Spill the Wine
| Spill the Wine | |
|---|---|
| Date of Cutscene: | 22 January 2024 |
| Location: | Grayson Residence, Baltimore, Maryland |
| Synopsis: | Debbie Grayson (Mother of Mark Grayson) deals with her grief in the the wake of a false funeral to bury her husband. |
| Cast of Characters: | Mark Grayson, Debbie Grayson (NPC) |
| Tinyplot: | Omni-Man |
"Debbie? You didn't have to come back to work yet." The office manager stood in the doorway as Debbie Grayson settled back into her desk. He watched the middle-aged woman as she settled back in, concern in his eyes as he sipped from his coffee. "The office pitched together, we have enough paid time off offered up that you can easily take another week or two off. It's the beginning of the year, everyone's generous with their PTO."
"No, I'm fine." Debbie offered quietly, looking up from her desk. "Mark's in school and he has things going on with his girlfriends, and I'd just be in the house by myself." She put a smile on her face. "So being here gives me something to do." A tone of cheerfulness in the last words.
"Well. Alright. But if you need anything... what happened, anyway?"
Debbie sighed and steeled herself. Cecil had practiced the story with her and Mark over and over again almost to the point where she almost believed it. Not that her husband, Nolan Grayson, formerly Omni-Man, had turned on humanity and threatened an invasion and it took their son and his friends and loved one to drive him off-world. Instead, she offered. "Plane crash. He was flying over Hawai'i in a private plane researching a new book when it went down."
"Hawai'i? I guess you should be lucky he didn't invite you, right?" her manager offered with a small, unsure laugh. Maybe humor would help?
Debbie glanced up. "Look, I get it. It's odd. But I'm fine. Promise. I need to get back to work. And I appreciate you letting me come back. After all, these houses aren't going to sell themselves!" she offered in false-optimism. "So, if you'll excuse me?" She took out a small picture. Reaching for one of the frames on her desk, she slipped out the picture of Nolan that was in it and slipped in a picture of Mark mugging for the camera, flanked on either side by Bunny and Sunny also in all smiles, before she set the frame back on the desk and turned to the smile pile of condolence cards on the desk, and as she opened one of them, she recognized on from a friend. She turned it over, and there was a black card with a phone number and a note that read: 'When you're really ready to talk about it.'
Filing it away for later, Debbie went through the rest of her day at work and then made her way home. Opening the door to the home, "Nolan?" she asked in confusion. But it was only his scent in the air - a lingering reminder that this was the home they made. She walked by the wall of pictures of the Grayson family and looked. Pictures of her and Nolan on their wedding day. At a book signing. Mark's birth. His first baseball games, pictures at school functions, vacations - a span of a lifespan of two people in love and creating a family, just for it all to be a lie and she was nothing more than a pet. Her fists clenched at her sides and she reached for their wedding photo, but in the end - she couldn't bring herself to take it down. She had to walk away.
She made her way into the kitchen and opened the wine cabinet. Taking out a bottle, she opened it and took out a bottle of red and a glass. As she started to close the cabinet, she noticed it popped open again. She frowned and tried again with the same result.
It was a cabinet she had asked Nolan to fix weeks ago, just before all of this had started. And it was that cabinet that caught her fury as she slammed it closed time and time again. Glasses shattered, bottles broke and she slammed it a few more times before she sunk to her knees in the midsts of the spilt wine and started to sob.
