Chapter Text
In Jenny’s dream, Rupert called for Elinor from across a river of chunky, rushing brown water.
Not water. Jenny held her little girl against her body, legs dangling, making sure she was turned away from the view of her dad.
“Ms. Kathleen’s waiting, darling.” Rupert held out his hand, and suddenly, Ellie was across the river. Walking away with him into a fog. Jenny tried to scream, but she couldn’t make her voice work --
SLAM. Jenny bolted upright on the sofa, blinking in the bright morning light. The study door was closed; Ellie’s stuffed pig Porcel rested just inside the doorframe. Somewhere in the house, Rupert’s baritone sparred with his daughter’s high-pitched barrage.Jenny took a quick self-inventory. Her mouth tasted sour, her throat burned, and her torso ached from hours of retching. For now, the nausea seemed to have abated.
She stood carefully, ready to make yet another dash to the ensuite bathroom. One glance outside and all misery took a back seat to the minivan parked at the curb.
A woman with long, dark hair stood next to it, facing the house. She wore professional clothes – slacks (trousers, Jenny!) and a button-down shirt under a cardigan. Jenny moved closer to the window and felt the thunk of the front door opening on the floor below. Then Ellie dashed across the lawn, pigtails whipping, and threw herself into the strange woman’s waist.
Rupert’s voice called out an admonition. He came into view, stopping halfway down the front lawn, in his blue sweater and trousers. The woman patted Ellie’s back and laughed, called something to Rupert along the lines of don’t worry about it and then asked him a question that brought him several steps closer. Jenny couldn’t make out his words in response, but the tone came through loud and clear, along with his self-deprecating chuckle.
What the actual fuck? Rupert only laughed like that when he was smiling. With teeth.
Who the hell was this - THUD. Jenny’s forehead hit the window glass. She dropped to the floor in case the sound had been loud enough to alert Rupert and his… his… friend.
A wail went up from the girls’ room.
Jenny got back on her feet a short distance from the window, but close enough to see Rupert outside, their daughter nowhere in sight. Her husband’s lady friend leaned next to the open minivan door, smiling, in no hurry to leave. Rupert stood casually with his knuckles on his hips, chatting away.
Jenny considered stepping out onto the exterior porch to yell, “Rupert, your other daughter is crying!” But she’d shucked her pants somewhere around four a.m., and Rupert’s long-sleeved henley that she’d fished out of the laundry had spaghetti sauce crusted across the hem. If she played Jealous Wife in her current state, Rupert would probably join Ellie inside the minivan.
Bea unleashed a scream, followed by choking. Jenny skidded into the room to find twin strings of green snot dangling from her daughter’s nose. She caught them inside a wet wipe and used it to attack the mucous crusted over her daughter’s bright-red face. “I know, honey, I know. You’ll feel better in a minute.” She grabbed her weapon of choice from the basket on the changing table.
The snot sucker was effective, but only for the initial surprise attack. Bea’s mouth and and eyes went wide as Jenny stuck the stem up one nostril and released the bulb to produce a mighty slurp. As Jenny closed her eyes and poised in case her stomach decided to revolt, Bea managed to fling herself out of Jenny’s grip and onto the crib mattress with a scream that should have brought Rupert and three sets of neighbors running to her rescue.
But it did not. And now Bea was standing, clawing furiously at Jenny’s chest through the shirt. So much for the plan to use the business trip as an opportunity to fully wean Bea from the breast. Jenny’s were still sore and full after ten days, no matter how many ice packs she tucked into her bra. She lifted up the hem and Bea’s mouth came down over one nipple with such fierce suction that Jenny had to grab the crib rail to keep upright.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnnny funnnnnn funnnnnnnn…” Jenny hissed through her teeth, lifting the baby out of the crib to reposition her latch and feeling the diaper squish dangerously under her hand. Carrying Bea in the football hold, she grabbed the wipes and a clean diaper before returning to the study.
Two minutes had changed everything. The van’s side door was closed and the woman was back in the driver’s seat. Rupert walked back to the house, folding a neon green piece of paper into smaller and smaller halves before tucking it into his pants (trousers) pocket.
When he finally appeared at the top of the landing with a baby bottle in one hand and a syringe of bright pink fluid in the other, Jenny was settled on the couch with a pillow tucked under her arm and Bea nursing away. Rupert saw her silhouetted in the open office door and his entire expression shifted into the soft-eyes and a gentle smile he was in the habit of sending her way since she’d been pregnant with Ellie.
Certainly not an expression she warranted in her current state. The smell alone –
“Darling. I’m so sorry she woke you,” he said. “Their schedules have been completely bolloxed and I was sure…” he entered the room and maybe he caught a whiff, because he stopped and tilted his head in clear concern. “You all right? You’re a bit, erm… off-color.”
“Which one?” She gestured to the different splotches across her clothes and body. “I’ve got red, brown, taupe. Oh, and this perfect shade of puce.”
He chuckled, “Yes, well… it is laundry day, fortunately.” He held up the bottle quizzically. “I thought we were –”
“The cow came home. Kind of an asshole move not to when they’re sticking in her face.”
“Jenny,” he admonished quietly, setting the bottle on his desk with a head shake. He hated it when she referred to herself in such degrading utilitarian terms. He raised the syringe. “She’ll, erm, need her antibiotics.” He settled into his chair.
“You’re gonna want to skedaddle. It’s probably food poisoning from the airplane chicken. But if it’s norovirus…”
Rupert went pale. She knew he was mentally cataloging the location of all barf bowls, bed sheets, and bleach bottles in the house before he snapped back to the present with a frown. “You were sick? Why didn’t you wake me?”
“For the same reason you didn’t tell me our entire family had turned into Fyarl demons on any of our phone calls?”
“Aside from the risk you’d mistake hyperbole for reality – “
“And it’s not like I could’ve woken you up once you took cold medicine.” She cooed down at Bea: “Concussions aren’t the only thing that knock your daddy flat.”
Bea looked up at Jenny with wide brown eyes, little hand working into the caramel curls behind her ear. A tiny snot bobble ballooned from one nostril and then receded, over and over, and Jenny was knocked dizzy with love. To think she’d truly believed she’d live out her days child-free, and now she was feeding a baby with her own body, this incredible creature she and Rupert had made.
“I apologize that you returned home to such a mess.”
Jenny laughed, drawing a sharp look from him. “Rupert.”
“No. Despite the events of last night’s dinner, it was my intent to take care of it once I’d put the girls down.”
“Are you kidding me?” She laughed again. “It’s par for the course around here.”
Bea laughed too, that gorgeous baby giggle that reverberated in Jenny’s soul. “Daddy’s being silly.”
Rupert jumped to his feet, swiped the bottle from the desk, and without a word stomped down to the kids’ bathroom. The water turned on in the sink.
Bea’s expression went back to the surprise following a snotsucker sneak attack. Jenny suspected it was identical to her own. "Rupert?"
He soon returned. “I’m sorry, Jenny,” said Rupert from the doorway, fiercely polishing his glasses with a bright purple hand towel, which is what happened when you let a two year-old pick out home décor. He paused to let his jaw work, considering his words. “I know you’re poorly, and travel makes you querulous –”
“I’m not querulous –"
“—and yet I do not appreciate the passive-aggressive commentary on my housekeeping.” He replaced his glasses and met her eyes. “Especially when this last week has been anything but status-quo.”
Housekeeping? She was the last person to insult Rupert’s housekeeping, and he knew it. The Scoobies knew it. Half their customers at the Magic Shop would testify in court on the fact.
No, she’d been referring to Rupert’s last council business trip, when Ellie was a toddler and she’d been newly pregnant with Bea. No sooner had she bid him farewell after a quick detour into a private international business class lounge shower suite than the daycare’s number had popped up on her beeper.
When Rupert called her the next morning to report his safe arrival in Gatwick, Jenny answered from the tub, cradling Ellie to her side, surrounded by a nest of putrid towels. She couldn’t linger on the memory too long without gagging, but it involved sobbing, Buffy showing up half an hour later with an economy size package of toilet paper, and dozing off on the sofa to Sesame Street then waking to Passions and Rupert kissing her softly on the forehead. When Willow had described the home situation over the airport pay phone, he’d turned around and gotten right back on the plane.
“They’re sick –” she began, intending to finish with I would never criticize your housekeeping! But Rupert was on a roll.
“Yes, clearly. And yes, it’s all my fault. Can we agree that spending the last ten days experiencing the natural consequences of my own poor decision-making is lesson enough?” He paused to cough, several times, his lungs rattling with phlegm. “Forgive me if I don’t quite feel up for a post-mortem at this juncture.”
He spun away. Jenny called him back, shaking her head at the ridiculousness of it all. “If you could stop overreacting – “
Fuck. She held up her free hand. “ – no, not overreacting. Wrong word. I apologize.”
“I don’t regret it, you know,” he informed her, green eyes blazing. “And I’d do it again. If you could have seen the look of absolute joy on Elinor’s face.”
“I wish I could have,” Jenny agreed. “But you’re wrong, and – RUPERT, get back here!”
“I have laundry,” he announced haughtily.
She shouldn’t have followed that up with the observation that he was acting worse than Ellie. That part was supposed to stay in her head, but to be fair, it happened at the same moment that Bea let out a long fart and Jenny once again felt her hand again go damp, overriding her mouth filter. “Bea, no! WHY?”
The baby cried. Jenny closed her eyes, breathed through her mouth, and felt for the clean diaper at her side. Her stomach rolled. Jenny was in imminent danger of sacrificing the study rug, one way or another.
“Let me have her.”
Too close. Jenny turned her head away. “Don’t –”
“Ma petit abeille,” Rupert crooned to the baby in French, as if his little bee wasn’t about to leave a stinking drip trail halfway across the second floor as he carried her back to the nursery. Jenny breathed again and again and again until her stomach settled. Without looking, she took out a wipe and scrubbed her hand and arm clean.
“Where. Are. The. Wipes?!”
Shit.
The wipes packet landed square on the raised part of the changing table, right next to Rupert’s elbow. Yes, it also took out the basket of clean diapers and butt cream. She’d get that later. Rupert’s cheerful chatter at Bea didn’t falter, even as she squirmed and screamed at being held down by his palm. Jenny backed up to the doorway and waited for him to thank her, to look at her, tofucking acknowledge her pathetic existence.
Finally, she asked, “Can I say something?”
He threaded Bea’s feet into clean pants printed with cheerful cartoon puppies. “If it contains the words plague rats or Chuck-E-Cheese, then no."
Jenny covered her mouth with a hand in case she accidentally said the words fucking drama queen out loud. Suddenly inspired, she went into the bathroom and returned with a purple bath towel. She shook it at him as he deposited Bea in her crib and scooped up a handful of toys to entertain her.
“This. Remember when you bought these? We had to replace all the towels in the house because Ellie and I got sick when you went to England, but you came right back and you didn’t even unpack, you marched up the stairs and disinfected our entire fucking bathroom on no sleep.” She was surprised when her voice hitched. She was mad because he was being an idiot and she was supposed to yell, not cry. Which enraged her further. She threw the towel at Rupert.
He caught it easily, looked between it and her with confusion.
“I was so fucking grateful and at the same time I felt so fucking guilty because there’s no way in any lifetime I deserve that,” she hiccuped. “And we have kids. We – and you – and I never --“
She made the mistake of looking in the direction of the changing table that Rupert had not yet finished cleaning. The ballooned diaper, the stained sleeper. Too late she snapped her eyes shut and clapped a hand to her mouth. Rupert’s strong hands came down on her shoulders. He steered her into the bathroom. She only got as far as the bathtub.