Two more kids bustled through the front door before Jonni could start the next phase of her fixes. Which, in this instance, might also be a good thing. It was her younger siblings, Peter and Deidre. They tumbled through the door, jostling each other in their rush to get inside first. Of course, like most young siblings they were also accompanied by the sounds of nonstop chatter, most of it directed at the other.
"Shut up! God, you are so stupid," a boy's voice, Peter.
"You shut up," a girl this time, Deidre, "And stop pushing me!"
"Karyn! Where'd you go?" Peter cried in the classic sing song voice of a tattletale, "Dee Dee won't stop pushing me!"
"I am not, you liar! Whoa," Dee Dee stopped short upon realizing how crowded the living room was, but both she and her brother immediately homed in on one key figure.
"Dad?" Peter said uncertainly, his eyes haunted and wary.
"Dad!" Dee Dee on the other hand was immediately and unhesitatingly joyous. She darted across the room in a flash and practically leapt into Gary Gibson's arms, "Daddy! You're better?!"
"I am, sweetie!" Gary smiled and ruffled the top of Deidre's hair after planting an affectionate kiss on her cheek, "Much better now that I've seen you."
Gary looked up from his daughter's smiling face and laughed, "And how are you doing, champ?"
Jonni almost said something, thinking her father was talking to her. It was a greeting he had typically always reserved for the only other man in the house. However, Jonni had just recently been distracted by a brief hot flash, which left her feeling flushed and irritable. She was in the process of shrugging out of her warm coat when she had heard the magic word, "champ." It had instantly cheered her, snapping her out of the cranky mood she had felt creep up on her. Jonni turned back to the rest of her family with a smile - - and realized Dad was talking to Peter.
Jonni's baby shifted inside her and she remembered that Peter now occupied the status of Gary Gibson's only son. A second after that she, and everyone else present, realized that this wasn't going to be quite the happy reunion everyone was envisioning. Gary was still staring at his young son, Peter, and tried again, "You okay, champ? C'mere and talk to your old dad."
"No!" Peter suddenly yelled, taking everyone aback, "Leave me alone! I hate you!"
With that the young boy violently hurled himself down the hall and stormed up the stairs to the second floor. His feet pounded down the hall, a door slammed, and there was the sound of a body throwing itself onto a bed. Gary was completely bewildered. His return to the ranks of humanity probably counted as the greatest moment of his life after marriage and the birth of his three children. Why had his restoration made the only son left to him so angry?
"It's okay, Daddy," Deidre said, her voice sad and wise beyond her years, "Pete is just upset. She, I mean, he gets teased at school all the time for being a sissy and for you being in the crazy house."
"Oh, well, I see, that makes sense," Gary felt himself getting angry again. That damn stone of Jack Merlin's struck again! How much hell does my family have to go through because of Merlin's mistakes? However, that wasn't his priority just then. Someone had to talk to Peter, to try to help him understand things would eventually get back to normal, "Dee Dee, you stay down here with everybody, okay? I better go talk to your brother."
"No, let me," Karyn spoke up, a trace of reluctance and something else, embarassment perhaps, in her tone, "I'm getting the impression I've been sort of a mother figure around here since we got back from DeMorrell's."
"What makes you think that?" Liam sounded a little put out, remembering when she had once been the mother figure in these parts.
"Us," Karyn pointed at the photo sticker on her highschool notebook. It showed Liam laughing, while Karyn, arms about his neck, planted a kiss on his cheek.
"Us?" Liam repeated, slightly shocked.
"Yeah," Karyn figited before shyly holding out her hand, displaying a gold band with a modest diamond set into it, "I mean, this kind of looks like an engagement ring, doesn't it?"
Jonni experienced a brief, powerful surge of jealousy. It didn't escape her that the person she was actually jealous of was really her mother. The world was spinning. Karyn was in a tuxedo, ready to marry Liam, who was dressed in a flowing white bridal gown. She felt like she was going to be sick. And with that, Jonni collapsed in a dead faint.
