Generations: The Long Game

He Was Always There

TW: mention of mental health and emotional abuse
Reece's mind was reeling. He couldn't get that call out of his head. He had noticed for the last few months that Winter had been staying at home more frequently. He even mentioned it to Char, but it wasn't all that unusual. He knew they had never really gotten over that honeymoon phase. They still wanted to spend all their time together and usually at home. Especially since they had Liliana.

The little girl was named after their mother, and that sparked something in his mind. Before she was torn from them, his mother often stayed at home with them and frequently refused to go anywhere. Even with friends. He was well into his adulthood before he realized that she suffered with anxiety and depression. There were times when she would pace the floor, and he would spend those days trying to keep Aut out of her way. Other times Autumn would curl up next to her when she couldn't get out of bed.

After she was gone, Autumn would spend days curled up in the fetal position in that very spot. She was a thirteen-year-old girl who needed her mother or at least a parent, but all she got was him ... and Mia. Roger made sure they seldom saw him, and when they did he was cruel. Reece knew why he hated him. He looked like her. He acted like her. Roger could never love him like that.

He couldn't understand at the time why he hated Autumn though. She didn't really look like either of their parents. Well, who he thought were their parents. In retrospect she had her two older siblings, but that was it. It changed Autumn. It changed them all.

He sometimes wondered who they would be if Roger had been the one killed instead of Lily and Max. "Depression" he spoke it out loud to himself which elicited a strange look from Marjorie who was nestled under his arm.

"Reece, are you okay? Do we need to ask Veronica for extra sessions? Is it the new baby? Are you feeling differently about that now?"

She rattled a barrage of questions at him so quickly his head was spinning. "No, gorgeous, I am over the moon our family is growing. I just realize Winter might be getting ready to leave my sister because of depression."

"What!?!?"

She screamed so loud he was sure his eardrum had burst. She was already about twenty questions into her rant before he got a word in. "Marjorie, I don't have answers to all those questions. Please calm down. I will go over there tomorrow morning and see if I can get them to talk to me." He wasn't sure either of them would, but he had to try. She might be a goblin, but she was his little sister, and he wouldn't see her hurt for anything. Not if he could stop it.