Chapter Text
“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” – Henry David Thoreau
It only takes until day two of this year’s family trip to Heimerdinger Head Island for Caitlyn to decide she is long past tired of sand.
She’s tired of it sticking between her toes, she’s tired of it making its way into the soles of her shoes, and she’s beyond tired of it getting in her things. The beach is nice, sure, but when it’s far too cold for the only good part of it to be viable, it loses its luster rather quickly. A beach without water is just sand—and just sand, she thinks, was not worth the trip down here.
The food is good, but nothing she can’t get at home; the golf courses are world renowned, but she doesn’t like golf; the local shopping centers are always packed around this time of year and even if she had any interest in buying anything, she despises having to push her way through the crowds. Caitlyn can count on one hand the things she’s truly enjoyed about this year’s trip so far: one, watching the sunrise in the morning, and two, getting to spend some quality time with Mother and Father for the first time in a while (and that one comes with the condition that Caitlyn finds Mother’s company is best enjoyed in short bursts.)
And just to put the icing on the “fuck you, Caitlyn” cake that the world had recently decided to bake and serve up, Jayce hadn’t been able to come this year either. That means she can’t use him as an excuse to get out of things and she’ll have to resort to using work as an excuse instead—which is fine, she can huddle up at her desk and work, that’s no problem.
The real problem is this: Caitlyn is bored and she’s quickly running out of work.
Slapping her name on another JIRA ticket from her team’s rapidly dwindling backlog, Caitlyn sends a brief, longing glance toward the setting sun through her window and mentally knocks another day off the count of how many are left on this godforsaken trip.
The local weatherman drones on in the background as she works and Caitlyn pays just enough attention to the garbage on her TV screen to hear him call the recent cold snap unusual. Personally, Caitlyn thinks that a better word for it would be annoying.
12 days left.
Just 12 more days and then she can go home.
“Caitlyn? Are you in there?”
Father’s voice breaks through the quiet doldrum of fuzzy TV chatter, accompanied by a small, hesitant knock at the door.
“Yes, Dad, I’m working!”
Caitlyn briefly glances up from a quickly growing blur of if-else statements at the sound of a turning doorknob and just barely catches sight of furrowed eyebrows and pursed lips through the crack in the doorway.
“Oh.” He backpedals slightly and hesitantly asks, “…Is now a bad time? I didn’t mean to interrupt. I can come back later, if you want?”
“No, no, don’t worry about it. You’re not interrupting anything.” After adding one more line to the method she’d been working on and neatly wrapping up her train of thought, Caitlyn pulls her eyes from her screen for real this time. “I was at a good stopping point anyways. Was there something you needed?”
“There’s nothing I needed, per-se, but…” He trails off for a moment before he pushes the door open a little wider, pokes his head into the room, and continues, “Your mother and I were going to go for a walk soon and we were wondering if you wanted to join us? It’s a bit too chilly out to go swimming, but it’s lovely weather for a stroll. We could stop by that ice cream place at the plaza, if you want to. The one you like—that little stand with the soft serve? I know your mother thinks that we should all mind our sugar intake a bit more, but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”
Judging by what sounds like a muffled protest coming from farther down the hall, Mother definitely knows.
Caitlyn raises an eyebrow, leveling him with an unimpressed stare. “Didn’t you just say she’d be coming?”
After glancing over his shoulder, Father raises a hand to his mouth and lowers his voice to a whisper. “We could always come back and take another walk without her,” he suggests, a small, impish grin curling its way over his face. “She’d likely know we’re up to something, but if you don’t tell, I won’t either.”
“Maybe another time. Unfortunately I’m a bit busy right now.” Caitlyn sends a pointed glance toward her laptop and offers her father an apologetic smile. “I handed off what I could to my coworkers before we left, but,” she shrugs and lets out a small sigh, “you know how work is.”
Caitlyn almost feels guilty for lying through her teeth with how fast he deflates at her answer.
“Do you want us to wait for you?” he asks, after a moment.
She shakes her head. “That’s alright. I’ll likely be a while.”
That, at least, isn’t a complete lie. Tracking down the source of bugs that seem to only want to replicate some of the time does usually tend to take a bit and while she’d already found and had mostly taken care of half of the problem that spawned this ticket, there’s still another half of it left to address. The fact that this particular issue has been comfortably sitting in the low-priority backlog for months, on the other hand, Caitlyn will be keeping to herself.
“How long do you think you’ll be? It wouldn’t be much trouble at all to wait a few hours.”
“Likely until later tonight.” At the rate things are going, she’ll probably actually have this finished far earlier than that—which isn’t exactly ideal, since she’d hoped to stretch this ticket til tomorrow. She’ll have to find something else to keep herself occupied, but she’ll worry about crossing that bridge when she gets to it.
“Ah.” He pauses for a moment. “Then I assume you won’t be joining us tonight for dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Ferros either?”
It’s clear that he’s trying to be polite about it, but disappointment manages to seep its way into his words nonetheless.
“Probably not. Sorry, Dad.” Caitlyn offers him a smile. “You and mum have fun on your walk, though.”
Father smiles, but it doesn’t quite match the look in his eyes. “We will,” he says. He steps back and moves to shut the door before he stops to add, “If you need anything while we’re gone, don’t hesitate to call me, okay? Your mum’s leaving her phone at home, but I’ll still have mine on me.”
“Sounds good.”
He moves to pull the door shut once more and Caitlyn’s halfway into settling back into work before he stops once again.
“And Caitie?”
Caitlyn looks up from her laptop with a small hum, meeting her father’s knowing gaze.
“Don’t work yourself too hard, okay?”
Caitlyn wants to say that she won’t, but she knows better than to make a promise she can’t keep. Instead, she simply tells him, “I’ll do my best.”
The door shuts with a quiet thud and Caitlyn’s left to her solitude once more—just her, the TV, chirping birds and clicking keys.
Later that night, Caitlyn watches the sunset from her window once more.
11 days left.
It’s shortly after Caitlyn knocks her mental count of days left from 11 down to 10 that there’s a knock at the door: one, two, then three light taps. Without the TV on for background noise, it’s a sound that rings loud through her room, instantly drawing her attention. Quickly hitting save, Caitlyn turns to glance over her shoulder, pausing slightly to stretch as the dull ache in her neck that had likely been growing over the better part of the day decides to make itself known.
“Yes?” she calls.
“Can I come in?” Father asks. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”
Caitlyn blinks. “A surprise? What sort of surprise?”
“Nothing much,” he says. “Just a little something I picked up while I was out and about.” His answer is evasive at best and tells Caitlyn absolutely nothing of value on its own, but there’s a mischievous lilt to his voice that easily gives away that—whatever he had brought, it was likely something that Mother wasn’t in on. And that means Caitlyn is decidedly interested in finding out what it is.
“I suppose you’ll have to come in and show me, then,” she tells him, moving to get up from her desk.
There’s a brief moment of silence and a few thuds at the door before Father speaks up again.
“I may need some help getting the door, if you don’t mind,” he admits, with a sheepish chuckle. “It seems my hands are a bit more full than I thought and twist doorknobs are proving far more challenging than the front door.”
“One moment! Be right there.”
She’s not sure what she’d expected to find behind that door in her father’s hands, but a half melted upside down ice cream cone in a styrofoam cup definitely wasn’t it. Father’s other hand is clenched around a spoon and a sizable heap of brown paper napkins he had likely snatched far too many of on the off chance he’d ever need one.
Eyes flitting between the ice cream and her father’s expectant gaze, Caitlyn asks, “That’s for me?”
“It’s for you,” he confirms, shoving it out her way and holding out the spoon. “I passed by the plaza on my walk and noticed that there wasn’t much of a line at that soft-serve stand you like. It must be due to the slightly chilly weather—I don’t think I’ve ever seen it that empty. Perhaps I just went at an off time.”
He shrugs, pausing for a moment as if considering more possible reasons for the lack of foot traffic before deciding that's best left for another time and getting back on track.
“Who knows what the occasion was,” he says, “but I figured I’d take advantage of the opportunity regardless. I know you normally prefer the cones, but it started to melt a little as I ate mine so I went back and asked them to put it in a cup. It melted a little more on the way home, but I figured melty ice cream is better than nothing. So, if you want it,” he moves the ice cream out toward her a slight bit further, shaking it ever-so-slightly as if to emphasize its presence and encourage her to take it, “this is yours.”
“I…” Caitlyn finds herself at a loss for words for a brief moment, taking the cup of ice cream with a small, grateful nod. “Thank you, Dad. This is great.”
“Of course. It was really no trouble at all to stop. I was passing by there anyways.”
At that, Caitlyn can’t help but let out a small huff. “I see. So you just happened to walk by the ice-cream stand on the one night Mother is busy with her country club friends?”
“Yes, exactly!” Dark eyes glitter with mirth as Caitlyn reaches out her free hand to grab the spoon and a few napkins along with it. “It was a rather fortunate coincidence, if I do say so myself.”
“Quite fortunate indeed,” Caitlyn agrees. “I’m sure she’d have loved to scold you the entire time you wolfed down your waffle cone.”
“Waffle cone?” He scoffs in mock-offense, bringing a hand to his chest like an old lady who’d just been accused of schmoozing up to the town’s most eligible widower before asking, “Who said I got a waffle cone? I only ever get small servings, dear. Anything more than that would be far too unhealthy.”
“Ah.” Caitlyn takes a moment to correct herself. “My bad, I meant your kiddie cone.”
A quick glance down at her own ice cream cone reveals—well. To be honest, she’d hardly call it a cone anymore. Her ice cream does have a cone in it, yes, but the thing had long since cracked and had half sunk into her vanilla custard like some sort of glutenous shipwreck. She’s sure it will be delicious nonetheless and she can’t exactly complain about being DoorDadded ice cream, but still, it’s a shame.
“Yes,” Father agrees, smug, “I think you’re right. Your mother would have loved to scold me as I wolfed down my kiddie cone.”
“I suppose it’s a good thing that she doesn’t know then.” Caitlyn hums, idly scooping up a glob of half-melted soft-serve.
A single bite proves her earlier theory correct. The ice cream is good. Some of it is a little soupy, but it’s still sugary and delicious and manages to maintain that same creaminess-to-sweetness ratio that had so entranced her as a child.
“I suppose it is.” He sighs. “I swear, if someone didn’t know any better, it’d be easy to think she was the doctor in the family.”
Caitlyn pulls the spoon from her mouth and moves to point the end of it right at her Father’s face. “And you’re sure that she’s not?”
He pauses, brings a hand up to lightly scratch at his beard and says, “You know, I’m actually not sure. You might be better off asking her that question.”
He looks like he wants to say more on the subject, but he’s interrupted by a loud dinging noise coming from Caitlyn’s laptop. It’s a sound Caitlyn would recognize anywhere: a loud, obnoxious ringing that more than likely is the result of Garen Crownguard sending another unfunny out-of-date meme he had probably found on Porobook to the team group chat. On the off chance it isn’t, however, Caitlyn will need to check on that as soon as possible. She may be technically on vacation, but if someone has a question about one of the tickets she’s now horribly regretting having handed off, she’ll want to get that taken care of sooner rather than later.
“I’m sorry to have to cut you short, but duty calls.” She points her spoon over her shoulder back toward her laptop.
“No worries.” Father raises his wrist up to glance at his watch and hums. “The new episode of The Bachelor is on in a few minutes anyways. I just wanted to stop by and see how you were doing, that’s all.”
“I’m doing well,” she tells him. She’s bored and tired and absolutely dreading spending 10 more days dodging having to entertain her parents and their friends, but she’s fine. Everything’s fine. “Thank you again for the ice cream.”
In an instant, Father perks up like a dog who’d just spotted a squirrel within ten feet of his vicinity. “Anytime, sweetie,” he says, and with a small little wave, off he goes to watch his TV show of choice for the night.
Upon settling back in at her desk and logging back into her computer, Caitlyn can only sigh as she opens the team group chat to be met with a new message notification from Garen Crownguard. Its contents consist of nothing but a single image.
Lovely.
The sound of the doorknob turning sends Caitlyn’s fingers rushing for the alt and tab keys before she even realizes it. It’s not like she has anything to hide, really—she’s an adult, she can make her own decisions on how she wants to spend her vacation time—but considering she’d told her mother that she’d be too busy with work to attend dinner with the Arvinos, she’d rather not be caught red-handed halfway through watching a three hour lore deepdive on some animatronic horror game that she’d clicked on on a whim.
“Can I come in?” That probably would have been a great question for Father to ask before he’d started opening the door, but it’s a bit late now.
“Go ahead,” she calls, quickly opening the most recent file she’d been working on and moving to resize it to fullscreen.
Footsteps ring out from behind and an arm reaches over her shoulder to set down a heaping plate of stir fry on her desk. Caitlyn blinks.
“You never came out to get dinner,” Father explains, and while Caitlyn doesn’t turn to look, she can practically feel the frown in his voice.
“Thank you, but I’m not hungry.”
There’s a brief moment of silence as Father takes in that answer before he lets out a sigh. ”Your mother is a bit worried about you, sweetheart.”
Caitlyn huffs. “When is she not?”
It comes out a bit snippier than intended, but Father doesn’t give any indication he’s bothered by it in the least. Instead, he chooses to quickly correct his earlier statement. “To be honest, we’re both a little worried.” A hand makes its way onto her shoulder, giving it a light squeeze. “You’ve barely left your room this whole trip.”
“I go out when I’m not busy,” Caitlyn politely informs him.
Caitlyn turns to meet her Father’s gaze and is met with a look that easily cuts its way past her flimsy excuses.
“Perhaps some fresh air once in a while might do you some good,” he suggests. “Maybe a walk on the beach?”
It’s not exactly like he had flat-out told her to go touch some grass, but it’s a close enough sentiment that Caitlyn resents the implication.
“I went for a walk on the beach just the other day, actually.”
And that isn’t a lie, she did go for a walk on the beach about three or four days ago.
She remembers it vividly, in fact, because some fire ants had decided it was a wonderful idea to bite her feet on her way out. Apparently nobody had thought to deal with the colony of them that had built themselves a home right next to the entrance of the street’s beach access, nor had they thought to deal with some of the old, creaky wood planks on the boardwalk coming slightly loose. By the time Caitlyn had finally gotten home, her feet had been sore, her shins had been disgustingly covered in sand, and walks on the beach had immediately been moved far lower down on her priority list.
Caitlyn likes her routines—always has. Routines are easy; routines are nice; routines are predictable. There are places she likes to go and people she likes to see and this year’s trip had shoved its grubby little hands all over the plans on her calendar and tore them to shreds. She was supposed to go bar-hopping with Jayce and now she’s been left with far too much free time, a mostly empty vacation home, bored parents, and no friends in the immediate area.
So maybe Father’s right: maybe she has barely left her room. Because really, why would she ever need to?
Everything Caitlyn wants to do that isn’t on her computer is at home. At home, where she can go to that lovely little cafe down the street every morning and pick up a coffee with exactly two sugars and a chocolate croissant. At home, where she has her own car and her own space and can make popcorn at well past midnight without risking waking anyone up. At home, where she can’t be for another 9 days.
Caitlyn is ripped from her homesick daydreams when Father speaks up again.
“Oh. In that case… If you’d be up for another walk on the beach tonight,” he offers, “I’m free now.”
She wants to say yes. She wants to say yes, because she knows that he’s trying, but she can’t. Saying yes now would snowball into saying yes to other things later and that’s decidedly not the type of commitment Caitlyn is willing to make right now. So instead, she purses her lips and simply tells him, “I can’t. Not tonight.”
Father frowns slightly at that, looking like a child who’d just been denied a second cookie.
Before Caitlyn can stop herself, she blurts, “We could maybe do something another time, though, if you want? I could…” Her lips catch on nothing, looking for the right words. “I might be free on Sunday morning.”
Father blinks—once, twice, before a small smile works its way upon his lips.
“Sunday morning,” he agrees. “We’ll do something then, just the two of us.”
Somehow, that feels like an ultimatum.
Friday comes like the rain it brings with it: slow, heavy, and thick. Some minutes seem to pass like hours and some hours seem to pass like minutes, alternating in a pattern Caitlyn can never quite seem to pin down. It feels like one moment she’s sending off minor code corrections for a relatively easy ticket she had handed off to their most recent intern, and the next, she’s sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by quiet chewing and the screeching of metal against ceramic.
Conversations pass accompanied by the pitter patter of raindrops against the window, one by one. Mother makes an offhanded mention of possibly inviting Mr. and Mrs. Ferros over for dinner again on Tuesday night (which Caitlyn makes a mental note to be unfortunately unavailable for), Father says something about a trip to the yacht club to go boating on Wednesday, and—
“…right, Caitlyn?”
Two sets of eyes watch from across the table and Caitlyn is all of a sudden aware that she’s being directly addressed.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. Come again?”
“I was just telling your mother that you and I were going to do something fun on Sunday,” Father helpfully pipes in. “Since you said you’d be free then,” he clarifies, when Caitlyn doesn’t immediately respond.
That is most certainly not what Caitlyn had said. She had said she might be free. Might, as in she might not have time. Might, as in possibly or maybe or perhaps or some other word from her veritable arsenal of iffy answers. Apparently Father had taken the word “might” as “I’m clearing my schedule,” and for as much as Mother always used to harp on her for sometimes having selective hearing, Caitlyn is starting to suspect that it may be a genetic condition.
“Yes,” she agrees. “That’s correct. I’ll be free on Sunday morning.”
“Good.” Mother lets out a low, approving hum as she cuts a neat slice of her filet mignon—exactly medium rare, just how she likes it. “Be sure you don’t forget to set your alarms tomorrow night,” she advises. “You’ll need to be there early.”
Caitlyn blinks. “Be there early?” All of a sudden, she feels like she’s eating cardboard. “Be where early? I wasn’t aware we had plans.”
“You do,” Mother confirms. “With your father.” She arches an eyebrow. “Did he not tell you?”
“No,” Caitlyn says, quickly turning narrowed eyes on her father, “no he didn’t.”
Father at least has the decency to look somewhat guilty about it.
“I was just about to tell you, actually,” he admits, sending a half-hearted glare toward his wife. “But it seems like someone beat me to it.”
Mother takes a delicate sip of her wine and continues cutting away at her steak.
He sighs. “But yes, your mother’s right. I booked us a fishing trip.”
“…A fishing trip,” Caitlyn echoes, incredulous. “You booked us a fishing trip?”
“You always liked going out boating,” he explains, “so I figured that maybe getting out on the water a little would be fun. I’ve got an old friend who’s a fishing guide, so I thought I’d call him up and ask if he had any availability, and… well.” He gives a small, nonchalant shrug. “He happened to have some open time on Sunday morning from a cancellation. I took it as a sign. I thought we could use it as an opportunity for some—”
He cuts off with a cough that quickly escalates into a small coughing fit and it's a sound that immediately draws the attention of everyone at the table.
Fortunately, it doesn’t take long at all for Father to catch his breath again and after a quick drink of water, he moves to pick back up where he’d left off without much fanfare.
“I thought we could use it as an opportunity for some father-daughter bonding time,” he says. He opens his mouth to say more before he stops to cough and reaches for his water with a small, “excuse me.”
After waiting a moment for him to regain his composure, Caitlyn gently asks, “Are you alright?”
“Yup! All good now.” He gives her a small, reassuring thumbs up. “Just my allergies acting up a bit.” A quick glance out the nearest window causes him to frown and purse his lips. “All the wind this morning must have stirred up some of the goop in the air. I swear, the plants around here shed like dogs.”
“That’s putting it far too lightly. Every time I leave to get my coffee, I find my windshield vandalized by a swarm of bees.” Mother pauses to dab at her lips with her napkin before huffing, “If I had wanted a yellow and black Cadillac, I would have bought one.”
Talk of bees and pollen quickly blurs as Caitlyn idly chews steak that definitely tasted much better 15 minutes ago and after politely excusing herself and clearing her dishes, Caitlyn makes her way to the sweet, sweet sanctuary of her bedroom, flops onto her comforter, and lets out a sigh.
A thick curtain of clouds makes it impossible to see tonight’s sunset.
8 days left to go.
On Saturday morning Caitlyn wakes not to singing birds, but to muffled coughing and quiet voices. It’s an immediate, forceful reminder of one of the things she’d always hated about this house: the walls here are dreadfully thin. The kitchen is just down the hall from her room and if someone in there so much as twitches, she can always hear it.
If she’d been woken up by something simple, like clinking dishes or the whirr of the blender, Caitlyn would simply roll back over and do her best to suffocate her ears with a pillow. But coughing? Now that—that is a) concerning and b) decidedly worth getting out of bed to investigate.
After stopping to throw on a bra and put her hair up, Caitlyn makes her way out to the hall to see what all the commotion is about.
The sound she’s met with upon first stepping foot in the kitchen can be summed up like so:
First, there’s wheezing. It’s not the good kind—the type of wheeze you let out after laughing a little too hard at someone’s joke—but instead a sound more akin to taking the squeaker out of a rubber chicken and squeezing the life out of it. Then there’s a cough, loud, sticky, and wet. And last but not least is Father’s tired, but incredibly insistent grumble of, “I’m fine, Cassandra.”
“Dad?”
Both of her parents instantly turn to look at her with wide eyes, as if flabbergasted to see her out and about mingling with other human beings.
“Is everything okay?” Caitlyn asks.
“No,” Mother snaps, at the same time as Father declares, “Yes.”
Father’s answer is anything but convincing considering he follows it up with a wheeze that sounds like a shredded dog toy. The absolutely scathing glare it earns him from Mother isn’t helping his case any either.
“Is he sick?”
“Yes,” Mother tells her, “You’d think that he’d have figured it out by now, but apparently not.”
“Because there’s nothing to figure out! Really, I’m fi—” He cuts off with a phlegmy cough and Mother shoots him a look that says a thousand words. At least four of them are definitely “I told you so.”
“Okay,” he admits, after a moment, “I may be a little under the weather this morning. But!” He holds up a finger. “I can still go fishing tomorrow.”
“Whether or not you can is irrelevant,” Mother huffs. “You will not be going fishing like this.”
“And I won’t. I’ll take some NyQuil tonight and I’ll be healthy as a horse in the morning.”
“Horses are rather fragile, actually,” Caitlyn pipes in.
“Healthy as an ox, then.”
“I’m pretty sure those aren’t much better.”
“Not the point.” Caitlyn tries not to cringe as he lets out another cough. “I’ll be fine.”
Mother looks like she’s five seconds from cracking a tooth with how hard she’s clenching her jaw. “Tobias, don’t be obtuse.”
Caitlyn is pretty sure she can see the moment Father realizes he’s not going to win this argument. Shoulders slumping ever-so-slightly, he frowns before letting out a sigh.
“Fine,” he relents, “but if I feel better tomorrow morning, I’m going.”
Mother looks at Caitlyn and Caitlyn looks at Mother and Caitlyn is pretty sure that everyone in this room knows that he won’t be feeling better tomorrow morning.
Father coughs well into the night.
7 more days. 7 more days and then it’s hasta la vista Heimerdinger Head Island.