With this segment of Chapter Fourteen of Repairing the Legacy, we continue the serialization of Repairing the Legacy. This is a rough draft work in progress and may not reflect the final form. Time period: set after the ending of The Martiniere Legacy main trilogy. I’m breaking longer chapters into sections for readability. This is the second part of Chapter Fourteen. There will be six parts to this chapter.

New to the series? Chapter order:

Chapter One, Section One

Return of the Prodigal Son (2 parts)

Conversations and a Dinner (2 parts)

Dancing into Change (2 parts)

Sisterly Compromises (3 parts)

Conspiracies at the Rodeo (3 parts)

Passing the Baton (4 parts)

Research Complications (3 parts)

Chasing After Shadows (3 parts)

Fifth Anniversary Present (3 parts)

Mariah (5 parts)

Shadows, Redux (3 parts)

Accidents Happen (4 parts)

Maternal Memories (4 parts)

April, 2070

GABE

Once Kris was cleared from surgery and back in her room, later that evening, Gabe and Ruby took Mike and Lily to Moondance so that Bran, Kris, and baby Ronnie could have time together.

While Mike settled into his suite quietly, Lily insisted on doing a ballet workout in her studio before going to bed—she had missed one of her classes because of Ronnie’s birth. Ruby supervised because Lily was in a manic mode, and might well dance all night if someone wasn’t there to insist that she stop and take her medications, then go to bed.

Gabe checked on Mike—completely absorbed in an online video game with Jeff Swait’s daughter JoAnn in Arkansas—and extracted a promise that he would sign off in fifteen minutes and go to sleep. Mike could be just as obsessed as Lily about his interests, but tended to be more secretive about it. Gaming with JoAnn was rapidly becoming one of those obsessions.

Secrecy was a definite Philip characteristic shared with his clone, accented by Mike’s early years, before Gabe and Ruby adopted him. Mike hid his emotions until he couldn’t manage them anymore. Having his horses and dogs around, especially the young dog Striker, bred with Ruby’s epigenetic tweaks toward cyberawareness, seemed to modulate Mike’s tendencies toward internalizing his emotions until he melted down.

But counseling still was a requirement. And, occasionally, anti-anxiety medication.

Gabe snorted at that thought as he poured himself a shot of whisky in the kitchen, then went to the great room where he was within earshot should Ruby need help. He still needed anti-anxiety meds, and sometimes they weren’t even enough. How much of that need was due to Philip’s abuses of him, and how much was because he was Philip’s son? Justine never talked about requiring meds in order to cope. But she drank heavily.

Just like he did, sometimes.

Gabe exhaled. Even though this recliner was new, a replacement for the one burned up in the fire eleven years ago, and the great room as decorated by Brandon and Kris looked nothing like it did when Gabe lived here, there were enough similarities to the original Moondance to bring back memories—and not the good ones.

Sitting here after Rachel’s death, drink in hand, mourning the loss of both of his wives, one to divorce, the other to death.

Brooding about how he could have prevented the divorce from Ruby.

Lonely.

Loneliness was the emotion Gabe most attributed to Moondance. The place where he put himself back together after the divorce that had, as Philip hoped, destroyed who he was much more than a painful death would have. Even when he and Rachel lived here during their marriage, there had been an aura of loneliness around Moondance. The cancer that ate away at Rachel, before the G9 killed her. That awful year after Rachel’s death, before he and Ruby reunited.

In many ways, the fire that had burned down the old Moondance house had been a welcome event. Oh, Gabe regretted what he lost of Rachel—her beautiful art quilt projects among other things—but he had none about the death of the lonely place.

This new Moondance was where he remarried Ruby. Where Philip died, and Gabe became the new Martiniere. Where Brandon became the Martiniere. Where Lily and soon—hopefully—Ronnie would fill the place with the sounds of children playing.

However, tonight, this house felt like the old one. Loneliness lingering in the shadows. Sitting by himself in the recliner, drink in hand, thinking about the past. The bad past, not the more recent, pleasant parts of it.

Ronnie was born on the date that everything went to shit for me and Ruby. I hope he changes things around, for all of us.

Gabe closed his eyes and shook his head. He shouldn’t be thinking about this. Such thoughts brought up vague recollections of the shadows that sometimes whispered to him. The dreams that suggested things could have been different, if only something had changed.

But that refusal to think about those dreams pushed Gabe toward yet another, diverse set of shadows.

Philip’s voice echoed in his memories.

You will be mine eventually, Gabriel. All of you will be mine!

What on earth did that really mean, and why did those sentences come back to him irregularly? Clear as could be when he heard those words in his head, true to every inflection in Philip’s voice, with just a hint of mind-control tones.

However.

Philip had never said those exact sentences to Gabe during his entire life. So why did they occasionally pop up in his thoughts without warning? Why did they fade away when he tried to tell someone?

Just like that damn programming worm in the Guardians that still evaded detection.

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