Closed The Longest Summer

[Reuben Pendleton]

It was the last day of June, and Reuben was in the garden applying a final coat of dusty rose paint to the walls of the playhouse. Although playhouse was no longer the right word for it. Earlier that morning, it had been a playhouse, outgrown and abandoned, filled with wet leaves and left to the mercy of the elements. Eight hours and a great deal of toiling later, it had earned the privilege of shedding its prefix altogether; it was now simply a house, fully equipped with its own front porch, mailbox, and doorbell. Its single, carpeted room was furnished with a camelback sofa, a writing desk, and numerous potted plants, and the walls were festooned with white bunting and soft fairy lights.

Reuben set down the paint can and poured himself a lemonade from the pitcher on the garden table. He poured a second for his wife and carried it over to her. "I hope they like it," he said, brushing an arm across his forehead. "Hey - it's kind of like your old shed. Do you remember? We had our first kiss in there." There was a pause as it dawned on him. His eldest was a teenager, and Rion wasn't far behind her. "New rule - no boys in the shed."

 

[Saveli Pendleton]

Saveli loved everything about working with her hands alongside her husband. She was giddy to get the work done and so cheated a few times using what little bit of magic she could - she wasn't expressly a good witch when it came to anything other than potions and herbology after all. She smiled as Roo came over to her with some lemonade in hand and gratefully took it. It was quite warm after all. "They'll like it I'm sure." She giggled. She then laughed fully when he spoke his new rule. "This may make you feel worse but I'd alreayd had my first kiss by their age." She responded offhandedly.

For the first time in years she thought of Gabriel. But she didn't think ill, or really even positively. He was just a fleeting thought of something she'd fully healed from a decade ago. She sighed contentedly. Her life couldn't be more perfect at this point. "We should probably get ready to pick them up, I'm sure they're driving Dad up a wall."

 

[Reuben Pendleton]

"Huh. Yep. Yeah, that makes it a lot worse, actually," said Reuben, but he was laughing. The warmth of the sun, the success of their project, and the anticipation of his children's excitement had infused the day with a brightness that nothing could spoil. He gave Saveli a quick kiss, then finished his lemonade. "OK, let's do it."

 

[Monty Pendleton]

Admin Approval ID - 92236​

Having the grandchildren over was never the hassle Saveli and Reuben made it out to be. They seemed to forget, or were unwilling to believe, that the girls were better behaved for Monty than they were at home, a fact the inventor considered to be his privilege for enduring the trials of raising Saveli. Besides, opportunities to see them were few and far between now that they were both attending school in New Zealand. Every time he saw them, they had been on another adventure, learned another spell, overcome another setback. Monty wanted to hear all of it.

As usual, he had planned plenty for them to do - a trip to the cinema, ice cream in the park, a board game or three. Now they were in the garden, setting up a barbecue to surprise their mum and dad. Well, it wouldn't strictly be surprising, since Monty had called in advance to tell them not to eat, but they had agreed to pretend, and the girls would be none the wiser.

Forty minutes passed. Sixty. Ninety. Saveli and Reuben were over an hour late. Leaving the girls, Monty went inside and tried Saveli's mobile. It rang six times, then went to voicemail. Twice again he tried, thirty minutes apart, with the same result. After the third try, he sat down in his study, still cradling his phone. Thinking.

Thinking was dangerous. In all likelihood, they had got caught up in something important and couldn't get to the phone. This was the story he had told the girls, after he'd made them a burger each to keep them going. It was no use worrying. Yet he did. Where were they? What was going on? Why hadn't they returned his calls?

He stood up, preparing to conceal his anxiety once more, when there was a rap at the front door. Thank God. Relief spurred him out of the study and down the hall, his heels knocking on the hardwood floor. But when he opened the door, it was not Saveli and Reuben who greeted him, but two men in smart, dark greys robes. They wore similarly grave expressions, and pinned to both of their lapels were silver badges lettered 'MINISTRY OF MAGIC'.

The men asked to come in. Monty took them to the living room. Distantly, Ainmere and Rion's laughter floated in from the garden.

"I'm afraid we've come to deliver bad news."

When Ava had lost her daughter, Monty had watched her grieve and wondered at her strength, but he had not known the depths of the pain she felt. Now the hand of death had come to reap from his own family, and he felt it all at once, a pain so tremendous it annexed his body and soul. Saveli and Reuben were dead. Saveli. His daughter. She who burned with unfailing brightness, who fought and breathed and laughed and conquered, who had given Monty reason to heal and taught him what it meant to love. His son-in-law, the man who had captured her heart and held it so delicately. Gone. It wasn't possible. But even then, as he resisted it, told the men they must be mistaken, the truth sought to silence his denials with fresh waves of agony. His world was not immovable, as he had once believed. It was fragile, and breakable, and it would never be whole again.

Some time later - Monty didn't know how long - the men left him alone, and the house was plunged into silence. Though twilight was approaching, it was still light outside, and the girls had not yet come in from the garden. How would he tell them? How could he? He was sure he wouldn't be able to, that he would fail under the weight of it. But he could not fail. He was their godfather, after all. In the avalanche of grief, he would be their rock, and if he crumbled, so too would they.

Numbly, he went into the kitchen, where through the bay window he could see Ainmere and Rion sitting on the patio. They were deep in conversation, faces animated with laughter, oblivious to the cruel hand that fate had dealt them. He could not bring himself to interrupt them. Instead, he sat down at the kitchen table, waiting, and wishing he could arrest them in their blissful ignorance forever.

 

[Ainmere Pendleton]

Grandpa Monty's was always a blast. Even if Rion was annoying sometimes, Ainmere always had fun. The two were outside and Ainmere was droning on and on about classes. She was so excited to get to choose her own classes. Briefly in their conversation she paused. Was that a knock in the distance? She looked up for a moment but then brushed it off. She had no idea what time it was so maybe she was hearing things. Or maybe their parents had arrived. If that was the case they needed to get more stuff together. "Set those plates, and sit down!" She said, tidying up the table. She sat and looked toward the house, waiting. Waiting so patiently.

But her patience waned and soon she was leaning on the table. "Why do they always talk so much..." She said with a grumble, before getting up and going inside. "Mum c'mon!" She called out, before finding Monty in the kitchen. "Are mum and dad not here? I thought I heard a knock." She said before getting a weird, sinking feeling. "Pops... you look sort of pale, do you feel okay?" She asked. As she approached his side she noticed his eyes looked red. "Hey... what's wrong?" She asked, taking a seat now, and glancing to see if Rion had followed her in.

 

[Rion Pendleton]

Rion had eaten her way through a bowl of grapes and an entire tube of Pringles, and her stomach was still rumbling. She glanced at her watch for the sixth time in an hour. "If they're not here in ten minutes, I'm opening the hotdogs without them," she said. But then Ainmere stood up, and, not wanting to sit all by herself, Rion followed her into the house. In the kitchen they stopped by the table, where their grandpa was sitting with a strange expression on his face. "What's wrong?" Rion echoed, glancing between them. As the youngest of the family, she often felt she was the last to understand what was going on and wondered if she had missed something important. But this time, Ainmere looked as confused as she did.

 

[Monty Pendleton]

Monty's stomach clenched. The avalanche was in motion. There was no returning from this moment. “Sit down,” he said, gently. Rion did. For a moment he sat in silence, assembling his thoughts in various ways and finding no order which softened their blow. When he finally spoke again, his voice was hoarse. "It's about your mum and dad. On the way here, they... I'm sorry." He wrestled with the pain, held it down. "They were in an accident. A car crash. They both died."

He paused, partly to let Ainmere and Rion process what he'd said, and partly to gather the strength to keep talking. "I don't want either of you to think this is your fault. They chose to drive, and no-one could have - no-one could have foreseen this. Do you understand that? You're not to blame." But even as he said this, he knew they would blame themselves. How many times had he offered to apparate them home? How many times had they refused? Saveli and Reuben had never made a fuss; a thirty minute drive each way was insignificant compared to the children's comfort. No doubt if Monty had apparated with the girls instead, Saveli and Reuben would still be alive, but this was meaningless, for there was no parallel universe in which Saveli and Reuben would not be kind. "I'm going to look after you. All right? I'm here. I'll look after you."

 

[Ainmere Pendleton]

Ainmere watched her grandfather as he talked. She refused to sit though. No when an adult told you to sit down you were either in trouble or something bad happened. It happened when Ainmere's favorite chicken died at a young age. She wasn't going to sit down and then he couldn't give her any bad news. But he kept talking. Ainmere's face slowly shifted from confusion, to a grief stricken look. She felt absolutely hollow for a moment, something that had never happened to her. She could feel these odd tingles in her wrists, traveling up her body as goosebumps appeared on her skin from shock.

"They drove because..." Ainmere stopped as she slowly hit a realization. They drove because she was afraid of apparating. She had been since she was a kid. She looked at the table, eyes void of any emotion for a second. Then suddenly they were filled with tears. "No..." She said before looking up at her grandfather, almost angry in the face from disbelief. "No!" She said more firmly.

 

[Rion Pendleton]

Time had crawled to a complete stop. Rion stared, hearing her grandfather distantly, as if he were on the end of a broken telephone. Mum and Dad were dead. No - they were on their way here. They'd turn up in a minute. Her grandpa was talking rubbish. What did he know?

Tears fell steadily down Rion's face. Her mouth had opened, but no sound came out. No. No, no, no. She needed her mum. She wanted her dad. She wanted to go home, to wake up from this terrible nightmare, to rewind to the morning and tell them she didn't want to go. They would have listened. They would still have been alive. In so many alternate todays, they would still be alive...

"Do something," said Rion. "Why aren't you doing something? Make them come back." Her grandpa was an inventor. He must have a machine that could save them. He must know a spell. "Do something!"

 

[Monty Pendleton]

Monty had been strong, but watching the shadows fall in his grandchildren's eyes broke him, and he began to cry. His loss was catastrophic, but still it was nothing when he measured it against theirs. For with their mother and father, death had taken from them all that was good, safe, and bright in the world, the only security they had ever known, and the purest love they had ever felt. "Whatever it is you feel, it's all right," he said. "It's all right to be angry. Or sad. Or confused. But listen to me, please - you must not blame yourselves. They loved you so, so very much. They wouldn't have wanted it, and neither do I."

Shock, anger, sadness - Monty had braced himself for these reactions. But he was not prepared for Rion to demand he bring Saveli and Reuben back. It tore open the vault in which he had enclosed his pain, and left to grow unchecked grief seized once again upon his soul. All he could see was their faces; all he could hear were Saveli's parting words to him on the phone. Rion's hope was naïve, yet Monty understood it - felt it, albeit a version tempered by his comprehension of Time - and it killed him to crush it. "I can't," he said. "If I could, I promise I would I try, but I can't. Magic can't. I'm so sorry."

 

[Ainmere Pendleton]

Ainmere stood very still. Very still for a long few moments. When Rion made her little outburst Mere visibly flinched and looked to the side. She swallowed. Why was everything moving so slowly? She didn’t understand. This was a bad dream. A nightmare. Like the one she had after watching the cow give birth. Ainmere took a step back. And then another, before she finally just retreated altogether to her room. She hid in there, under her covers, and hoped for a better outcome when she woke tomorrow.

But she couldn’t even sleep, Ainmere couldn’t even close her eyes. She sobbed violently into the pillow, until she couldn’t cry anymore. Until she was cold inside. And then she did the next thing she knew how to do. She ran from the problem, out the window and down the lattice, the same one her mum had snuck down before unbeknownst to her. She ran from the pain and from the hurt. It was the best solution.

 

[Rion Pendleton]

Godmods approved

The room grew colder as Ainmere left. "No," said Rion. How could her grandpa sit there and cry and do nothing? There had to be a chance, even a slim one, that he could save them, and he didn't even care enough to try. "Please. Please, try. Please. Granddad." But he wasn't moving. He'd given up. Deep down, Rion knew he wasn't stupid, but she refused to accept that he knew everything. He was the only one who could do something. If he didn't try, who would?

An agonised howl came out of her, and the next thing she knew he was beside her. She told him she hated him, and he said he knew, and he was sorry, and it wasn't fair. Rion had been told, many times, that life wasn't fair, but nobody had ever told her death wasn't fair either. How would she ever stop hurting?

After a while, Monty picked up his phone. "I need to look after both of you," he said. "I'm asking Ava to come, all right?"

Ava was there in minutes. She sat with Rion in the kitchen while Monty went upstairs to find Ainmere. But no sooner had he left than he returned, looking somehow even paler than before. "She's gone - but I might know where she is. Don't panic, yet. I'll call in few minutes," he said. And then he was gone, too, and Rion felt colder and emptier than ever. Too young to help, old enough to understand. Everything was collapsing, and there wasn't a single thing she could do about it.

---

END​