~~~~~~~~
She was tempted to laugh even though the reality of the situation wasn’t particularly funny to anyone but herself (and she was fairly certain that her amusement was mostly a stress induced tendency toward finding a tension break). She thought she might be nearing the point where she had to either laugh at the situations confronting her or burst into tears. Tears weren’t really an option, so she was, apparently, left with mental eye rolling and chuckling softly to herself inside her head (because trying to explain why she was laughing out loud at the scene in front of her was a conversation that she was not going to be having).
She was the one who needed Will’s help. That was the way this moment was supposed to go down. She was going to take advantage of actually being left alone in Will’s company to solicit his assistance. That was the plan (or as much of a plan as one could have with all of three seconds of notice). That wasn’t what was happening in some strange twist. It seemed to be Lia’s week for heart to heart conversations with the sons of the Walsh clan. Playing therapist for Will hadn’t been what she had in mind when she had spent the past few days being nearly desperate to see him, but it seemed to be what was on the agenda for the evening. She couldn’t possibly begin what was already going to be an awkward conversation pleading for assistance from someone who looked like Will did at the moment.
The man hadn’t gone asking for someone to vent to (she very much doubted that he was the type; she would have pegged him as the lengthy internal monologue kind), but she wasn’t about to let the man’s demeanor go unchallenged. He needed to be snapped out of it. She needed him in working order. It was strange -- she had never before really thought that Wyatt and Will were very similar. They were both tall, of course, and shared the same dark hair, but there had always been something fundamentally different in the way the two of them presented themselves that seemed to cancel out any and all of the physical similarities.
Seeing Will slouching on the sofa in an attitude that could only be described as having an aura of moping, she was reconsidering her stance on the brothers’ common qualities. It was almost disconcerting. They even absented mindedly swirled the ice around their glasses in the same counterclockwise manner. She wondered briefly which parent they might have adopted the mannerism from (she had difficulty picturing either of the senior Walshes doing anything that resembled moping) before pulling her attention back to more pressing issues.
He couldn’t be moping -- not now. There was no time for moping. Moping was for people who were not in the middle of a time crunch. She needed him to be in an up for challenging his brother and soon to be sister-in-law (even if it was rather passively) state of mind. There was no room in her plans for a Will that was all angst ridden over the family loyalty spiel to which they had just been subjected. She didn’t even have time to ponder the purpose of that little talk even being given in the first place. It had been kind of randomly tucked in to a round of congratulatory speeches. Meredyth and Wyatt had kind of traded back and forth on it. It could have been directed at her or at Will or at both of them or at nobody at all. She would work that out later. She needed to get Will Walsh’s attention, and she needed to do it quickly.
The man had blown off her first couple of attempts at striking up a conversation, so she decided to just jump straight to the point. She didn’t know how much time she might have (how long could Meri and Mrs. Walsh actually peruse the table arrangements), and she wasn’t going to go around wasting it just because Will was being overly sensitive.
“Nobody is asking you to forget that Wyatt’s your brother, Will, no matter what it feels like,” she tried. The man actually gave a sort of a startled jump (or as much of one as one could do from a seated position). He blinked up at her, and she felt another wave of familiarness wash over her. Hadn’t she just seen that same expression on the other one the night before?
“I don’t . . .,” he started. Oh, no. He was not going to blow her off; she wasn’t going to let him.
“You heard what I said,” she countered, “and I meant it exactly how it sounded. Don’t pretend that you don’t know why I said it.” He sighed and started to shake his head at her.
“You just . . . .”
“Don’t.” She didn’t have time for this. They needed to be upfront with each other. She didn’t have time for anything else. “It isn’t going to work on me. I’m right there with you.”
He appeared to be attempting to stare her down. That wasn’t going to work. He could get all sentimental about family loyalty at some time when it wasn’t going to cause her further aggravation. She held a hand up as if making a presentation.
“Meredyth,” she offered as if he was being obtuse (which she thought he might be deliberately being). “We’ve always had a pretense of getting along at least. I can’t say the same for you and Wyatt. I know good and well that that doesn’t change the fact that they’re your sibling, and it’s awfully hard to wrap your head around the fact that your flesh and blood is capable of some of the things that I think we both know that Wyatt and Meri are capable of doing.” Will looked shocked. That was a vast improvement over a few minutes before when she would have classed his look as somewhere in the “morbid” range.
“You want to explain to me how you just jumped right in to this then,” he challenged. So, he did know. She hadn’t been sure. But seriously? He thought she hadn’t thought this through? He didn’t think that she knew what she was doing? That was the implication of that tone. There had been a time not so very long ago when that tone might have had some justification, but it did not now. That would be a little too much explanation for the time that they had (which was likely rapidly dwindling). She gave him the shortest, most honest answer that she could.
“Because I’ve known it’s coming for a long time now,” she looked him directly in the eyes as she said it and hoped that it managed to convey what she needed it to convey. She thought it might have worked if the slightly startled, slightly disbelieving tone that he used to answer was any indication.
“You’re only sixteen,” he said as if reminding himself of that fact. “How much could you have known before Connor drug you into this?”
“First, Connor didn’t drag me into this,” she countered. “I was already in the middle of it. Being around Meredyth put me in the middle of it. Knowing what Meredyth was doing, even before I knew the whole extent of what it was, put me in the middle of it. Knowing Wyatt puts you in the middle of it. You can try to pretend that you can stay out of it all you like, but you and I both know that you know that you can only get by with that for so long. You aren’t stupid, Will, and Wyatt knows that. More importantly, Meredyth knows that, and I think you’ve been around her enough to know that she doesn’t leave potential threats alone.”
She watched his face as he processed her words, and she knew, without a doubt, that he had had some sort of an altercation with Meri at some point in time. His reaction to her subsection of the importance of family speech had hinted that that might be the case, but the grim smile along with the darkness that shadowed his eyes when she mentioned Meri and potential threats was an absolute confirmation. Meredyth had gone after him at some point, and Will didn’t seem to have taken kindly to it. That was good. That was the type of reaction that she had been counting on getting. Meredyth had saved her who knew how much convincing time.
“I’m on board, you know,” he told her. “Well, I guess you didn’t know that, but you do now. You should just let the grown-ups handle it. You’re better off out of the way.”
She felt one of those dark amusement chuckles that seemed to overtake her more often these days work its way up to the surface. She managed to startle Will again. Oh, good, another Walsh brother was going to decide that she was creepy. She would have a perfect record.
“Funny how in agreement with Meredyth you are on that,” she told him. He looked affronted. How old was he anyway? “I
need you to tell Connor where I am. That’s all I need from you, and then you don’t have to worry about it anymore. Okay?”
“You’re really better off as things are.”
“Do not go there,” she bit out not particularly caring about the harsh edge that had taken over her voice. “You don’t know anything about it, so don’t continue spouting your ignorance. Give a message to Connor for me, and I’m not your problem anymore. Deal?”
He seemed to have returned to an attempt at staring her down, but he would be unsuccessful. She wasn’t going to seal his noncompliance by losing a child’s game. It was just a message. She had no idea what was going through Will’s head at the moment. All she was asking for was message delivery. It wasn’t exactly taxing. If he had already chosen to be on the actively against Wyatt and Meri side, then what was the big deal?
If he didn’t do this for her, then she was going to have to do something drastic. Meredyth had, after all, had phone service disconnected from the house (as she had discovered after her little heart to heart with Wyatt the night before). She never, not in a million years, would have predicted that Wyatt Walsh would be easier for her to deal with than his brother. Wyatt, at least, was decisive. He was wrong, and he was often morally bankrupt, but at least you knew exactly where everything stood when you were dealing with him. She even understood Wyatt after their little chat (and she was not even going to think about how deeply disturbing of a thought it was that she actually “got” Wyatt Walsh).
She didn’t understand Will. Either he had picked a side or he hadn’t. He said he had. Why did it feel like he was still in the process of deciding? He was so wishy-washy. If he was working with Connor, then why had he been skipping out on all of the prewedding stuff? Connor had to be going spastic trying to figure out where Meri had sent her, so why hadn’t Will jumped right in on the chance to see her. She knew Connor was worried. He had to be. He was Connor, and she knew that about him. It didn’t matter how many times Meredyth tried to subject her to the you can only count on blood lecture series that she seemed to be channeling lately. She knew Connor was worried about her. She knew Will could fix it. Why wasn’t he?
“I’ll get a message to Connor.”
She was so caught up in her thoughts that she almost missed the words. She had been a heartbeat away from deciding to throw herself upon Mrs. Walsh’s mercy and pray that everything would miraculously end well.
Plus, Will hadn’t exactly been forceful when he uttered them. He looked odd (not that she had a lot of experience reading Will’s expressions) almost as if something had shifted off of his expectation track, and he was doing his best to wrap his head around everything that he would need to reconfigure in his thoughts to match up with the new version of his reality. That she could sympathize with -- she had been there more times than she cared to recount.
“Thank you,” she told him right before Meredyth came sweeping back into the room followed closely by Mrs. Walsh. Wyatt (who had given no indication that he recalled that they had spoken to each other very early that morning) and his father returned soon after leading the board members from WIS who were the guests for the evening back from their tour of whatever it was that Wyatt had been showing them. Lia couldn’t remember. She hadn’t been paying attention. She had been too focused on trying to find a way to talk to Will. Mrs. Walsh had suggested they go look at something. It couldn’t have been the garden; it was too cold for that (not to mention dark). It didn’t really matter. It had gotten them out of the way, and she had hauled Meri off to be shown the centerpieces for the reception. Thus, Lia had found herself alone with Will -- bless the woman.
General chit chat soon took up everyone’s attention. She and Will spent the rest of the evening in some odd little parody of a spy novel. They exchanged little snippets of information whispered at opportune moments and tucked random items into carefully constructed sentences about the weather and the wedding. She, at least, hoped that that was what Will was doing because that was what she was doing. If he hadn’t caught on, then she might have to go back to the launching herself at Mrs. Walsh and pleading her case plan. She liked Mrs. Walsh and all, but she didn’t have much confidence in the potential positive outcomes of that one. There were too many variations that ended up with a needle in her arm. She would rather avoid that if at all possible.
If she and Will were on the same page (and having the conversation that she thought they were having), then Connor knew what school she was attending and that most of her options for communication were nonexistent there. He would know soon (again if Will was following her, which she really hoped he was and it wasn’t just wishful thinking on her part that he was making appropriate responses) that she needed to talk to him and that she had her netbook in her possession. She wasn’t sure what he could do with that information, but she was hoping that some ingenuity on Anna’s part would be forthcoming. If nothing else, then she was hoping that Will could be prevailed upon to play message carrier one more time. After all, there would be programs at the wedding (paper!), and Meredyth couldn’t watch her during the whole wedding reception (somebody around would have to have a pen).
It was deeply sad that that was her backup plan and that she actually found it comforting.
Glimpse: The Complete Trilogy Page 31
