Episode 400: Mama's Arms

"Another rousing success story?" Katherine sneered, pacing the floor of her husband’s home office.

"I really don’t need to hear it from you right now, Kath," he grumbled leaning back in his leather chair, washing both hands over his face. "The school administrator, the fund raising department - no one will take my financial gift to keep Adria out of their acting program. I can’t believe it!"

"Let’s see. Our eldest daughter loved a dead end mechanic more than her trust fund and a high-powered job. Our son chose bussing tables over the lap of luxury with us. Now our youngest would rather be a gypsy. How is it exactly, Phillip, that you can’t believe that money won’t fix everything? It obviously hasn’t for us."

She shook her head at him. She didn’t mean to feel so furious with him, but she had no work now to channel her energies in, no extracurricular lover, so it was all heading his way, she couldn’t help it. "Money sure as hell hasn’t fixed our family. What happened to we’ll be a family again? Isn’t that what you told me when I came home? Where’s my family Phillip?"

"I haven’t made these decisions alone," he defended himself, and moved to her, gentling an arm around her shoulders. "I’m sorry things haven’t been as happy as they should be. But Sebastian’s back. He won’t say it, but I know he’s thankful that I had that horrible fiance of Avalon’s investigated. So we have him, that’s a start."

"What about Justine?"

"That, we have to be patient with, it’s not as though I would feel right to just push the man out of her life to get her to back into the fold, there’s a child involved."

"I’m sick of being patient," Katherine said, although there were times she’d been guilty of barely giving her children a thought, she hadn’t required patience, but that was when she had other things going on in her life. "Maybe it’s time to accept that Quentin’s not as self-possessed and ambitious as we’d like for our daughter to-"

"No. Justine deserves better than for us to support her settling. The same goes for Adria," he said, reading Katherine’s next suggestion before she even voiced it. They had been together a long time; she supposed she should be encouraged, if they could survive all their rough spots, surely they could survive rough spots with their kids. "Do you think it’s a good idea for her to be an industry where every day you hear another person in rehab, or penniless, faced with countless rejections and associating with the wrong kind of people? Is that a fate we should encourage?"

Episode 401: I Need You