Page 2 of Thrown

He just wasn’t enough, period.

He’d been telling the rest of the family he was fine and he’d moved on, but there was a cavern inside him that Keith had caused, and nothing he’d been doing for the past several months had come close to filling it up.

“So does anyone know what this meeting is about?” Robbie asked as he and Nally made it to the long meeting room that had once been part of the ballroom before the house’s insides had been rebuilt and rearranged to make it into a school in the nineteen-forties.

As far as Robbie could see, the entire family and then some was already present. Someone had bought donuts, which were laid out on the long table. The table had graced the family’s formal dining room for generations before being moved to the new meeting room and given its far more pedestrian purpose.

Robbie had always liked to imagine the great and glorious people who had once sat around that very table. Hawthorne House was known to have hosted the likes of Samuel Pepys, William Pitt the Younger, Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria, and in a particularly wild rumor that Robbie wasn’t certain he believed, the ninth earl had entertained Oscar Wilde and a large party of his aesthete friends one summer.

The family joke was that the ghosts of that party had turned half the member of the Hawthorne family gay ever since, but Robbie had his suspicions about all those previous earls. Judging by their portraits, the ones from the eighteenth century in particular were definitely dandies.

“It has to be the finances,” Rebecca sighed from where she was already seated at one end of the table, two donuts on a plate in front of her. “Dad has been looking over my shoulder in the office for the past week, asking me if anything can be done.”

“Can anything be done?” Rhys asked from off to the side, where more than one kettle had been plugged in so they could all have tea. Just like Robbie was certain he had smudges of clay on his shirt and jeans, Rhys had flecks of paint on his clothes already, proving he’d been up early working as well.

“Something can always be done,” Nally said, ever the optimist, as he and Robbie descended on the remaining donuts.

“He’s called the rest of us in, too,” Nate pointed out, sipping his tea near the window that looked out into the vast back garden. “So it has to be something business related and not family.”

“Aww, Nate. You’re family, too,” Rebecca said, smiling sadly at him.

Robbie felt terrible for Rebecca. She and Raina had been the only girls in a sea of boys, and now she was on her own in the estrogen department. It was almost enough to make Robbiewish he was into women so he could marry one to keep Rebecca company. Almost.

“It’s been almost a year since we lost Raina,” he pointed out softly. “Maybe Dad wants to do something to mark the occasion?”

He glanced warily to Nate.

Nate shrugged with a gesture that felt poignant and hopeless to Robbie. “I’d be up for it,” he said. “The kids might like something.”

Before any sort of discussion about what could be done to remember Raina could begin, everyone’s attention was pulled toward the meeting room door as their father, Robert Hawthorne the third, the thirteenth Earl of Felcourt marched into the room, saying, “Alright, kiddos, we’ve got a problem on our hands.”

Robbie’s stomach instantly tightened, making him wish he hadn’t inhaled one of the donuts straight out of the box. His dad was usually brimming with life and quirkiness. He was a typical, artistic eccentric who had been born in the austere fifties, came of age at the end of the expansive sixties, and run amok all through the wicked seventies.

Robbie’s mum, who was twelve years younger than Dad, was the love of Dad’s life, but they’d enjoyed an open relationship, and both had had lovers of both sexes all through Robbie’s childhood. Both had been renown artists in their own rights as well. Mum was currently in Africa studying tribal art, and Dad, well, he was dealing with other things.

“Sit down, all of you, sit,” he said, motioning to everyone to find a place at the table. He headed straight for the donuts himself, taking the last cruller and biting into it before going on with his mouth full. “I’ll be brief and honest,” he said, dropping crumbs into his monumentally long, but surprisingly well-groomed beard, which was decidedly full for someone in hisseventies. “We’re up against it, and unless we make magic along with our art, we’re fucked. And not in the good way.”

Nally snorted. Rhys rolled his eyes. Rebecca shook her head. Robbie just smirked and waited for his dad to get more to the point.

“Hawthorne Community Arts Center has always had a hard time keeping its head above water,” Dad went on. “We’ve managed to do fairly well for an estate that hasn’t opened its doors to let foreign tourists waltz in and poke their noses in our drawers and cupboards. The school brings in a fair amount of money, and the events that take place on the grounds have just about helped us to break even.”

“Has something happened?” Rebecca asked. “Is that why you keep asking to look at the books?”

Dad winced, which wasn’t like him at all. “Something has happened,” he admitted. “Or rather, something might be about to happen.”

Robbie frowned and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. He didn’t like the troubled look on his dad’s face. Dad was wild and hip. He was embarrassing and fun. He had never done well with “things happening”.

“What are we dealing with?” Rhys asked. “And how much money do we need to fix it?”

“That’s precisely the problem,” Dad said. “We don’t need money, we’re being offered money.”

The room went silent as everyone stared and blinked at Dad.

“Explain?” Robbie half asked, half demanded.

Dad sighed and finally took his seat at the head of the table. Robbie had a flash of what the other, more serious earls, their ancestors, would have looked like sitting in that same spot.

“We’ve had an offer to buy the place,” Dad said shortly, looking around the table and meeting everyone’s eyes.

---