Vol. 6, Chapter XX — Family Intervention

I woke up not to an empty bed but a soon-to-be one. It wasn’t one of those rare moments where Violet had woken up early to get up to go to the bathroom either, but one where she was preparing to go somewhere impossibly early in the morning with no previous appointment made to force her to do so. That never happened, that’s why I sat up in bed as I softly called out to her.

She was just done getting inside some jeans and was closing them as she turned towards me, also talking in whispers.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you up,” she told me. “I’m just going for a walk to clear up my mind. I’ll try to be back in time for breakfast, but don’t wait up on me.”

I said a simple “ok” while my face likely sulked. All those needlessly complicated worries about her future, I had waited for things to settle down, but with the approaching New Year, they are likely doubling up instead.

“Take the red coat,” I told her when she opened up the wardrobe, referring to her most recent acquisition from her modelling for Josephine.

“For any particular reason?” she asked as she looked over the shoulder.

“It looks great on you and makes you very easy to spot,” I told her. The sun wasn’t over the horizon yet, or at least it looked like it, and she always fussed about me going out at this time of the day, so I was returning the favour.

She let out a dry chuckle and went with my suggestion. Even though I was worried, a part of me still marvelled at her elegance and beauty in the very dim room. As she approached the bed, she smoothed the fabric over her front, before leaning over me, cupping my face with both of her ever-cold hands, and giving me a chaste kiss on the lips.

“I’ll be back in a bit,” she told me, her face two fingers away from mine, her fingers caressing my cheeks. “Go back to sleep for now.”

I told her to be safe as my farewell, and she left.

I didn’t settle back down in bed. Instead, I waited for a bit, hugging Mr Sealy, to be sure she truly had left the apartment and got up once the coast was clear. Enough was enough.

My first stop was my sister’s bedroom.

“Sis, wake up,” I told her as I shook her with one hand. Only then did I realise I was still clutching my plushie like some kid who woke up from a bad dream.

“Abby? What the… Did something happen?” she asked as she rubbed her eyes and sat up, looking at me a bit dazed. Seeing me standing by her bed super early in the morning, holding my little doll, certainly wasn’t how she’d ever expect her day to start ever again after all these years. “Did you and Violet have a fight?”

“No, I just need your help with her,” I explained. “I want us to have a sit-down with Violet and make it clear what expectations we have of her over her future.”

She blinked at me, frozen for a second before shifting to sitting on the edge of the bed.

“It’s been pretty bad for a while, hasn’t it?” she noted. “Still, did you really need to wake me up this early?”

“Violet just left for an unscheduled walk, so I decided to use the opportunity to get the ball rolling.”

“Wait, she went out at this time of the day? Alone?”

“Yup, I’m being dead serious here.”

That, more than anything, seemed to settle my sense of urgency into her.

I told her that I didn’t know when Violet was coming back and that I was also going to recruit our Dad and Papa Stan, so I asked her to call Papa Stan to tell him to come here pronto and that I’d call him too once I was done talking with our Dad.

Dad was harder to wake up. Any other time, I’d find it a bit funny how he was living up to the stereotype of being the hard-to-wake-up man, while the women of the house woke up startled by the sound of a feather landing on the floor in the middle of the night. At this moment, however, his snoring was getting on my nerves, and I even considered grabbing a pillow and hitting him with it. Lucky for him, I found that my Dad deserved a bit more respect than that, so I persisted until he finally woke up. And once he did, he completely flipped around, now being hyper aware and seemingly ready to fight an intruder.

“Easy there,” I told him while tapping his shoulder. “Everyone’s safe, so calm down. I just need to talk with you.”

He looked at my face and then looked me up and down as I stood by his bed, clutching my plushie.

“Did you and Violet have a fight?” he asked.

“Ok, first of all, have you ever seen Violet with energy for anything else other than sleep at this time of the day?” I asked, being asked again if my wifey and I had a fight having struck a nerve. “And second of all, when Violet and I do fight, we take a brief time off before talking things over.”

“Right. Right,” he echoed, clearing his throat before asking me what had brought me into his bedroom so early in the morning. Actually, he asked what had brought me there so late in the night, which is also a valid way of putting it.

“Wait, she left this early in the morning? Alone?”

“Yes to both of those questions. Now, please get up and get ready for when she arrives. I’d like to have the whole family gathered before she returns.”

Off I went from his bedroom back inside my sister's after I grabbed my phone to send a text to Violet and dropped off Mr Sealy on the bed, right by our pillow.

“Please come home in about half an hour. I need you here for something. It’s important.”

As soon as I stepped inside her bedroom, my sister in the middle of making herself look more presentable, she told me that Stan was on his way and was waiting for my call.

I grabbed my phone to do so, just in time to get Violet’s reply.

“Ok,” it read. Just that, those two letters. In other words, her real reply was “Am I in trouble?”

To put her mind at ease, I sent her a thank-you text with a smiley face. It immediately showed the Read sign, so that part of my plan was taken care of.

“Papa Stan,” I began as soon as he picked up. “Good morning. Sorry for all this, but I’ve really had it with Violet always moping around and beating herself up over her future.”

“I bet,” he huffed as he walked in what sounded like a firm march. “She’s always been a moody girl after all.”

“Yeah, so… I need you to tell her about that bank account you did for her and have been saving up for when she graduates high school.”

The line got silent for a bit, save for his light huffing from his walking.

“You know, that’s something I had been considering doing for a while now,” he told me. “Ever since you two got married, actually.”

I told him that I thought it’d be a good idea to tell her about it because she’d likely feel a bit more at ease that way. Not starting her adult life completely from zero, you see? And there was likely still a bit of an inferiority complex about our original station in life, mine having been affluent all my life, while hers only became easy recently, thanks to Papa Stan becoming mine’s right-hand man.

“…Pancakes!” I huffed once the call ended, my sister giving a tiny jump from my sudden outburst. “I’ll do pancakes for the whole family as a thank you for helping us out!”

“How can someone so tiny be so noisy?” my sister sighed, shaking her head. “Don’t go overboard now, ok?”

Even if I did, Violet and I discovered a cake recipe from one of Mathy’s streams that used layers of pancakes with a cream filling in between, so there wouldn’t be any waste even if I did too many.

“While you’re at it, could you brew me some coffee?”

I was a bit jittery doing the cooking, but dealing with two pans at the same time kept me busy enough. I didn’t know if any of this would work, or how well it would, but I was hopeful that Violet would face the future ahead of her in a less… cripplingly obsessive way.

“You’re doing too many,” my sister told me as I handed her two plates destined for the two men. “Even they won’t be able to eat all these.”

“Well, they better,” I scoffed. “I woke them up super early, so they’ll have to wait a long time until lunch.”

My sister was telling me how they won’t eat again until dinner if they eat all that I have plated for them just as the front door unlocked.

Right on time, my wifey had arrived.

“Why is everyone here this early?” she asked me, having heard our parents chatting in the living room. She placed a small paper bag smelling of delicious, recently baked bread.

“I asked them to come,” I explained to her as I handed her a plate ready to be eaten. “Well, more like, I demanded them to come.”

“You’ve got that right,” my sister commented from somewhere outside the kitchen, zero bite in her voice. I think she might even have been amused by how I presented the facts.

“Right,” Violet said, dragging the work as she was still confused by all this. “Is this somehow related to your text?”

I confirmed that it was and told her that it’d all become clear once we all sat down for breakfast. She looked at the stack of pancakes on her plate, a few fewer than I had served the others, and she still commented on how I had made too much. I told her that, worst-case scenario, we’d do two of those pancake cakes, one for the family, and the other to eat with our buddies at Mathilda’s or something. That girl would love to try the cake out and then tell her chat all about it.

With us all sat, there was a moment of awkwardness, everyone sharing a nervous look. I asked if any of them wanted to go first, my Dad pointing out that, since I was the one who had the idea and was Violet’s wife, I should be the one broaching the subject.

“For starters, what even is all this about?” Violet asked. “I mean… I have an idea what it might be, but…”

“…It’s exactly that,” I confirmed. “We want to talk with you about your plans for the future. More exactly, we want to help you… not exactly figuring it out, more like… helping you have your mind at ease with whatever it is you choose and not fuss so much about it.”

“I think I’ll start first,” Papa Stan said, unlocking the screen of the tablet he had by his side on the table when we sat down. “Take a look at this, sweety.”

Violet looked, frowning as she looked at the screen. It was the home banking app it was showing, and in the account in question was a hefty sum of money.

Violet asked if this was his retirement fund, Papa Stan chuckling as he shook his head.

“No, sweety. This account is yours.”

“Huh!?”

“Sorry to keep it hidden from you all this time. I opened it up a long time ago and have been saving up whatever I could over the years so that, once you’d set on your own, you wouldn’t start from zero like I mostly did. My plan was to give it to you once you graduated high school, but Abby is right, I think it will do you better knowing you have that parachute once it’s just you and Abby somewhere away from home.”

“Dad, no… this is too much!”

“You’ve been very involved with our finances for years now, so you know that it really isn’t,” he told her. “If you don’t work to at least mitigate a bit of what’s going out, you’ll be out of money before Abby graduates from her university, if not faster than that.”

That got Violet quiet as she looked at the screen, still taking in the value it showed and what it represented, years of hard work and sacrifice he put in for her.

“Dad, really… I don’t know what to say,” Violet stammered, barely holding back tears. “I always thought those transfers for the same account were you saving up for your retirement or for emergencies.”

He laughed, saying that he didn’t really worry about saving up for his retirement until he got his new job and had only recently started saving for that. Violet chuckled that she didn’t think he should be acting that merry-go-lucky about such things as she returned the tablet to him.

“You know that Dad loves you, right?”

“D-Dad, come on…” Violet blushed violently.

He further teased her about acting all shamelessly sweet and clingy with me in front of them, but when it’s her old man showing some love, she turns red like her coat.

“Dad? Do you want to be next?” I asked mine.

He agreed to it, leaning slightly over the table and giving her a stern look that wasn’t actually meant to be like that. He began by reiterating how thankful he is for all I did, not just for me, but for all of them, before giving his piece.

“It is my honest only wish that you keep on providing a happy home for Abby to return to at the end of the day, no matter if you choose to pursue a career, be a stay-at-home housewife, or anything in between. I’ll let you know that I also will always take you up to work for me as an assistant, or to your Dad’s.”

“Erm… thanks, but… wouldn’t Sophie be a better fit?”

“…I’ve thought about it and came to the conclusion that, if everyone’s in agreement, if I retire or am unable to keep working, your Dad and Sophie should take the lead of the company as equals.”

Stan choked on some of his pancakes, hearing that. We watched him drink his glass in one go, and then the one Sophie offered him, seeing him still all choked up. Once he managed, he asked what my Dad meant about putting him in the lead as an equal to Sophie.

My Dad, rather calmly, explained to him that he meant exactly that. Sophie has all the knowledge in the world about management, but not really how the groundwork of those under her is, while Stan has plenty of the latter but lacks the former. Together, they’d form a great team and share the burden, Stan doing pretty much what he is already doing, and Sophie applying what she’s been practising at Mrs Fletcher’s place. If Violet felt so inclined, she could then join them as some sort of personal assistant since she has the personality for it, further clearing their mental bandwidth for the practical parts of running the company.

“Well, look at you, Papa Stan,” I joked. “All that hard work and good karma is paying off, huh?”

“I guess,” he said, still stunned by the reveal. “I don’t remember single-handedly saving kids from a burning orphanage though.”

He then looked at my sister, as if asking what she thought of it. She gave him a small smile, and her cheeks flushed a tiny bit.

“It does make sense, what Dad said, and… I’d be lying if I said that having you deal with the groundwork didn’t help me feel more at ease about taking such a job… If the occasion presents itself, of course.”

He looked around the table for a moment before making a joke about us having gathered there to talk about Violet’s future, but ended up pretty much deciding his instead.

“To summarise,” my Dad said, clearing his throat and getting back on track. “If it is about my opinion, don’t worry about it. I’m sure you’ll do what is needed, when it is needed and even when it isn’t, to make sure you two stay out of trouble. So much so that I don’t even worry about you two.”

“Come on, man! You do worry about it a bit,” Stan laughed, bumping his shoulder on my Dad’s.

“Well, yes,” Dad admitted, getting a bit flustered. “As a parent, I always do, of course. They get what I mean, don’t you, Violet? Abby?”

We did, even without Papa Stan having teased him into showing his softer side. This was a lot funnier and sweeter though, so props to Papa Stan for not letting this one slide.

Next up was my sister.

She crossed her knife and fork over her pile of pancakes, half their initial height, and moved her hands to her lap. She glanced at me and at our parents before looking at Violet.

“I think… I think I get what's really making you worry so much,” my sister said, having found her words. “It’s not your future, at least not exactly, but what others might think of it… isn’t it?”

Violet didn’t answer; she just kept staring at Sophie, her shoulders having raised a bit. Sophie had put the pin right on the spot, Violet only realising what was truly causing her so much distress right now.

“I might be wrong, but I think that might be it,” my sister continued, not having enough insight into Violet’s inner workings to fully notice how accurate she had just been in her assessment. “This is all just my personal experience too, but when I graduated from university and returned home, I think I was experiencing exactly what you are right now. Well, I also had all the expectations that had been placed on me removed all at once, but that was only half of my problem. What I’m trying to say is, don’t worry about what others might or might not expect from you. I think that there are only two people you should worry about in relation to that, and those are you and my sister, nobody else. If you see others pursue careers, let them. If you see others decide to stay at home instead, let them too. Something might come up as it did with me, and you find a job you actually enjoy, or maybe you just spend most of your days at home doing housework and managing the place while Abby works. At the end of the day, only you can decide what’s right for you and for your life with my sister. When we say that we don’t care what you choose, it’s not that we don’t care about you. We really do. What we mean is, we’ll be happy with what you choose for yourself as long as you’re happy about it too. I also get it. You’ve been putting in all this effort, getting all these great grades, but then you decide to be a housewife? Performing great in school doesn’t demand that you then continue on achieving greater heights. The only thing it does is open up doors so you can do whatever it is you want after it. It’s like money. Having a lot of it doesn’t mean you have to spend it all. What it means is, if you want or need to, you can get that thing or the other you otherwise couldn’t if you had less of it.”

Violet grew silent, hearing this. We watched her retreat into herself for a bit, her eyes staring at her hands on her lap that she twisted and entangled fingers. Tears were forming, and she snorted a few times, trying to hold them back.

“I’m sorry everyone,” she sobbed. “I didn’t mean to make you all worry about me like this… and… thank you.”

I took her glasses out and pulled her in, Violet clinging to me and quietly sobbing into my shoulder while I patted her back.

So far, it looked like we had, finally, reached her.