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Cecil’s car puttered to a halt in the driveway, just behind a tan Corolla whose hubcaps were still missing. Rolling his eyes, he put his car in park and shut off the engine, taking a moment to let his annoyance at Steve Carlsberg’s absolute incompetence wash over him. How that man had managed to woo his sister, he could never understand.
But. Today wasn’t about Steve Carlsberg. He shoved down the feeling and snagged the gift bag out of his passenger seat as he stepped out of his car. Skirting the edge of the drive, he planted a smile on his face that he hoped would become more natural than forced over the course of the visit.
“Uncle Cecil!” Janice threw open the door and rocketed down the walkway towards him, skidding her wheels and doing a complete 360 spin before coming to a stop right in front of him. She threw her arms around his waist in a tight hug.
Laughing, Cecil juggled the gift bag and leaned down to hug her around the shoulders. “Hey, kiddo,” he said. “Happy birthday.”
“Thank you!” She beamed up at him, rotating her chair and wheeling back up the walk, Cecil keeping pace beside her. “Is Uncle Carlos going to come?”
“He’ll stop by later.” Cecil let her enter the house first, then shut the door behind them. “He’s working on something special today, but he wouldn’t miss cake and ice cream.”
“Cecil, is that you?” His sister’s voice rang out from the kitchen, and she poked her head around the corner, wiping her hands on a towel.
“Who else would it be, Mom?” Janice said, rolling her eyes.
“That’s true,” Abby said with a laugh. “You’ve always had a distinctive voice, Cecil.” She stepped back into the kitchen. “I’ll have some snacks ready in just a moment; make yourself at home.”
“Uncle Cecil, hold on, let me show you something.” Janice zoomed out of the living room and down the hallway to her bedroom as Cecil moved into the dining area. Chuckling, he set the gift bag down on the kitchen table and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms and watching his sister move around the kitchen.
“Where is Steve?” he asked, and for her sake, he tried to keep the venom in his voice to a minimum. “His car’s out front.”
“He’s around,” Abby said, sliding a baking sheet out of the oven and setting it on the stove to cool. “Probably in the shed out back.”
A silence descended. He realized it had been a long time since they had really talked; for the most part, his visits were brief and taken up by talking to Janice, fawning over her inventions and her Girl Scout badges, avoiding Steve Carlsberg. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he was in a room alone with his sister.
She seemed to pick up on the awkwardness of the situation too, because she glanced sidelong at him as she set down her oven mitt on the counter, smiling a little. “You’re looking good, little brother,” she said softly. “That scientist is good for you.”
“Thanks,” Cecil said, and he was saved from having to say anything else by Janice’s return.
“Check this out, Uncle Cecil,” she said, lifting something from her lap and holding it up for his inspection. It was a little helicopter-type device; he could see a pinhole camera mounted into the front, and there were wires sticking out at odd angles from the belly.
“Neat,” he said, taking it from her and turning it over in his hands. “Did you build this?”
Janice nodded excitedly. “It’s not done yet, of course, but it’s going to have a speaker in the bottom, so when it flies, I can talk to people it passes! It’ll be a great prank!”
Cecil cooed and fawned over the little helicopter, taking a seat at the kitchen table with her so as to not be looming over her. Janice pointed out features on the device, expounding on her plans for it, explaining problems she had run up against and how she was solving them. All the while, Cecil kept half an eye on his sister, occasionally catching her watching them, and he could have sworn her face was almost sad.
Other people arrived as the afternoon went on; Tamika Flynn and a couple of other kids from her Youth Militia came soon after Cecil, and they and Janice holed up in the living room for a while, talking about literature and the finer points of fighting Librarians, slingshot engineering and the kinds of weapons one could find in a good book. Old Woman Josie dropped by with two Erikas in tow, though she couldn’t stay long, she said; “There’s something time-sensitive we have to attend to, but we wanted to congratulate the birthday girl.” Steve Carlsberg came out of hiding, and Cecil hightailed it back to the kitchen. The pile of gifts on the table had grown so that it was difficult to find a place to lean his elbows.
Abby suddenly appeared at his side, sliding a cup of steaming coffee onto the placemat in front of him. She took a seat opposite him and smiled, holding up her own cup. “You looked like you could use a pick-me-up.”
“Thank you,” Cecil said awkwardly, lifting the mug to his lips and taking a sip. It was perfect, dark and thick, and he could taste the ritual chants she had put into hammering the beans. “You’ve always made such good coffee,” he added with a sigh, loathe to lower his cup. He cradled it between his hands on level with his mouth, the easier to take frequent sips.
She hummed and took a drink, her eyes flicking towards the oven timer. “Thank you for coming, by the way. You know, Janice adores you. And she can’t wait until Carlos gets here. She’s been working on that little drone for weeks, but I think she wants a scientist’s opinion on its finer points.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, and I’m sure Carlos will be more than happy to look it over,” Cecil said, and he set his mug down at last, folding his forearms together on the table. “He’s very fond of her, thinks she’s brilliant - which, of course, she is. I just can’t believe how fast she’s growing up.”
“I know, me either.” Abby laughed. “It seems like forever, and like no time at all.”
Cecil knew what Carlos would say to that: ‘Time isn’t real,’ or, ‘Time doesn’t work in Night Vale anyway.’ Steve Carlsberg would probably have some inane rebuttal to that, knowing him, and Cecil would fume and pull faces while Steve and Carlos debated jovially about the nature of time.
As for himself, he would probably say something flippant that someone else might take seriously and analyze, such as, ‘Time is a description of our physical location as it relates to a giant ball of exploding gases in space.’ The look on his sister’s face was wistful, though, staring off into the middle distance in the direction of the living room as though she could see her daughter and her friends through the wall.
“I know what you mean,” he said instead, and he reached across the table to cover her hand with his. She started, looking at him with surprise, then smiled a little and squeezed his fingers.
“Thank you, Cecil,” she said. “For coming. For always being there for Janice.” There was something unspoken in her words, something that sounded a lot like, ‘The way Mom wasn’t for us,’ or maybe ‘The way I wasn’t for you.’
Cecil rarely found himself speechless over the course of (what he could remember of) his life, but just now, he couldn’t make his throat work; his tongue felt stuck to the roof of his mouth, and he settled for squeezing her hand back. She gave him another one of those sad smiles, but he was saved from further scrutiny or the expectation to say anything by the chime of the oven timer, which coincided with a chorus of shrieks from the front room as the door opened.
“Uncle Carlos!” Janice’s voice broke out above the rest, and Abby laughed as she released Cecil’s hand and stood.
“You had better go rescue him,” she said, walking back into the kitchen proper and popping open the oven door. The tantalizing aroma of gluten-free snickerdoodles joined the other smells of good food and snacks she had already laid out.
Cecil watched her move for a moment, listened to her hum a barely remembered song. Then he stood, his chair scraping against the linoleum, and went to protect his boyfriend from excitable teenaged engineers and militia leaders, whose intentions were good but whose methods were sometimes questionable - at best.
The food was, of course, delicious. It seemed Abby had taken it upon herself to become the best gluten-free baker that ever gluten-free baked, and she was pretty close to her goal. The ice cream was some of the best in town, and didn’t even have that many bones inside. Janice received a number of splendid gifts, one of which was a helicopter pilot’s manual from Tamika, and which was promptly confiscated by Abby and Steve for at least a couple of years. Carlos had gotten her a set of jeweler’s tools, for those tight, finicky spaces in her inventions; as for Cecil, he’d decided she was of an age to have her very own municipally approved and required Dream Journal. (“It’s important to get into the habit early,” he had told her gravely, and she had just beamed at him.)
Cecil sat on the couch between his sister and Carlos, much closer to Steve (on Abby’s other side) than he really wanted to be, but this was Janice’s special day; he could pretend to make nice for an afternoon, if only for her sake. Carlos had an arm around his waist, pulling them snugly together, chuckling occasionally and offering comments and opinions on the things she could do with her presents as she opened them, and, in fact, it was the closest he’d ever felt to content while breathing the same air as Steve Carlsberg.
He jumped when he felt a touch on his shoulder, much higher than Carlos’s soft, sometimes teasing fingers. He glanced over to find Abby resting her head there, lightly, a radiant smile playing across her lips as she watched her daughter and curled her legs in, so she was half sprawled on him.
“Open that one next, sweetheart,” she said, pointing to a blue and purple bag that was much larger than her other gifts. Janice tore at the tissue paper inside, pulling out a helmet set with a pair of goggles. She gasped, her eyes wide, and turned her gaze to her mother and step-father, obviously disbelieving.
“We heard you talking to Carlos one day about certain modifications to your chair,” Steve said in his awful, grating voice.
“As long as you’re safe about it and only do it in the presence of one of us,” Abby added, motioning to the four adults on the couch, “we think you’re old enough to handle some of that responsibility.”
“Oh, Mom, really?” Janice squealed, hugging the helmet to her chest. “Thank you so much!”
Abby laughed, her head bouncing on Cecil’s shoulder as her daughter fawned over her new protective equipment, the members of the Militia crowding in to offer their own opinions and admire the craftsmanship.
“I can’t believe that you, of all people, think that’s a good idea,” Cecil murmured to Carlos, who shrugged, pinching at the skin of Cecil’s hip with a little grin. He yelped and glared as his boyfriend pulled the ‘who, me?’ look.
“I think it’s an excellent idea,” Carlos said. “What better way to learn about thermodynamics, fuel efficiency, engine mechanics and combustion all at once? Don’t worry, bunny,” he added, pressing a kiss to Cecil’s temple. “I’ll be triple-checking everything, every step of the way.”
“I’m gonna be a rocket man!” Janice half-shrieked, half-sang. “I have to go try these on, I have to see how cool I look!” She and the other kids raced down the hallway to her bedroom.
“Just don’t shut the door!” yelled Steve Carlsberg after them, just as the slammed the door closed. He sighed, leaning back into the cushions of the couch. “Kids,” he added, with that idiotic giggle of his that set Cecil’s teeth on edge.
Abby sighed happily, stretching her legs out and moving to sit back up. “I don’t know about you boys, but I’m exhausted. I’m going to go clean up the kitchen a bit. Holler if you need anything, or if you decide to leave,” she added to Cecil and Carlos. Then she did something completely unexpected: She leaned over Cecil and pressed her lips to his forehead, holding his face in her hands. “And thanks so much again for coming, Cecil. It really means a lot - to all of us.” She pulled away, her fingers ruffling his hair, that radiant smile back in place and her eyes shining.
Cecil blushed, stammered, nodded. He hardly noticed either his sister or Steve Carlsberg leaving the room, and even in the car later, tailing Carlos all the way home, he couldn’t shake the idea that something had just happened - their relationship had shifted, yet again, and for once, it wasn’t terrifying, or painful, or sad.
It was warm, and it was loving. It was the start of something new.