a/n: This is the sequel to Family Disgrace: The Story. I recommend that you read the first one before this, but you don't have to in order to follow it. Family Disgrace has always held a strong place in my heart, and I know that there's others who feel the same, so for all you people out there who have wondered what comes next, here it is. (And just so you know, there's more coming up than just this chapter). Hope you like.

Cheyenne

Family Disgrace 2: Nathan

I couldn't live with it anymore - the silence, the constant silence that enveloped and swallowed the whole house. The coldness that seeped in past the highly expensive temperature monitors and into the very aura of our home. The three-act plays that started over every day.

We were seen as the model family. The whole town knew who we were, and strived to be us. The perfect husband who was active in the community, kept his wife and son with silver spoons in their mouths, and held respect from everyone who met him. The beautiful and supportive wife raise with aristocratic manners and class, whom other women tried to get 'in' with so as to have some of her natural spotlight shine towards them. And the well-adjusted, pleasant-natured son who led the town's only high school to victory on the football team, who was going to Stanford University this fall because he was brilliant, who had made his adoring parents proud by continuing to be strong, even after the Incident that should have broken him.

My Daddy, every now and then, would look at me oddly, as if I confused him and he was trying to figure out what was going on in my mind. I would notice his observation for days, but he would never say anything, just watch with visible worry. Finally, he would say, "Son... are you okay?" or "Son, is there anything you want to talk about?" or "Son... you know you can come to me about anything, right?" He never said, "Son... are you still hurting?" because he knew, he knew that was why, but on the off-chance that it wasn't what tortured my sleep and haunted me awake, he didn't want to remind me and make it new all over again.

I admired my daddy. He was the type of man who really truly loved his son and wanted the world for me. The type who always became my personal servant when I was little and got sick, always had time to listen to my problems even now, and always made sure to be there through almost every process of me growing up, minus the one I purposely kept from him, and the problems that resulted. It was me who shut him out, not the other way around. It was my way of protecting him, from the fact that I was tortured and no, there would never be anything he could do about it. I was protecting him from it the way he had protected me for all these years, from what was going on right inside our home, because even though he was a wonderful father, he no longer understood how to do as well for his marriage.

It was nobody's fault, really. At least, if it was, I had no way of knowing. I had been such an innocent thing, so young and happy and unaware, that I never let myself interpret the distance between them. And then my world and heart shattered, and I was too consumed in my misery to notice. But finally I opened my ears, and heard and felt it - the silence and coldness between he and Ma, and that's when I knew that my last piece of support would also crumble. Sometimes I would think, if only I could go back in time, back to the boy I still love, whose name I still could not utter. If only he was here to listen. I would imagine what he would say to me, how he would hug me and say how it's alright, his parents aren't happy either, and we can lean on each other. And then he would suggest something fun and outrageous for us to do to take my mind away from my problems.

But he wasn't here, and that was the problem. I had fallen in love and had him taken from me, seemingly all in the same moment, by a gruesome homocide that the whole town was shaken by. Outside of his immediate family though, there was nobody shaken worse than me. Nobody whose life was more thrown off-course. I know I was only fifteen, a child, especially compared to now, but we had such real feelings for each other. And it's only been a little under three years - I'm still allowed to hurt. And maybe still blame myself a little. I know I should've gone after him, told him there's no way I would let him out on the streets to fight or die while he looked for his sister. I tried, but I could've tried harder. I was so naive, I couldn't see all the possible dangers. I should've...

I left the house in my Miata, and drove through the palm-tree lined streets with one destination in mind. I'd be leaving this town today, leaving the memories, and the new reality of my screwed up family life. They'd probably spend a few more months at the most, denying that their marriage was dead before they finally buried it. Of course it would devastate me, but I've reached a point where I've become used to things dying. I'd be gone anyways, the whole town locked away in the past while I looked for something new at Stanford.

I pulled up to the house I had been seeking out and walked up to the doorway, ringing it once and hoping for a response.

The door opened, and the woman on the other side smiled. "Nathan."

"Ms. Christensen. I wanted to say goodbye."

"I heard you're going to Stanford," she said, ushering me in. "I'm proud of you."

"Thanks."

Her smile always held something in it that I couldn't place. I was the boyfriend of her murdered son, and that should've been strange for her, but we were politely comfortable around each other. And somehow, in her smile... maybe it was a sense of family. She would never see who her child would grow up to be. Maybe she wanted to see him in me. I would never accept that responsibility.

I suddenly hugged her. She put her arms around me right back.

"I see you around the town sometimes," she began, still holding me. "And you try to look like you're okay. But it's obvious you're hurting. And it's been ever since what happened. I know you loved my son, I love that you loved my son, but you're so young, you can't dwell on this forever. He's all I had, he was my youngest baby, the one who was still under my wing - it hit me harder than anyone. But you're so young, Nathan - you need to find someone new out there and get a new reason to smile. You don't smile anymore. So when you leave, promise me you'll leave all this behind you. Find a nice young man and fall in love, and don't for a second think you don't deserve it. I don't want to see you so consumed in mourning that you forget how to live. Please smile, Nathan. There's so much out there for you to smile for."

I took a shaky breath and withdrew from her embrace. "I'm sick of crying, I know. I'll try. But are you going to be okay?"

She had aged so much. I couldn't even see in her the woman who used to always come to our football games and cheer for him and jump around and shout and totally embarass him in a way that he secretly loved. She cheered for me too, back when she thought we were just friends. We were together for seven months, but she only found out about us... afterwards. Even if I hadn't initially been planning to tell her, which I had been, the police had demanded to know every piece of information about us that they could get. I'd wanted her to know first, that I had loved her son dearly, that I had tried to take care of him but it's no use trying to stifle a young will. She begged me to see that it wasn't my fault - he was her son, and she should have taken care of him. And she blamed herself. How could it not age someone, waking up every day and looking at her child's empty room, feeling like it was her fault?

"I'll be alright, sweetie. Just worry about you."

I nodded and kissed Ms. Christensen's cheek. "You're a wonderful lady."