Rip - Becoming Whole

History

I have made a few minor corrections in some of the previous chapters. If you get a notification that I have updated previous chapters, don't fret. They make no difference to the content, you don't have to go back.

"I'm only doing another hour or so," Rip told his uncle who inquired how much longer he was intending to work, reminding him that it was getting late. Rip was standing on the bottom step of the porch stroking Barney who was sitting on the railing of the fence. "If I get in two more solid days after tonight, I'll have it done by Monday evening" he informed his uncle proudly.

"You've got school Monday," his uncle told him in a cautionary tone.

"I'm not going," the boy simply told him as he proceeded to go inside and before his uncle got a chance to even object. He needed to get himself some water, he was parched.

"Yes you are," the old man called after him but Rip pretended not hear him and used the backdoor in the kitchen to exit the house after he had filled his water bottle, to avoid a confrontation. He was going to have this darn field done and if it was the last thing he was doing. He was going to take whatever punishment they'd dole out in school. It would be worth it, he decided. He wanted to be free next weekend. It was Chrissy's last, they were heading for England the following weekend.

Samuel wanted to say something to his father but held back. He knew his father needed time to lick his wounds after their run in this afternoon, or else they'd have another row. He wouldn't be open to discuss his parenting of Rip tonight. The general algorithm was that if his father lost one battle, he had to win the next ten or else there would be war, at least that was the conclusion Beth, Jamie and he had come to, one drunken night.

"Where are Robert and Jacob this evening?" Paul asked them, breaking the silence that had followed after Rip had gone in.

"They have some business to take care of," Mr Dutton told him coldly, his eyes fixed at the stables whose silhouette stood out against the vastness of the night due to the floodlighting that Rip had employed to illuminate the area where he was digging.

Despite wanting to ask, not for the first time, what kind of business they would have to attend to at this time of the night Sebastian did not respond. Instinctively he knew not to. Samuel had always been evasive in relation to the rumours he had heard about his father when he asked him about it. He had not yet fully deciphered the code but was not surprised when Samuel skilfully changed the subject.

"Is Jamie still on the phone to Molly?" Samuel asked, even so they could hear Jamie slightly raising his voice to her in the study right beside them. He was trying to convince the mother of his child to let his daughter visit them for overnight access.

"The law is on his side," Mr Dutton said gruffly into the night to no one in particular. "He even has a court order. I don't know why he doesn't just drive up there and take the child."

Samuel bit his lips again, wanting to say something, and wondering if his father said this just to provoke him. He agreed with his brother. In the middle of this was still the child. The access visits were going extremely well and were regular. Molly was not an unreasonable mother, just somewhat overprotective, eventually she would come around. Samuel had offered to talk to her, and his older brother said he would come back to the offer if all else failed.

"You're letting him continue? It's way past his bedtime is it not?" Samuel couldn't help asking his father, when they noticed what only could be Rip emerging from the shadows at the side of the house, walking towards the lit-up area behind the stables. It was the one thing Samuel and his father had agreed on from the start, firm, consistent boundaries around his routine, especially in relation to sleep and eating. The boy often found it difficult to fall asleep and then stay asleep, waking with nightmares that kept him awake and at times night terrors that had everyone else but him awake. His father argued in favour of discipline, Samuel in favour of mental health, in the end it equated to the same.