After the contentious custody battle, Frank & Mary go on with their lives as usual. But it isn't until an eventful night at Ferg's that Frank starts to wonder if maybe his life might be missing something. Now that his niece has a normal life, maybe...
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Joey hadn't seen her half brother Cameron Clauson in at least fifteen years, but she would have recognized his voice anywhere. She tried to wipe the shocked look off her face and pretend that running into him again was a normal, everyday occurrence. But inside she was freaking out and she hoped that Frank hadn't noticed that her hands had started shaking.
Cameron was two years older than her and the only one of her half siblings that her estranged father, Mitch, had had a hand in raising. Joey was embarrassed to admit that she really had no idea how many half siblings she actually had. Besides Cameron, she had only met three of them during her childhood. All from different mothers, all brothers, all handsome, and all of them desperately (and unsuccessfully) vying for their father's attention. They had all been bad news and Jessie had kept Joey away from all of them.
But, because Cameron's mother had a friendly relationship with Jessie, Cameron had been the only one that she'd had any kind of a brother-sister relationship with. In fact, Cameron had lived with Jessie and Joey for a short while after his mother had tragically passed away. But sadly, Joey lost contact with him after their father decided, on a whim, that he wanted to raise him instead. Joey had suspected that he'd only taken Cameron in to hurt her mother and not because he had any kind of warm and fuzzy feelings towards his son.
It had been sadly ironic that, out of all Joey's siblings, their father had decided to raise Cameron because, back when Joey knew him, Cam had hated Mitch just as much as she had. But that was a lifetime ago and Joey had no idea where her brother stood now.
"How have you been, JJ?" Cameron smiled his bright, handsome smile. The two scantily dressed women that Cameron was at the bar with sat down at the table abandoned by the pack of men, that had been harrassing Frank and Joey, who Cameron had curtly dismissed. "The last I heard you were in Tokyo. What brings you back to this neck of the woods?"
"I've been good." Joey politely smiled. She really hoped that the sweet kid she remembered was still in there somewhere and that Cameron had not succumb to their father's lifestyle. But judging by the looks they were getting, people either respected or feared her brother and she remembered people looking at her father in the same way. "No one has called me JJ in a long time."
"JJ?" Frank asked again as he shaked Cameron's hand and introduced himself. "Frank Adler." Joey had the worst poker face in the world and Frank could feel her anxiety as they stood there and chatted with her brother.
"Cameron Clauson." he nodded and shook Frank's hand a little harder than he should have in an attempt to prove his dominance. "JJ is what our dad has always called her. Josephine Juliette Clauson. JJ is a little less of a mouthful, I guess."
"Kincade." Joey corrected him.
"That's right, sorry." Cameron took a deep breath and quickly looked around Ferg's back pool room. Joey could tell that he was actually really happy to see her but that he didn't want to let it show to anyone that may be watching them. "Say, how is your mom doing nowadays?"
