Dance with the Devil: Chapter 52

Jack admitted to himself that, by lunch, he wasn’t concentrating on school.  His thoughts were with Victor in the hospital.  He had managed to read a quick text from Starr about him and began wondering how he was going to face the man he had thought of as his father again.  Especially now, with Todd back and them repairing their relationship, it was hard to not think of the man without the scar on his face as his father. 

Molly found him at the lunch table, seemingly lost in thought.  “What’s going on today?  You haven’t seemed to be in the here and now with us.  Mr. Stanley nearly had your head in history,” she inquired.

Jack looked both ways and moved in to whisper in Molly’s ear, “My Uncle Victor was found alive this weekend.”

Molly’s eyebrows shot up at what she had been told.  “They found him!  Where? When?” she asked hurriedly.

“My dad had hired a PI to go down to Llanview to see if there could be anything uncovered from that end.  When he realized it was a dead end, he headed home.  On the way there, he saw a van dump something on the side of the road.  He went to investigate and there was Victor,” Jack explained.

“So, they just let him go?” Molly asked after working through it in her mind.

“Well, he was barely conscious and they had to rush him to the hospital, but according to my family, he seems to be recovering.  My dad even said he’d put him up at our house when he is release,” Jack said.  “That surprised all of us.  But I think my dad’s trying to help the guy out, now that Tea and her son are missing, he’s been gone for a long time, plus, my little brother Sam.  I don’t know.  My life just turned really weird last August and I’m still trying to figure it out.”

“What kind of relationship did you have with Victor when he disappeared?” she asked.

“I still thought of him as my dad.  To the point that I hated Todd.  I called him Scarface, which he hated.  I brought up a lot of bad history that I had dealt with when I was younger.  But with Victor, he was dad.  He protected me…when I did something stupid.  He probably protected me too well,” Jack said shamefaced.

“What did you do?”

“There was this kid, Shane.  He’s our age.  Well, he’s got asthma, he had leukemia and there were a lot of issues in his personal life.  He didn’t have a father, then his mother had a guy pose as his dad, then it turned out his real dad’s parents were who he thought they were, just lot of stuff like that.  Well, I bullied him, stole his clothes from the locker room, posted stuff about him on MyFace.  He…he almost jumped off the roof of the school after that. But I kept it up and tried to lure him to an abandoned house.  His mom, well, we thought his mom, went instead and we locked her in a room with a busted generator.  The woman inside died,” Jack said.  He looked up at Molly’s horrified expression and realized he’d ruined it.  He ruined any chance he had with her. The only good thing was the lunch bell had rung and they had different classes.  He ran away from her as fast as he possibly could. 

While Jack was suffering from the shattered, short-lived relationship with Molly, Blair was fearful she would have to play referee between Victor and Todd.  She had been in the hall when she heard Todd’s voice explode and when she ran into the hospital room, she would have bet the two would be at each other’s throats. 

“Why would I have done something stupid like that?  As far as I knew, Irene Manning died long before you hit Llanview.  It must have been your fault!” Victor shouted back.

“Me?  Excuse me, but I spent eight years tied up, tortured and God knows what else down in the bayou.  When would I have had the time to make a will leaving everything to our mother?” Todd yelled back.

“Hey!” Blair called out over the two.  Then, quieter, she said, “This is not the place to have a screaming match, especially over money.  Who do you two think you are, Tina?”

As if to prove her point, both pointed at each other and said in unison, “He started it!”

After giving each other nasty looks, Victor, holding up the paper said, “I guess it all got resolved.  You fight it in court?”

Todd exhaled, trying to calm himself.  “Tea took it to court to try to break it.  Firstly, it was  your will but made out by ‘Thomas Todd Manning’ who had been established to be me, and thus, not legally allowed to give to anyone anyway.  That didn’t work, so since Irene was dead by the time we got to court, both yours and hers was passed on to the person she named as her heir.”

“And who did our mother name as her heir?” Victor asked.

“Tina,” was all Todd said.

Victor laughed.  “Tina?  Really?”  He looked at Todd, whose face was dead-panned.  “You’re not laughing.”  He dropped his head back onto the pillows.  “Tina inherited everything.”

“But that’s not the strangest part of the story, Victor,” Blair said, her voice laced with amusement.  If Tina inheriting everything was shocking, what their sister had done was downright unbelievable. 

Victor looked at Todd, who smiled wickedly.  “Tina gave everything over to me.”

Again, Victor laughed.  “I’m going to hate myself for asking this, but what in the world would make Tina Lord give over not one but two fortunes?”

“She realized she had a shot with her ex-husband if she grew up and stopped being a money-grubbing pain in the ass,” Tina’s voice answer as she stood in the doorway with Viki.

“Don’t think I’m going to congratulated you on this,” Victor said.

“I don’t need you to,” she answered. 

“You’re really back with that goody-two-shoes cowboy?” her brother whined.  “He really is a glutton for punishment.”

“Well, then, you should also wish Viki the best.  She and Clint are going to be getting married soon,” Tina said.

Victor rolled his eyes at that thought, but remarked, “I’ll make sure someone drunk calls me at the wedding.  Hopefully you’ll come to your senses.”

Blair, feeling uncomfortable, looked at her watch.  “Look, I’m going to go pick up the boys.  We’ll be back in a bit,” she said, wanting to get out of the sibling’s way.  She went to go pick up Sam and then headed over to the high school.  Jack was standing at the curb, looking miserable and dejected.  When he got in, she asked with concern, “What happened?”

“Nothing I want to talk about,” he answered glumly.

Blair drove the rest of the way in silence.  When they got to the floor at the hospital, Sam took off in a run and didn’t stop until he hit his father’s room.  “DAD!” he shouted.

Todd caught him and got him into his father’s arms.  The whole family was touched to see Victor and Sam reunited.  “Oh, buddy, I’ve missed you,” he said.

“They were all right.  You really are alive,” Sam said through his tears.

Victor looked over his son’s shoulder, an implanted memory of going over a cliff in Ireland flashing across the mind’s eye.  “Hey, we’re all too tough to kill.”

Jack came in and saw Victor lying in the bed.  He, too, walked over and hugged his uncle. 

Todd shifted in his chair and wheeled himself out.  Blair noticed and followed him out to the hospital hub.  “Hey, where you going?” she asked.

“I…I just need some air,” he answered.  He looked at Blair.  “Jack and Victor…they need some time to be alone.”

Blair knew that was just an excuse.  “Jack is your son, Todd.  He’s accepted it and you two are in a great place.  Yeah, Victor’s back, but that doesn’t change anything.”

“He raised Jack.  Jack thought he was his father for eight years.  He didn’t even accept me when Irene told us the whole story.  Now he’s back and I just afraid…just afraid I’ll loose my son again,” Todd admitted grimly.

Blair touched his cheek and kissed him.  Todd had spent a childhood lied to, not knowing his parents and, having vowed to not do that to his own children, had, partly through no fault of his own, done the same thing to his own son.  She could see his heart hurting, thinking the worst as he always did.

“Dad?” came a voice.  Blair and Todd turned around and saw Jack standing there.  “Can we talk?”

“Uh, sure, son,” Todd replied.  Blair left them alone and Todd pulled up in front of a bank of chairs.  Jack sat down opposite him.  “Remember that talk we had about relationships, you know, between men and women?”

“Yeah,” Todd said hesitantly.

“Well, I was honest with Molly today, about my past, you know, Shane,” Jack told him.

“Ok,” Todd said slowly.  “And what was her reaction?”

“Ah, lunch ended, so she never really said,” Jack answered.  “But I saw her face when I finished.  She was horrified.”

Todd ached at seeing his son’s pain, but he was proud that he had been honest.  It was more than Todd had ever done.  “Hey, look, you did the right thing.  Just don’t overreact,” he said.  Thinking about it for a minute, he added, “People can surprise you.  How’s, uh…”

“Sam’s talking his ear off.  I thought I should leave the father and son alone for a bit.  I’m still not sure how much of all this Sam really understands.  But, I’m happy he got his father back,” Jack replied, hoping Todd got his meaning. 

Todd smiled, knowing exactly what his son meant.  He let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding.  “We should get back too.”

“You go.  I want to get a burger over at Kelly’s.  I’ll give Starr a call to pick me up.  I’ll see you back at home later,” Jack told him as he got up.  Then, before he moved away, he impulsively gave his father a hug.  Todd accepted it, gratefully, finally believing that he hadn’t really lost his son.  



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