The tree stump Jack was sitting on was a memorial of sorts to Bobby's need to burn shit down.
Jack wasn't a Mercer yet when it had happened, but he'd heard all about it, several times. Hell, he could tell the story in vivid detail if he wanted to since Jerry took every opportunity he could get to share it.
His beloved treehouse - up in flames.
It took Jerry all summer to build that thing from plans he'd carefully drawn up himself. He'd gathered supplies from a neighbor who was building a deck and overestimated the amount of lumber he'd need. It was a really hot summer, and dry, too, but Jerry worked every chance he got, hammering nails into planks at all hours of the night until Evelyn had to force him to come in for dinner. It took weeks, but Jerry never wavered from his plans until he was finished - proudly unveiling his work for his two brothers and their mother one late July night.
And it had taken approximately one week for Bobby to destroy it.
Jerry always told the story with such a somber expression that Jack had to fight the urge to laugh. It really wasn't funny, but the idea of the fire department showing up, sirens roaring, trying to extinguish a fire in a tree while two teenagers looked on - one crying and one cracking up - was just too priceless not to laugh.
Grinning despite himself, Jack pulled a cigarette out of the battered pack he'd found hidden in his bedroom. He knew Bobby had already found all the loose tobacco and Marlboros he'd brought with him from New York and trashed them - for his own good, of course.
No, these cigarettes were old, a forgotten pack from when he was a teenager and had to do stuff like stash them throughout the house to keep Evelyn from finding them. Why he bothered hiding them in the first place, he couldn't figure out. His smoking wasn't something Evelyn had been clueless about - she'd known, of course. Something about her, though, made it feel like he should at least try to pretend he didn't smoke, make some effort to act like a normal teenager and normal teenagers hid things like smoking from their parents.
He pulled out his lighter and spun it around in his fingers, the metal cooling quickly in the brisk air. He studied the cigarette he was holding and wondered if it was worth it. It was going to taste like shit; there was no way it wasn't. He wasn't relishing the thought of inhaling stale tobacco, but at this point, he'd settle for anything that would calm his nerves and help distract him from the letter he'd shoved into his back pocket.
XxXxXxXxXx
Bobby was leaning against the kitchen counter, looking out the window when the front door banged open. He didn't turn around to see who it was - he could tell just by the sound of scurrying feet, the excited yippy little barks of the dog, and the ragged sigh of his brother. He'd almost forgotten that Jerry was coming over today with the kids - Camille was away at her sister's for the weekend and Jerry was stuck watching the kids.
Bobby heard the TV turn on and the obnoxious sounds of some kiddy show filled the house. He hadn't been around his nieces much, but he'd already learned that TV only distracted them for so long. Soon they'd be running through the house, giggling and chattering as they got in the way of everything. It was cute ... for about five seconds.
"Since when did you take up bird watching?" Jerry asked as he stepped into the kitchen, making a beeline for the fridge to grab a beer.
"Ain't bird watching. Fairy watching," Bobby answered as he turned around and reached out, grabbing the beer Jerry had just twisted the cap off of. "Thanks, man," he said with a grin, turning back toward the window.
Jerry stared at his empty hand for a second. He opened his mouth as though he was about to say something, but quickly closed it as he went back to the fridge for another bottle.
"It's freezing out there and he isn't wearing a jacket," Jerry stated as he joined his brother at the window.
"And this is news how?" Bobby asked, shaking his head.
"He's gonna make himself sick. What's he doin' out there, anyway?"
"Pouting? Thinking? Writing a ballad about your treehouse? How the fuck should I know?" Bobby watched as Jack fidgeted with his lighter, opening and closing it, repeatedly lighting and extinguishing the flame. Bobby was hoping he'd keep it up long enough that the damn thing would run out of lighter fluid before the he got a chance to light the cigarette he was holding.
Bobby had no fucking clue where the cigarette had come from in the first place; he'd cleaned all that shit out of the house before Jack had come home. Part of him wanted to run out there and bitch him out for smoking, but another part of him was tired of being the Jack Police. It was getting boring - for both of them.
Jerry turned and looked at him. "Well," he said, raising an eyebrow.
"Well what?" Bobby asked as he took a swig of beer.
"Ain't you gonna go see what's bugging him?"
"Why me? I ain't no fucking Dr. Phil. You're better at this shit than I am. You go talk to him." Just as he finished his statement, something crashed in the family room, followed by high-pitched laughter and barking.
Jerry grinned. "Fine. I'll leave you with the girls and I'll go talk to Jackie."
"Right," Bobby said with a grimace as he pushed away from the counter and made his way to the back door.
XxXxXxXxXx
Just as he was about to light the cigarette, the door opened. Jack groaned, not surprised in the least to see Bobby step outside. Pretending he didn't notice his brother was walking toward him, Jack cupped one hand around the end of the cigarette to shield it from the wind as he lit it.
He didn't inhale as deeply as he usually did - it had been months since his last cigarette and he wasn't completely stupid - but that didn't matter and he was quickly in the middle of a world class coughing fit.
It hurt. It hurt like hell and it lasted forever. Bobby was right. He'd finally killed himself smoking.
The coughing subsided and he fought to catch his breath, wiping his hand across his mouth. Part of him was afraid he'd look down and find blood on his fingers after he'd literally hacked up a lung. But there wasn't any blood and as the pain eased and his breathing grew regular, he tried to convince himself he hadn't done any permanent damage.
Without even realizing he was doing it - it was just such an ingrained habit - he raised his hand to take another drag off the cigarette. "You've gotta be fucking kidding me," Bobby growled, stopping Jack just in time.
Jack was half-tempted to take the drag anyway, just to piss off his brother. Instead he ground it out on the tree stump and tossed the butt into the frozen, brown grass, missing the patch of snow he was aiming for.
A shiver ran through him and he wrapped his arms around himself, suddenly very aware that he was sitting outside in the middle of winter with only a sweatshirt on. He should go inside, but Bobby didn't have a jacket on either and Jack knew how much the cold bugged him.
Bobby had that pained expression on his face - the one that meant he wanted to talk, a talk that was more than likely for Jack's own good. Well, if Bobby wanted to butt in and be a pain in the ass, then he could do it while freezing his balls off in the snow.
"Don't start about the smoking," Jack said in a low voice as his brother took a seat next to him on the tree stump.
"Wasn't going to," Bobby said as he stretched his legs out in front of him, hooking one ankle over the other one.
"Right," Jack said with a derisive laugh.
"Why are we out here, Jack?"
Jack shrugged and busied himself with pulling the cuffs of his sweatshirt over his hands, a habit Evelyn would always scold him for, claiming he would ruin his clothes by stretching them out. The safety pins and holes didn't bug her nearly as much as a stretched out hem.
"It's the letter, isn't it?"
Jack shrugged again; he didn't want to talk about it. He was half hoping Bobby had forgotten about it or would at least not care enough to ask about it.
"Thought you always wanted to know who your parents were?"
Bobby wasn't going to let it drop and Jack gave up trying to avoid it.
"I did," he admitted quietly, "but that was before."
"Before what?"
"Before Evelyn," he said with a sad smile. "She made it different, ya know? She made it okay to stop hoping and looking and wondering. Why should I give a fuck who my real mother is when I have the greatest mom in the whole world right in front of me?" He winced as his voice caught on the last word, waiting for Bobby to make a joke about it.
Bobby looked at him steadily and Jack could sense his hesitation at what to say or do next. Bobby was never a heart-to-heart kind of guy and usually tried to avoid them as much as possible.
"What's the letter say?" Bobby suddenly asked.
"What?" Jack asked, taken off guard by the question.
"The letter … I mean, does the woman come off as some kind of fucking nutcase, or something?"
Jack thought about it for a minute. He'd read over the letter so quickly, the words blurring as his hands shook while holding it. Despite how little time he'd spent looking at it, he could practically recite it from heart, the words burned into his memory.
"Nah, man," he started slowly, "she sounds … I dunno, she sounds fine, I guess. Maybe a little sad."
"Sad?"
"Yeah, sad." Sighing, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out the folded envelope and tossed it to his brother. "Here, since you're gonna keep asking me until I recite the whole damn thing for you anyway."
Bobby snorted a laugh as he pulled the letter out and unfolded the pages.
Bobby read silently and without comment. Jack kept twisting the cuffs of his shirt as he watched him read, almost wishing for a smartass remark or two sprinkled throughout to help ease the tension.
Closing his eyes, Jack could picture the careful feminine handwriting that stretched across the nice stationary she'd used. The letter was to Evelyn – well, not by name, but it was meant for the person who adopted him, for her to pass along to him, for her to talk to him about. But she hadn't had a chance.
The letter was dated for October, right around the time Evelyn had called and asked him to come home for Thanksgiving. He couldn't remember if she'd mentioned that she had something important to talk to him about or not; but then again, she knew that saying something like that would just make him worry needlessly for a month before she had a chance to talk to him face-to-face.
It was weird, but he could feel the uncertainty of the woman writing the letter and he supposed that made sense. He felt overwhelmed with uncertainty just reading it; he couldn't imagine what it would be like to actually sit down and write something like that.
She was young when she got pregnant - young and scared - and giving him up was the only option she had at the time. She said she knew a lot of time had passed, but that she had always wondered what he'd turned out like and what sort of life he'd had.
It sounded like she wanted some sort of absolution, that she wanted him to tell her she'd done the right thing. Part of him wanted to find a way to contact her so that he could fill her in on just what sort of a life she'd abandoned him to, but it was obvious she thought she was writing to the couple who adopted him when he was a baby. He figured she didn't know that they were killed in a car crash five years later and that he'd wound up lost in the system until Evelyn took him in.
It didn't take long for Bobby to finish reading and he looked up once he was finished. "Jackie, she seems okay. Not half bad. Ma would have been okay with it if you --"
"I don't want to," Jack cut in before Bobby could finish.
"You don't have to meet her, just write her a letter or give her a call." The words sounded awkward coming out of Bobby's mouth, too civilized or something. Bobby's timing really sucked when it came to dropping the obnoxious attitude.
Jack pushed himself up, slightly unsteady on his feet as pain shot through his knee. "Just leave it alone, Bobby." He reached down and grabbed the letter from his brother, hastily folding it back up and forcing it into the envelope before shoving it back into his pocket - as though he could pretend it didn't exist if he didn't have to look at it.
"Promise me you'll think on it," Bobby said, and Jack had to fight the urge not to laugh. Like he was going to be thinking about anything else in the days to come. Well, at least the letter had taken his mind off his shitty excuse for a band.
"Fine, whatever, I'll think about it," he mumbled just as Jerry opened the back door. The strains of some goofy song sounded behind him, followed by squealing and barking and more laughter.
"Hey, guys, can we maybe go to the rink or something? I've been meaning to teach the girls how to skate anyway and I don't think I can take another minute trapped in this house with them." Jerry disappeared back into the house as quickly as he appeared and Bobby looked up at his younger brother.
"What do you think? Up for a little skating?"
"I can't skate. You know that," Jack said, shaking his head but grinning.
"Whoever said you could in the first place?" Bobby deadpanned as he stood up and started walking back to the house, Jack following slowly behind him.
"Bobby, I could skate circles around you on my worst day."
"In your dreams, Cracker Jack, in your fucking dreams."
They were still arguing as they climbed the stairs and went inside, the door slamming behind them.