Secrets of the Past

by Kerri G.

Part 3

Logan strolled back into the house to find Jazz on the phone, the boy frowning heavily at the wall, back turned towards the front door where his father stood. The tense, aggressive pose told Logan that Jazz was seriously annoyed. It made him curious.

"Yeah, okay, I'll come out there to get you." His voice was gruff, unwilling. He didn't want to talk to the caller at all. "You'll have to walk in. Mom isn't around right now to let in any vehicles. She's here, just not around. We've got company. It's not that funny."

Logan stopped to listen, hearing the caller's voice laugh. It was a man. The hair on the back of his neck prickled in response.

"I'll try to reach her and tell her you're here, sure, but I don't know if she'll come rushing home." He hung up the phone, letting out a frustrated breath. "Damn!" he said to the wall.

"Problem?" Logan asked, hoping there was one, just to get rid of some of the stress he was feeling from Charlotte's revelations, the envelopes in his shirt pocket. He was acutely aware of those few scraps of paper. He didn't like feeling he'd left something unfinished.

Jazz looked up from the phone, blinking in surprise. "No, not really." Just the timing couldn't have been worse. "It's a friend of Mom's, he's out on the road outside the shields. I don't think she knew he was coming, and he has to be let in."

"Why?" Logan asked. "If she don't know he's here, why don'cha let him sit till she does?"

"Because then I'd really be in hot water," Jazz groused. "If you see the others, would you tell them I'll be back soon?"

Logan watched the boy leave, then turned to find his way into the library. Friend? What kind of friend? Not an intimate friend, he knew that much.

He looked around the huge room, shaking his head at all the books on the floor-to-ceiling shelves. There were titles in every genre, but he prefered old hardboiled detective novels himself. Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane and Cornell Woolrich were favorites of his, and he didn't see any of those here. Her tastes ran more to fantasy and science fiction, apparently, with extensive collections in history, natural sciences, politics, all the highbrow stuff. There were even romances, though not as many as Rogue had.

He could hear the other kids up in the attic, shifting things around and talking. Jess was getting along with them pretty well. He thought maybe the kid would have a problem with the other students, being his kid, but he had to admit Charlotte raised him right. Jess got along with everybody.

Moving around to the cabinets, he opened them and found the TV set, VCR and stereo system. In the lower ones he found hundreds of video tapes and CDs. Again, the titles ranged from one end of the spectrum to the other for both video and audio. Classical and opera appeared to be her musical preference. There were collections of music from the different eras, even the recent decade. He opened the CD player out of curiosity to see what she'd listen to recently.

'Songs That Got Us Through WWII Vol. 2' He picked up the case to read the artist names. Bing Crosby, Dinah Shore, Benny Goodman, Vaughn Monroe, and the others. Some he liked, some he didn't.

The next cabinet had the liquor supply, a small bar with a limited selection. He found the whisky, noting absently from the unfamiliar label it was a single/single malt, and poured himself a generous glass. The first swallow was good, a smooth peaty-smoky tone to it. It was old, rich.

Glass in hand, the next stop was her desk. It was uncluttered, a stack of papers on one side. Peering at them, he saw they were covered in an elegant hand, the language unknown to him. He gave a thought to opening the drawers, but decided against doing so. He'd already invaded her life enough, she didn't deserve that from him. At least not yet.

He found her photo albums on a shelf behind her desk. From the dates on the leather album spines these pictures were old, nearly 150 years old, and there were albums for every decade since, beginning 1850. He took the first one down and and set it on the desk, turning it to the first page. A daguerreotype of Charlotte and an Indian man. He was too old to be Thomas, his long hair a silver grey in the old picture, but looked enough like him to be the father. He wore buckskin pants and vest, the strong body unbowed despite his age. Charlotte posed against him, her face tilted up to his. She was clearly happy. The Indian was wearing the medallion that now hung around Logan's neck, he could see it lying against the man's dark skin.

Logan touched it now, unconsciously responding the sudden heaviness of it around his neck, wondering briefly about the man who could inspire the kind of love she had written in every line of her body as she leaned against the Indian. Had he been that kind of man once? He hoped so.

He settled down in her chair with the rest of the albums within easy reach, and proceeded to catch up on the life of the woman he couldn't remember.

His wife.

~*~*~*~*~

Jazz stepped through the shields to find Wyn waiting patiently, leaning back against his Blazer.

Wyn grinned at the boy. "Hi, Jess."

"Hi." Jazz felt uncomfortable with Wyn now that Logan was in their lives. He wasn't a bad person, just in the way right now. "C'mon."

Unless Charlotte programmed the system to recognized and allow entry, the only ones who could get in or out were those wearing the special medallions embedded with the circuitry to bypass the shields. So far, it was just four of them - Mom, Thomas, Matthew and himself.

And now Logan, though he was sure Mom hadn't told him about that yet, if she ever did.

"Mom's off wandering around?" Wyn fell into step next to him, hands in his pocket, his overnight bag slung over a shoulder. The 527 year old Immortal Norseman was very tall, with a lean, muscular build. His sun-bleached blond hair fell in waves below his shoulders, combed back off a wide forehead, bright blue eyes missing little. He knew right off Jazz was uncomfortable about something, other than him. Jazz hadn't been all that comfortable with him to begin with, but Wyn had thought they'd at least found a common ground after all these years. Now it seemed they were back to square one.

"Yeah." Jazz's response was short and terse.

"So, you've got company. Anyone I know?" There were others that visited, he knew, friends that were Torelan, Immortal, and various other members of what one dubbed the Twilight Subculture. Charlotte's aversion to strangers was well known throughout their circle; it was inconceivable to Wyn that whoever was there wouldn't be known to him. They all had their aversions to the unknown, the results of decades and centuries of cautious existence.

"No. Some friends from school." And his father. It wasn't the kind of news Jazz felt like sharing with Wyn. He didn't feel like it was his place to let his mother's boyfriend know his father was back.

"Charlotte's let you go to school? Congratulations. When did all this happen? She didn't mention it when I spoke to her last month." He'd spent the last ten years of their fifteen year relationship trying to convince her Jazz needed a more formal education, but she always refused to hear anything on the subject. He first thought she resisted the issue because of boy's power, and then because she preferred the buffer zone Jess represented between her and him. He had to wonder what changed her mind. "That's why I haven't been able to reach her by phone the last couple weeks?"

One thing he'd learn over the centuries was that Patience was indeed a virtue, and all he usually had to do was wait out the situation. If he waited long enough, sometimes the situation resolved itself, one way or another.

"I guess." Jazz climbed the front stairs. Mom had been home for more than a week, after spending a few days at the school to check out the curriculum and the other students. The test romp in the Biosphere with the others to introduce him to the team still made him laugh. When Miss Frost challenged her to join in the game, in that cool, non-challenging way she had, Mom accepted with a glint in her eye, and a knife on her hip.

Angelo almost lost 2 feet of skin, and Ev had headaches for several days after he tried to synch with her. And when she shot Jubilee's paffs back at Paige just before Monet took Mom down hard, well.... Miss Frost seemed satisfied with the results. Mr. Cassidy just looked confused.

Attitude was everything in a battle, and Jazz's mom had that in abundence.

If Wyn hadn't been able to reach her it was because she didn't want to talk to him. That thought cheered him. "You might want to wait in the library. We're busy packing up my stuff." Maybe Dad could keep him company.

~*~*~*~*~

Wyn walked into the library, heading straight for the bar behind the cabinet doors. After pouring himself a drink, he turned to find himself looking at a short, dark man sitting at the desk, with his feet propped up on the shiny surface and one of Charlotte's photo albums opened in his lap. The man glanced up and pinned him with a gimlet stare. He looked pretty damned comfortable for a stranger.

"Oh, hello," he said, surprised. He didn't like surprises. "I didn't expect anyone to be in here."

"Get used to it, bub," Logan drawled. "I'm gonna be around a lot from now on." Shame the other man wouldn't be, though. Time to start cleaning house if he was going to reclaim what was his, just as soon as he figured out exactly what belonged to him.

And if he really wanted to claim it.

"I don't think I know you," Wyn said, his hackles rising just a bit. "I'm Wyn. I'm a friend of Charlotte's." He injected a wealth of meaning into the word.

"Name's Logan. I'm her husband." This was gonna tick her off good. He might consider taking out a full page ad to announce it. Maybe a sky writer?

"Husband?!" the other man repeated. "She's a widow."

"She thought she was, she ain't no more. I got better." If this didn't get her reaching for a weapon, nothing would. He'd rather see her mad then apathetic.

Wyn gulped his drink, then poured another one. He didn't like the way this was going. "When did all this happen?" he demanded.

Logan shrugged nonchalantly. "Couple weeks ago."

Wyn took a closer look at the other man. "You're Jess's father, aren't you?" This was why he couldn't reach her on the phone. She'd been spending her time with him.

"Yup."

"Where've you been?"

"Don't think that's any o' yer business. I'm back now, an' I ain't goin' nowhere."

End Part 3.

[next part]

back to Kerri's stories | Cyke and Logan archive | comicfic.net