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Chapter 24 - Why did you leave?

“Wow! I can’t believe you held on to this place all those years,” Justin stated as the group piled out of Brian’s Mercedes G-Class SUV after they pulled up to the front steps of the big old tudor-style mansion where Brian and Quinne had lived for so long.

Brian opened the back and pulled out two of the waiting suitcases before answering, adding a patented Kinney smirk. “Well I couldn’t sell it with you still on the title.”

“What are you talking about? I signed off on the quick claim deed when you returned the divorce papers to me,” Justin argued, wrestling his case out of Brian’s hands.

“I never recorded the deed,” Brian replied with a shrug.

Justin was still standing there, mouth hanging open in shock, as Brian hustled up the front walk to unlock the door and disappear inside.

“Cool! We own another house,” Qianna stated, seeming unfazed by the bombshell that seemed to have taken out her father. “I say we just let Hairy Alex keep the place in San Jose and move in here permanently.”

“We are not letting Alex keep the house, QiQi! And we are not moving here. We live in California, remember? Everything we have is back there, including my job,” Justin growled angrily at his daughter.

“You know, considering your reputation,” Gus intervened, grabbing his own case out of the back of the car, “you’d have no problem at all getting a job around here. You’d basically have your pick. In fact, if you were interested, Uncle Ben just happens to be workout buddies with the Dean of PIFA.”

“Sweet!” the twins sang out in tandem.

“Shut up you two!” Justin growled, but then softened the rebuke slightly by adding, “I’m still angry at you guys and continuing to spout more idiotic nonsense certainly isn’t going to help matters.” Then Justin addressed the boy with a much gentler tone. “Gus, Honey, you know I can’t just uproot my whole life on a whim like that, right? No matter how much I still care about you.”

“Wait a minute!” Qianna complained, hands on hips and a glare directed at her father. “How come I got a ‘shut up’ and called an idiot, and Gus gets a ‘Honey’ and ‘I care about you?’ I’m your actual daughter, in case you forgot!”

“Face it, QiQi, I’m now his favorite,” Gus chuckled as he beamed at his newest sibling. “‘Bout time too, after having to fight Quinne for Pops all those years.”

“Like you ever had a chance with Pops! I AM his baby girl after all,” Quinne bragged, offering up a simpering, pseudo-innocent look that got Gus laughing along with her.

“Fine, you can take Pops and I’ll have Justin,” Gus decided as he handed his sister's bag to her.

“What about me? I wanna be someone’s favorite too,” Qianna whined, shouldering her carry on bag and starting to follow her sister inside.

“You can be MY favorite,” Quinne declared as she slipped her free arm around her clone’s shoulders and led her inside. “Now, let’s go pick out a room for you and decide how we’re going to decorate it.”

“It’s like nobody’s even listening to me!” Justin grumbled, watching the teens’ retreating backs with a sour look on his otherwise handsome face.

He pulled the last of the bags out of the back of the large vehicle and then slammed the hatch closed. Gus came up next to the grouching older man and shoulder bumped him before reaching out to take another of the bags out of Justin’s hands. Justin managed a small smile for the boy and began to follow Gus up the walk.

“You get used to it when you live with women long enough. You think it’s bad with just two of them? You should see what it’s like at home with two mothers and a bossy younger sister. This is nothing.”

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When the girls finally came back down to the kitchen about twenty minutes later they were in high spirits. They’d managed to convince Gus to give up his room so that Qianna and Quinne could have adjoining rooms. He was actually quite happy to be moving further down the hall where he’d have more privacy and not have to share a bathroom with his sister any longer. He didn’t tell them that, though, and made the girls concede many, many favors in order to ‘get’ his room. Meanwhile, Quinne had the Wayfare app open on her tablet and had employed the virtual decorating tool to select all the new furniture Qianna would need. Now they just needed Brian’s approval - and his credit card - to finalize their rather hefty purchases.

“You DO realize we’re only staying for two weeks, right? By the time that stuff is delivered, we’ll probably be gone already,” Justin cautioned the two twittering girls.

“Maybe, but it’s not like we won’t be spending time together in the future, right? QiQi needs a place to stay whenever she comes to visit,” Quinne insisted.

When Justin failed to respond other than to glare in the girls’ direction some more, Qianna got worried. “You haven’t changed your mind, have you, Dad? You’re not going to try and keep us apart, are you? You promised, Dad . . .”

“I know what I promised, Qianna, and I won’t try and keep you two apart but that doesn’t mean we’re moving in!” Justin erupted furiously, slamming the coffee cup he’d been holding down on the counter before storming out of the room. They could hear him stomping up the stairs and then, a few seconds later, they heard an upstairs door slamming.

“Shit!” Quinne mumbled and sat down on the kitchen stool that Justin had vacated.

“Give Justin some time, girls. He’s had a lot of changes thrown at him in a very short period and just needs to vent a little. After he’s through queening out, I’ll go talk to him,” Brian promised with a reassuring smile to the twins.

“I don’t think a little talk is going to do much,” Qianna replied, pouring herself a glass of orange juice and then joining her sister at the kitchen island. “Dad is pissed - I mean, majorly pissed - and he when he gets like this, he tends to stay mad for a long time.”

Brian chuckled under his breath. “Oh, trust me, I remember. He always was a little drama princess. But this is nothing. You wouldn’t believe some of the fights we got into back in the day.” Brian’s smile got even bigger and his eyes glinted as if he was actually enjoying the memories of their prior fights, a phenomenon that was explained by his follow up comment. “Of course, that just meant the make up sex afterwards was even better.”

“Ewww! Pops! Stop already,” Quinne demanded. “It’s bad enough I had to listen to all your sexual exploits growing up, but I can’t handle it when I actually know the other guy you’re talking about. I’m gonna be traumatized for life.”

“You think that’s bad?” Gus added as he poured himself a cup of coffee and joined his father in leaning back against the counter near the sink. “I once walked in on them back when I was about five . . . And no, Pops, even then I didn’t buy the explanation that you were just teaching Justin some fun new wrestling moves.”

The whole group exploded with laughter. Especially Brian, although he might have been blushing just a tiny bit at the same time - it was hard to tell with his darker coloring. As the laughter died down, though, the participants became serious again, each staring contemplatively into his or her drink.

Qianna was the one who finally broke the lingering silence. “I don’t know if that approach is going to work this time. Dad is . . . well, I can tell he’s not ready to forgive you for whatever happened between the two of you. To be honest, I’ve never seen him this angry at anyone before. Usually he gets over stuff like breakups pretty easily, but not this time. I’ve never seen him like this.”

“Yeah, I . . .” Brian began, and then shook his head, apparently at his own failure to say whatever it was he needed to say. “It’s not you kids’ fault that he and I screwed up so badly. I know I hurt him pretty spectacularly, but I promise that I’ll find some way to fix it. At least enough so you girls won’t have to suffer.”

“Well, whatever you need to do, you better do it fast,” Quinne advised, taking a sip of the cooling coffee that Justin had never tasted, “because you only have two weeks and I get the impression that, once they go back to California, QiQi and I aren’t going to see each other very often - maybe once or twice a year, tops - which is completely unacceptable.”

“I hear ya,” Brian agreed, setting down his own coffee cup and cracking his neck from side to side as if about to set off into battle. “Personally, I would be thrilled if we could somehow convince Justin and Qianna to stick around permanently. Although, it’s gonna be tough to get everything sorted out in only two weeks.”

“Just tell us how we can help,” Gus offered, as incentivized as his sisters and father to find a way to work this thing.

“Leave it up to me - I’m the one that caused all this, so I’m the one that’s going to have to find a way to repair the damage,” Brian admitted.

Then he headed out of the room with a steady stride and a determined set to his shoulders. As soon as Brian was out of sight, Gus and Quinne jumped up and, each pulling on one of Qianna’s arms, they signalled that she should follow them without saying anything. The Kinney kids led the Taylor girl to the back stairs, heading down to the basement and thence to the laundry room at the rear of the building. Once there, they huddled together next to the laundry hamper in the corner. Qianna wasn’t sure what the hell they were doing in the damn laundry room, but since she trusted her friends, she didn’t say anything. And, as soon as they were all settled and not making any noise, the words of a distant conversation became discernable, trickling down to them via the heating vent above their heads.

“. . . Yeah, well, stop taking it out on our daughters, then,” the kids heard Brian speaking. “They just want to be together, which is understandable, and you’re freaking them out with this temper tantrum of yours.”

“I’m not taking it out on them,” Justin yelled, loudly enough that the eavesdroppers had no trouble at all hearing him. “And I’m not throwing a temper tantrum, damn it!”

“You’re sure doing a fucking great job of imitating a spoiled four year old, then,” Brian shouted back. Then his voice softened again, and the kids had to lean in closer to the wall to hear. “Come on, Sunshine. Stop making this so hard. What do you want me to say? I was a total ass. I freely admit it. But you’re not blameless either. I didn’t expect you to fucking leave me over a stupid argument. It’s not like we didn’t have a million other arguments in our day. But when I came home you were just gone. And then I didn’t hear another word from you for six months? It felt like . . . you just . . . you gave up on me. And now, what? You’re giving up on our children too?”

There was a long pause and then an interval of mumbling that the children couldn’t decipher.

“What?” Apparently Brian couldn’t understand Justin’s whispered explanation either.

A little louder, sounding almost desperate, Justin responded, “I DID give up . . . When you stormed out of the house that day I gave up on everything, Brian. And worse, I gave up on myself.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“You said you were devastated when Lizzy backed out on the surrogacy contract?” Justin responded, a tinge of anger returning to his voice now too. “But, what? You didn’t think I’d be equally affected? I was just as devastated as you were, Brian. And, on top of that, I had to deal with my partner screaming at me and ordering me to leave my home. Not for the first time, I might add. So, effectively, in the space of just under an hour, I felt like I’d lost not only my child, but also my home and my lover. Talk about fucking devastated – I was crushed. Destroyed . . .”

“Fuck,” Brian commented quietly. “But . . . Why did you leave? We’d had that same fight before, Sunshine, but you never left for good. You always just tracked me down later and kicked my ass for being an idiot. I thought . . . I thought the whole marriage thing meant you . . . You weren’t supposed to leave, damn it!”

There was no response for long enough that the kids almost decided it was time to leave their hidey-hole, but then, finally, they heard Justin’s voice again. He sounded thoughtful but distant, as if he was discussing something from a clinical perspective. Strangely emotionless.

“I know you’ve always detested the idea of therapy, Brian, but it might have been useful for me to get some help after the bashing, you know.” They could hear a faint grunt of assent from Brian in the background. “I’ve learned a lot about PTSD since then. Like the fact that nobody really understands what triggers recurrences. You see, getting your brains smashed in isn’t something you ever really get over. You can go years without even thinking about it and then, one day, you see something or hear something - maybe something completely unrelated - and it just hits. Like a fucking Mack Truck. And before you know it you’re totally incapacitated and struggling to even breathe . . .”

While Justin’s voice remained calm and neutral as he spoke, the children listening in heard a muffled whimper at that point in the conversation and could only surmise it came from Brian. Which was troubling to the man’s children who’d never seen their father as anything other than strong and capable of handing anything. It seemed likely that they were about to find out something that none of them had suspected. They shared a glance amongst the three of them, their matching expressions communicating the doubt about whether they wanted to keep listening or not. But the conversation they’d been listening in on continued before they could make that determination.

“I don’t actually remember it very well. I guess I packed up my stuff - intending to leave as you’d directed - and I called Daphne to come pick me up. All I recall from that time was that I couldn’t seem to stop crying. Everything seemed to be crashing down around me and I couldn’t even see outside the blackness that covered everything around me. Everything seemed hopeless. All my thoughts became this circular morass of pain and self-loathing. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn't focus on anything. All I could do was cry. And I hated myself for being so weak. Even my anger at you turned inward and somehow morphed into self-recrimination. It was . . .” Justin laughed mirthlessly when he couldn’t seem to find the right words to describe what he’d gone through. “It wasn’t pretty.”

“Why didn’t you call me?” Brian pleaded.

“I wasn’t exactly thinking rationally, Brian,” Justin replied, finally evidencing some emotion in his tone. “Eventually Daphne bundled me into her car and took me to the hospital. I spent fourteen days in the psych ward before they were confident that I wasn’t a danger to myself. And after that . . . Well, it took me a long time before I felt strong enough to deal with the outside world. I was so . . . . embarrassed . . . I didn’t know how to explain what had happened to people. That would have required me admitting to everyone I’d become so unhinged that I was threatening to kill myself and I just couldn’t do that so . . . I don’t know . . . It just seemed easier to move three thousand miles away and cut off all ties to everyone I’d ever known.”

“Fuck, Sunshine . . . If I’d known . . .”

“Yeah, well, like I said, I wasn’t exactly rational at that point,” Justin admitted. “I was barely holding on as it was and talking to you or anyone else in the family seemed like an impossibility at that point. PTSD is a real bitch. And, knowing your pathological aversion to talking about shit, it’s not like telling you would have helped all that much, now would it?”

“I would have . . .”

“What? You would have what?” Justin’s voice betrayed a renewed hint of anger. “You would have come with me to therapy? You didn’t even manage to come see me when I was in the hospital after I was bashed, Brian. How exactly would you have helped?”

“That was before we were fucking married, Justin. I was your husband. I had a right to know . . .” Brian countered.

“Maybe . . .” Justin conceded quietly and then paused before he offered another disclosure. “That’s what Daphne said too, by the way. She was so pissed off at me, but I blackmailed her into not telling you - I said I’d go through with killing myself if she told you - so she couldn’t say anything. Of course, after I fled to California I cut her off too. So much for that unwavering friendship thing, huh? I haven’t talked to Daphne in ten years . . . Hell, I barely kept in touch with my mother.”

There was another long silence during which Quinne had to take her sister into her arms, pressing Qianna’s face into her shoulder to muffle the sounds of the girl’s quiet sobbing, in order to prevent the men they were covertly listening to from discovering they were being surveilled.

Eventually Brian’s voice broke through the silence. “I did come to see you, you know. After Hobbs. I came every night, but I . . . I still . . . I blamed myself for what happened. So I only came after everyone else left. When you were asleep. And I watched through the window of your room so I wouldn’t disturb you . . . But that was before. Before I manned up and fucking married you, you twat. You should have known I’d changed. You made me change, damn it . . . I would have been there for you this time, Justin. If I’d known, I would have been there.”

“How was I supposed to know that, Brian? How? When you’d just finished throwing me out of your life? When I was barely functioning for months afterwards?” Justin sounded so crushed and defeated, the kids’ hearts were breaking. “So you see why I’m not exactly thrilled to have been forced back here? All the memories this place brings up . . . It’s fucking painful.”

“What can I do to help, Sunshine?”

“Nothing. I have to work through this by myself,” Justin warned with an audible sigh so loud that even the kids could hear it. “And, as if that’s not bad enough, I have to call my Mom and explain to her why I’m back in Pittsburgh and why the wedding is off. That should be a fun conversation.”

“If it helps, you’re welcome to blame it all on me,” Brian suggested, earning himself a wistful chuckle from Justin that broke the somber mood.

“That’s probably not a great idea. My mom isn’t your biggest fan these days.”

“I’m not afraid of Mother Taylor . . . Well, not too afraid . . . Although, if she tells Debbie, and they team up against me, I’ll probably be toast. So much for preserving my one remaining ball intact. Good thing I’m not still the prime Stud on Liberty Avenue or there’d be issues.”

“What? You’re not still the reigning Stud around here? When did that happen?”

“The day I first held a squirming bundle of baby girl in my arms and decided I’d rather be a single dad than an aging club boy,” Brian answered. Justin must have evidenced some disbelief though, because Brian’s next comment was telling. “What? You think I’m still out tricking nightly or something? I’m forty-fucking-eight, Sunshine. How pathetic would I be if I was still out chasing chicken every night?” They both laughed. “Don’t get me wrong, I can still get my needs met when I choose to, but outside of an occasional fuck buddy or two I don’t really bother much anymore. These days, when I go to Babylon, it’s just to look over the books and talk to the manager about business. Nope. I’ve long since given up my Studly ways, Sunshine. I’d rather spend my weekends reading, watching movies and catching up on my sleep than chasing tail and suffering through hangovers.”

“Oh how the mighty have fallen,” Justin teased.

“I choose to think of it as ‘evolving’,” Brian countered. “Now, if you’re done wigging out, come back downstairs with me, Sunshine, and let the kids see that you’re okay.”

“Fine,” Justin replied, his words followed by noises associated with the two men getting to their feet. “I’m going to need a drink before I call my mother, though. Maybe two.”

“My liquor cabinet is at your disposal, Sunshine,” Brian offered and then they heard a door opening.

The kids waited a minute or two till they could be sure that the men had left the guest room, listening to the steps echoing on the risers of the stairs as two sets of feet descended, before they relaxed.

Relaxed might have been the wrong word, though, especially for Qianna, who seemed completely wrecked by the disclosures they’d overheard. “Oh, Dad . . . I didn’t know. It’s terrible. But he’s never said a word to me . . . Maybe I should back off? I mean, if coming back here is so hard for him?”

“Bullshit,” Gus declared, reaching out to give his newest sister a consoling squeeze to her shoulder. “I’m not a psychologist or anything, but even I know that it’s probably a good thing that Justin is finally confronting all the crap he’s bottled up for more than a decade. Yeah, it’s not going to be easy, but it’s got to be healthier than hiding from the truth. Right?”

“I agree with Gus,” Quinne seconded. “It was about time your dad finally confronted Pops about all this. And Pops needed to hear it too - you heard how hurt he sounded and how he practically begged Justin to explain to him why he left? Pops doesn’t open up emotionally like that unless he’s really hurt. Now he knows what happened and hopefully he can start getting over it too. This will be good for them, QiQi. I know it will.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“Come on, QiQi,” Gus interrupted. “You can hear how lonely they both are. Sheesh, Pops just admitted that, all these years when we thought he was out sowing his wild oats every weekend, he was basically just sitting around alone. That’s just . . . well, it’s just wrong.”

Quinne added her own take. “Look at it this way, QiQi; what’s better - Justin running back to Cali and hiding from the painful memories while he cycles through another half dozen useless boyfriends like Hairy Alex while Pops keeps guilting himself out over driving your dad away all those years ago, or the two of them working out their shit and figuring out that they’re better off together?”

“I suppose you’re right,” Qianna admitted, taking a deep breath and wiping away the residue of a tear that had escaped from the corner of her eye. “It seems like it’s gonna take a lot more than two weeks to get through all the issues our dads have, though.”

“I refuse to accept failure,” Quinne averred strongly, looking at her co-conspirators with determination. “We just stick to our plan. We keep the dads together as much as possible and let them get used to each other again - giving them whatever support they need to work through their shit in the process - and in the meantime, I’m going to send another email to that bitch Lizette. If she hadn’t screwed with the dads like she did, none of this mess would have happened. And I intend to give her a piece of my mind.”

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