CINDERELLA Revisited

Chapter Thirty

Epilogue

The mansion was gone. The real estate people had sold it easily enough even in the current economy. Some of the DiNozzo family was so repelled by the place there was no interest expressed as to whose hands the ancestral home belonged to now.

Janes was the last to really leave the mansion and he took his time as he had a choice of places to live. After Ducky's mother had passed away, Ducky had found a roomy townhouse where he could showoff and display some of her lovely things and still have plenty of space so as not to feel claustrophobic. He had offered one of the spacious bedrooms to his good friend Janes who was basically homeless now that the mansion was sold.

Ducky had met Janes some years ago through Anthony, and the two older men had become good friends. The arrangement had worked out for two men of the same generation who could reminisce about the good old days without the inevitable eye roll of busy younger people who had no time to pause for a good tale lest life pass them by.

Janes had consumption is what the inimitable Mrs Mallard would have diagnosed, a wasting disease of the lungs. She would have prescribed poultices and compresses, remedies she remembered from when she was a young girl, for that was where she lived in her senile memories, when she was a girl. In her adult life, his mother had been a strong proponent of modern medicine but as she aged, all of those adult memories slipped away like her favorite lilac scented mist and at the end, she hadn't even recognized him, her son and constant companion for many years.

Ducky thought fondly of his mother as he prescribed the antibiotics not poultices, that might help prolong Janes' life a little longer from the pneumonia he had developed after a bout of the common cold. Young Anthony would pick the medicine up at the pharmacy on his way over and Ducky had told him, "Anthony, my boy, he doesn't have long to live. I would advise you notify family as you see fit." A subtle way of telling Tony that Senior had a right to know.

"Hey, Steve."

"Tony, what's up?"

"It's Janes, he's pretty sick. Ducky said those who want to come had better come now."

"Yeah, okay."

Tony sat at the bedside holding the hand of the man who he always thought of as his father. He remembered snuggling into Janes as the man carried him to bed and asking him in his childish voice, "Can I call you daddy, Janes, instead of Janes?" Because he wasn't sure, really he knew no better, but the man who showed him nothing but hate filled squinty red eyes and a fierce scary frown who he was supposed to call father, could not possibly be his daddy. Cookie had said that that man needed to turn his frown upside down like Janes did when he smiled at him, and Tony had laughed, tickled at that picture.

But Janes said, "No, Tony," in a kindly voice, not like that other man, who growled like a grizzly bear at him. "You have a father. Someday, he will rue the day he chose to forget that."

Tony didn't know what Janes was talking about then but it didn't matter, in his heart where it did matter, his dad was forever his dad Janes.

Janes stirred awake at the sound of the door opening. "Is that you Tony? Is that my boy?" Whispered in a soft voice, all Janes could manage but full of love. The others who had entered the room came to stand around the dying man's bed.

"It's me, Dad, I'm here. And here's Senior and Steve, Anton too, dad, and Anton's son, Gregor, he's here too." Tony's voice quivered but he wasn't ashamed of his weakness as he let tears fall for the man who had raised him in love.

"Is my Caroline here too, Tony?"

"Grandma's not here right now, dad, but she's waiting for you."

"But who will take care of you if I go, Tony, who'll watch out for you...?"

Tony reached behind him and pulled Steve closer to the bed. "Dad, look, Steve and I, we're friends, brothers, we'll look out for each other so it'll be okay, dad, it'll be okay."

"Okay, Tony, you be a good..." his breathing became labored in, labored out. Tony leaned close.

"Hey, Dad? Remember when you and grandma sneaked onto the campus and Coach Trent let you take me into town. Remember we went to the movies and saw Star Wars and grandma sneaked a bag of donuts in that satchel she always carried and the attendant wanted to search it for food but she threatened to gut him with her fish knife if he didn't get out of her way? I ate so much junk that you had to stop at the drug store and get me some of that pink stuff and grandma was so mad at you because she said it was that last hotdog you got me that turned my stomach..."

Janes went peacefully to meet his maker with the sound of his beloved son's voice in his ear, and the image of his one true love Caroline the last thing he saw as he fell asleep in death.

Ncisncisncisncis. Ncisncisncisncis. Ncisncisncisncis

Tony sat on the sofa in Ducky's airy living room and contemplated the tiny expanse of lawn he could see through the glass louvre doors to the small back yard. Ducky had made coffee and sandwiches and placed the tray on the sideboard for those who could eat, and then disappeared.

So here they sat, Steve who had brought Anton who was on a three day pass from the private facility, and was staying with Senior, Senior himself, and young Greg. It brought back to Tony the last time they had all been together. An event that proved to be a pivotal point in his life, though he didn't know about the others, and involved a noisy crowd shocked into silence, a staircase marred by drops of blood and a beautiful sparkling chandelier. The shabbily dressed injured boy yelling out his hate on the stairs and the boys surrogate father dressed in a butler's uniform holding him up.

Another boy staring up at him in horrified fascination, and a fat little boy and his friends laughing raucously. A she-devil demon with a beautiful sneering face and hidden horns and a tail, and a larger than life man with a heavy hand and hate in his heart.

Two of the players had died and left the stage and another young soul with magic fingers and a big intellect had been added. So what had changed if anything in that race to get to where they were now, three hundred sixty degree travel back to the start of it all?

Tony looked around at the faces staring back at him for...what? Guidance? In their history together, he had started out as a beaten soul. Was he a mature enough man now to reconcile that hatred and alienation to a oneness of mind with the others, recognizing that each one of them, in spite of their faults, had more in common than not, even his father?

Tony pondered the question. Reconcile with his father, doubtful, the harm went too deep and Angela was still too present. Anton, maybe. Only time would tell.

THE END

for now