Act 2: Tensions are still there

It took Vince a few moments to compose himself and get back to his feet. He closed the front door and walked into the kitchen. “Okay, I guess I deserved that,” he admitted.

Claire was sitting at the table. The same one that had been there for the last fifty years.

Claire was scowling at him as he walked to the refrigerator and opened it. He reached in for a cold beer that was sitting in the corner of one shelf among half a dozen others.

Claire slammed her fists on the table when she noticed. “Those are mine!” she shouted. Pushing herself up to her feet. Vince turned and shot her a glare that made her pause.

Vince strode to the table and sat down across from her, took a long drink then looked at her with a smile. “Unless you’ve been squirreling away all the money I send you and paying everything on your own, they are mine, aren’t they?”

Claire suddenly shrank back and dropped back into her chair. “Low blow Vince,” she said weakly.

“As low as gut-punching your Brother the minute he walks in the door?” Vince asked. The smile still hadn’t left his face.

The fire came back into her eyes for just a moment, as she glared at him, and then her face fell and she sighed. “Sorry,” she whispered. Then in a sudden burst of bravado, “But you have to admit, this is sudden!” she shouted, “You never called to tell me!”

“Sure,” Vince admitted, finishing his beer in just a few swallows and then standing to place the bottle in the recycling bin. “Bad on me,” then he chuckled. “You’ve developed quite the right hook,” He walked over and stood over Claire and looked down at her.

Claire stared up at Vince. He could see unshed tears in her eyes. She looked tired, worn out. The burdens of the last decade showing in the lines under her eyes. The silence lasted for only a few moments before Claire shot up from her seat.

In an instant, her arms were around Vince’s body and her face buried in his mid-section and she began crying openly. Vince placed a hand on her head and just stood there letting her cry on him for a long few minutes.

When Claire finally stopped crying and dried her face. She brewed a pot of coffee and sat and had a calm conversation with Vince, and aired her frustrations of the last ten years with him.

She understood that he couldn’t simply fly home on weekends, but the fact that he never called upset her more than anything. She told him about the difficulties raising her two sisters and their constant “You aren’t Mom!” attitudes.

She updated him on Helen and her high school life and her upcoming graduation. Vince shook his head, realizing that his baby sister was now eighteen and becoming a high school graduate.

Claire had just then dropped the bomb, that Kate, now twenty-five had left a few years ago and hadn’t been heard from since. Vince was about to interrogate Claire about this when the front door banged open and a high-pitched voice called out “HOME!”

There was a thump in the entryway and a slim young woman with short blonde hair and wearing a school uniform ambled into the kitchen. When her eyes fell on Vince she froze.

Vince smiled at her and asked Claire. “Is this Helen?”

There was a sudden high-pitched shriek and Helen was suddenly flying at Vince. Her arms wrapped around his neck and her weight pushed them over and they tumbled back off the chair onto the floor. Once more Helen shrieked “Vinny!”

Helen laid on top of Vince kissing him all over his face with short pecks, making loud kissing noises. Vince couldn’t do anything but laugh. Then Helen sat up and looked down at him.

“You ran away,” she accused Vince. Then began landing punches on his chest. Not hard, not any force behind them at all. To Vince, she suddenly looked like a petulant little girl who’d been told she couldn’t have any ice cream. “That wasn’t nice. Not at all!”