mother’s attention. Alvina's tried just about everything she could think of to ease the aloof bitterness that continued to fester in her daughter, with little success. Maybe it’s because the twins were nearly 15, proper teenagers full of angst and exaggerated emotions. Harper scratches at the back of her neck, her hair cuts off just shy of her chin, and shuts the ice box a little too hard. Alvina ignores it and averts her gaze to the living room, where Marge, their long time live in nanny, was watering plants.

“You still haven’t told me what you want for your birthday this year?” Alvina tries, sweetly. “I know you don’t want horseback riding lessons like Luna but…” Harper’s shoulders stiffen. “What do you think I want?” She snaps, tearing the cap off a bottle of seltzer water and throwing it into the sink.

“Harper.” Alvina’s tone is a warning. She can feel their wolves, anger bubbling under the surface and ready to bare teeth. “You know better than to talk to me that way.” A low growl rides the undercurrent of her words. Harper, disinterested in her mother’s reprimanding, sighs in a way only teenagers can and breezes out of the kitchen to the front porch with Luna. Alvina sighs, throwing her portfolio on the table in frustration.

____________

Hudson of course knows where his family resides because he pays for it. When Alvina had sent him the details on costs, it had all been approved more or less sight unseen. It doesn’t make sense to fight her on money, all things considered, so he doesn’t. Also, it’s just not very complicated: she does know best. She is their mother.

And he is their father. Maybe the polite thing to do would be to send ahead word that he’d be dropping by, but for his own reasons he doesn’t. He wants to be here, so he is. Out on the porch, Luna and Harper pay little mind to the sound of an approaching carriage, but they’ll both jerk up when the voice of their father addresses them from the steps: “You really shouldn’t give your mom a hard time.”

“Dad!” exclaims Luna, scrambling to her feet and running to throw her arms around him. This part’s easy. He pulls her close in a hug, kissing the top of her head.

“Oh, you’ve both gotten extremely tall and beautiful,” says Hudson, his heart scuppering on the words. “Hi Luna, honey, hi.” He kisses the top of her head again, peeking at Harper, whose face is flushed in anger. He can feel it.

“Hi,” she says simply.

“I like your hair cut,” says Hudson.

“Mom!” shouts Harper, as if her own father were an intruder.

Yelling randomly across a very large house never really being a good strategy for getting someone’s attention, Luna excuses herself to go find Alvina.

“Did mom know you’re coming over?” Harper crosses her arms over her chest. How quickly she changes sides between parents …

“No.”

“You should have told her.” A beat. “So I could make sure not to be here.”

That cuts, and Hudson sucks in a breath. “Honey.”

“You just send us away,” her tone is filled with bitterness. “Like none of us know how to read.” What’s in the papers. “Like people don’t talk.” About him being the mafia king of Cenril, about Candice Snow. “You barely even know Meadow.” They grow up so quickly, she had still been little …

“That’s not true. I know Meadow. And your mom updates me about Meadow.” One expects a certain amount of angst from teenagers. Given the circumstances, Hudson had anticipated this. But it still stings. “Is there something about Meadow your mom wouldn’t have told me about?”

“Whatever,” says Harper. “You just want to know so you can throw money at it.”

“Is that what you think? You think I don’t miss you guys and don’t think about you all the time?”

“Yeah, that is what I think,” says Harper, pinning him with a serrated gaze.

No one could gut you like your own child. “Well it’s not true,” says Hudson quietly. “I’m here because I do miss you guys.”

“We were doing just fine without you,” says Harper pointedly, and turns on her heel to go back into the house, slamming the porch door in her wake. “I told you I didn’t want to talk to him!” she can be heard screaming rather irrationally and tearfully at someone, presumably Alvina, in passing.

____________

Between the noise Bryce and Meadow are making and her thundering anger at Harper, Alvina doesn’t hear Hudson’s carriage approach. What she does hear is Harper’s shrill voice from the porch, burning with venom. Alvina stares a hole through the table. “Harper, I swear to the gods…” She whispers through grit teeth, preparing to wage war against her daughter when Luna appears in the kitchen doorway. Her face is flushed with excitement, a bright smile nestled there. It knocks Alvina off balance. Before Alvina can even ask, Luna chimes “Dad’s here” like it’s the second coming.

Harper runs into the house a beat later, tear stained and still screaming. All the anger in Alvina deflates with a heavy sigh. “Harper.” She calls weakly to the chorus of slamming doors. Luna looks at Alvina, uncertain. “Just give her a minute…” Alvina rubs her face before moving towards the entryway and reopens the front door.

She finds Hudson on the lawn, looking a bit like a kicked dog. Harper’s always had the innate ability to find the things that hurt her father the most. She frowns at him apologetically and leans against the door frame. Her soft curls are pinned back away from her face to fall down the back of her white sleeveless ribbed knit sweater. It’s complimented by a smart knee length skirt, indicative of work attire.

“Is everything okay?” She keeps her voice low to safeguard the quiet bubble that bloomed around them. He hadn’t sent word that he’d be coming so she can only think the worst of his visit. She opens her mouth to say something else but she’s cut off by a fuzzy blur that runs past her. Meadow, at mach 5, launches herself at him. Bryce follows behind at a more modest speed, slipping past Alvina. He’s nearly a head taller than her now. Puberty hits like a carriage.

“Yoooo.” Bryce says, no doubt thinking he sounds super cool and mature. Meadow’s determined to lick Hudson’s face if it kills her. Alvina watches their children circle him, like moths dancing around a flame. It touches an ache she tries to ignore. “Kids,” She says, sounding tired, “Give your father a chance to catch his breath.”

“Come in,” she says softly to her husband, a weight settling on her chest. “Harper will calm down, just give her a little bit.” Even repeated, the words sound empty. They both knew Harper’s version of calm wasn’t going to match the energy of the rest of their children. Alvina turns to head inside and Luna moves up to fill the space her mother leaves. “Dad, you’ve got to see the house!” Luna chirps, ever his little starling. Luna follows Bryce and Meadow into the front yard to join their father while Alvina raps her knuckles on Harper’s bedroom door. Marge, well versed in the family's habitual events, asks Hudson if he’d like something to drink once he ventures inside.

____________

Hudson does look like a kicked dog. He leaves the porch and walks a shallow distance out onto the lawn to cool off, hands in his pockets, gazing at the college students in the park. Alvina calls out to him moments later. He looks back at her, turning slowly to walk back onto the porch, the tired expression still on his face, on her face too. It was always Harper. But things aren’t the way they always were. “Everything’s fine,” he exhales. “I just wanted to see you guys.” Implicit there is her inclusion among ‘you guys.’ She looks great. The words die in his throat, unsaid, as Hudson reminds himself of all the pointed civility characterizing their private interactions, of the cruel things they’d said to each other to draw a line marked Do Not Cross.

Do you ever get tired of washing blood off your hands? My hands? It’s only a matter of time before –

Meadow launches herself into his arms, and he bends down to hold her, to smell her, this complicated creature who preferred to be a wolf, who wasn’t like the others. He leans away but she licks his face anyway, and he laughs.

“Hey Bryce buddy,” Hudson continues to try to dodge licks from Meadow and greets his son. “I haven’t had any reports about your behavior at school, which I am pleased to hear.”

“Whatever,” says Bryce. “School’s easy.”

“Guess we’re really into saying ‘whatever’ around here,” observes Hudson, releasing Meadow now that she has taken sudden interest in what appears to be a rubber ball. He glances at Alvina, nodding that he’ll be invited inside.

It’s just never very straight forward, being separated, seeing her face in his children.

“House looks great, your mom picked everything out so all credit goes to her,” says Hudson to Luna as they head inside. He embraces Marge, their nanny, and will take a glass of water, thank you.

While Alvina negotiates with a hostile Harper, he sits on their couch, making conversation with Bryce, who is eager to impress his father with how actively he’s been following the Cenril Cubbies in the offseason. Meadow curls up on him, with the rubber ball, which is slightly disgusting, but this is life with children and/or dogs (and children who prefer to be dogs) sometimes. At length, Luna cuts into the conversation, shyly disclosing a boy from school, whom Hudson has already heard about from Alvina.

“So what does he want to be when he’s older?” Hudson asks patiently, as if this relationship his fifteen year old daughter could have with some random kid from school is going to end in actual marriage.

“So, he’s in a band,” Luna is very excited about this, the prestige of this Boy In A Band, which is obviously a very significant get for her at her age. “He plays guitar and is the lead singer.”

“The lead singer,” Hudson says as if he’s hearing it for the first time. But he already knows this, because Alvina’s letter to him on it had actually been kind of inadvertently hilarious. She’d written it all matter of fact, but it hadn’t mattered, he’d autocorrected it in reading it. He had pictured her tone, her eyes rolling, them discussing this lead singer guitarist love interest of Luna’s over wine … before.

“I’m going to all the gigs,” Luna blushes. “I mean, there have only been two at the coffee shop.”

“Very supportive of you,” says Hudson. “Has he been over the house?”

“So, Mom said she had to talk to you about it,” Luna is quite the little operator here, thinks Hudson. Talking to him about this while Alvina is dealing with Harper. As if he and Alvina would not sidebar about this.

“His band sucks,” says Bryce.

“Shut up,” Luna throws a decorative pillow at him. “Dad, can you stay for dinner?”

Hudson is inclined to believe his son, frankly. “Guys.” He wipes his hand on his pants. “You are drooling on me,” he addresses Meadow. “Dinner I need to talk about with your mom. Can you get her and give us a minute?”

____________

Harper has an enchanted record player turned to 11. The blockade of her door vibrates defensively at the very end of the hall. Alvina leans her head against it, wishing for the magic words to mend Harper. To mend the situation that was unamendable. “Harper.” She remembers Lanara’s optimistic rendition of a future where friendship was preferable to this cold, matter-of-fact façade she’s adopted. Her own barricade to try and separate herself from what he was and what she’d become beside him.

Harper still refuses to answer the door. Alvina sighs and feels the pulse of Aubree’s brittle bones snap effortlessly in her hands with the back beat. She hears Candice’s screams from the warehouse basement woven in the singer’s screeching.

She blots it out, shoving it back in it’s shallow grave, and moves down the hallway. She listens around the corner, out of sight, as Luna and Bryce chat excitedly with their father. Marge brings him a water with familiar ease and gives Alvina an unobtrusive look on her way back to the kitchen. Dinner would be started soon. It was a twisted version of normalcy. All the dark things tucked away in places not to be touched.

She rolls her eyes privately at Luna’s talk of her boyfriend. It’s scary and endearing to see these parts of herself in her daughter. She smirks privately when Bryce says the boy’s music sucks. It was really terrible.

Alvina reappears, mouth a thin line, shaking her head. No luck with Harper. Upon her re-entry, Luna looks pleadingly at her father to try and stay. The youngest twin moves to pick up her wiggling pup of a sister before turning to give her mother the same pleading look. ‘Please’ she mouths, with a face that says ‘I never ask for anything’. Which was completely untrue.

“Go on.” She says softly to Luna. They watch their children vacate the living room, which suddenly feels too big and suffocating quiet.

“E.L. actually recommended this table ages ago.” She says, by way of laying out a benign carpet for them to tread over. “Something about a famous author having one. ‘Anyone who’s anyone,’ you know.” She feels like she should thank him for not fighting her on all the outlandish purchases but instead she pushes one of the books on the table's surface back in place. She flattens her skirt against the back of her legs and sits cautiously on the couch. Like he was necrotic and being too close would rot her from the inside. Her eyes stay on the coffee table decorations, steeling herself. It was easier in letters. It was the first time they’d seen each other since he’d left. It pressed on the bruise buried deep under her skin and she couldn’t decide if it was relief or rage that hummed through her blood. Maybe the wolves were also uneasy. When she did look at him, he looked the way she felt; tired and uncertain in navigating the strangeness of what they’d become.

____________

Luna could talk to her father about her boyfriend all evening, but Alvina mercifully arrives and interrupts, so neither Luna nor Bryce have to displace themselves to fetch her. Hudson watches Alvina dismiss them smoothly, and is glad to see how little resistance she meets. It is literally amazing how few questions they had for him. How their primary focus was telling him the mundane stuff about their lives, or in Meadow’s case, drooling a puddle on him.

“Seems like a thing mum would do, and or say,” says Hudson, when he and Alvina are alone. “That’s nice of her to help, I hadn’t realized.” It makes sense, though. His mother is above all things a kind human who loves Alvina for her own sake, not because she’s the mother to four grandbabies. E.L. had been a single mother herself and would want to make things easier on Alvina, so … nice of her to offer her assistance by picking out a table.

Maybe that hadn’t exactly continued the thread of conversation. A silence swells between them.

Hudson draws a breath. “I’m sorry, about Harper. She uh, she can talk to me when she’s ready, I don’t want to make it any worse.” He frowns. He’d thought to just say that, to level set, so it didn’t fester between them as some unspoken failing on Alvina’s part that she’d failed to wrangle what they both knew to be his favorite child. Except in speaking the words aloud he feels only how desperately he wants to talk to Harper, to hug her, to tell her he thinks of her all the time.

“It’s really fine,” he says miserably, offering Alvina a smile. “So,” the word is percussive between them, a beat that carries the conversation onward. “I take it you ah … don’t want the amazingly talented Connor Snowberst to hang out at the house with Luna … because it’s news to me you have to ask me about it. Kind of feel like if you intended to ask me you’d have asked me. So probably by me being here I’m messing up the whole ruse about how you need to ask me.” He snorts faintly, amusement settling in the corners of his gaze. This is a safe topic, he tells himself. It’s safe. Except he can’t read Alvina’s expression. When did that happen? When did she learn to draw down an iron curtain that made her thoughts a mystery to him? “Well anyway,” he exhales carefully. “Yeah you can say I did not sign off on this. She’s fifteen. When she’s sixteen we can re-assess. But hopefully they’ve just broken up.”

____________

Alvina frowns at his apology about Harper. The misery surrounding their interaction on the lawn lingers; with Harper decibels away and Hudson looking worn in the living room sun. With all the things they’ve said to each other, raw or dull as they might be, at this moment he looks…not quite like himself. She sighs, picking at an imaginary piece of lint on her skirt. “She just doesn’t know what to do.” Harper’s rage was as much a mark of caring as it was of pain. As caring as any wrathful daughter’s barbed words could be. There could be no ‘it’s fine’ to tend the wound. “It will be okay.” Not now but someday. His ‘it’s really fine’ is less convincing. Neither of them believe it.

He brings up Luna’s boyfriend; an umbrella they can huddle under and Alvina lets him talk. She watches the uncertainty in his posture and feels something important lurking nearby. She was guarded but his prolonged monologue about Connor softens her enough to let her hum through a smile. “Hopefully, she’ll thank us one day.” It was bound to dissolve. They were teenagers. Hudson agrees to take the blame and she lofts her brows at the floor. “I really just didn’t want to deprive you of the joy of intimidating him as the father of his loyal fan girl slash girlfriend.” She bites the inside of her cheek. “We could invite Harper’s girlfriend and make a night of it.” A joke that falls short. She’d tried but he’s just sitting next to her, uneasy and out of his element. It feels cruel to be cold…if he’d wanted to see them. It feels cruel that he’s here.

Do you ever forget? She looks back at him, the question an unspoken wedge between them. The battlefield at their feet is mortar shells and trenches choked with blood. Bodies floating on the surface of the pooled collective, face down, drowning even in death. They’ve fought about it endless times but coming out of hiding and his being here. She balls her hands in her lap and swallows the words before they come out. No one knew better what they were capable of than each other. Hadn’t they said all they needed to about that?

“You should stay for dinner.” She offers instead, meeting his gaze. “You came all this way.” The sentiment feels flat. He could have always come. Here or home or anywhere. He had the luxury of always knowing where they were while they were always wondering. Harper stole the newspapers first thing every morning. She’d never said why but Alvina knew; she was searching for news about her father.

“Maybe Harper will settle over some mac and cheese.” A beat. “I could use your help figuring out what to get her for their birthday next week. She won’t tell me a damn thing.” She’d already told him in one of her letters about what Luna asked for. Horseback riding lessons from a painter / hippie / former pop singer in Rynvale in the middle of literally nowhere. It was too much of a yoga retreat for Alvina’s personal liking but it was their birthday. She sighs again, unable to push that weight off her chest.

“Marge?” She calls, standing to meet the nanny in the hall. “Could you run to the bazaar and pick up a couple more things for dinner?”

____________

“Well, Harper’s girlfriend can’t get Harper pregnant, but I guess that’s a fair point. We could allow that. Make it a game night or something,” sighs Hudson. “I guess I remember being that age and thinking, you know. That the person you’ve met will be the person you spend your whole life with.” He offers Alvina an uneasy smile.

Alvina invites him to dinner and he nods slowly. Maybe Harper will settle. It might sweeten the deal if her girlfriend is permitted to come over. The thought sinks inside of him, and suddenly it feels impossible to Hudson to talk with Harper about anything, much less her sexuality. He wonders if the message had gotten muddied through no fault of Alvina’s. Harper had only ever come out to her mother, and he knows that Alvina had told Harper that of course her father loves her the way she is. He’d felt choked up when Alvina had written to him about it.

It was just one more thing he’d missed …

And in missing it, he’d never said the words to Harper himself. Harper’s a teenager, she couldn’t see inside their heads, she couldn’t know that Hudson and Alvina had long seen this truth about her, that Harper’s speaking it aloud had been a moment of triumph for her, for them. For wherever else they’d failed as parents - failed to stay together, certainly - their daughter had felt empowered to come to them vulnerable and to voice this inexorable truth about herself.

Hudson isn’t thinking about Harper’s birthday at all. His expression has fallen. “Do you think … do you think she thinks I’m avoiding her because I’m not proud of her?” it’s just a question but it cuts deep to say it aloud. The words are barely out before they cause injury to his pride. He doesn’t want to be this way in front of Alvina. Or to see this expression of hers on her face right now. He draws a steadying breath. “I’m just tilted because of how she was on the porch,” he dismisses it. “She knows I love her, and in any event, I will tell her what I should have said in person.” A beat. “Yeah, I can stay. I’d like to. Then I’ll be out of your hair. Back to the hotel.”

____________

Alvina comes back into the living room to receive his question about the reason for Harper’s anger. There are, no doubt, many different reasons Harper must be upset. Hudson had missed important moments. Harper specifically felt abandoned by him because of how close they were. When he left, though it was a battle both parents agreed needed to be resolved, it still created a hole in the household. His presence, as infuriating and tense as it had become to Alvina, was felt by everyone. Alvina carried her own guilt about it and often wondered if the children blamed them for not being able to hold things together. If they blamed her for his leaving for good.

She wraps her arms around herself and looks at him. Her expression was an apology she didn’t say. She moves back to the couch and sits briefly. She reaches out to rest her hand on his for a moment. As wounded as he looked, even Harper’s words couldn’t change anything.

“She knows you’re proud of her.” Hands poised again in her lap she adds. “I know, but it’s our kids. If anything’s allowed to tilt someone.” Then “She’s mad at both of us.” Harper was just giving Alvina a hard time before Hudson’s arrival. “She’s just…angry.” And Alvina doesn't know what to do about it. For all their differences, Alvina knew he loved their children.

The front door closes as Marge leaves. “I’ll start making dinner so Marge won’t be rushed when she gets back.” Maybe Harper would talk to him if he showed interest in meeting her girlfriend. He’s staying in a hotel. She wants to ask why he isn’t staying in the luxurious mansion they still owned but she knows why.

“Maybe,” she suggests softly. “You should invite Harper out sometime after today? So it can be just the two of you? Maybe she’d be more inclined to not scream and run off. A long shot but…a little attention can go a long way.” If anyone needed it, it was her. “Maybe not to the hotel.” In case it’s dangerous or his room is filled with various women. She couldn’t tell how he felt to be here. The wall between them made it difficult. She almost missed the shouting by comparison. At least then she knew where he was.

“Or maybe not Cenril? I heard there was some kind of zombie outbreak…” The undertone was ‘I don’t want her anywhere near your business’. A common theme they both knew like steps in a deadly waltz.

____________

Hudson sighs, mulling over Alvina’s suggestion of spending one on one time with Harper. “I could, but with things like this, more than ever, I don’t want to give preferential treatment,” he says. Even though they both know how he feels, that Harper is his favorite, he isn’t about to rub that in everyone else’s face, even if maybe they suspect too. “Maybe for her birthday I’ll figure out something, although she’ll probably say I’m ruining it.”

He struggles to believe that Harper was giving Alvina a hard time too, but he knows it must be true. He draws a steadying breath and his gaze briefly flicks to Alvina to belatedly mark the warning notes he’d heard about the hotel, Cenril in general. “It’s not as bad as it sounds, by the way, in Cenril. It’s confined to parts of it we wouldn’t go. There’s a quarantine. And masks help prevent the spread. Also, prevailing public opinion is that werewolves are immune.” But he doesn’t want Harper in Cenril for his own reasons. Doesn’t want it to confirm whatever thoughts she might have about her father, whatever she’s read, which is probably true. “But, you know. I’ll figure it out, if it’s something that interests her..”

He drains the last of his water and sets the glass on the coffee table, considering Alvina as a long silence stretches out between them. He feels he should ask her how she’s doing, to show her he cares what the answer is, but the words are sticking to the insides of his teeth. It’s just so much easier to talk about their children, a neutral topic they are both committed to finding common ground on.

How are you, are you okay, do you have everything you need? It wouldn’t be that hard, but he won’t. Not even that they might fight, those questions have their own implications.

He clears his throat. “Valrae has been going after Uma in the press over the zombies, I don’t know to what extent you’re aware of that, or if you’re aware at all.” He steadies a gaze elsewhere, as he hadn’t chosen to discuss a nuclear topic in lieu of asking a basic question about her emotional state. “Uma’s politically toxic now. I’ve about had it, I told Valrae to just run for Mayor.” He manages to look at Alvina directly. “So you’ve heard that from me. Probably will be widely reported soon. I’ll try to keep the press focused on her candidacy, but probably they’ll portray her as the right person to resist my influence. Old stuff might come up.”

____________

“She probably won’t tell you it interests her but yeah, at least for her birthday, consider it.” Khitti hadn’t mentioned anything about werewolves being immune, quarantines and the like. If it was published, Alvina hadn’t been able to read about it in the papers with Harper always snagging them first. “Luna’s already got her gift in mind, which involves an overnight stay and Harper’s not one to brag anyway. So the timing could work out all right, I think.”

Alvina has no illusions about their state of affairs. The business transaction that had become their marriage was easier through letters. She still felt the empty space in the bed he’d bought her. In the mentions of him from their children. His absence was a silent force in their lives. Beyond bank statements, she was the one tending to the pieces of the life they’d shattered together. It was a necessary arrangement.

“I knew it was only a matter of time.” She says, matching his gaze. They were all used to how the papers treated them by now. Scandalous rumors, murders, violence and crime all plastered haphazardly on headlines.

He’d specifically chosen to say this in person with their kids in the other room. “Is Uma going to keep her husband company?” Uma’s husband, Fitz, died after winning the Mayoral election in Cenril years ago. Uma’d been shoehorned in to take Fitz’s place. Fitz had been the perfect candidate, and friend, for Hudson’s underworld influence. Or would have been. If things had fallen into place. Uma had always proven herself a little more difficult to herd. What had never proven difficult was adding another body to the body count.

____________

Alvina is asking if Hudson has ordered a hit on Uma, and Hudson shakes his head. “No no,” he exhales. He’d find a use for Uma Abelin. She would still be politically connected. And, people would forget about the virus, eventually. It would be cured. Such things always were, or all of humanity would end. Nothing else was conceivable. “Uma’s been a good soldier. And a friend, honestly.”

Is he that dangerous seeming to his own wife, that he’d throw even Uma in the trash? He’d meant politically toxic like a hyperbole, but he realizes that maybe it’s just hard to tell anymore.

How are you, are you okay, do you have everything you need? The questions bubble up his throat and die on the tip of his tongue.

“I don’t know what’ll be next for Uma, but she’s going to be fine and she and Marco probably will enjoy not having to deal with,” his hand sweeps the air, “all of it.” All of it. That had been the wrong thing to say. A loaded silence stretches out between them once more. Alvina had avoided the subject of Valrae. Not a surprise, even though she was like Uma in that they owed a lot to her, too. He clears his throat. “Anyway, that’s that development,” he says. “Thanks for being cool with me coming by. I’m going to go grab Bryce and Meadow and have a catch in the yard. You ah, wanna tell me which side of the yard Harper can see out her window?”

____________

Alvina crosses her arms protectively. He can’t really be surprised she’d asked about Uma’s life expectancy. She’s visibly relieved when he earnestly denies any danger to the current mayor and her family. Alvina’s always loved Uma. They’d gotten close at barbecues and teasing their husbands about various men's behaviors. She’d also gotten closer to Valrae, the night Val’s son was born, during the witch celebration Uma invited Alvina to. They didn't talk but they had shared moments. Alvina would be quick to say it’s a two way street but she knows she’s been too wrapped up in her own situation to reach out. There was a lot his wife could say about both women but it all felt awkward. The line drawn in their marriage’s end presumably found Uma and Valrae on the other side, in Cenril, with Hudson. She’d never guessed it would go any other way.

She gives him a look that equates to resignation and gestures towards the side yard where Bryce and Meadow had been playing before his abrupt arrival. It ran the length of the back of the house, which included Harper’s room. She didn’t hear any blasting music anymore. Maybe it was a good sign.

“I’m going to start dinner.”

On the back porch steps, Meadow is illegally chewing on Bryce’s baseball glove, the ball close by. Bryce is at the fence line with Luna, talking to a boy that can only be the infamous Connor. Luna’s flushed and laughing too loud until Bryce cuts in with a hushed comment that upsets her. Connor looks unphased.

“Go away!” Luna shouts at Bryce, clearly embarrassed.

“I’m telling mom!” Bryce retorts, turning back towards the house to find Meadow slobbering on his glove. “DUDE.” He hisses, running back to snatch it away from her. He spots his father a second later. “Luna’s dumb boyfriend is here.” He says, though Connor is plainly in sight. “And Meadow won’t stop eating my glove,” To his sister Bryce groans “Dude, come on, this is the THIRD time this week, you’re gonna ruin it!”

____________

Alvina directs Hudson to the part of the yard in view of Harper’s bedroom and he flashes her a tired but quick grateful smile. “Sounds like a plan,” he says amiably enough to her intention to make dinner.

They part ways. It had been painful but also seamless. He has the sensation of old muscles being flexed, the memory of how to be a family returning in color. Through the porch door he can see all the kids are outside, together, except Harper. Bryce is trying to retrieve his baseball glove. Luna is giving doll eyes to a tall guy in skinny trousers with a shaggy cut at the fence. Connor, confirms Bryce.

“I got it,” says Hudson, and intervenes smoothly to pry the drooled on glove from Meadow’s teeth. Meadow, who had only been playing, barks a single bark. An ‘I was just playing’ bark. With a whine, she flattens her ears and lies flat on the porch. “Come on, bud,” says Hudson to Bryce, jerking his head to the yard.

As they toss the ball back and forth, Hudson can see a slim figure watching, arms crossed, from the window upstairs.

Things would be what they had to be.