All The Things That Once Were| Four Brothers

Part 2

Two

Vivienne slipped between people after talking to her brothers and rejoined Jeremiah and Camille, her whole body aching from the effort. The doctor told her that it was going to be a while until she was back to normal and that she would lose energy more quickly and this was the perfect example of what they were talking about.

"We will be home soon Vi and you can rest," Camille commented, they both had been concerned with how much Vivi was doing.

Instead of staying the 3 days in the hospital that the doctor wanted to recover and bond with her daughter, she checked herself out of the hospital and settled in at her brother's house to help with the funeral. Though she wasn't much help due to spending most of the time on the couch with Evie sleeping or supervising her nieces. Her eyes focused on the flower coffin and she was unable to look anywhere else for the remainder of the service, it wasn't until Jerry's hand grasped hers and pulled her up from the seat.

"Sorry." She mumbled, "Spacey still."

'Doesn't surprise me, you are still in a lot of pain and pain medicine." He returned softly as Bobby and Jack joined them and the oldest out of all them put his arm around Vivi and pulled her into him.

"Careful." Jerry warned, "She still has a lot of stitches." "What did that son of a bitch do?" Jack questioned, other than Camille and Jerry, he was the only one that knew that Josh abused her, his eyes looking around for his brother-in-law. "He didn't do that part to me. I had a baby the day Ma died." She answered, "Emergency C-section. Opened me from hip to hip."

"My second favorite sister had a baby?" She could almost imagine the look on Bobby's face but she didn't have the heart to pull away from the extra warmth he offered her to look up at him. "Evie Jack ." She returned, "She's at Jerry's house, I didn't want to be alone in the house and I didn't want to be with Josh. He was already mad enough that I kept the baby. If it hadn't been for Green coming in, he would have killed me." Bobby squeezed her to his side almost painfully tight. That son of a bitch was dead. He had gotten an uneasy vibe from him when he had met him briefly, but finding out that he almost killed his sister and her baby was enough to mark him for death in Bobby's book

"Bobby.' She whined, "Loosen up."

"Shit, sorry." He loosened his grip a bit and she took steps forward and picked up one of the roses that fell out of the bouquet that was on top of the casket. She took a shaky breath and laid it on top of it before the men worked on lowering it into the ground. She turned so her back turned she started to go towards Jerry's car but froze seeing her husband and his partner standing not far away watching.

"Jer? Can we go? Please." She called, "I need to get back to Evie."

It wasn't Jerry that joined her it was Bobby, his eyes following her gaze.

"Is that him?"

"Yeah, don't cause a scene Bobby, he isn't going to do anything with you being with me. And not with Green being there." She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, she could see his jaw working furiously wanting to yell at her and to storm over to where Green was with his partner but the fact that they just buried their mother and they were both struggling with it stopped him. "Come on, I will walk you to Jerry's car."

**

Green swallowed the smirk that threatened to form on his face, he should have known that Bobby would have made his way home to mourn Evelyn's death and to find out who did this. But also that he would also protect Vivi, just like he had when she was adopted when she was almost 10 and he was 14.