whumpril 29
prompt is "i'm not giving up on you"! I could write so much more of this. I will at some point probably but I need to stop or else i'll never finish :(
word count: 1180 tw/cw: mentioned death, mentioned war, mentioned illness context: Ronald was the second oldest of 6. He has not seen his siblings since his father died in 1910, but that doesn't mean one of them hasn't been looking. Shortly after Ronald's death, his baby sister finds out where he's been all these years. Version of my day 13 / alt 11 prompt where Ronald is alive!
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“Ronald Wilkes?” He looks up. There's a woman standing to the side of his desk. Her voice is shaking. Around his age, maybe younger. Hair a mosaic of brown and gray.
People came, sometimes, to see James or Alex, mostly to complain. But any complaints for the sports editor were generally in writing, and more about the sports than his coverage of them. He had quit replying to most of them fourteen years ago, but he still read every one.
“Yes?” he asks, sparing her a single glance before returning to his notes and papers. It was the world series week, and the game would be soon—time to sit by the radio in the hallway and frantically scribble, then rush to type it all up before the printers deadline at 8 o’clock. The cord didn’t reach nearly far enough, but it was too loud in the newsroom to hear anything, so he had to sit at the landing and pray no one tripped down the stairs.
A brief pause. “Helen and Frederick Wilkes son?”
Ronald’s head shoots up, and the rest of his body follows. A sharp pain arcs through his shoulder at the movement, and he has to sit down again, swearing softly. Ronald tries for nonchalant, but lands somewhere around scared instead. Helen and Frederick Wilkes son.
How long had it been since he heard that? Decades? It felt like centuries. “What did you say your name was?”
“Ruby Helena Wilkes.”
The pen in his hand clatters to the ground.
How long had it been?
1905. No—that was Vic. December, 1904. Maybe January. Christmas—or was it 1903? He couldn’t remember. Was mother there? No, that didn’t narrow it—she had died in June, wracked with chills even as the summer sunshine poured through the oft-drawn curtains.
Fifty years, give or take. He thought he would never see them again. He thought it would stay that way. Except. Except there’s a woman standing in front of him, one hand covering her mouth and the other reaching out, fingers splayed, on his desk; towards his arm.
“Ronald…” she whispers, and all he can think is why here. Why now. In the middle of the Herald—where else?—, half a century after he had last seen her—because I ran away.
He wishes Donovan was here. He might not be able to fix anything, to make anything one ounce better, but he wants Donovan back more than anything, and he wants him back here and now more than he has in years.
“I didn’t…” His hands shake, and he tries to open the drawer. Ronald fumbles the cigarette packet, nearly dropping it four times. “I didn’t think you could remember me.”
“I can,” she whispers. Ronald’s fingers brush his cheek as he brings the cigarette to his mouth, and they come away wet. Fumbles with the matchbox, too, and then suddenly he stands. Another lancing pain—but he ignores it.
“Morgan—you have the first two innings,” he calls to the junior sportswriter, staring curiously at them across their linked desks. “If I’m not back you can have the rest.”
Morgan’s brow furrows, but she shrugs and agrees. “Aye aye, Mr. Wilkes.”
Through the newsroom door—the landing. He can’t stand the staring, and no one’s staring yet but they will soon. Of course they will. He closes the door behind his sister—my sister…—and takes a long drag on the cigarette. “Why?”
“Everyone else is gone. Only you and Vic.”
Fifty-five years ago, Donovan Gates’ front hallway. It’s only in the light from the doorway that Ronald realizes just how pale Vic is, and how thin. It isn’t just his eyes that are like mom, he realizes. He has TB, too. His call for Vic to wait, to ask if that’s the real reason Grandmother turned him away, dies on his lips.
“Vic…” Ronald sighs. “Vic died, fifty years ago, Ruby. Last time I saw him he had TB, and…” We both know what a sentence that is.
“Ah.” Ruby is quiet for a minute. “Just you, then. Us. The only Wilkes left.”
Ronald’s heart catches in his throat. “What do you mean, the only—”
“Calvin… died, not long after the Depression hit.” Ruby coughs thickly. “Sammy died in the Great War. He was 18. Stephen…” She looks at her shoes. “Stephen caught TB, too. Died in 1912.” She shudders.
The year Amelia—the year his niece was born.
“Oh. I’m—I’m sorry,” Ronald says. He doesn’t know what else to say. He shuffles his feet awkwardly. “Do you. Erm. How long are you in town?”
“A few days, maybe longer. I don’t—I never married, you see.” No one to go back to.
“Ah.”
“What about you?”
Almost. Once. I might as well have been. “No, ah, no. Never married.” No one to go back to.
Silence. Finally, Ronald works up the courage to ask the question burning in the back of his mind. “How did you know I was here?”
Ruby makes a noise, but he doesn’t know what to call it. Not a sob, not a cry, not a laugh or a gasp or anything else in particular. “When I went home, back to the city, I heard the stories. ‘Ronald Wilkes and Donovan Gates ran off West, and no-one ever saw them again.’” She sends a sidelong glance at Ronald. “How is he?”
How is—oh, I wish. I wish. “He, erm.” Ronald coughs, and looks at his scuffed shoes. “Donovan—” Another cough. Don’t make me say it. Please—. “Donny died. In 1929. Murdered.” Half his cigarette is gone now, burning away faster than ever.
“Oh, that’s awful—I’m so sorry.” She does seem, remarkably, genuinely sorry.
Silence. Silence for so long that Ronald starts taking the next cigarette out of his pocket, ready to light it from the stub of the old, and then someone opens the door.
“Ronald!” Alex. Alexandrina McLelland. Alexandrina McLelland, the spitting image of her father, so similar that even Ruby with a memory worse than swiss cheese could place her—
“Oh, sorry, are you busy?”
He can’t speak. Something is caught in his throat, and Ronald coughs once to try and clear it. Then he descends into a coughing fit, and he can hardly hear over the noise—
Alex stares at Ruby. As soon as Ronald stops coughing—and crumbles out the butt of his first cigarette in the ashtray, though not before using it to light his second—she whirls to face him. “I thought all your family was dead.”
So did I. “Ms. Ruby Wilkes, please meet Miss Alexandrina McLelland, investigative reporter. Alexandrina, this is Ruby. My little sister.”
“Your… I thought—” Alex shakes her head. “I thought…” she repeats again, and trails off. She studies Ruby for a moment, arms crossed and considering, head tilted like a confused duck. Ruby looks at her, and then at Ronald, and then to Alex again, finally holding her gaze.
Alex drops her arms and straightens her head. “She looks like Amelia.”
Oh, god. She does.
