A tall, slender woman with blonde hair that fell nearly to her knees opened the door after a short pause and looked at her inquisitively. "Yes?"
"Hi. I'm looking for Taylor Hanson?"
The woman stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door closed behind her, looking a little more forbidding. "I'm his mother, can I help you?"
Alex gestured in Clarke's direction, not sure what to do next, and the woman turned to look. She stood frozen in shock, staring at him, then the smile that covered her face could have rivaled the sun. "Isaac!" she exclaimed, and threw her arms around him. "Where have you been?" Alex could hear the tears in her voice.
Before he could answer, the door was wrenched open, and a small girl, maybe 10, limped onto the porch. Her hair matched both Clarke's (Isaac??) and his mother's, and she held a cane in her hand that she leaned on now. "Ike?" she asked softly.
Clarke went white, and he let his mother go. "Avery."
The girl smiled as bright as her mother, and threw herself into his arms. He lifted her easily, cradling her against him. Her cane clattered to the porch, and the woman picked it up. "Let's go inside," she said, and turned to Alex. "Hi. I'm Isaac's mother, Diana."
"Alexandra." She looked at Clarke, who smiled sheepishly.
"Sorry. Changing my name was part of disappearing. Mom, this is Alexandra. She lives downstairs from me." There was a catch in his voice that built a lump in Alex's throat.
"Changing your name?" Diana asked.
Alex cleared her throat and adopted a playful tone just to keep from bursting into tears. The tears and the absolute joy that radiated from the woman let her know how much he really was loved and had been missed. Not that she blamed them. "I know him as Clarke. Although I did say that your name didn't fit you."
"It was a nod to his father's ancestors," Diana said. "Not meant to actually be used. At least, not by him." They stepped inside, and Isaac set Avery down. She retrieved her cane and limped quickly into the front room, but Isaac hung back, pale. Diana took his arm. "Come on." She pulled him into the living room. Alex followed, a step behind.
The sensation of having every eye on him was a familiar one, but this made him distinctly uncomfortable. Then the room turned into a madhouse. Every one of those people, except the smallest who ran crying to her mother, descended on Isaac. Alexandra just watched as they pulled him over to the couch by the tree and made him sit down. He looked bewildered, uncertain, glancing from one face to the other as if trying to decide who everyone was. She was reminded of a comic book she'd read as a child; two friends, meeting after a long parting during which one was thought dead, had said 'my hands touch joy'. It seemed to fit here, too, considering the expressions on the faces of the whole family.
Diana set the smallest child down, reached into the fray, and pulled out a slender man with dark hair, and sent him out of the room. Mr. Hanson? Alex wondered. The noise was insane.
"That's enough," Diana announced, and it didn't take long for the noise to die away. The tumult around Clarke stilled, and Alex noticed that he had his arms wrapped around someone slender. Everyone else seemed to still hover, almost as if they couldn't believe he was really there.
"I'm sorry, Ike," she heard in a tear-filled voice.
"Let's go into the kitchen for a minute," Diana suggested, and with relatively little noise and great reluctance, the whole family trouped into the next room.
"Zac?" Alex guessed, looking at Diana. Diana nodded.
"You can meet him when they are done. This is Taylor, Jessica, Avery, MacKenzie and Zoe." She pointed them out, and Alex tried to match them with the faces in the picture Clarke had in his apartment.
Taylor was taller, no longer waif thin, although still smaller than Clarke. Isaac. Jessica was twelve, and cheerful. Her hair was well on its way to being the length of her mother's. Avery was small, one leg twisted in the accident that had driven... Isaac away from home. She seemed happy. Next to her was the boy, blond and brown eyed with a quick, mischievous grin. The little girl must be a new addition. She wasn't in the picture. She looked at Alex with a frightened expression.
"I'm Alexandra," she introduced herself.
"Are you Ike's girlfriend?" Avery asked.
Ike? "I don't know if I'd go that far. I live downstairs from him, and we're friends." Technically, yes, she supposed she was his girlfriend, but she wasn't sure how he would react to her saying that.
The man returned with a camcorder, looking surprised to see them all in the kitchen. "Where is Zac?"
"In the living room with Ike," Jessica said. "Dad, this is Alexandra."
"Are you sure it's safe?" he asked, offering a distracted nod to her. Alex grinned.
"It's okay, Walker. I just decided to leave them alone for a minute. They need the time together," Diana explained.
He sighed deeply, and tension drained out of him. "Well, knowing those two, it could take hours. Would you like to see the house?" he asked, turning his attention to Alex.
"Sure," she grinned.
They started at the top, without Diana and Avery. There was evidence of the kids everywhere. Taylor led the tour with stories from growing up, telling of the first time he slept in the top bunk and fell out, how Isaac never had. Jessica and Avery's room had dancing clothes and shoes, and a guitar in the corner. In red letters it said "Ike". They moved down the stairs to the garage. Hanging on the wall across from the door, before she turned to go down, Alex noticed three nails with a lot of what looked like passes hanging from string. She stopped and looked at one. "All Access pass, Taylor Hanson" it read. The picture was of a young man who could have been mistaken for a girl, but was definitely Taylor. She turned to look at him. "All Access?" she asked. "Were you a roadie or something?"
He grinned. "We were the band. We could go anywhere, and Zac usually did."
Alex's eyebrows went up. "Cl... Isaac, too?"
Taylor nodded. "He left his guitars here. Avery has the one he never named." He waved her down the stairs. Guitars? she thought, walking down the stairs as he directed her. Guitars he named? "This is my..." he paused to think, "third masterpiece." The walls of the garage were covered in drawings a lot of things. One corner was almost black. "Except that corner. Zac broods there. He writes..." He paused.
"He writes what he said to Ike before he left, over and over," Jessica said. "Sometimes he writes down what he was thinking. I read it once."
"He let you?" Taylor asked. His hands tapped absently on his legs, and he looked towards the stairs. Alex wondered what was wrong.
"No. But he was gone, and I wanted to know." She looked away, towards a well-drawn sunset. "I put it in my journal, to remind me the harm words can do."
"You didn't tell him, did you?" Taylor asked.
Jessica snorted, very unladylike, and glared at him. "Right. And be hung by my toes and tickled until dead?"
Alex chuckled. "Effective threat."
"Not an idle one, either," Taylor said. "He would have tried it."
"He'd have to catch me, first," she muttered. "And you're not going to tell him, are you," she asked Taylor sweetly, with a triumphant smile.
"Nope," he grinned, but his cheeks flushed.
Walker watched them both, one eyebrow raised, then leaned over to Alex. "It's not often one of the girls has something to hold over their brother's heads."
One side of the garage was musical stuff - keyboards, drums, and three shapes covered in tarp Alex guessed were the guitars they'd mentioned a minute ago. Walker gestured at them. "He told us to sell them in an email message, but we couldn't."
"I rescued one from Zac," Jessica volunteered. "I hid it. Zac was so mad, he broke one."
"Temper," Alex mumbled, running her fingers over the obviously expensive and just as obviously well-loved and well-used keyboard.
"He's better now," Taylor said. He scowled fiercely. "He'd better be."
"Tay," Walker said. Taylor took a deep breath.
"Sorry. Still get mad over it." He looked at her, opening his mouth hesitantly. "How long is he going to stay?"
Alex grinned. "I have to go back to work in two weeks. We both have tickets for then." None of them looked happy, and she chuckled. "Let me at him. I can pack his stuff and send it. I had figured on talking him into staying longer than two weeks, anyway."
"Between you and us, he won't be able to go." Taylor grinned manically. "Okay, I know there's a lot between them, but I haven't seen Ike in a longer time than Zac." He artfully dodged his father's hand and dashed up the stairs.
Alex and the others followed him, slower, and Alex was not surprised to find him sitting at the kitchen table, fidgeting even worse, Diana standing guard at the doorway to the living room. Taylor's hands tapped in a rhythm on the table, his right hand fluttering beautifully. He didn't seem to be aware of it until Jessica put both of her hands over his. "Please, Tay."
He blinked up at her. "Sorry," he mumbled. She didn't move her hands for a minute, and when she did, he set his in his lap.
Someone ran up the stairs, and a tall, slender young man who looked something like Taylor but with broader shoulders, stepped into the kitchen, gently pushing Diana aside. Without a word, he washed his face at the sink, then turned to the others. The evidence of tears had not been totally erased. "Sorry," he said. Diana hugged him.
"It's okay. Isn't Christmas for families?" she asked. "Zachary, this is Alexandra. She's Ike's downstairs neighbor." The way she looked at her, however, gave Alex the idea that she believed her relationship with Cl... Isaac to be more than she'd said. It was a mother's look of evaluation, and Alex squirmed a little under it. Of course, no one had asked him what was going on, yet.
He nodded a greeting at her. "He'll be down in a minute," he reported.
"Well, let's go back into the living room and wait for him there," Diana suggested, and everyone moved back into the decorated room. Alex sank down by the tree and examined the ornaments. The tree looked nothing like her mother's, a designer job with blue and silver ornaments that no one was allowed to touch. This one had personal ornaments, including something from a lot of the cities in the US, and a few from around the world. It also had cookies and candy canes hanging on it - not to mention empty places, especially around the bottom, where they probably had hung at one time, but had been eaten. Someone reached around her, plucked a candy cane off the tree and offered it to her. She looked up into Clarke - Isaac's face, and smiled. He looked a ton better, even with the tear marks that were just as obvious as Zac's had been.
"Hi. Candy cane?" he offered.
"Thanks." He sat down next to her, and she turned to face the rest of the family.
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