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Chapter or Story 
Chapter or Story
The Visit - by MMB
Chapter 1: Reaction
It was an anniversary that she hadn't missed since her mid-childhood. Even knowing that it wasn't the actual date of her mother's death, Miss Parker had succumbed to the habit of finding herself in the Blue Cove cemetery on this day anyway. She walked slowly and purposefully towards the back of the broad expanse of green populated with so many standing or flush stones. It was a cold and overcast day, as it usually was; she was wearing a heavy overcoat, as she usually did. And she was alone, as she had been for every year except one - the year before all the treacheries and lies had started to come undone.
The tall stone with “Parker” carved prominently across the top stood as it always had, not far from the cypress boundary and the flowering dogwood and cherry trees that would shower flower petals in the spring. His name had been added to hers eventually - not only were they now united in death, but also united by the fact that neither of them actually were buried there. Catherine's body had been cremated and the ashes scattered - somewhere - she had never managed to convince Mr. Raines to tell her where. His body had simply never been found - vanished into the dark and briny deep of a storm-tossed night-time Atlantic gale.
The ironic symbolism of where she was and on what date did not escape her. Here she stood at a graveside with no bodies, remembering the day of her mother's death when her mother hadn't died on that day after all. It was all a lie - every last bit of it. Her whole life had been one lie after another until, like a house of cards, it had started to fall in on itself.
Miss Parker gazed down at the gravestone and felt - nothing. Perhaps it was that finally she had become accustomed to being left behind by everyone she had ever cared for. What kind of mother would fake her suicide in front of her own daughter? What kind of father would step out of a jet in the middle of the night over the ocean in front of his own daughter - or at least, the woman he'd claimed as his daughter all that time? And what kind of person was she to continue to go through the motions of grieving when there was nothing left for her to feel?
Halfway across the same cemetery was another stone, and at this one she could stand for hours and weep - but she didn't. She carried Thomas and the memory of his love for her around with her in her heart, hidden away carefully where no one could touch or threaten it. She didn't need to stand in front of a cold stone and wonder. He hadn't betrayed her or abandoned her willingly, but he too had left her behind when his life was stolen from him.
It was all falling apart now. Raines' paranoia and Lyle's serial killer escapades were starting to make everyone nervous - from Centre staff to the clients. Even the Triumvirate, which controlled the purse strings now, was no longer amused or looking the other way. The loss of many key players at the heart of the Centre's activities had made doing business with the Centre was no longer a wise fiscal move for the clients because of the number and type of projects no longer offered. With the loss of revenue and business, the subsequent loss of morale and personnel at the Centre itself was growing to such proportions that they soon would threaten the very life of the organization. Every day, another office or work station sat abandoned, empty, with no notice given, no forwarding address for severance checks - nothing.
A soft, cold rain began to fall, chilling her as she stood there with her hands full of roses and baby's breath. This was all that was left of her family, this stone and a three year old that she was rarely allowed to visit who had never, ever, seen the outside of the Centre. She raised her face and let the droplets hit her skin openly, not caring that soon her mascara would start to run in black rivulets down her cheeks. Today, she didn't care. Today was her Day of the Dead - black-streaked cheeks would be appropriate attire.
There was so much to mourn - so many losses over the past year and a half. Her father - or the man who had claimed that title for so long - had been only the first. Then Angelo, in the process of trying to perform to Lyle's and Raines' exacting and over-eager standards, had simply dropped dead of a heart attack, and his body cremated and disposed of long before news of his demise had been spread to anyone who knew him. Somehow, she had not anticipated how deeply the loss of that odd little man would affect her. Then, only a few weeks later, Jarod had called her late one night, as was his wont, but this time to say goodbye - that he didn't have either the heart or the desire to play the “you run, I chase” game with her anymore. He'd evidently already called Sydney with a similar message - and the aging psychiatrist had come to work the next morning, tendered his resignation and cleaned out his office with barely a backward glance at a lifetime spent there. Jarod was as good as his word. There was not another word, another clue, or another goose chase - it was as if he had walked off the face of the earth. Without Jarod toying with them, and without Sydney to analyze his last message, the search for the escaped Pretender had ground to a screeching halt.
Once it was known that even Sydney had pulled up stakes entirely and vanished - supposedly for warmer climes - Broots had finally listened to what she had told him years earlier about taking Debbie and just leaving. He had quit very abruptly when he received a hefty and substancial job offer from an up and coming West Coast firm. He'd been gone over six months now - his office yet another dark doorway into abandoned and empty space that she had to walk past every morning on her way to hers.
And she? She was trapped. Born and bred to Centre existence, she had nowhere to go, no one to turn to, and nothing to look forward to. She could sit at home and drink herself into a stupor for the rest of the weekend, but alcohol now bothered her ulcer to the point she couldn't handle the pain that would follow - so even that vice was denied her. She'd quit smoking long enough ago now that just a whiff of tobacco in the air turned her stomach. All she could do was sit in her office and wait - wait for potential clients whose numbers were rapidly dwindling, wait for a summons to Mr. Raines' office for another diatribe against an imagined opponent that even her twisted twin knew enough not to believe in anymore, wait for - nothing.
She closed her eyes and felt the beginnings of the burn that came as mascara ran into her eyes. How fitting. It had all been such a horrible waste, and for what? Power? Money? Reputation? A cold stone standing wet in the middle of a cemetery was all there was to show for two lives. She opened her eyes again and stared down at the headstone, doubting that she'd even merit that much. Not that she cared - she felt nothing. It was her Day of the Dead, and she was one of them.
There was movement on the edge of her vision - a man approached her; tall, in a black overcoat very much like hers, hands in his pockets and lapels turned up over silvered hair against the chill of the wind and the rain. She knew that stance - that posture - all too well, even though she hadn't seen it for the better part of a year. "What are you doing here, Freud?" she asked in a brittle tone, refusing to turn and look at him.
"I know what day this is," came the lightly accented answer. "I knew you would come."
"I thought you'd moved to Arizona now." It had been the last she'd heard of him.
"I have," he answered simply. "Scottsdale, as a matter of fact."
"Then what are you doing here?"
He moved closer; and as he did, she closed her arms around herself, around the bouquet, defensively. "I know what day this is," he repeated gently. "I knew you would come. I came to see you."
"I don't want you here," she snapped tiredly.
"Too bad," he responded with no heat at all. "I don't need your permission to be here."
She focused her gaze firmly on the headstone, shivering slightly as a gust of wind blew the chilled rain like sharp pellets into her face and neck. "Do you think it hurts to die, Sydney?"
He moved a little closer to her again. "I think sometimes it hurts more to live than to die," he offered thoughtfully.
"It hurts to be left behind," she whispered accusingly - to the two who weren't buried in the plots at her feet, to the one buried half a cemetery away, and to the man standing at her elbow.
"That's why I'm here," he answered her gently, worry rippling through his voice like an obligato. "Come in out of the rain, Parker before you catch pneumonia - you already look like death warmed over standing out here like this on a day like today."
She smiled a smile utterly lacking in either humor or mirth. "Oh, that's rich!" she quipped bitterly. "I think that's the whole idea. I AM dead, Sydney - it's just my body hasn't figured that one out yet. Maybe if I stand out here long enough..."
"Then you think you have nothing left to lose, do you? Is that why you're not taking care of yourself anymore?"
The accusation in his voice made her lift her burning grey eyes to his, and she found them warmer than she remembered. It hurt to try to remember, so she looked away quickly, before she could be burned by anything but running mascara. "What do you want, Syd?"
"What do YOU want, Parker?" he answered impertinently. "Let's start there instead."
She shook her head. "You're getting out of practice, Dr. Frankenstein. You used to be able to slip into your shrink's hat without being so obvious about it."
"That isn't an answer."
"That's all the answer I have for you today," she sighed. "I don't have time for games anymore. Goodbye, Sydney. It was good to see you. Drop me a postcard from sunny Arizona sometime..."
"Parker..."
"Look, I don't WANT anything!" she shouted at him. "There - are you happy now? I don't want anything, I don't feel anything... Everybody I've ever cared about is gone, and I'm still here... I just wish..."
He took one step closer. "Yes?"
She looked at him bleakly, the smeared mascara making her eyes look sunken in a painfully thin and pale face. "Forget it. What do you care, anyway?"
"I've cared about you since you were a little gi..."
"Bullshit." Her voice had grown hard and brittle. "That line lost all meaning years ago, Dr. Jekyll. All it took was for your precious Jarod to decide he'd had enough after Angelo died, and you were outta here so fast..." She drew in a broken breath. "And almost as soon as you took off, Broots made tracks too, taking Debbie with him. And neither of you bothered to ever call, or write... Tell me, Syd, what am I to think? Huh?"
"I didn't know Broots was gone now too." His voice had gotten soft with shock and dismay. "How long ago?"
"It doesn't matter."
"It matters, Parker. HOW LONG?" His voice grew gruff with insistence, and he reached for her elbow.
"It's been a while now," she shrugged dismissively. "Six, maybe seven, months now." She wrenched her arm out of his grasp.
"Merde!" He was aghast - Broots' leaving that quickly had never occurred to him.
"Like I said, it doesn't matter. I told him to take Debbie and leave a long time ago - took him long enough to figure out I was right, that he needed to think about his little girl." She sighed and buried her nose in one of the roses. "For you, it was always Jarod and Angelo. For Daddy - both incarnations of him - it was Lyle, or the Centre itself. For Broots, it was Debbie. For Jarod, it was his long-lost family. Once Momma was dead, no matter where I turned, I was a spare wheel, an afterthought, a hanger-on, until Thomas - and then he was taken from me too."
Her words stung because they contained a level of brutal honesty, and in her condition, he didn't dare try to defend himself when he knew himself guilty of her charge of partiality. "I suppose it may have seemed that way..." he began lamely.
She shot him a glower. "Go home to your nice, sunny Arizona. I'm tired, and I refuse to be an emotional charity case. I appreciate the gesture, but frankly, its too little too late."
But that stung, and deserved a response. She'd unloaded on him, by God, now he'd return the favor.
"You're right, Jarod and Angelo were always first in my mind," he admitted slowly, softly, "but only because every time I tried to approach you after you came back from Corporate, even just as a simple friend, either you or your fa... Mr. Parker... pushed me away. When Mr. Parker died, I tried again to reach out to you, to let you know that I was here... and what happened? You stopped talking, to me, to Broots, to anyone." His voice grew rougher, harsher, his accent heavier.
"When Angelo died, and then Jarod..." He paused and took a deep breath, struggling to get his emotions back under control. "Did you know Nicholas died in a car accident a week before Angelo died?" He nodded into her look of surprise. "Do you have any idea how much it hurt, then, when I handed you my resignation and had you wave me a breezy “see you around, Syd” as if you didn't care whether I lived or died and then turn your back and walk away? What was I to think, Parker?"
Her grey eyes flicked up to meet his, the guilt in them plain this time. "I thought..."
"And now you think I'm here looking at you as an emotional charity case." He shook his head sadly. "I don't know why I thought it would be any different now than before. You're still pushing me away, with every ounce of strength you have left in you. Well, you know what? Congratulations, you've finally succeeded. I can't fight you anymore. Consider me pushed away at last." He reached up and adjusted the lapels higher against the chilled wind and rain and turned away. "Goodbye, Parker. You won't be seeing me again."
"Sydney?" Her soft call kept him from moving away, but he didn't turn back to her. "Why DID you come?"
He sighed and pondered the wisdom of even trying to answer her question, then decided that honesty from him would be his farewell gift and turned to face her again reluctantly. "I came to try and talk you into letting me take you home with me," he answered with a shrug. "Silly me, I thought I would try to take you someplace warm, away from all of this," he waved around them at the dismal scenery and weather - and the Centre which always loomed just out of sight behind everything else. "I'm an old man, and just as alone in this world as you are - I thought that perhaps I could save just one of my children..."
He sighed again heavily. "I thought that maybe I could get you someplace where you could make a new and better life for yourself, now that things are falling apart here. I was hoping that maybe, finally, you'd let someone take care of you until you were healthy again and ready to start over. THAT'S why I came. I should have known better and saved myself the round trip air fare."
"But you left. You barely even said goodbye." Her voice was soft and accusing.
"You didn't seem to care one way or the other at the time." His voice was defeated. "It doesn't matter now anyway, as you say." He turned away again. "Goodbye, Parker."
"But you know I can't go with you." She said loudly enough to keep him from walking more than a step or two, bent and put her bouquet on the cold earth in front of the headstone quickly, then straightened. She looked at his back, wishing she dared reach out to him. "Even if I wanted to..."
"You can do whatever the hell you want to do - you always could." He looked back over his shoulder at her in frustration. "All you need to do is figure what you want to do, when you want to do it, and whether you can live with the consequences - and then DO it." He turned and began walking away again. "You can't keep blaming others for your own inertia or lack of decisiveness forever."
"What if I were to want to go with you - after everything that's happened between us over the years?" she called after him again, making his steps slow once more. "Would you still have me?" she asked very softly, afraid of the answer.
He halted, thought for a moment, then walked back to her. "What do you think?" he demanded. "I'm still here, aren't I, despite having told you goodbye twice now? You keep calling me back." His chestnut eyes, once warm, were now quite guarded. "For someone who wants to push me away every chance you get, you seem suddenly very reluctant to actually let me go now that I'm ready to stay pushed away once and for all. Make up your mind, Parker. Quickly - it's cold out here, if you hadn't noticed."
"I'm afraid," she admitted, astonished that she could even give voice to that most secret of feelings, "of leaving... of being alone..." She couldn't look at him anymore.
"I know," he said gently. "You're going to have to decide what you fear least, and then go with that, one way or the other. But, as I see it, you've really nothing to lose by leaving. Raines and Lyle are so busy running the Centre into the ground now, they'll probably barely know you're gone - not to mention that they'd no doubt take you back in a heartbeat, if you should decide later on to come back. God knows what they'd do WITH you once they got you back, but that would be your problem at that point. And you wouldn't be alone, you know..."
"Do you honestly believe I can walk away from the Centre? Just like that?"
"Yes! I do! You know it's what you've always wanted - and now's your chance!" His voice had gained a note of urgency. "The Centre's falling apart, Parker. Trust me, now's the time to walk away. You don't want to be here when things begin to get REALLY bad!" The eyebrows soared at the continued expression of hesitation on her face. "You don't want to be brought down with them, do you?"
She shook her head. What he was suggesting was almost beyond her ability to comprehend at this point. "I'm so tired." She lifted her grey eyes to his, and he could see the soul-withering fatigue that was slowly consuming her from within.
He shuddered inwardly - he'd waited almost too long. He'd been afraid of that. "I know you are. The sooner you get away from here, the better. For God's sake, let me help you. Please! Just this once..."
She looked deeply into his gaze, trying in vain to uncover any agendas. Finally she gave up, conceded that he actually had come back for her. He was the only one that ever had - that HAD to count for something. "I've missed you, Sydney."
"I've missed you too, Parker." He sensed something had shifted inside her. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and gently pulled her close to him, deciding to leave off the lectures about the past or worried commentary about how frail and gaunt she had become for another time. "Think of it as finally taking that extended vacation you haven't had all this time to visit an eccentric old uncle who lives on the other side of the country. Give yourself time to rest and get well again, so that maybe, if you really want to, you can start a new life. Please?"
She closed her eyes and nodded slowly. "Take me with you, Sydney. I can't live like this anymore." She leaned into his chest tiredly and felt his arms enfold her tightly, making her feel warmer already despite the drizzle.
"Thank God!" He kissed her forehead softly and let go a sigh of relief. "Let's go home then."
And then the headstone stood alone in the freezing rain, marking forever the place where two people weren't buried. And the moments of the anniversary that wasn't slowly ticked away.
Chapter 1: Reaction
It was an anniversary that she hadn't missed since her mid-childhood. Even knowing that it wasn't the actual date of her mother's death, Miss Parker had succumbed to the habit of finding herself in the Blue Cove cemetery on this day anyway. She walked slowly and purposefully towards the back of the broad expanse of green populated with so many standing or flush stones. It was a cold and overcast day, as it usually was; she was wearing a heavy overcoat, as she usually did. And she was alone, as she had been for every year except one - the year before all the treacheries and lies had started to come undone.
The tall stone with “Parker” carved prominently across the top stood as it always had, not far from the cypress boundary and the flowering dogwood and cherry trees that would shower flower petals in the spring. His name had been added to hers eventually - not only were they now united in death, but also united by the fact that neither of them actually were buried there. Catherine's body had been cremated and the ashes scattered - somewhere - she had never managed to convince Mr. Raines to tell her where. His body had simply never been found - vanished into the dark and briny deep of a storm-tossed night-time Atlantic gale.
The ironic symbolism of where she was and on what date did not escape her. Here she stood at a graveside with no bodies, remembering the day of her mother's death when her mother hadn't died on that day after all. It was all a lie - every last bit of it. Her whole life had been one lie after another until, like a house of cards, it had started to fall in on itself.
Miss Parker gazed down at the gravestone and felt - nothing. Perhaps it was that finally she had become accustomed to being left behind by everyone she had ever cared for. What kind of mother would fake her suicide in front of her own daughter? What kind of father would step out of a jet in the middle of the night over the ocean in front of his own daughter - or at least, the woman he'd claimed as his daughter all that time? And what kind of person was she to continue to go through the motions of grieving when there was nothing left for her to feel?
Halfway across the same cemetery was another stone, and at this one she could stand for hours and weep - but she didn't. She carried Thomas and the memory of his love for her around with her in her heart, hidden away carefully where no one could touch or threaten it. She didn't need to stand in front of a cold stone and wonder. He hadn't betrayed her or abandoned her willingly, but he too had left her behind when his life was stolen from him.
It was all falling apart now. Raines' paranoia and Lyle's serial killer escapades were starting to make everyone nervous - from Centre staff to the clients. Even the Triumvirate, which controlled the purse strings now, was no longer amused or looking the other way. The loss of many key players at the heart of the Centre's activities had made doing business with the Centre was no longer a wise fiscal move for the clients because of the number and type of projects no longer offered. With the loss of revenue and business, the subsequent loss of morale and personnel at the Centre itself was growing to such proportions that they soon would threaten the very life of the organization. Every day, another office or work station sat abandoned, empty, with no notice given, no forwarding address for severance checks - nothing.
A soft, cold rain began to fall, chilling her as she stood there with her hands full of roses and baby's breath. This was all that was left of her family, this stone and a three year old that she was rarely allowed to visit who had never, ever, seen the outside of the Centre. She raised her face and let the droplets hit her skin openly, not caring that soon her mascara would start to run in black rivulets down her cheeks. Today, she didn't care. Today was her Day of the Dead - black-streaked cheeks would be appropriate attire.
There was so much to mourn - so many losses over the past year and a half. Her father - or the man who had claimed that title for so long - had been only the first. Then Angelo, in the process of trying to perform to Lyle's and Raines' exacting and over-eager standards, had simply dropped dead of a heart attack, and his body cremated and disposed of long before news of his demise had been spread to anyone who knew him. Somehow, she had not anticipated how deeply the loss of that odd little man would affect her. Then, only a few weeks later, Jarod had called her late one night, as was his wont, but this time to say goodbye - that he didn't have either the heart or the desire to play the “you run, I chase” game with her anymore. He'd evidently already called Sydney with a similar message - and the aging psychiatrist had come to work the next morning, tendered his resignation and cleaned out his office with barely a backward glance at a lifetime spent there. Jarod was as good as his word. There was not another word, another clue, or another goose chase - it was as if he had walked off the face of the earth. Without Jarod toying with them, and without Sydney to analyze his last message, the search for the escaped Pretender had ground to a screeching halt.
Once it was known that even Sydney had pulled up stakes entirely and vanished - supposedly for warmer climes - Broots had finally listened to what she had told him years earlier about taking Debbie and just leaving. He had quit very abruptly when he received a hefty and substancial job offer from an up and coming West Coast firm. He'd been gone over six months now - his office yet another dark doorway into abandoned and empty space that she had to walk past every morning on her way to hers.
And she? She was trapped. Born and bred to Centre existence, she had nowhere to go, no one to turn to, and nothing to look forward to. She could sit at home and drink herself into a stupor for the rest of the weekend, but alcohol now bothered her ulcer to the point she couldn't handle the pain that would follow - so even that vice was denied her. She'd quit smoking long enough ago now that just a whiff of tobacco in the air turned her stomach. All she could do was sit in her office and wait - wait for potential clients whose numbers were rapidly dwindling, wait for a summons to Mr. Raines' office for another diatribe against an imagined opponent that even her twisted twin knew enough not to believe in anymore, wait for - nothing.
She closed her eyes and felt the beginnings of the burn that came as mascara ran into her eyes. How fitting. It had all been such a horrible waste, and for what? Power? Money? Reputation? A cold stone standing wet in the middle of a cemetery was all there was to show for two lives. She opened her eyes again and stared down at the headstone, doubting that she'd even merit that much. Not that she cared - she felt nothing. It was her Day of the Dead, and she was one of them.
There was movement on the edge of her vision - a man approached her; tall, in a black overcoat very much like hers, hands in his pockets and lapels turned up over silvered hair against the chill of the wind and the rain. She knew that stance - that posture - all too well, even though she hadn't seen it for the better part of a year. "What are you doing here, Freud?" she asked in a brittle tone, refusing to turn and look at him.
"I know what day this is," came the lightly accented answer. "I knew you would come."
"I thought you'd moved to Arizona now." It had been the last she'd heard of him.
"I have," he answered simply. "Scottsdale, as a matter of fact."
"Then what are you doing here?"
He moved closer; and as he did, she closed her arms around herself, around the bouquet, defensively. "I know what day this is," he repeated gently. "I knew you would come. I came to see you."
"I don't want you here," she snapped tiredly.
"Too bad," he responded with no heat at all. "I don't need your permission to be here."
She focused her gaze firmly on the headstone, shivering slightly as a gust of wind blew the chilled rain like sharp pellets into her face and neck. "Do you think it hurts to die, Sydney?"
He moved a little closer to her again. "I think sometimes it hurts more to live than to die," he offered thoughtfully.
"It hurts to be left behind," she whispered accusingly - to the two who weren't buried in the plots at her feet, to the one buried half a cemetery away, and to the man standing at her elbow.
"That's why I'm here," he answered her gently, worry rippling through his voice like an obligato. "Come in out of the rain, Parker before you catch pneumonia - you already look like death warmed over standing out here like this on a day like today."
She smiled a smile utterly lacking in either humor or mirth. "Oh, that's rich!" she quipped bitterly. "I think that's the whole idea. I AM dead, Sydney - it's just my body hasn't figured that one out yet. Maybe if I stand out here long enough..."
"Then you think you have nothing left to lose, do you? Is that why you're not taking care of yourself anymore?"
The accusation in his voice made her lift her burning grey eyes to his, and she found them warmer than she remembered. It hurt to try to remember, so she looked away quickly, before she could be burned by anything but running mascara. "What do you want, Syd?"
"What do YOU want, Parker?" he answered impertinently. "Let's start there instead."
She shook her head. "You're getting out of practice, Dr. Frankenstein. You used to be able to slip into your shrink's hat without being so obvious about it."
"That isn't an answer."
"That's all the answer I have for you today," she sighed. "I don't have time for games anymore. Goodbye, Sydney. It was good to see you. Drop me a postcard from sunny Arizona sometime..."
"Parker..."
"Look, I don't WANT anything!" she shouted at him. "There - are you happy now? I don't want anything, I don't feel anything... Everybody I've ever cared about is gone, and I'm still here... I just wish..."
He took one step closer. "Yes?"
She looked at him bleakly, the smeared mascara making her eyes look sunken in a painfully thin and pale face. "Forget it. What do you care, anyway?"
"I've cared about you since you were a little gi..."
"Bullshit." Her voice had grown hard and brittle. "That line lost all meaning years ago, Dr. Jekyll. All it took was for your precious Jarod to decide he'd had enough after Angelo died, and you were outta here so fast..." She drew in a broken breath. "And almost as soon as you took off, Broots made tracks too, taking Debbie with him. And neither of you bothered to ever call, or write... Tell me, Syd, what am I to think? Huh?"
"I didn't know Broots was gone now too." His voice had gotten soft with shock and dismay. "How long ago?"
"It doesn't matter."
"It matters, Parker. HOW LONG?" His voice grew gruff with insistence, and he reached for her elbow.
"It's been a while now," she shrugged dismissively. "Six, maybe seven, months now." She wrenched her arm out of his grasp.
"Merde!" He was aghast - Broots' leaving that quickly had never occurred to him.
"Like I said, it doesn't matter. I told him to take Debbie and leave a long time ago - took him long enough to figure out I was right, that he needed to think about his little girl." She sighed and buried her nose in one of the roses. "For you, it was always Jarod and Angelo. For Daddy - both incarnations of him - it was Lyle, or the Centre itself. For Broots, it was Debbie. For Jarod, it was his long-lost family. Once Momma was dead, no matter where I turned, I was a spare wheel, an afterthought, a hanger-on, until Thomas - and then he was taken from me too."
Her words stung because they contained a level of brutal honesty, and in her condition, he didn't dare try to defend himself when he knew himself guilty of her charge of partiality. "I suppose it may have seemed that way..." he began lamely.
She shot him a glower. "Go home to your nice, sunny Arizona. I'm tired, and I refuse to be an emotional charity case. I appreciate the gesture, but frankly, its too little too late."
But that stung, and deserved a response. She'd unloaded on him, by God, now he'd return the favor.
"You're right, Jarod and Angelo were always first in my mind," he admitted slowly, softly, "but only because every time I tried to approach you after you came back from Corporate, even just as a simple friend, either you or your fa... Mr. Parker... pushed me away. When Mr. Parker died, I tried again to reach out to you, to let you know that I was here... and what happened? You stopped talking, to me, to Broots, to anyone." His voice grew rougher, harsher, his accent heavier.
"When Angelo died, and then Jarod..." He paused and took a deep breath, struggling to get his emotions back under control. "Did you know Nicholas died in a car accident a week before Angelo died?" He nodded into her look of surprise. "Do you have any idea how much it hurt, then, when I handed you my resignation and had you wave me a breezy “see you around, Syd” as if you didn't care whether I lived or died and then turn your back and walk away? What was I to think, Parker?"
Her grey eyes flicked up to meet his, the guilt in them plain this time. "I thought..."
"And now you think I'm here looking at you as an emotional charity case." He shook his head sadly. "I don't know why I thought it would be any different now than before. You're still pushing me away, with every ounce of strength you have left in you. Well, you know what? Congratulations, you've finally succeeded. I can't fight you anymore. Consider me pushed away at last." He reached up and adjusted the lapels higher against the chilled wind and rain and turned away. "Goodbye, Parker. You won't be seeing me again."
"Sydney?" Her soft call kept him from moving away, but he didn't turn back to her. "Why DID you come?"
He sighed and pondered the wisdom of even trying to answer her question, then decided that honesty from him would be his farewell gift and turned to face her again reluctantly. "I came to try and talk you into letting me take you home with me," he answered with a shrug. "Silly me, I thought I would try to take you someplace warm, away from all of this," he waved around them at the dismal scenery and weather - and the Centre which always loomed just out of sight behind everything else. "I'm an old man, and just as alone in this world as you are - I thought that perhaps I could save just one of my children..."
He sighed again heavily. "I thought that maybe I could get you someplace where you could make a new and better life for yourself, now that things are falling apart here. I was hoping that maybe, finally, you'd let someone take care of you until you were healthy again and ready to start over. THAT'S why I came. I should have known better and saved myself the round trip air fare."
"But you left. You barely even said goodbye." Her voice was soft and accusing.
"You didn't seem to care one way or the other at the time." His voice was defeated. "It doesn't matter now anyway, as you say." He turned away again. "Goodbye, Parker."
"But you know I can't go with you." She said loudly enough to keep him from walking more than a step or two, bent and put her bouquet on the cold earth in front of the headstone quickly, then straightened. She looked at his back, wishing she dared reach out to him. "Even if I wanted to..."
"You can do whatever the hell you want to do - you always could." He looked back over his shoulder at her in frustration. "All you need to do is figure what you want to do, when you want to do it, and whether you can live with the consequences - and then DO it." He turned and began walking away again. "You can't keep blaming others for your own inertia or lack of decisiveness forever."
"What if I were to want to go with you - after everything that's happened between us over the years?" she called after him again, making his steps slow once more. "Would you still have me?" she asked very softly, afraid of the answer.
He halted, thought for a moment, then walked back to her. "What do you think?" he demanded. "I'm still here, aren't I, despite having told you goodbye twice now? You keep calling me back." His chestnut eyes, once warm, were now quite guarded. "For someone who wants to push me away every chance you get, you seem suddenly very reluctant to actually let me go now that I'm ready to stay pushed away once and for all. Make up your mind, Parker. Quickly - it's cold out here, if you hadn't noticed."
"I'm afraid," she admitted, astonished that she could even give voice to that most secret of feelings, "of leaving... of being alone..." She couldn't look at him anymore.
"I know," he said gently. "You're going to have to decide what you fear least, and then go with that, one way or the other. But, as I see it, you've really nothing to lose by leaving. Raines and Lyle are so busy running the Centre into the ground now, they'll probably barely know you're gone - not to mention that they'd no doubt take you back in a heartbeat, if you should decide later on to come back. God knows what they'd do WITH you once they got you back, but that would be your problem at that point. And you wouldn't be alone, you know..."
"Do you honestly believe I can walk away from the Centre? Just like that?"
"Yes! I do! You know it's what you've always wanted - and now's your chance!" His voice had gained a note of urgency. "The Centre's falling apart, Parker. Trust me, now's the time to walk away. You don't want to be here when things begin to get REALLY bad!" The eyebrows soared at the continued expression of hesitation on her face. "You don't want to be brought down with them, do you?"
She shook her head. What he was suggesting was almost beyond her ability to comprehend at this point. "I'm so tired." She lifted her grey eyes to his, and he could see the soul-withering fatigue that was slowly consuming her from within.
He shuddered inwardly - he'd waited almost too long. He'd been afraid of that. "I know you are. The sooner you get away from here, the better. For God's sake, let me help you. Please! Just this once..."
She looked deeply into his gaze, trying in vain to uncover any agendas. Finally she gave up, conceded that he actually had come back for her. He was the only one that ever had - that HAD to count for something. "I've missed you, Sydney."
"I've missed you too, Parker." He sensed something had shifted inside her. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and gently pulled her close to him, deciding to leave off the lectures about the past or worried commentary about how frail and gaunt she had become for another time. "Think of it as finally taking that extended vacation you haven't had all this time to visit an eccentric old uncle who lives on the other side of the country. Give yourself time to rest and get well again, so that maybe, if you really want to, you can start a new life. Please?"
She closed her eyes and nodded slowly. "Take me with you, Sydney. I can't live like this anymore." She leaned into his chest tiredly and felt his arms enfold her tightly, making her feel warmer already despite the drizzle.
"Thank God!" He kissed her forehead softly and let go a sigh of relief. "Let's go home then."
And then the headstone stood alone in the freezing rain, marking forever the place where two people weren't buried. And the moments of the anniversary that wasn't slowly ticked away.
