Dulcis Domus

CHAPTER-2

Luke isn’t able to enjoy much of the plane ride over to New York because she falls asleep half an hour after they take off, she had planned to stay awake, look around because as her mother says golden opportunities right? And as long as demon Ashford didn’t return Luke would have been in an alright mood, at least just to keep an eye on CJ.

CJ wakes her up once they have landed and she has no idea what he had done for the whole flight, hopefully not something too horrible in his passive aggressiveness. She has a few minutes to get her bearings and straighten out her sleep rumbled shirt before she is being rushed out of the plane and is greeted to the evening sky of New York, there are a surprising amount of people waiting for them but she can only point out a few camera flashes in her sleepy brain.

She instantly shift closer to CJ when surrounded with so many strange people and CJ in turn grips her tighter, obviously sharing her discomfort, then there is a lot of shaking hands and people telling her and CJ how sorry they are for them, and how her father was such a nice man that Luke actually wonders if they got the wrong man and wrong children, for a second she kind of desperately hopes they did just so she can go home to her mom and brother.

She knew that if her father had dropped dead under normal circumstances Ashford wouldn’t even have bothered with a call to inform them of the man’s death, but no that asswipe had to get murdered by Ashford’s weapon in a very non flattering way that made the company look like incompetent blubbering idiots.

The hand shaking and sympathizing pats continue on but she can barely process half the words they are saying because she is still in her sleepy daze despite the crazy levels of discomfort she is in with suited men surrounding her and her poor brother who looks way out of line when surrounded by them, then there are some posing for photos and finally their Lawyer Lady comes to the rescue and rushes them away.

Its only when she is safely deposited into a limo with her brother that the sleep actually fades, luckily enough only the Lawyer Lady gets in with them, which is a huge internal sigh of relief because she would have done unspeakable things if she had to share close quarters with Marylyn again. It’s at that thought she is reminded of the fact she hadn’t smiled, hell she hadn’t even thought about demon Ashford as she was too busy being crowded by suited men (and Maybe a women or two, she doesn’t quite remember).

“You alright?” CJ asks after a few minutes, blinking at her worriedly and wow, she hadn’t expected that look out of CJ, he gave their mom that look a lot though it’s the ‘I am worried about you and I will die if you are hurt, so please don’t be hurt’ look, she never thought she’d get that from CJ who preferred to yell and tease her rather than you know be concerned about her, which is just ew.

“Yeah, Yeah-I am good” Luke lies easily with a comforting pat on his knee.

“So that was fun wasn’t it?” Carrie asks interrupting them and they both give her the best b***h faces they can because they are not dealing with her fake cheeriness no matter how relived her presence instead of Marylyn’s makes he feel, she is the lesser of two devils, at least this one tries and smiles even though its 200% fake.

Carries doesn’t bother with conversation after that, the rest of the ride passes fairly in silence other than the radio that is playing some random song. Luke and CJ tries their best not to gape out of the window like a dog as they see the city for the first time in their life, despite all the list of shitty things she will have to deal with this year the view is surly on the plus side, and under all the wonder and excitement of their eyes chasing after huge skyscrapers and building’s its almost easy to forget about the fact that she is terribly missing her Ma even though it hasn’t even been half a day since she left.

“Aren’t we going to the school?” Luke wonders out loud once she realizes that the limo they were in was pulling into a less building-y area and more of what seemed like a castle.

“Oh-No No, Mrs. Ashford insisted that you join her for dinner, that way you guys can relax today at the Ashford Estate and get used to the jet lag before heading to school tomorrow with Miss Marylyn. Don’t worry she is a nice woman” Lawyer Lady informs and Luke fights the urge to groan out loud, CJ actually does do just that.

“Just like Marylyn is wonderful?” Luke asks and Carrie had the audacity to look ashamed.

“Okay, that might have been bit of a stretch. But Annalise Ashford is a much better woman, she’s the woman who greeted you today at the airport with Mr. Ashford, don’t you remember?” Carrie asks and CJ and Luke share a look that says exactly how much attention they had paid to those people. She remembers Lionel Ashford, a gruff old man with a stern voice and that was about it, she thought that’s all that mattered.

“Never mind, you’ll meet her properly this time and trust me she is a lot better than her step daughter, tons better than the previous Mrs. Ashford at least, that one had been a giant headache” Carrie murmurs once she realizes they had no idea who she is talking about, by the end of it, It seems she is talking more to herself than them though.

“How many times had the guy been married?” Luke wonders.

“4 last I heard, the kids belong to number one though, she passed away years ago, the others barley lasted six months before the divorce paperwork started, this one is the longest so far though, fairly nice compared to the other two I knew” Carrie gossips and Luke finally sees something of a real person behind all the fake smiles.

“Wait was she the blonde one who said the asshole was one of the nicest men she ever met?” CJ inquires, suddenly joining into their conversation. Luke snorts out loud at her brother’s words.

She didn’t know if David Martinez had a sudden change of heart or something but when she knew him he was the furthest thing she knew from the word nice, there was a picture of him somewhere in a sections named the worst f*****g morons of the world, ‘Nice’ should not even some within 50 feet within that guy. But she figured the Woman probably never even knew him just like the rest of the lot and was just blubbering out something to sound like she cared, Luke and CJ would like them tons better if the honestly said that they didn’t care.

“Yeah, that is the one. Forgive me for asking but I am not really getting good vibes from you two about your father, is there something-“ Carrie starts of but leaves it at that giving them the choice to answer in a way they found comfortable rather than ask them a solid question. It seems the sudden burst of gossiping had made her comfortable enough to ask questions that are not tightly interlinked to her job.

“Let’s just say that man is the reason we all have trust issues, specifically against men” Luke replies in the best way she knows with the devilish smile that held more pain than humor as she chooses to focus her gaze back to the slowly halting outside world.

“He is nothing more than a sperm donor” CJ adds soon after, his words intense.

“He means it literally, a year after he and our mom got married my older brother was born, he left when she was 7 months pregnant without a freaking note, almost half a decade later when our grandparents passed away and our mom couldn’t possibly be more helpless he comes back full of bullshit and 9 months later I was born, my mom likes to call those months ‘a rough patch’ which translates to a f*****g abusive relationship, this time he stuck around till he got the chance to name me then bailed soon after, 2 and half years later he comes back again and when our mom didn’t take his s**t-he-he…” Luke abruptly cuts off her rant realizing where her words were heading towards and the fact her chest was feeling so heavy with burning range all of a sudden.

“You can say it you know, he r***d our mom, this time he ran away before he even realized mom was pregnant with his f*****g collateral damage” CJ spits out, his eyes welling up and Luke instantly goes for his hands, there are a lot of words she wants to tell her brother, words her mom had been telling him since he realized how he was conceived and felt guilty every second since then, but Carrie is still a stranger, the only reason they were telling her any of this is because she was the familiar stranger, the only person they actually had in this strange town to look out for them, because everybody around them was glorifying this asshole and it was only fair that at least one person knew what kind of a monster he actually was.

“Cam, you know it’s not like that. Ma loves you more than anyone else in the world” Luke whispers to him, but CJ just shrugs her hands away before continuing on.

“It doesn’t end there though, we moved away but he found us again, this time he came back for his kids, threatened our mom but could barely last a weekend with us, so he went to torture our mother again expect this time Wendell broke a vase in his head and we got a restraining order” CJ completes.

The car finally pulls up but no one makes an effort to get off from the car even though she can see other few similar limos pulling up and their patrons exiting into the large wooden doors of the said Ashford Estate.

“Oh I am so sorry-I-I-The restraining order never came up in any of the-“Carrie starts awkwardly, her eyes suddenly holding much more sincerity.

“Mom dropped it before it was filed, she was afraid he would take action against Wendell, but that was all like a decade ago, he never came back” Luke answers realizing CJ had went still again.

“That’s why you guys hate this whole thing, because you got it out of an abusive asshole of a father. I-I am sorry” she repeats out loud and Luke can do nothing other than shrug at her words, because everyone is sorry for them, but being sorry is never actually enough and Luke had learned to live with that by this point.

“He is not our father” CJ says before he unlocks the door and gets off, Luke lets out a frustrated sigh before following after him. This time Carrie helps them get their bags and even drop them of at their respective rooms in the large mansion even though a few of the workers in the mansion had already rushed to their side. Their Lawyer Lady only leaves after saving her number in both of their phones and reassuring them that they could call her at any second.

She hates getting pity because her father was an asshole, but considering that she is stuck in strange place full of people who seems to be wearing fake facades and rude gestures whatever kindness she can sense is appreciated, So Luke accepts her offer and even manages a genuine smile towards the older woman.

Luke gets enough time to take a long shower, in where she contemplates most of her life choices and thinks about the very depressing future ahead of her if Marylyn was anything to go by. The bathroom is just as luxurious and elegant as the rest of the Estate, but Luke doesn’t marvel much on it mainly due to her anxiety about the new school and also just genuine lack of interest at the moment.

By the time she gets dressed, a butler (she thinks it’s a butler, Ashford’s could have butlers right? Like Bruce Wayne) informs her kindly that dinner will be served in an hour, which gives her enough time to flop down on her bed and groan into the pillow like she had desperately wanted to from the second she saw demon Ashford and realized how depressing her final year of high school was going to be, as the cherry in the topping it seems like they are going to deal with her and CJ like charity cases.

She lays there starfished on the overly comfy bed and tries her very best not to scream or cry because she is missing her family so much and the impromptu story time about her sperm donor had made her feel even worse (as most things concerned with David Martinez was). She stares at the ceiling and the chandelier hanging from it (why the hell is there a chandelier in the guest room? who does that? actually what even is the point of chandeliers other than reminding her than it could fall any second due to an earthquake or a loose bolt and come plummeting down to her death, and she will be pinned down in blood and glass bits, what a terrible way to die) for another good 10 minutes before deciding to gather her bearings and call Wendell.

She doesn’t go for her Ma knowing that CJ must already be on phone with her, she could just walk across the hall where CJ’s assigned room is but she is feeling a bit lightheaded and does not want her brother to see that she is actually terrified and panicking, because after all he had a point she only has to suffer a year of this, CJ has 3, if he sees her freaking out he’ll act out even more and probably set fire to the place or something.

So she rings up Wendell even though she already knew all Wen was gonna do was tease her or gloat about how amazing the house is when the both of them weren’t’ there, but she is desperately seeking for a rope of familiarity and if bantering with Wendell was what it is, she was gonna go for it, no matter how degrading that was. They talk for a few minutes, and of course there is the usual banter but other than that she fills him in on all that happened and they both discuss about the annoying time differences, Wen assures her that they’ll get sorted enough to find a time where both half’s of their family will be awake and free to talk, then there is the usual jittering because if Wendell was not being an annoying little i***t it meant something was seriously wrong.

By the time she hangs up (after talking to her mother too, because there is good chance she wouldn’t be able to sleep otherwise) there is only a few more minutes till dinner was meant to be served, for a second she thinks of not going, she could probably lie about a headache or something. She didn’t feel like sitting with a bunch of strangers but then her stomach groans and she is reminded of the fact that she hasn’t eaten in at least 10 hours, so despite her discomforts she gets up from her spot in the bed and straightened up.

She puts on the best plaid shirt and the newest jeans she had as not to look like an i***t (she was pretty sure she would manage to look like an i***t among them anyhow). She has a feeling her clothing was going to be made fun of a lot in the next year at Eddridge Academy, her closet consists of a lot of flannel and plaid shirts and a few pairs of jeans not very jaw dropping or feminine for that matter, and in her defense she had grown up in Wendell’s hand me downs, worn and used to the point that the strings were falling out and its exactly for that reason those cloths were so damn comfortable, so when it came to her turn of shopping she made a point of picking out the most comfortable stuff and looking good was only like the 5th factor in her factors of choosing cloths, most of her cloths were brought from Target or Wen’s old ones, she owns nothing that cost more than 50 dollars or has a guy’s name on it, hell the only designer brand she has is a pair of Nike sneaker that too once belonged to Wendell.

She even braids her hair so it won’t look like she had just been rolling around in their fancy thick bed (which she has), but it still manages to be angled in at least 36 directions, her hair was messy like that, she had given up on it long ago when she was 12 and asked her mother whether she could just chop it off, her mother had almost cried because she had had her grandfather’s hair, Luke had resigned to live a life of messy hair after that.

By the time Luke gets out of her room CJ is waiting for her despite her worries of him bailing on her and leaving her all alone with those sharks, he even cleaned up, wearing a shirt instead of that hideous hoodie (she is pretty sure she has a similar hoodie somewhere).

“Do we really have to do this?” he asks with his eyes resembling a petulant puppy. Luke would love nothing more than to say No and make plans to run away from there, but no her deranged father left her no choice.

“I am hungry” she says instead and that actually earns her a smile.

This time when she places a hand on his shoulder he doesn’t shrug her away, Luke takes that as a win as their butler (or maid, what is the male version of a maid, man servant, maiden? Wait, that was feminine too, Luke was gonna stick with butler because that just sounded cooler and you know more Batman-ish) returns to lead them to the dining room.