Chapter 2.5-Safe Questions

          Cyrus almost couldn’t believe how much his baby sister had grown. Though he thought he could find traces of the child he’d left behind all those years ago, he was still impressed by how she’d turned out.

          She’d finally calmed down once she’d realized she was repeatedly pushing the wrong buttons on the coffee machine and he assured her that he had all evening.

          He chucked as she drank deeply from her mug, obviously appreciating the strong brew.

          “You have no idea how weird it is to see you drinking coffee,” he smiled at her. “Or to see you wearing a shirt that doesn’t cover you completely. You grew up.”

          “Well, no matter how much we wished it, time didn’t stop just because you left. It went on.”

          “Uh, and honestly?” Layla kicked herself and tried to put her bitterness aside. This was supposed to be happy. “You have no idea how weird it is that you’re here at all. Did Phedra find you?”

          Cyrus nodded as he brought his mug back down from his lips.

          “Yeah,” he said. “Phedra found me. We finally decided to make it all legal and get married at long last, including changing Liv's name. It seems like Fay was keeping an eye out on all the legal networks to see if we ever changed our paperwork. She called a few weeks ago. Told me where you were and that you were as desperate as she was to see me. So we came out to see where it was you lived.”

          “We?” Layla was surprised he’d bring Olivia with him just to see his sister. “You brought Olivia with you?”

          “No, not this time” he smiled kindly. “Three toddlers are a bit of a handful for a hotel room. I'm sure it would have ended up looking like we'd bombed it in the end.”

          “Three? Geez! Mom is going to be thrilled to know she’s a grandma! Right before I left home she was going on about how she wanted grandbabies! Though I’m surprised Arden-”

          “No,” Cyrus burst out making Layla nearly choke. “No. Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat. Helen has no grandchildren by me. She has no rights to them. None. If you want your children to call her Grandma, that’s your deal. My children are not her grandchildren.”

          At a loss with where to take the conversation from there, Layla sipped her coffee again. She was almost afraid to take a drink for fear of another outburst. She shouldn’t have brought her mother up though. And she should have known that.

          “So will your kids at least get to meet their Aunt?”

          “Hopefully I can bring them all here soon. We'll just have to see.”

          “Triplets? Like mom was one of?”

          “No,” Cyrus’ smile finally returned somewhat. “No. Corrine is oldest. We just happened to get lucky with twins while she was still very young.”

          “I’m guessing Corrine is a girl’s name. Are the twins identical? Girls? Boys? Come on, Daddy! I shouldn’t be fishing this from you.” Leveling her gaze, Layla didn’t flinch as he finally looked up at her questioning.

          “All girls. And the twins aren’t identical, thank plumbBob. Claudia and Candice.”

          “You guys going for the seven ‘C’s then?”

          Cyrus quickly put his mug down, shaking his head at her horrible pun, smiling despite himself.

          “Oh, Layla is that the best you can come up with?”

          “Yeah, sorry.”

          “No,” he said. “No, no more kids. This is enough. We love them to death, don’t get me wrong, but it’s enough trying to handle them. And what am I going to do come prom time when they’re teens? Do you know how much those dresses cost? And what about all the weddings one day? I’m not risking another one. And just so Aunt Layla knows, Corinne will be starting school very soon. So it won't be three toddlers for too much longer. Thank the Maker.”

          “So what do you do for a living now?” Layla had been casting about in her head trying to find safe subjects. Safe questions. She didn’t want to risk him running off again.

          “Well, nothing honestly,” Cyrus smiled at her, letting her know it was okay. “I usually only stay at a job long enough to know the ropes fairly well, then I’d leave. We moved a lot. It was easier to stay hidden. Most times I took jobs for under the table pay. Construction and such. But if I’ve been found, I might as well get a good stable job. There are a few openings at the City Hall here for clerks. I think I could do that”

          “Wait a second,” surprised, Layla frowned, trying to force herself to slow down. “Are-are you saying you’re going to move here?”

          “The kids need somewhere stable to grow up,” Cyrus’s face was very serious. “I need to be able to provide them with a safe, loving place to live. To do that I’d really need a job that isn't going to dry up in a few months. And with Corrine starting school soon, it has to be soon. I don't want her in a million different schools like some of the migrant workers do to their kids. It's not fair to them an they can fall behind really easily.”

          “But why here? Why not a city with a lot more to offer?”

          “Fay made me promise to look here first.”

          “Phedra did what?”

          “Made me promise to look for a stable job and a house here first.”

          “I don’t understand why here, though,” she couldn’t  imagine what her sister’s motives could be when she herself was so far away.

          “I didn’t ask questions,” Cyrus chuckled a little bit. “You know Fay. She’s going to push until she gets her way. It was a lot of fun on the phone with her. She hasn’t changed much.”

          “But she did change. We all did. You’ve changed too.”

          “Oh, yeah,” Cyrus nodded heavily. “But, it was still so easy to talk to her. Like we’d never been apart. She still bullies and threatens me, tries to one up me. Almost every time we’ve talked, it’s been the same.”

          “So you’ve talked to her quite a bit then?”

          “Yeah, she’s called quite a bit. I was really reluctant to come here at first, truth be told. Buck’s family is here and I’d hate for someone to tell Helen where I’m at. But Phedra kept calling from that village she’s in-“

“-But that village doesn’t have a phone.” Layla broke in. “The nearest phone to her village is a long walk away.”

“Well, maybe she’s been staying in the phone village then, because I’ve talked to her a lot. The first conversation was almost an hour long. Don't think you were hard on me little girl. Phedra has you beat by a long shot. Yelled at me for half an hour, then proceeded to cuss me out for 15 minutes once I laughed at her for it. Some guy took the phone away from her at that point. I still don't think she's finished with me yet.”

For a moment, Layla felt absurdly jealous that Phedra would use her money to call Cyrus rather than her. Layla rarely heard from Phedra since she usually used her few calls to call Helen and Buck.

          “Look, you know how Fay is with keeping secrets,” reading her face, Cyrus tried to smooth things over. “It could be that she didn’t call or write because I know she wanted my showing up on your doorstep to be a surprise.”

          “It was a wonderful surprise.” The momentary lump in her throat was easily swallowed away this time.

          “It was for me too, sis.”

          Reaching over, she patted his knee, almost to reassure herself he was really there. And something clicked between the two at last.

          Finally, Cyrus really smiled at her. And then he talked. And Layla talked. And the years melted away along with the wall Layla had errected between them.

          Cyrus told her about the first few months after running away. What he and Olivia did just to survive. How they’d pretended to be older in order to get jobs, money, food, transportation to the next city to hide in.
          They'd run afoul of vampires once in Bridgeport. The only way they managed to get out of that one was Olivia finally pretending to be queen of the zombies. Seems vampires aren't too keen on having their brains eaten and are pretty defenseless when zombies don't have blood.
          He'd made light of the hardships they'd endured. How difficult they'd found it to be to get housing and work. There were allusions made to things Olivia may have had to do that still made Cyrus seethe at himself. But then, it also seemed he had developed quite a reputation as a petty thief which is why they had finally had to leave Sunset Valley in the dead of night shortly before the twins were born.
          Layla could have listened to his rather colorful stories all night if he finally hadn't told her that he was dying to hear the news from her point of view. Phedra wasn't exactly current with what was going on in the same way Layla was.

          And so she told him about Galen’s girlfriend Arden, and how she bossed him around. They were married now, the wedding had been held while she had been travelling so not one of his siblings was there. She told him about the house being broken into and how Helen had fought the burglar in her underwear. She told him what some of his old classmates were doing now. She told him about meeting Trigger and Estella and their kids. And she told him all about her travels before she had moved there.

          Finally, as the sun sank behind the hills, both siblings, turned to each other marveling at seeing the other sitting near. They probably could have talked much longer, but neither was ready to deal with anything weightier than general gossip just yet. Layla still tended to get defensive and touchy when she thought about much she'd lost because of Cyrus.

          “I’ll come by again,” Cyrus told her.

          “You’d better,” she answered.

          “I’ll bring the family.”

          “I’d expect nothing less.”

          The silence that now stretched between the two was strained again. Something broke on his face, and he looked at his lap, frowning.

          “Do you really forgive me?” At last, he’d looked back up, looking like a small child caught doing something wrong, eyes boring into hers, forehead creased.

          The lump had returned to Layla’s throat, but she didn’t dare break eye contact.

          “Cyrus, there is nothing to forgive. So long as you don’t run away again, there will never be anything to forgive.”

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Yay!

He’ll be back in the story again. And if he needs to give more details I’ll fish them out then. This was bound to be an awkward meeting between the two. There’s a lot of years between them they can never get back, and far more ground to be covered than an evening spent chatting will allow for. Plus, as he said, he was closest with Phedra. Also, Layla is a little more resentful toward him that she thought she would be. But if he can prove to her a that he really is going to stick around, it should help her reticence with him. 


A final word about Cyrus and Olivia's girls: I have Chann's custom name mod overriding SP's name list. In this mod there are 300 possible names for girls in game to randomly pop up and I have rename newborns enabled. So SP comes up with Corrine for the first girl and I went with it. When the twins were born I admit to having a total brain fart and forgetting Corrine's name. SP came up with the two 'C' initialed names on it's own and I just clicked ok since they weren't awful. It wasn't until I dragged Cyrus and Olivia back into this that I realized that they all had that initial. Whoopsie! This happened with Anthony also. His dad had Anthony, Amie, Andrew, and Adrianna all randomly chosen by SP and the name mod. I figured that there are enough people out there that do that on their own, why can't it happen occasionally here?

And there are Cyrus outtakes now from his growing up to YA on the bloopers tab. Enjoy. ;)